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The His Dark Materials movie is taking shape. The award-winning children's series, considered the "anti-Narnia", is due on the screen in 2007, starring a actress found in open casting, along with Nicole Kidman (as Mrs. Coulter, for those who know the books). Unfortunately, the screenplay by Tom Stoppard has been dumped, though the new one appears to be to the author's liking. There is no official trailer yet, but there are several more or less painful fan-made ones. The series has also been made into a successful play, and a radio program. For those who haven't read it, an excerpt is here; and for those that have, try the interactive alethiometer or find out your daemon's name. Previous discussion on the debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury was here.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:11 PM PST - 51 comments

EEEK! (YouTube) [more]
posted by madamjujujive at 10:48 PM PST - 78 comments

``Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and other countries of the so-called "free world." The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership... The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others... These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly industrialized capitalism.'
posted by Mr. Six at 10:24 PM PST - 49 comments

Fidel Castro temporarily relinquishes power before under going surgery. His brother, Raul is acting as president and first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. Is this the beginning of the end?
posted by hex1848 at 8:49 PM PST - 148 comments

Apparently, all the exhibits entered into evidence in US v. Moussaoui are available online. Enjoy!
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:28 PM PST - 25 comments

The Periodic Table should be familiar to anyone that's taken a Chemistry course. Like E=MC^2 it's something people tend to remember even years after they've forgotten everything else they learned in science class. Maybe that's why it's inspired so many renditions: From the edible to the wearable to the literary. Heck, for some it causes them to break out into song.
posted by cm at 7:25 PM PST - 20 comments

Flight of the Conchords (video, "Jenny") the fourth most popular folk rock in New Zealand! More Videos (Business Time, Gangsta folk battle, Issues (parody of "Where Is the Love?"), She's so hot...Boom!, Albi the Racist Dragon). Audio-only versions of most of their stuff. Official site.
posted by null terminated at 5:55 PM PST - 24 comments

"The situation didn't have any intrinsic calm to it," he says, "There was some excited radio communication and the roar of the wind and storm was also very cautionary. I knew it was in the process of killing people out there..."

Dr. Stuart Hutchison, a Canadian cardiologist, was a member of one of three expeditions climbing the southern route on Mount Everest in early May of 1996. Just after midnight on the morning of May 10, he and 34 other climbers crawled out of their tents on the South Col and started their final summit push. After weeks of climbing up and down between camps on the mountain; scaling the treacherous Khumbu Ice Fall and waliking the Western Cwm to acclimatize their bodies to the to the rarefied air at and above 14,000 feet above sea level, everything came down to the next 24 hours.

The day would end with 11 climbers dead on the mountain. Until now Dr. Hutchison has maintained his silence about his role in, and experience of, that tragic day on Everest. [more inside]
posted by persona non grata at 5:27 PM PST - 50 comments

CleanFlicks closes up shop and liquidates as Hollywood wins content-rights battle. Should a rental store have the right to remove offensive material before renting the DVD out to its customers?
posted by JPowers at 3:23 PM PST - 142 comments

We're raising a nation of wimps.
posted by keswick at 2:59 PM PST - 118 comments

Platform Security It’s time for a helpful primer on platform security. Also, our good friends at MoFi want to remind you: don’t buy anyone’s C.R.A.P. Always sound advice, except for you coprophiliacs out there. You guys are on your own.
posted by Unregistered User at 2:55 PM PST - 9 comments

Why we love Monty. Just a few months ago, Monty Panesar was the struggling underdog of the England cricket team to some ("from what I've read of his fielding and batting, I think there's potential for him to outdo Phil Tufnell for sheer comedic value"), and downright butt-of-the-joke to others (Ponty turns around and appeals madly. The umpire isn't amused. "What the f*** are you appealing for?" he asks. "The ball," says Ponty, imploringly. "Can I have the ball please?"). After continued improval culminating in a ten-wicket haul (including the key batsmen) against Pakistan last weekend, now the bookies have the turbanator at 10-1 to be BBC Sports Personality of the year. ("Monty is a left-arm finger spinner for crying out loud. What is he doing spinning it a foot? Not even Danish Kaneria, the second best leg spinner in world cricket, could turn it that much"). Quite the turn-around!
posted by nthdegx at 2:51 PM PST - 21 comments

Social theorist Murray Bookchin died July 30th in his home in Burlington, Vermont. During a prolific activist career spanning half a century, Bookchin forged a new anti-authoritarian outlook called social ecology, which sought to reclaim local political power, by means of direct popular democracy, against the consolidation and increasing centralization of the nation state. Bookchin was a relentless critic of ideologically similar movements that he found disturbing, including the New Left's drift toward Marxism-Leninism in the late 1960s, tendencies toward mysticism and misanthropy in the radical environmental movement, and the growing focus on individualism and personal lifestyles among anarchists. He was kicked out of the Young Communist League at age 18 for openly criticizing Stalin. In 1974, he co-founded the Institute for Social Ecology. He published more than 20 books and hundreds of articles during his lifetime. A public memorial service will be held for him in Burlington, Vermont, on Sunday, August 13th. (Summarized from an email sent by Brian Tokar.)
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 12:02 PM PST - 18 comments

The Poor Man's Air Force: A History of the Car Bomb Part 1 & Part 2. Written by Mike Davis, the two-part essay argues that the first car bomb was actually a horse-drawn carriage filled with dynamite that Italian anarchists used to blow up Wall Street in 1920. (more inside)
posted by jonp72 at 11:36 AM PST - 15 comments

How To Put Your Thumb on the Scales of World Opinion. In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
posted by scalefree at 10:12 AM PST - 143 comments

Scarface. No, not that one. Or even that one. Fish [previously] and his roommates remake a classic film. Only problem is, they've never seen it. Well, two of them haven't. Revisionist filmmaking never knew what hit it.
posted by Francesnash at 10:12 AM PST - 7 comments

"The system for classifying illegal drugs in Britain, which determines how users are punished, is unscientific and illogical and should be completely overhauled", according to a new report. See updated chart on the harm potential of various drugs.
posted by daksya at 10:00 AM PST - 31 comments

Perfection and Eraserhead. Discussing Singing in the Rain and Goodfellas with prisoners. The link between Pasolini, Blind Willie Johnson and Carl Sagan. If you like hanging out at the corner of Film and Word, you might enjoy spending time in the archives at Your Humble Viewer, a wide-ranging, well-written, funny and literate film blog.
posted by mediareport at 9:40 AM PST - 10 comments

Los Angeles in the 1900s is a collection of newspaper articles & photographs documenting life in L.A. from 1900 to 1909. Some of the articles are funny, some tragic, all informative about what life in the very young city was like prior to the explosive growth caused by Mullholland, the Film Industry, & the freeways.
posted by jonson at 8:49 AM PST - 9 comments

The Yuyu (flash, 8.4Mb). The latest instalment in the Brackenwood series of impressive flash animations by former Disney cartoonist Adam Phillips (previously). Features music by Spider Stacy, of Pogues fame.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:32 AM PST - 12 comments

The Chicago Tribune special report on peak oil. Includes a documentary and reporting by Pulitzer-Prize winner Paul Salopek.
posted by stbalbach at 5:22 AM PST - 78 comments

"I keep track of Condoleezza's hairdo so you don't have to."
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:21 PM PST - 38 comments

Meat cake - Meat cake - Meat cake - More Meat cake
posted by growabrain at 8:14 PM PST - 85 comments

Beirut Postcard
posted by jne1813 at 8:10 PM PST - 12 comments

"It's time for politicians to let Terri Schiavo rest in peace", says the politician who santimoniously went on national TV, and voted in the Senate, to prevent exactly that. Now he says it, when he's in a tight re-election race, and government intervention in private medical matters doesn't anymore seem like popular vote-getter. But why's the politician bring it up now? To santimoniously dismiss Terri's husband Michael Schiavo for having the unseemly affrontry to remind voters of the politician's vote to interfere in his family's private and agonizing end-of-life decisions. Now that's chutzpah Joementum!
posted by orthogonality at 7:59 PM PST - 91 comments

Amazing photos of human fetal development from conception to birth.
posted by leapingsheep at 6:52 PM PST - 59 comments

The politically incorrect alphabet: an alphabet using only subjects that, while they might have been unremarked a few decades ago, are now outside acceptable usage. But only just. (mildly nsfw)
posted by onkelchrispy at 6:02 PM PST - 46 comments

Metatalk: "Psychic Readings, Clairvoyant Readings, Graphology & Handwriting Analysis." An errant stab in the dark unearthed this amusing conflation. A site search reveled no doubles, so... what am i thinking?
posted by mwhybark at 5:31 PM PST - 21 comments

Great photos from the Paping Soapbox Derby held earlier this month. [via MAKE]
posted by mathowie at 5:04 PM PST - 7 comments

E3 is finished. Or maybe not. The video game trade show was long known for long lines, unruly fans, and people who weren't supposed to be there. Will a combination of fan supported gaming conventions and corporate sponsored events pick up the slack?
posted by zabuni at 3:49 PM PST - 24 comments

Whether you love it or hate it, Ulillillia City is a fascinating site by fascinating person. It's a meticulously annotated, categorized and laid out record of one man's entire mental life: his colour coded daily life, his dreams (over 400!), his fears, his video game ideas (including the supernatural olympics), his unique personalized mind game, his extensive tips 'n' tricks, how he processes and listens to music, and far more...
posted by The Wig at 2:58 PM PST - 41 comments

bit Generations is a line of Japanese budget-priced Game Boy Advance games Nintendo released these past two weeks. Most of the titles feature minimalist graphics combined with simple but engaging gameplay, echoing the company's recent philosophy. Perhaps the most intriguing of the games is Soundvoyager, in which the player relies almost entirely on audio positioning to progress- a bit reminicent of this. No word on a US release yet, but if Electroplankton made it out here, maybe there's a chance.
posted by Dr-Baa at 2:11 PM PST - 10 comments

Qana 1996. Qana 2006.
posted by pwedza at 12:25 PM PST - 148 comments

A timetable of UK trains carrying nuclear waste. (PDF file). The related Greenpeace UK article. UK nuclear waste train route graphic. Mirror tabloid hack plants fake bomb on nuclear waste train. "The gate was open, there were no security guards. I walked up to the train and planted my bomb". The Guardian's take on the story.
posted by nthdegx at 11:57 AM PST - 16 comments

Wonder what it would be like to have Parts I and II of "Back to the Future" synched up on a split-screen during which both Marty McFlys are together? Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited.
posted by MetaMonkey at 2:59 AM PST - 57 comments

Storm The House 2 is a flash based siege game involving balancing out weapon upgrades with defense & repair upgrades as an ever increasing horde of stick figure villains try to overrun you; bonus Terry Gilliam inspired weapon included at Day 40. For those curious about the original Storm the House, that's pretty much the same game as this one but worse
posted by jonson at 12:12 AM PST - 46 comments

Danes top world happiness ranking. "Piecing together information from more than 100 studies in the growing field of happiness research, a British psychologist has produced what he says is the first world map of happiness." The study ranks each country based on it's SWL (Satisfaction with Life, calculated from data published by the New Economics Foundation) and contrasts it with statistics such as Life Expectancy, GDP per capita and the level of Access to Education.
posted by heylight at 12:06 AM PST - 61 comments

Bali is an island in Indonesia that attracted Walter Spies, a Russian born, German artist who settled in the colonial Dutch East Indies from 1923 on. Adored by the Balinese, Spies was the co-founder of the Pita Maha artists' cooperative, he shaped the development of contemporary Balinese art and established the West's image of Bali that still exists today. [more images and background inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:07 PM PST - 15 comments

Spam plants Plant-like artwork generated from text data in Spam. There's also spam architecture and whatever this is.
posted by delmoi at 7:48 PM PST - 13 comments

The New York Times thinks that we might be witnessing a paradigm shift: "Old labels, and old planning, do not apply. Certainly its style of 21st-century combat is known — on paper. The style even has its own labels, including network warfare, or net war, and fourth-generation warfare, although many in the military don’t care for such titles. But the battlefields of south Lebanon prove that it is here, and sooner than expected. And the American national security establishment is struggling to adapt."

So does author and history's weathercock William Gibson.

Here is some background reading on the new buzzword from Defense and the National Interest (which has a ton of articles on the subject), Global Guerillas, and antiwar.com. The last of these is of especial interest since it's written by one of the authors of the first article on fourth-generational warfare.
posted by Kattullus at 7:21 PM PST - 43 comments

"F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." The ugly truth about Mel Gibson's drunk-driving arrest oozes out, with exquisite timing. (Enter his name on linked form.) Apple/tree, etc. (via tmz)
posted by turducken at 6:55 PM PST - 164 comments

New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 has been under construction since 1970 and completion is expected in 2020. (Be sure to click the sidebars.) City Water Tunnels Nos. 1 and 2 have been operating continuously since 1917 and 1936, and currently cannot be shut down for repair without disrupting the city's water supply. Popular Mechanics and BLDBLOG have articles, Newsday has photos, and 60 Minutes has an article with video. Local paper The Villager covers the construction of one of the many shafts that connect to the tunnel. It has inspired a one-woman show. The Sandhog Project covers the workers, called "Sandhogs," with photos, sound, and video. Over twenty sandhogs died building the tunnel.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 6:51 PM PST - 11 comments

"Workers were also told not to flirt with one another." After eight years of "fiasco", Wal-Mart bails on Germany.
posted by telstar at 5:57 PM PST - 55 comments

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the operating room: surgical fires. Virtually all operating room fires ignite on or in the patient. These fires typically result in little damage to equipment, cause considerable injury to patients, and are a complete surprise to the staff.
posted by Wet Spot at 4:20 PM PST - 31 comments

The Fine Art Adoption Network works to "place artworks by committed artists into deserving homes and institutions, as well as to offer a channel for new audiences for contemporary art. It is the intention of FAAN to engage art enthusiasts who never thought of themselves as art collectors, and to introduce them to the experience and pleasures of owning and caring for contemporary art." Amazing. via Gothamist
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:10 PM PST - 14 comments

U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.
posted by EarBucket at 11:55 AM PST - 72 comments

Photosynth is a new image processing technology from Microsoft that takes a collection of images (say, of a famous location), analyzes them for similarities & rebuilds the location in virtual space for the user to fly though, zooming in on details, panning around like a 3D Hockney piece. Video of how it works here.
posted by lilbrudder at 10:02 AM PST - 82 comments

Owen Wilson has denied any connection between his new movie, "You, Me and Dupree," and '70s supergroup Steely Dan, a spokesman for the actor said Friday. The band recently posted a letter on their Web site claiming that Wilson's Dupree character was based on their Grammy-winning song, "Cousin Dupree," about a couch-hopping houseguest. In a statement released by his spokeswoman, Ina Treciokas, Wilson said: "I have never heard the song `Cousin Dupree' and I don't even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, `HEY 19.'"
posted by wfc123 at 8:44 AM PST - 62 comments

1-800-SUICIDE loses govt. funding: Despite the fact that almost 2 million callers have reached help and hope over the last 8 years, and a government funded evaluation stating the benefits of 1-800-SUICIDE, the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), a division of Health & Human Services, has decided to create their own government run system where they would have direct access to confidential data on individuals in crisis. (SAMHSA has already scrubbed their websites of any and all LGBT information, and gay youth are 2-3 times more likely to commit suicide.) Save 1-800-SUICIDE website here.
posted by amberglow at 9:24 PM PST - 67 comments

IRAQ RADIO: Turkish soldiers Enter Northern Iraq by Chan News Agency: The 1st division comander of Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (IKDP) Fahmi Sofi, claimed that about 200 Turkish soldiers entered two kelometers into northern Iraq on Wednesday. His statement came from the Voice of Iraqi Radio.......
posted by Unregistered User at 7:43 PM PST - 57 comments

The "Snakes on a Plane" Problem. "The tragedy of the best titled movie in the history of film."
posted by kirkaracha at 6:09 PM PST - 124 comments

Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider has been fired. After a 2003 incident in which the North Carolina Press Association stripped him of his awards for three pictures (before and after can be seen here) the Observer has fired Schneider over the alteration of this image. The question remains among photojournalists: is it unethical to alter a photo in such a way that it more closely resembles what the eye saw and the camera is unable to capture, or is this a deceptive practice that damages the public's trust?
posted by TheGoldenOne at 4:02 PM PST - 77 comments

Are you or have you ever been a member of community theater? Sgt. Bleu Copas, an Arabic language specialist was kicked out of the army recently after an "investigation" that involved questions about whether he had a lot of gay friends, and if he'd ever been involved in community theater.
posted by delmoi at 3:57 PM PST - 50 comments

How To Grow A Chair: An Interview with Richard Reames. Arborsculpture is the art of shaping tree trunks to create art and functional items through bending, grafting, pruning, and multiple planting.
posted by team lowkey at 3:57 PM PST - 10 comments

"Rasputina is a 'cello-rock' ensemble. Founded by Melora Creager in 1891, they have long held true to their mission of enlightening the common man as to the power and versatility of the mighty cello." Her insightful comments such as, "There are many things that Satan invented that I can really get behind- like spanking", and "Our undergarments may be soiled, but, our hearts remain pure" have been an inspiration to many. Here's their cover of Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" (mp3). Unfortunately, they chose the evil RM format to stream their other songs from their site.
posted by sluglicker at 2:43 PM PST - 34 comments

Ever Wonder? "[H]oping to push existing boundaries, this paper will put the accumulated knowledge of two animals to the ultimate test, in an attempt to answer the age-old question of who would win in a fight between a penguin and a lemur. Courtesy of MeFi's own Milkman Dan.
posted by rossination at 2:23 PM PST - 17 comments

"we recognize a divine plan that stands above all human plans and continue to seek His will." So says George W. Bush in a proclamation affirming a Senate resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's decision to establish In God We Trust as the national motto of the United States. Coincidentally, George's brother Jeb has recently approved In God We Trust as Florida's official state motto.
posted by jonp72 at 2:18 PM PST - 58 comments

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Part One. Part Two. [YouTube videos] [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Border Patrol Scouts
posted by pwedza at 1:12 PM PST - 20 comments

"NUKE ISRAEL!... Hezbollah, where can I enlist?"
Jani Taskinen, one of the lead PHP developers, has upped and quit. Why? Because Jani has served as a UN peacekeeper, Zend is run by Israelis, and, well, you work out the rest.
posted by reklaw at 12:46 PM PST - 105 comments

Anthony Bourdain, chef, writer, and TV traveler, writes about his experience in Beirut and his escape to the USS Nashville. Via. Previously.
posted by lackutrol at 12:33 PM PST - 32 comments

Negative Campaign Tactics in Congo: A candidate for president in Congo's first free election in four decades defends himself against accusations of cannibalism. He dismisses as libelous electioneering claims that he ate pygmies during his years as a rebel leader.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 12:09 PM PST - 9 comments

War in Spaaaaaaaacccccce! A practical discussion of weapons that would work in space and orbital combat.
posted by Divine_Wino at 11:18 AM PST - 42 comments

Leonard Cohen reads his poetry on the Online NewsHour.
posted by wheelieman at 10:57 AM PST - 9 comments

Need to find something to do with your empty beer bottles? Got some old gas cans taking up space in the back yard? Does grandma's acoustic bass just need a little something extra? The folks at oddmusic can help.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 10:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Running late at work? Need to get dinner on the table? It is easy to warm up the George Foreman USB iGrill from any internet connection. With a little advance planning, your meal can be ready when you get home! (via b3ta newsletter)
posted by moift at 9:49 AM PST - 45 comments

Obsessive Consumption wants to know what you buy. Obsessive Consumption wants to know what you owe. Created by Kate Bingaman to showcase her love/hate relationship with money, shopping, branding, credit cards, celebrity, advertising and marketing, she documented all of her purchases for 28 months starting on January 22nd, 2002 and ending on April 22nd, 2004. Currently she is drawing a lot of her purchases and all of her credit card statements until they are paid off. Her Obsessive Consumption installation in Kansas City is particularly impressive.
posted by dead_ at 9:23 AM PST - 9 comments

Extra! Tabloid photographs from the Los Angeles Herald Express (1936-1961), showing celebrities, fashion, tragedy, (early) CHiPs, and babes with guns. Via the Virtual Gallery at the LA Public Library, which has many other fine exhibits, such as California in the 20s, the 1932 Olympics, celebrity golf, and a wonderful collection from the golden age of travel posters.
posted by Gamblor at 9:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Ad Supported Software It started with email, and now it's everything from IM, maps and photo galleries. But, free network management software? Can this work?
posted by tboz at 8:55 AM PST - 8 comments

David Gemmell has died.
posted by essexjan at 8:48 AM PST - 13 comments

Maim That Tune "Are you plagued by Stuck Tune Syndrome? Do you have a song stuck in your head you just can't get out? Take heart friend, for your suffering is over. The Maimograph Machine, through complex analysis and calculation, will find an even catchier tune to counter-act the one you already have."
posted by unknowncommand at 8:24 AM PST - 44 comments

787 pieces of clip art, in a loop -- mesmerizing, haunting, and amusing. I can't stop watching. [via coudal]
posted by mathowie at 8:19 AM PST - 38 comments

Gonzalez seeks "protection" from War Crimes Act of 1996 Ten years ago, the Republican Congress passed the War Crimes Act, which makes violations of the Geneva Convention by Americans criminal acts. Now, the Attorney General is urging the current Republican Congress to "shield" those who participate in the War On Terror from the Act.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:56 AM PST - 68 comments

Remember Infocom? What makes a small, beloved, and wildly successful developer of interactive fiction decide to sideline the games and venture into building database software instead? While the knowledge that they were bought out and shuttered is pretty common, it isn't until relatively recently that all the details have come to light.
posted by ewagoner at 7:55 AM PST - 18 comments

Only rarely is there an opportunity to participate in a molecular 'happening'. On an open field at Stanford University in 1971, several hundred students convened to undulate and impersonate molecules undergoing protein synthesis by a ribosome. Narrated by Nobel laureate Paul Berg and performed by a cast of very groovy cats. (via)
posted by Turtles all the way down at 7:03 AM PST - 15 comments

SysAdminDay. If you can read this, thank your sysadmin.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:01 AM PST - 31 comments

Magnum photos of previous Tours de France. A Flash (Friday) evocative photo essay of Tours gone by. With soothing accordian music and light narration to help you forget your doping woes.
posted by OmieWise at 6:55 AM PST - 11 comments

Law as Art? is a recent article that discusses artwork that deliberately incorporates the law as an intrinsic element of the work itself, including Consideration, Disclaimer, Terms and Conditions, and A Selection of Interesting Secrets from Various Stages in my Life.
posted by ND¢ at 6:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Newsfilter: Police officer infiltrates anti-war group obtains leadership position. Still no pacifist have infiltrated terror cell to discredit their activity by reducing terror.
posted by elpapacito at 5:29 AM PST - 40 comments

Blasphemy on a train. We've talked all about the movie epic of our generation, Snakes on a Plane, before, but now that its within a month of opening, most of us can't even sleep at night. What to do? Placate your anxieties with the direct-to-DVD low budget rip-off from The Asylum. What better testament to capitalism than a company like this succeed riding on the coat-tails of real movies about codes, pirates, and gorillas.
posted by allkindsoftime at 5:10 AM PST - 24 comments

Nerds travel to the infamous Atari 2600 E.T. video game landfill, dig up hundreds of carts, play them and make a music video of it. (Quicktime video.)
posted by loquacious at 3:48 AM PST - 37 comments

Who's on first? The classic sketch from Abbott and Costello available for all to see on youtube. Many others have done the sketch since, or a variation of it, such as Slappy the Squirrel, Yoda and JarJar and World of Warcraft.Previously discussed
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:49 AM PST - 20 comments

The Museum of Online Museams. Our very own Meta-Museum. Perhaps you feel like whistling? Living on the edge, going shopping, , rolling the dice, , or starting a fire? Or would you prefer something smaller? Found via Coudal, which also might be worth a look.
posted by sophist at 1:38 AM PST - 15 comments

freaky flash fryday alex yukon's bizzaro sort-of "resume" flash web thing (parts nsfw). check out his videos (also on youtube. Just don't let the gnome know.
posted by psychobum at 1:06 AM PST - 4 comments

You can drift, you can dream, even walk write on water
Researchers at Akishima Laboratories have developed a device that uses waves to draw text and pictures on the surface of water. Here is a PDF file about the project (I think it is in Japanese, but it has pretty pictures!)
posted by lenny70 at 12:34 AM PST - 16 comments

The Size of Our World. A brief study in pictures of the relative sizes of some astronomical bodies.
posted by Eideteker at 10:49 PM PST - 47 comments

Fans of Hollywood Squares may remember Wayland Flowers and his homely, tiara- and rhinestone-bedecked puppet Madame (they replaced the similarly bitchy Paul Lynde as center square.) Madame also briefly enjoyed her own show Madame's Place (1982, with Corey Feldman!), and also, incomprehensibly, hosted Solid Gold. It's not easy to find video of Madame nowadays -- YouTube, as an example, only has one. Her public visibility has decreased since the 1988 death of her puppeteer. (The rumor -- untrue -- is that she was buried with Flowers.)

But even if a puppeteer dies, it's possible for the puppet to live on.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:20 PM PST - 30 comments

Newsfilter: According to a new research from the United States, increasing numbers of Americans are becoming too fat to fit into X-ray machines. Whoa. Heavy...
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:14 PM PST - 63 comments

It was an important consumer product in the 18th century. Rich and poor “took” it and it was processed in several locations. Outside Bewdley, a mill was created to grind the raw material. The history of the industry is linked to early 20th century photographs, which show the abandoned and derelict mill and machinery.
posted by boo_radley at 7:14 PM PST - 27 comments

Caution: Retards In Area
posted by nooneyouknow at 5:08 PM PST - 104 comments

Makin' fun of furries, fantasy nerds, and bad artists
posted by jimmy at 5:00 PM PST - 47 comments

I've linked their site before, but now Fecal Face has instructional How Tos: Stuff a Mouse, Make an Oil Painting, Screen Print a Poster, Make a Mini-Comic/Zine. The site has many other features as well but remember that where there's art, the occasional nsfw image may wait, brooding.
posted by dobbs at 3:50 PM PST - 9 comments

im in ur sub base killin ur d00dz. Eerie photos of a decomissioned Russian submarine base. [via]
posted by dersins at 2:04 PM PST - 38 comments

I just escaped from prison - and I'm blogging about it! Farah Damiji, 39, a former magazine editor from the UK, megawealthy scion of a real estate dynasty and "international conwoman", was given a 3.5 year sentence last year for credit card fraud and identity theft. She was given a day pass from Downview Prison in Surrey to attend an educational event and never returned. That's when an English magazine found out that Ms. Damiji was blogging about her jailbreak on her Myspace page. Her Majesty's Home Office is not amused.
posted by huskerdont at 1:37 PM PST - 38 comments

Everybody please read about marmots. "Marmots are large, about the size of a housecat, charismatic sciurid rodents found in the Northern Hemisphere." [Much, much more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 1:26 PM PST - 47 comments

Portraits of Stuffed Monkeys.
posted by brain_drain at 12:40 PM PST - 9 comments

Waiter, there's hair in my soy sauce! A new soy sauce from China is raising eyebrows in Asia and elsewhere. Why? IT'S MADE OUT OF PEOPLE! Well, people's hair. Someone ought to tell these guys. [via BoingBoing]
posted by clevershark at 12:16 PM PST - 23 comments

A new iteration of the Fun Movie Quiz has been posted. For those unfamiliar, single frames from films are shown, and the users must guess what movie the image comes from. Previously.
posted by lilbrudder at 11:06 AM PST - 52 comments

What if transit were free? For six days last month in San Francisco, it was. At a cost of about $14 million (USD) for all six Spare the Air days, about 1.3 million (15%) more people took transit. Festivity ensued. Now LA's mayor is proposing a Free Transit Week. More opinions.
posted by salvia at 10:25 AM PST - 85 comments

The internet has been hailed as a great media equalizer; no longer do you have to have the huge budgets & backing of major news outlets, record companies, movie studios, etc.. One attempt to formalize that process, IMince seems to be a bit of a YouTube/Project Greenlight combination, where users submit their funniest/most compelling (five minute max) digital video in the hopes of being discovered. I assume the site will be community content driven & user voting (digg like?) to separate the good from the bad, but until they start getting/posting content, it's hard to tell.
posted by jonson at 9:02 AM PST - 11 comments

New York Times 2006 interactive elections map. A really impressive guide to the current House, Senate, and governor races with all of the poll data and analysis a political junky could ask for; plus the ability to modify the maps by population, ethnicity, and income levels. It also allows you to play out scenarios. [registration may be required]
posted by blahblahblah at 8:27 AM PST - 16 comments

The new war on hunger. No strangers to controversy, the Food Not Bombs Network generated further discord while distributing meals to others. In the course of its work, FNB's food lines often neglect the issue(s) of sanitation disposal. In response, Legislation has been swiftly drafted to correct problem; feeding the destitute in public gathering areas has since become a criminal offense in a number of cities.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:59 AM PST - 37 comments

Landis tests positive for doping.
posted by beagle at 7:34 AM PST - 141 comments

"There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes." Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. Initial (and unwarranted) suspicions notwithstanding, the July 27th bombing would prove to be just the first of four such acts of domestic terrorism committed by 5-year fugitive Eric Robert Rudolph.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:28 AM PST - 23 comments

The Ghetto Diary of Eli Lesky, The Fifth Horseman, the Buchewald Series, artwork by Joseph Bau; Paintings of the Hmong Migration; Visualizing Otherness - Nazi and other racist propaganda - all this and much, much more from the University of Minnesota's The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:03 AM PST - 18 comments

"We have many traditions. In my career, I have encountered most of them. Some are good, some not so good. I would, however not be here today were it not for our greatest tradition of all... honor." Carl Brashear, the US Navy's first African American diver and the subject of the 2000 movie Men of Honor has died at age 75.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:31 AM PST - 11 comments

Ever heard of the Arbëresh? Regis Philbin's mother was one. Even if you're not a fan of Regis or his morning show, you might find the Arbëresh interesting. They are ethnic Albanians who had fought under the great Albanian general George Kastrioti, better known as Skanderbeg (The Russians even made a movie about him). Six hundred years ago, they were invited to settle in Southern Italy and Sicily and became one the one many forgotten groups of Europe. If you have the time, listen to some Arbëresh music.
posted by Atreides at 6:22 AM PST - 18 comments

Here is a guy playing the "Star Wars" theme on a banjo.
posted by ND¢ at 6:18 AM PST - 60 comments

US Navy Saftey Center Photos of the Week. Or: A Nearly Comprehensive But Not Entirely Inclusive Manual of Instruction On How to Qualify for a Darwin Award.
posted by loquacious at 11:34 PM PST - 22 comments

Africa does not need more expensive food. As the Doha trade rounds collapse largely due to disagreements about farm subsidies, Daniel Davies challenges the conventional view that farm subsidies hurt the poor.
posted by afu at 10:22 PM PST - 28 comments

Barcodepedia: A community based, online barcode database.
posted by onkelchrispy at 9:04 PM PST - 13 comments

What is the value of your vinyl record? An archive of the marketplace of wax.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:39 PM PST - 33 comments

So What?
posted by persona non grata at 7:19 PM PST - 32 comments

Behold! The puppy mover monorail.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:12 PM PST - 40 comments

Love's guide to the church bells of the City of London (with sounds, peals and pictures).
posted by tellurian at 5:58 PM PST - 11 comments

Henry Lim composes sonatas and film scores. He also has a serious thing for Lego. The Hepburn portrait, Natalie Portman portrait, Beethoven and Fab Four portraits are impressive enough, but it is the full size, fully playable Harpsichord that demonstrates some kind of heroism. (mp3 included- to be listened to only once, really, or not even that.)
posted by IndigoJones at 5:57 PM PST - 15 comments

"Years ago, when I worked for outlandishly hirsute rockers The Cure, the band wouldn't tour without stocking up first. I'd be at my desk, and the call would come in. 'Fraser? We're in Rio, and we've run out of Pepto. Can you Fedex us a crate?' And so I would." How to make Pepto-Bismol ice cream.
posted by ktoad at 5:01 PM PST - 34 comments

Interactive Network Maps of Mideast National Relationships Social network analyst Valdis Krebs has put together a pair of interactive network models visualizing the relationships between all the nations & non-nation actors involved in the Mideast crisis. And after you get bored of playing "drag the countries around", check out a few of the other models & maps he's made available. (via)
posted by scalefree at 4:30 PM PST - 10 comments

US plotted to invade Iran: explosive report, Rolling Stone adds new fuel to fire over possible Iran strike. Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran. BY JAMES BAMFORD
posted by Unregistered User at 3:25 PM PST - 100 comments

STUNT ROCK.
posted by glenwood at 1:57 PM PST - 38 comments

Free Computer Version of Board and Card Games with Artificial Intelligence Computer Opponents and with Screen Shots is exactly what is says. Now those of you who've had their interest piqued by such games as Settlers of Catan or others mentioned in the Top 100 Boardgames thread can try games such as these without ponying up the thirty bucks for a big box of boards and pieces.
posted by jtron at 1:34 PM PST - 10 comments

Quicktime VR photos of Tokyo - tunnels - night - large drains - buildings - etc. The nav is mainly in Japanese but the "VR List" link, lower right, seems to be the main index.
posted by carter at 1:30 PM PST - 9 comments

The year is 1909, the man is Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.
posted by mattbucher at 12:46 PM PST - 6 comments

Jack Jackson, writing as Jaxon, may have created the first underground comic, God Nose, in 1964. In 1969 he was one of the founders of RipOff Press. Jackson's work at that time included horror stories (in Skull Comics, RipOff's tribute to EC) and political fare. Jackson returned to his native Texas in the 70s and began work on a series of comics on Texas history. In 1979 he published Comanche Moon, the story of the abduction of Cynthia Ann Parker and of her son, the great Comanche chief Quanah Parker. Jackson was influenced by Texas History Movies, a 1920s comic strip by Jack Patton and John Rosenfeld that was compiled into booklets and used in Texas schools until the 1960s. Other works by Jackson included the story of Spanish-Americans in the war for Texas independence, the Alamo as seen from both sides, and a look at Sam Houston's relationship with the Cherokee. The subjects of Jackson's comics tended to be history's dispossessed and, in 1998, he published Lost Cause, a look at post-Civil War white Texans. Accused of racism, Jackson replied that he intended to show history as it was, not as people wanted it to have been. The Comics Reporter: "Jackson's Texas was capable of grotesquery and atrocity because Jackson's art was able to communicate extreme, transcendent moments without hesitation or shame." Aside from comics, Jackson wrote a number of books on Texas and other history, including the award-winning Los Mestenos, a study of Spanish ranching in Texas. He was a lifetime member of the Texas State Historical Society. Jackson's health deteriorated as he grew older and he suffered from diabetes and prostate cancer. On June 8, Jack Jackson committed suicide near the Stockton, Texas cemetery where his parents are buried.
posted by CCBC at 12:29 PM PST - 19 comments

Globally, there are about 105-107 boys born for every 100 girls. I was led to believe this was because men do stupid things that get themselves killed/injured. I wonder if this theory accounts for those times when men do something stupid that gets women killed/injured. (youTube link: video of a really stupid idea getting two women bruised up. If you laugh, it means you're going to hell.)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 12:26 PM PST - 105 comments

Teaser trailer for the 2007 Ninja Turtles computer-animated film. [more inside, dude]
posted by zennie at 11:54 AM PST - 58 comments

An Exclusive and Brutally Frank Report by JT Nesbitt, a New Orleans resident and the designer of the radically cool Confederate Motorcycles' B91 Wraith (pictured here), in the wake of the destruction of the company's factory during Hurricane Katrina. via
posted by fenriq at 11:36 AM PST - 21 comments

Federal officials in Mexico have officially dropped the investigation into the murders of hundreds of young women in Juarez since 1993. [previously]
posted by gottabefunky at 11:29 AM PST - 19 comments

Looks like the battle over Bush's judicial nominations may be back on. In February, Bush nominated Michael B. Wallace to a seat on the Fifth Circuit. Not long after, the ABA Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary, which evaluates the professional qualifications of all nominees for the federal bench, gave Wallace a 'not qualified' rating. With that rating, Wallace joins company with other similarly unqualified judicial nominees such Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, and J. Harvie Wilkinson III. [more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:33 AM PST - 70 comments

A splash of urban colour! A dilapidated tower block in Glasgow was the setting for a riotous splash of colour this week as Sony followed up their previous Bravia tv campaign of the bouncing balls down the streets of San Francisco with a new advert using a disused towerblock in Glasgow. Some beautiful urban explosion pics here, here, here, here and here.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 10:01 AM PST - 20 comments

The Format. Indie pop and flying dogs.
posted by NationalKato at 9:45 AM PST - 14 comments

We Heart Prints is "a compilation of beautiful, affordable art prints." Your own mileage on beautiful and affordable may vary. {via artdorks, of course}
posted by dobbs at 9:16 AM PST - 24 comments

Newsfilter: While Philadelphia officials dispute with a local chapter of the Boys Scouts of America over its use of taxpayer-subsidized, rent-free property, despite a policy of open discrimination, the Republican-controlled federal government discusses legislation that would make it illegal for taxpayers to withdraw funding from any youth organization, including the Boy Scouts of America, regardless of its activities or stated policies.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:28 AM PST - 192 comments

# ^ ! & *
posted by Plutor at 6:45 AM PST - 47 comments

"I'm Gay"
posted by tsarfan at 6:36 AM PST - 149 comments

Abandoned iron mines - imagine exploring this one.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:32 AM PST - 14 comments

Designing the Next Industrial Revolution [google video], an inspiring talk by William McDonough on design and ecology, beyond sustainability. Starts a little slow, but builds a powerful vision of a possible future. [transcript, via, see also]
posted by MetaMonkey at 6:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Nevermind Zidane: jockey Paul O'Neill puts the head on his horse.
posted by ninebelow at 6:30 AM PST - 10 comments

AirPower Wiki looks like its just getting off the ground, but if you travel much, you know the hassle of finding a power outlet in an airport. Hopefully it grows fast and furiously.
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:25 AM PST - 8 comments

WEALTH OF KINGS Very nice collection of rare and beautiful works of the rug weavers art,including fascinating history of the middle east.
posted by hortense at 12:06 AM PST - 7 comments

After nearly 70 years, blues legend Robert Johnson's guitar has recently surfaced. It's up for sale, but you may need to sell your soul to afford it. Maybe Legba will lend you the purchse price. [more]
posted by madamjujujive at 12:00 AM PST - 118 comments

If you've always wanted to build your own computer why not do it with some tinker toys? This ought to give future archaeologists many years of discussion.
posted by bigmusic at 10:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby asks "Are You a 'Chicken Hawk'?" Liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald responds.
posted by bardic at 8:53 PM PST - 48 comments

What happens if traditional companies were remade into Web 2.0 companies? Think these guys will get any VC funding? Origin Here.
(Via A, Via B)
posted by phyrewerx at 8:09 PM PST - 35 comments

Aikido tested in urban combat. ^{^}
posted by loquacious at 6:56 PM PST - 129 comments

Fergis Writes Letters to such notable recipients as the new Canadian $20 bill, 666, and the single reader that subscribes to his RSS feed.
posted by leapingsheep at 6:44 PM PST - 7 comments

Lit majors - English prof. drops knowledge
posted by vronsky at 4:58 PM PST - 88 comments

I've really been enjoying Ken Jennings' weblog, especially his hilarious, satirical Dear Jeopardy letter (with later faux-correction (bottom)]. But some people don't get it. Michael Starr of the New York Post wrote at length this morning that Jennings is biting the hand that fed him. It gets worse: AP has picked up the story, which is where I first saw it: as a headline - 'Jeopardy' Champ Ken Jennings Blasts Show - on U.S. News & World Report. Ken has a response. Mine is disbelief...
posted by Sean Meade at 4:39 PM PST - 41 comments

Chinese Jews and the Silk Road. Maps. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 4:28 PM PST - 26 comments

You are being followed.
posted by panoptican at 3:36 PM PST - 53 comments

Straight Talk Is Cheap: How John McCain became the capo of the new, reformed campaign finance syndicate. "McCain isn't breaking any campaign finance laws. He wrote them so he wouldn't have to. But he's guilty of campaigning in exactly the manner he asserts is harming our nation. Senator McCain isn't reforming Washington. He is Washington."
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:12 PM PST - 23 comments

A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems – Amit Singh posts a free, 140-page PDF "bonus chapter" to his Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach.
posted by timeistight at 1:33 PM PST - 18 comments

The Smell of War -- the Institute for Creative Technologies preps Quake-happy teens to become first-person shooters in the non-virtual war on terror. Now in Odorama.
posted by digaman at 11:35 AM PST - 22 comments

The extraordinary Center For Land Use Interpretation is a tertiary reference for one of today's posts, and it's been mentioned in comments before. Don't miss the Land Use Database or the Newsletter.
posted by scrump at 11:24 AM PST - 9 comments

INAPPROPRIATE CAPS: Misleading title 4 exclamation points The Daily Kos hive mind parodies itself.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:31 AM PST - 191 comments

The Cavity Lake Fire: On July 14th of this year a lightning strike in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (previous posts) started a wildfire that has so far burned over 30,000 acres, the biggest fire in the area since 1894. A large reason for the size of this fire is the 1999 blowdown of 400,000 acres of forests, that's 600 square miles of dead wood waiting to burn. Short video of firefighters creating a buffer zone, blogger's pics and comments on the aftermath in an area that was just reopened. Five photo galleries of related images: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5. This is my favorite pic to date, that is the smoke plume from this fire.
posted by edgeways at 10:30 AM PST - 20 comments

Tale of How, [mpg] a short film by The Blackheart Gang. [with extra mp3 audio]
posted by ijoshua at 10:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Moscow's decadent post-Communism nightclub scene. Stalin's yacht pushes up the Moscow River at eight a.m., and nobody cares if you missed it. The world's longest-running after-party just keeps going. In a shipboard ballroom, Russia's lucky few tend to their good time. Music like a lot of loud nothing pounds through the girls lathered in Valentino, Gaultier, and Bulgari. Defying you with their eyes, they throw off a kind of heat that has never burned you before. The men with money and new style hang around the edges with satisfied smiles, their low-vibrating calm punching through thousand-dollar sunglasses. They'll kiss you, they'll kill you, you'll know where you stand.
posted by fet at 9:44 AM PST - 50 comments

Most. Expensive. Cellphone. Evar. (It's Jaren Goh Design's $300,000USD "Black Diamond" phone.)
posted by Extopalopaketle at 9:21 AM PST - 62 comments

Seattle clown crime spree! It seems that clown makeup is the New Black for robbers. Besides those Seattle clowns, clownish robbers have hit San Francisco, Tucson, Arizona, Manchester, England, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The resourceful clowns have apparently even invented a new crime - posession of "simulated weapons of mass destruction". Where will it end?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:59 AM PST - 44 comments

[NSFW] Heavy Rain From Quantic Dream Sets a new standard for realism in interactive cinema... I found this to be really creepy. I have a hard time looking into their eyes. Something about it is just...well, see for yourself. Anyway the flash technology is getting better and better. Along with what has become know as augmented reality. Pretty amazing stuff.
posted by Unregistered User at 7:24 AM PST - 61 comments

Scientists say they’ve found a code beyond genetics in DNA. The study by Segal et al. [PDF] establishes a model for predicting some (but not all) nucleosome placement. This is critical for understanding the regulation of gene expression.
posted by rxrfrx at 4:21 AM PST - 31 comments

WinMX is back (kind of). It was such an unbelievably awesome file sharing program that its makers had to pull their peer caches after being served a cease and desist order in September 2005. Now it has been reincarnated as MXpie. Even better . . . it's not spyware or adware.
posted by augustweed at 1:12 AM PST - 45 comments

The Amazon rainforest becomes "a desert" after three consecutive years without rain - the trees die. Next year would be the third year of an ongoing drought. The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emmisions at current rates) - 3/4's of the carbon is released within a year of dieing. The Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".
posted by stbalbach at 12:05 AM PST - 80 comments

Joe Nishizawa's new photojournalism book, Deep Inside, is a visual exploration of the amazing, highly mechanized world under Japan's urban areas. This brief interview with the author is accompanied by several interesting photos.
posted by jonson at 10:57 PM PST - 18 comments

"Excuse me," Schwartzman said to the Home Depot man, "can you tell me where to find tar?" "Tar?" asked the Home Depot man. "What're you using tar for?" "I'm building an ark," said Schwartzman. If there was anything that two years of completing God's preposterous homework assignments had taught Schwartzman it was that there was absolutely nothing you could tell Home Depot Man you were building that would surprise him, that would get any reaction from him at all, for that matter, aside from the usual skepticism about your choice of building materials.

Shalom Auslander recasts Jewish history in short story form. Start with the aforementioned "Prophet's Dilemma," and work your way backwards to "Plagued." [more inside]
posted by anjamu at 10:56 PM PST - 19 comments

The origins and evolution of human intelligence: parasitic insects? viruses? mushrooms? neural darwinism? foraging? machiavellian competition? emergence? or something else?
posted by MetaMonkey at 10:33 PM PST - 26 comments

Semper FiSpace
posted by pyramid termite at 10:30 PM PST - 24 comments

Crew of a disabled ship carrying 4,813 cars from Japan to Vancouver will soon be rescued. The Cougar Ace is stranded near Adak, Alaska, a tiny town and former naval air station in the remote Aleutian Islands, 1,192 miles from Anchorage. Here are pictures of other Aleutian shipwrecks.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:24 PM PST - 37 comments

Your Very Own Nuclear Island Getaway Johnston Atoll, described by J. Maarten Troost in his book The Sex Lives of Cannibals as the "vilest place on earth" is for sale.
posted by thedailygrowl at 9:55 PM PST - 23 comments

The Vasulkas - an archive of early video and electronic art including a trippy Lilith (Doris Cross) and a hip Don Cherry. [via]
posted by tellurian at 9:00 PM PST - 6 comments

Two videos (second one live) I don't understand in the slightest but which are pretty to watch. (movs)
posted by dobbs at 8:51 PM PST - 16 comments

On September 9th 2006, 112 of the world's writers, artists, activists, and social entrepeneurs (nominees here) will gather for a Table of Free Voices in Berlin, Germany, discussing questions about the important issues of today. Who provides those questions? You.
posted by divabat at 8:49 PM PST - 6 comments

Joanie Anderson, singer/songwriter (YouTube)
posted by persona non grata at 7:44 PM PST - 64 comments

"Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?" [MP3] A stupefying song (sung by the Joker) from a forthcoming Batman musical, written and sung by Jim Steinman of Bat Out of Hell fame. He discusses the matter in depth on his blog. If it's a hoax I fell for it. But a cursory Google search bears it out!
posted by BackwardsCity at 7:36 PM PST - 17 comments

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota "Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," says one federal Air Marshal. Why? Because a memo from management requires marshals to file one Surveillance Detection Report (SDR) per month, and failure to do so will negatively impact upon their annual raises, bonuses, awards and special assignments. Marshals deny fabricating stories wholesale, but claim to have resorted to creatively stretching the truth to turn benign acts into potential threats and the harm this may cause to people who have done nothing wrong seems irrelevant to the marshals and the TSA officials who created the rules.
posted by Dreama at 6:53 PM PST - 44 comments

Nonononono, After You (.mov): A short animated film by Christopher Cordingley, graduate of the Ringling School of Art and Design. The school's computer animation portfolio is worth a browse; there's some real talent being nurtured there. (Last four links are to .avi files.)
posted by Gator at 6:32 PM PST - 8 comments

Japanese animation from 1933. A bizarre Max Fleischer-inspired 11-minute cartoon about some critters from traditional Japanese folklore, complete with a soundtrack of traditional Japanese music. [youtubefilter]
posted by a louis wain cat at 6:28 PM PST - 12 comments

95 theses of geek activism (via)
posted by telstar at 6:14 PM PST - 36 comments

Dr. Stephen Lanka claims that H5N1 doesn't exist. Or AIDS. Or disease-causing viruses in general. "In humans, in the blood or in other bodily fluids, in an animal or in a plant there never have been seen or demonstrated structures which you could characterize as bird flu viruses or flu viruses or any other supposedly disease-causing virus. The causes of those diseases which are being maintained to be caused by a virus, also those in animals, which can arise quickly and in individuals either one after the other or several at the same time, are known since a long time back. However much you stretch things in biology, there is simply no place for viruses as the causative agents of diseases. Only if I ignore the findings of Dr Hamer’s New Medicine, according to which shock events are the cause of many diseases, and the findings of chemistry on the effects of poisonings and deficiencies, and then if I ignore the findings of physics about the effects of radiation, then there is a place for imaginings such as disease-causing viruses."
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:38 PM PST - 116 comments

Mildred Fish Harnack was the only American woman executed for treason during World War II. Born, raised, and educated in Wisconsin, she moved to Berlin with her German husband Arvid in 1929. Arrested by the Nazis in September 1942 for their pivotal role in the Communist Red Orchestra resistance movement, they were tried in December 1942: Arvid was hung and Mildred received six years hard labor. Reviewing her case (during the humiliating German defeat at Stalingrad), Adolph Hitler ordered her retried in January 1943. This time, she was convicted, sentenced to death, and beheaded by guillotine in Plötzensee Prison on February 16, 1943.
[Mildred's life is detailed in the 2000 biography Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra.]
posted by cenoxo at 2:56 PM PST - 10 comments

Bill Clinton Doesn't Care About Black People. (More. Protest Announcement.)
posted by bardic at 1:38 PM PST - 78 comments

Marvin, the neglected Bush We hear about the Bush family a good deal but seldom do we learn much about the "other brother," that is, "Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, [...] a principal in a company called Securacom that provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. The company, Burns noted, was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Burns also served. [Utne] According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." But then, Marvin has led a rather odd life, and more can be learned about him here Wikipedia sums up this Bush in a short bio, and notes the rather odd accident befalling his baby sitter This accident had been reported by The Washington Post but largely ignored by other papers. Is Marvin another possible heir to the Bush crown?
posted by Postroad at 1:08 PM PST - 46 comments

The worst possible gift for a stoner. Great for hotel lobbies, people with fake cancer, or just a brown thumb who likes the aesthetics of marijuana and visits from the DEA but hates getting high.
posted by justkevin at 1:00 PM PST - 27 comments

In 1988, 12% of the public thought the media was biased. Today, the figure is 62%; and, paradoxically, the reported bias is almost always to the opposite political view of the person surveyed. Introducing the Hostile Media Effect. Partisans on either side of an see the media as being biased against them, and the more educated about a situation they are, the more strongly they see bias. Unsurprisingly, news of the Middle East conflict is one area where the effect has been frequently noted. If you want a lot more information, see this academic PDF. [If media bias isn't your thing, Mixing Memory is full of many other interesting articles, from the cognitive science of patriotism to the science of art.]
posted by blahblahblah at 12:46 PM PST - 35 comments

"Freudster is a textual analysis system that explores how Freud's theories might be understood by the millions of people presenting themselves via text & images on MySpace. "
posted by jrb223 at 12:00 PM PST - 18 comments

You might have caught the first Click Survey on mefi projects, but there's a new and much more interesting series of 8 images in Click Survey 2. Click where you feel like and watch the results in real time.
posted by mathowie at 11:39 AM PST - 39 comments

In June, the American Bar Association created a task force to investigate President Bush's use of signing statements to qualify his approval of certain laws. Some of the members of the task force, among others, testified before Congress, and today the task force issued its final report and recommendations [pdf]. Its conclusion: "American Bar Association opposes, as contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, the issuance of presidential signing statements that claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law the President has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress."
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:22 AM PST - 42 comments

Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords has introduced the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (full text – PDF) [more inside]
posted by nickmark at 10:25 AM PST - 37 comments

Legend has it the people of Nuristan, Kalash and Chitral are descended from deserters who stayed behind after Greek Emperor Alexander the Great’s army passed through the area more than 2,000 years ago, and for centuries they lived in splendid isolation. It was in this region that the first images of the Buddha were created. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 8:51 AM PST - 24 comments

"Where's my pitbull?" In which our 'hero', Carl Monday, CLEVELAND'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, attends the sentencing of Mike Cooper, an "unemployed porn site user", caught pleasuring himself at a local library. (Metafilter passim; via Deadspin's full coverage of Carl Monday.)
posted by docgonzo at 7:58 AM PST - 66 comments

Who hates who in the Middle East. An interactive chart from Slate. Click the graphic on the page to access the chart. Click on any cell for more details.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:28 AM PST - 52 comments

“I always say that if North Korea only produced conventional goods for export to the degree of quality and precision that they produce counterfeit United States currency, they would be a powerhouse like South Korea, not an industrial basket case.”
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:59 AM PST - 18 comments

William F. Buckley: "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign."
posted by EarBucket at 4:15 AM PST - 80 comments

A guide to Britain as seen through the eyes of an average American. A celebration of the inadequacies and shortfalls, misunderstandings and culture gaps. Brought to you by the ineffible, George Saunders.
posted by metaxa at 2:49 AM PST - 58 comments

The Toymaker offers over 40 free paper toys and pretties you can print out (PDFs) and make yourself, as well as "Stories to be Told by Firelight" - online versions of author/illustrator Marilyn Scott Waters' children's stories and lots of other fun goodies. For people who have kids, people who know kids, people who are kids, and people who love papercraft, illustration, toys, and tales. [more...]
posted by taz at 2:23 AM PST - 17 comments

Replacing Trident? Clare Short MP, former International Development Secretary for the UK Labour government, debates replacing trident and the UK's role in nuclear proliferation (and the world in general) with Michael Codner, Director of Military Science at the Royal United Services Institute. Scroll to the bottom for the mp3s.
posted by nthdegx at 1:52 AM PST - 7 comments

'In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife. But this method doesn't work with a tomato". Finally, a blade worthy of Hattori Hanzo, so sharp it can slice a bullet in two.
posted by jonson at 10:23 PM PST - 55 comments

3D Starmaps by Winchell Chung. (I knew him for his game illustrations before I ever knew about his starmaps.) The site contains lots of information about how to make 2D/3D starmaps from standard star tables, a nice selection of pre-existing maps and one of the best listings of 3D starmap software around.
posted by jiawen at 9:52 PM PST - 12 comments

Although bicycles could be worse for the environment then cars, (pdf) a new motor that could replace the front wheel of a bike could accelerate that trend.
posted by bigmusic at 8:06 PM PST - 72 comments

A plane you can print. via bldblog, which has a lot more context and speculation.
posted by signal at 6:22 PM PST - 17 comments

Maurice Agis is the creator of Dreamspace, a magical walk-through environment of color and light that has been enjoyed by thousands of people. It might be good to remember, though, that art can occasionally kill people.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:58 PM PST - 17 comments

New questions over the death of David Kelly. Previously, on MeFi...[1][2][3][4]. It's a theory, that wants to explain the death of a Weapons Inspector who was involved in little problem concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction. And of course, one cannot link to the Daily Mail without a fondness for the daily-mail-o-matic.
posted by gsb at 3:51 PM PST - 23 comments

Fourteen infants in Kazakhstan hospitals have been found to have HIV. The chief of the regional anti-AIDS center blamed degenerate parents. Not a bad guess; certainly drug use and prostitution have been the major driving force behind the spread of HIV into Central Asia. In this case, however, the victims were probably infected by tainted blood, a problem largely solved in developed countries but still problematic in much of the world. Attitudes like the official's in this case are a big part of the problem.
posted by thirteenkiller at 3:19 PM PST - 22 comments

"What does a bill mean when I sign it into law? Why, whatever I choose for it to mean, no more, no less." This isn't the way I learned this stuff on Schoolhouse Rock; I'm unsurprised Congress isn't pleased by 'signing statements', either. Even the Supreme Court isn't all that happy. No wonder he's only vetoed one bill in 6 years.
posted by baylink at 3:05 PM PST - 38 comments

Green? Probably. Peaceful? Well...
posted by generichuman at 2:03 PM PST - 68 comments

Index of Medieval Medical Images Searchable collection of medieval illustrations (to the year 1500); the thumbnails can be viewed at varying magnifications. There are many more interesting online repositories devoted to the history of medical illustration--both medieval and early modern--including Historical Anatomies on the Web, Anatomia, Seeing is Believing, and Medieval Manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine.
posted by thomas j wise at 1:39 PM PST - 12 comments

NJ Mayor calls Spanish-language ad "offensive." Linguistics professor Geoffrey Pollum says "Wtf, mate?"
posted by Bizurke at 1:28 PM PST - 62 comments

"God's Army Has Plans to Run the Middle East" is an article that argues that Hezbollah is Iran's "spearhead" towards controlling the entire region. The author? Amir Taheri. You might remember him as the guy who fabricated the story about Iran imposing "yellow star" regulations on religious minorities (previously on mefi). James Wolcott connects the deceitful dots.
posted by bardic at 1:27 PM PST - 59 comments

"If anything, a civil rights background is considered a liability." Meet the politically-appointed career staffers of the Justice Dept.'s Civil Rights Division: ... the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians. ... Thorough Boston Globe article on how the administration disbanded the hiring committee in 2002 to appoint lawyers with a very different vision of what civil rights are, and the ensuring and ongoing results.
posted by amberglow at 12:53 PM PST - 24 comments

The Human Speechome Project - "A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.". Selected video clips. Paper (PDF, 750KB). To test hypotheses of how children learn, Prof Deb Roy's team at MIT will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. Total storage required: 1.4 petabytes.
posted by Gyan at 12:40 PM PST - 19 comments

'History on the Half Shell.' "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed-- Now if you're ready, Oysters (via) dear, We can begin to feed." . . . . . "O Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?' But answer came there none-- And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.------Lewis Carroll-------
posted by nola at 9:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by the Zionist Irgun organization, which killed 92 people. Bibi Netanyahu attended a celebration of the event.
posted by Ty Webb at 9:42 AM PST - 69 comments

Maybe there's something to this plankton-as-panacea idea? "Gummy bear"-like sea creatures absorb great amounts of carbon before dying and sinking to the bottom of the sea. Previously on mefi: Sustainable oil and Oil from plankton.
posted by shownomercy at 9:21 AM PST - 12 comments

Hijra, demi femmes du Pakistan, the Hijras of Pakistan, Eunuchs in Mumbai, and the stories of Neela and Laxmi: Various portraits of the third sex in the third world. (some NSFW) [more]
posted by madamjujujive at 7:03 AM PST - 29 comments

visual field diffeomorphisms without having to buy anything of dubious legality.
posted by oonh at 2:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Mysteries of... Canada!
posted by persona non grata at 11:57 PM PST - 61 comments

Invest in immigrants!!! Business is booming!!!
posted by pwedza at 8:36 PM PST - 15 comments

Top 100 Music Videos, according to Stylus. Last month Pitchfork made their pitch for a hundred awesome music videos. This month it's Stylus's turn.
posted by caddis at 8:16 PM PST - 47 comments

The Duke Nukem Forever List provides a bullet-point run down of notable events that have occurred since Duke Nukem Forever was first announced back in 1997. And for those who may have missed last month's Gamespot interview, George Broussard is still saying it'll be done when it's done, insisting that 3D Realms "won't be rushed" into releasing DNF before it's ready.
posted by Effigy2000 at 7:27 PM PST - 30 comments

This is what happens when you put on a banana suit, soak yourself in accelerant, and light yourself on fire.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:54 PM PST - 106 comments

A unethical businessman could get 55 years for clicking ok on a eula.(pdf)
posted by bigmusic at 5:20 PM PST - 32 comments

Steely Dan vs. the Wilson Brothers It's all about Dupree and Dupree, and is a great example of what bored rock stars do when they're too old to trash the hotel room. (Or, the Bird Flu of Viral Promotion - you decide.)
posted by wendell at 5:00 PM PST - 27 comments

The New Islamic Mafia - An introduction to Albanian organized crime
posted by thirteenkiller at 3:11 PM PST - 31 comments

Student Projects from DigiPen, a computer game college. A few I've tried and approve include Narbacular Drop, which is very short, more of a tech demo, but contains the idea and some of the people behind Valve's upcoming Portal^, Orblitz, a get-the-ball-to-the-goal puzzle game with extremely calming graphics and music, and Bontãgo, a weird combination of RTS, Tetris, and Jenga.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 1:18 PM PST - 18 comments

Katatsumuri (Escargone) (mirror here, in case you don't want to sit through a commercial), a Super Mario-ish Flash game from Japan, except instead of an Italian plumber, you are a snail. With a mustache. From the fine folks at SKT. Left click to jump, left click and hold to climb walls, reach the end-of-level ring before the time runs out. Watch the animation before each level to see what new obstacles and enemies are in store.
posted by Gator at 12:40 PM PST - 8 comments

World Leaders Were Kids Once Too
Photos of a whole bunch of world leaders as kids up through adulthood. Hey, Reagan was Teh Buff! And proof that Joe Stalin was NOT born with that mustache!
posted by fenriq at 12:39 PM PST - 83 comments

Grizzly Bears frolicking at McNeill Falls, Alaska...live. It requires Real Player, sorry, but it's really quite something - the sight and sound of a Grizzly feeding frenzy that happens each summer here.
posted by Flashman at 12:25 PM PST - 28 comments

Direct physical manipulation of data. PDF & you should see the Video. via information aesthetics.
posted by signal at 10:13 AM PST - 17 comments

The Cultural Cold War by Frances Saunders covers the way in which the government, via CIA-influenced NGOs worked to alter the direction that popular movies and animations took during the first half of the Cold War. [mi]
posted by longbaugh at 9:34 AM PST - 11 comments

Who'll be living where. Researchers at the Earth Institute at Columbia University have developed map that projects where people will be living in the year 2025.
posted by stbalbach at 10:34 PM PST - 34 comments

Criticizing the food is OK, just don't mention the water: the blog implied a specific knowledge of interrogations and . . . worried "the seventh floor" at CIA
posted by If I Had An Anus at 10:01 PM PST - 37 comments

500,000 Lebanese citizens are now homeless. That's out of a population of 3.8 million, according to Juan Cole. People in Southern Lebanon have received leaflets warning them to leave, but are trapped in their villages under Israeli bombings. The IDF has opened a 60-km front on the border, using tanks to probe Hezbollah. Meanwhile, a ceasefire remains... elusive. I normally take the position that both sides are excessively violent, but this is a pretty sad picture of what's going on in Lebanon.
posted by spiderwire at 9:57 PM PST - 206 comments

PBS says good night, Melanie, now security will escort you out. Melanie Martinez was the star of The Good Night Show, the marquee show on the PBS-Comcast preschool channel, Sprout. At least, she was until this week, when a parody PSA promoting "technical virginity" (video, NSFW) from her starving actress days resurfaced, thanks to a Memphis radio station. PBS fired her, saying that the "video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host," even though it pre-dated her Sprout work by many years. A new meaning for the word dooced?
posted by dw at 9:49 PM PST - 95 comments

Commercial exploitationTube? Creative Commies-Tube? Plagiarism® ? "…you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels…" moc.ebutuoy

whata circlejerk... Now where's my aeroflot and reversed copyright Tee-Shirt! and Negativland, Tape-beatles, EEC records. I'm ready for a copyfight !
posted by Unregistered User at 9:34 PM PST - 27 comments

Teen cancer patient, Starchild Abraham Cherrix, in a custody battle between his parents and and the Accomack County (Virginia) Social Services Department, has lost his battle to choose his own treatment for Hodgkin's disease. A judge has ruled that the 16-year-old must report to a hospital by Tuesday and accept treatment that doctors deem necessary.
posted by ericb at 7:22 PM PST - 81 comments

1938 film of yoga in the west pioneer B.K.S. Iyengar and his teacher Sri T. Krishnamacharya B/W silent.
posted by vronsky at 6:42 PM PST - 10 comments

Losh! That's a stoater of a web site!
posted by persona non grata at 5:46 PM PST - 20 comments

Harry Olivieri, one of two brothers credited with inventing the Philly cheesesteak, has died at the age of 90: "Despite a heart condition, Olivieri had reportedly showed up at Pat's King of Steaks almost every day until about three years ago."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:33 PM PST - 17 comments

There aren't many places in the United States that can count poetry societies run by Afghan cab drivers. Washington has two. And they don't like each other.
posted by jason's_planet at 1:51 PM PST - 23 comments

Tourist Remover. Sorry for the one-link post, but this is just too good an idea not to share. This clever (and free!) service removes extraneous stuff from pictures. Neat! Via.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 1:01 PM PST - 29 comments

"The word "fuck" and its variations were spoken 281 times in this movie." Video, sound, wildly NSFW. Like, happy Friday, man.
posted by maryh at 1:01 PM PST - 95 comments

Donald Trump discusses the major thematic elements of Citizen Kane. Featured in the awesome new... err... issue?... of Wholphin.
posted by hypocritical ross at 12:46 PM PST - 21 comments

The 1 Second Film. 12 giant frames. One giant movie. 90 minutes of credits. All profits to the Global Fund for Women. It's all part of a plan.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:40 PM PST - 13 comments

Slate Remembers Nerd Camp. I'd thought all parents everywhere were sending their kids to turn-pro-at-18 camp now, but it seems that CTY is bigger than ever. (Albeit subject to accusations that the standards have been watered down.)
posted by MattD at 11:31 AM PST - 76 comments

shaggs music video
posted by pyramid termite at 11:18 AM PST - 24 comments

With the days counting down to the November election, people should really start to think about who they want to vote for. Get some straight information on who's running here, and while you're at it, check to see how your senators and representatives voted on a variety of issues.
posted by triolus at 11:10 AM PST - 16 comments

Safe at Any Speed With higher speed limits, our highways have been getting safer.
posted by caddis at 11:00 AM PST - 79 comments

A judge has thrown out a 201-year-old North Carolina law making it illegal for unmarried couples to live together. The case was previously discussed here.
posted by EarBucket at 10:19 AM PST - 53 comments

New Friend Request
posted by reklaw at 10:10 AM PST - 61 comments

Eight rules for writing a female comics character worth reading Karen Healey lays a cursory path for avoiding the major pitfalls of women in comics. Part of the larger Girl Wonder site (previously). Also good is Designated Sidekick's takedown of IGN.
posted by klangklangston at 9:49 AM PST - 57 comments

The Moving Sofa Constant. We have noticed you have a small personal problem with sofas. You move them and get them stuck in hallways. But it's nothing a little math won't fix.
posted by storybored at 9:01 AM PST - 29 comments

Lustfaust, an expiremental noise band from West Berlin has been steadily building an online retrospective archive of band photos, memorabilia from past gigs, and collected submissions of artwork that fans created for their own mix tapes. They can also be found (of course) on MySpace. For those of you in the NYC area, tomorrow is the final day of a show at The Volume Gallery that features artwork created by fans of the underground group . What they've pieced together is a pretty loyal and diverse following for a band that doesn't really exist.
posted by stagewhisper at 7:29 AM PST - 23 comments

flatlife (google video) and about flatlife
posted by crunchland at 6:29 AM PST - 17 comments

"It's Beyond Belief!" Right here in red-state central, a summer camp for atheist kids.
posted by tizzie at 5:09 AM PST - 189 comments

Underground bases [you decide] This is a list of known or suspected U.S. Underground Bases, the purpose of each (hey, I'm just passing on the reports...), how they're set up and any other info known about them. Although most of these are supposed to be a secret, this list is culled from publicly available records (is that good or bad?) and of course people who worked in them, live by them or those who have retired and offer info. Some wish to remain anonymous. Some have written to me with stories that have been terrifying - just to tell me things - not meaning for me to put them up.
posted by Postroad at 4:49 AM PST - 64 comments

32 worst lyrics of all time
posted by mr.marx at 3:55 AM PST - 253 comments

Beautiful women show us your boobs. Australian model Erin McNaught’s, now dubbed McNaughty, ”topless scandal” in the Australian magazine Zoo has boosted her chances for winning Miss Universe on Sunday. She is one of the bookmaker’s favorites together with Shakira’s cousin.

Whatever happened to inner beauty?

Since Miss Universe is owned by Donald Trump, who has two things on his mind, money and beautiful girls, his praise for her (after the “topless scandal” and media attention) has made her the favorite she is.

What will the future bring? Will we see a lot more topless scandals, home made porn movies and “worse” from now on to get mr. Trumps and media's attention? Time and Internet will show.
posted by Grums at 12:27 AM PST - 56 comments

“That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” [Audio] On 21 July 1969, four days after taking off from Cape Canaveral, and six and a half hours after landing Apollo 11 on the Sea of Tranquility, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on the moon.

Without a doubt, the moon landing is one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind. For those who were alive thirty-seven years ago, the sight of Armstrong’s “small step” is one of the most iconic images of their lifetime.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 12:15 AM PST - 45 comments

Check out this map of The Simpson's hometown of Springfield. We may never know what state the town is located in, and yes, the show has sucked for at least six years now (if not more) but this map was considered to be so good, it was, apparently, added to the Harvard Map collection. Comic Book Guy would be proud.
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:18 PM PST - 52 comments

PINR presents a well educated guess over what is going to happen with the Israel - Hezbollah conflict. They also offer significant background and insight into the mood and motives of some surrounding states.
posted by bigmusic at 11:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Conceptual dresses in leaves, feathers and more. Shoes of glass, cultural tradition and ideas.
posted by nickyskye at 9:55 PM PST - 10 comments

Griko is a language used by the descendents of ancient Greek colonists in southern Italy that still has thousands of speakers. Pennsylvania Dutch, the only German language native to North America, was used as a first language until well into the twentieth century. Ladino ia a variant of medieval Spanish written in the Hebrew alphabet that florished among refugees from the Spanish Inquisition in modern Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. Welcome to the world of ethnolinguistics.
posted by huskerdont at 7:31 PM PST - 22 comments

Warning!!!Extreme violence, mutilation, blood, guts and gore, including but not limited to eye-gouging, chainsaw disembowlment, and torture by propane torch. NSFW, in fact, NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE ANYWHERE. Halfway decent soundtrack though.
posted by sluglicker at 5:56 PM PST - 54 comments

Senator Brownback is a... vagina? Another esteemed politician's take on something he may not be fully informed on. Full video and transcript if you'd like to skip the YouTube Jon Stewart commentary.
posted by ninjew at 5:33 PM PST - 50 comments

The Feather Book, digitized by and on display at McGill University: A seventeenth-century book containing illustrations of birds and men -- composed of real feathers, beaks, and claws. More information about the book and its contents and history can be read here.
posted by Gator at 2:27 PM PST - 14 comments

Judge Refuses to Dismiss NSA Spy Program Lawsuit. Judge Walker has denied the motion by the government to dismiss the EFF's suit based on the state secrets doctrine. Read the order [pdf] and more coverage and analysis at SCOTUSblog.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:18 PM PST - 36 comments

Newsfilter: Spanish firm claims it can make oil from plankton. A Spanish company (Bio Fuel Systems) claimed on Thursday to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel.
posted by Nquire at 1:52 PM PST - 66 comments

"Not today, sir, probably not tomorrow": Alternatively titled "Me and My Shadow, Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX"; the long, touching, interesting, hilarious, disturbing story of how 'Jay' kicked his drug habit, written by 'Silent Bob', aka Kevin Smith.
posted by docgonzo at 1:46 PM PST - 101 comments

Farmers across the US are increasingly isolated and work brutally long hours. It can be pretty hard to get a date when you work sixteen hour days and live in the middle of nowhere. Happily, now there is farmersonly.com, a dating site for "farmers, ranchers, country folks" and the people who want to love them. As one patron explains, "I don't want to baby-sit some city boy who is afraid of stepping in poop."
posted by onlyconnect at 1:42 PM PST - 26 comments

"The largest roof job in American construction history" The Louisiana Superdome -- one of the more iconic symbols of last year's Katrina damage, temporary home to thousands of displaced New Orleanians and the semi-permanent home to the NFL Saints -- has a shiny new roof. I hope they won't need another one for a long, long time.
posted by diastematic at 1:41 PM PST - 7 comments

"In 2006, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) distributed a 38-question survey to 5,918 FDA scientists to examine the state of science at the FDA. The results paint a picture of a troubled agency: hundreds of scientists reported significant interference with the FDA’s scientific work, compromising the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and safety."
posted by daksya at 12:25 PM PST - 25 comments

Today's Tour de France stage was legend-making.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:03 AM PST - 93 comments

"I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately." – George Orwell, writing about the revolutionary war which started 70 years ago yesterday: July 19th, 1936. Also: Anarchism and the Spanish Civil War. The Visual Front: Posters of The Spanish Civil War. Photos from the Spanish Civil War. Films from the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), 1936-1938.
posted by Len at 10:48 AM PST - 28 comments

Cthulhu: The Movie. Filmed not in Providence, but on the other side of the country in Astoria. Starring nobody I've ever heard of. Featuring a cameo by Tori Spelling. Given that previous attempts over the last forty or so to capture Lovecraft's mythos on film have been more miss than hit, all these signs point to yet another missed mark. But I must confess ... the last tracking shot over the water in the trailer compels me.
posted by grabbingsand at 10:39 AM PST - 69 comments

Time: Just as Vietnam had been America's first "living-room war," [...] so is the Iraq conflict emerging as the first YouTube war. Growing up in a world where they can swap MP3s as well as intimate details about their lives via MySpace or Facebook, American soldiers are swapping their Iraq experience as well. There's a byte-enabled intimacy to "The War Tapes," the film that bills itself as the first documentary about the war filmed by those fighting it.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:33 AM PST - 15 comments

The Museum of Black Superheroes: There are galleries, articles, exhibits. See villians like Dreadlox and Hypno-Hustler, and heroes like Muhammad X and, well, Hero. All of these bios together in one place present an interesting picture.
posted by OmieWise at 10:04 AM PST - 25 comments

On July 20, 1976 something really cool was accomplished.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 9:45 AM PST - 23 comments

Top Ten Most Violent Children's Games (no, not those games). So, tag is banned, but what about its variants?
posted by Stauf at 9:27 AM PST - 108 comments

Afrigadget Life hacks from the Dark Continent. Similar idea to better-known hacks here and here.
posted by klangklangston at 8:53 AM PST - 13 comments

Propagenda? By now most have seen the pics of the Israeli Girls whom were said to be writing --english--messages on Israeli missles that would soon be headed into Lebanon. But how many know the details behind it?
posted by Unregistered User at 7:36 AM PST - 95 comments

Inner City Youth, London "In 2002, Simon Wheatley began photographing London's publich housing developments...and was able to obtain a level of intimacy with his subjects that provides a true picture of the daunting project of growing up in the intimate confines of drug use, societal neglect, and poverty." This (Flash-based) narrated slideshow features Wheatley's work, and is a look at the culture...and also the music (grime) "as an artistic response to the place and circumstance, an expression of the violence, bleakness, and neglect..." (via Future Feeder)
posted by tpl1212 at 7:24 AM PST - 38 comments

Comments that didn't get quoted because they weren't made.. Prominent Liberals have been jumping into the fray about the crisis in the Middle East and the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon. Here are some (parodied) comments from them.
posted by orange swan at 7:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Mike Nelson's RiffTrax. New Legend Films trainee and former Mystery Science Theater head writer, Michael J. Nelson continues to keep the MST3K spirit alive. Rifftrax allows download of full-length commentaries to play along with your DVDs. First up: Roadhouse. [via Satellite News]
posted by Otis at 7:04 AM PST - 20 comments

6 years after being given 6 months to live , Jane Tomlinson has raised shedloads of money for charity. In doing so, she cycled from Rome to Home (yorkshire - 2500 miles), was the first terminally ill person to complete the Florida Ironman Triathlon, has completed numerous marathons and half marathons (she's the first person to have completed the London marathon whilst on chemotherapy). Her current challenge is to cycle across the US finishing on the 6th anniversary of her diagnosis. It's not all fun. Yesterday, she had a bottle thrown at her, was followed by a cop, and sprayed with road chippings by a lorry.
posted by handee at 6:37 AM PST - 42 comments

From A to craZy... basically its a word association game, i figure if anyone can solve it its the hive mind... via {first answer inside}
posted by ShawnString at 6:27 AM PST - 88 comments

Super Serif Bros. -- From the creator of Hapland.
posted by empath at 6:04 AM PST - 17 comments

Starry Night a minimalist improvisation by:
mazen kerbaj / trumpet
the israeli air force / bombs
posted by hototogisu at 1:58 AM PST - 12 comments

Welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Remember our motto: "There's a hole in the sky, through which things can fly." (Coming soon.)
posted by nervestaple at 12:30 AM PST - 26 comments

1.html
posted by ChasFile at 8:42 PM PST - 62 comments

iSPOTS is a project that maps the dynamics of the wireless network on the MIT Campus in real-time. The Intensities map is very nice indeed.
posted by tellurian at 7:35 PM PST - 6 comments

DADA Hits the MOMA. DaDaism was an art movement that arose prior to the rubble of WW1 where the artists led a creative revolution that shaped the course of modern art by combining different mediums to create a message of protest and hope. The MOMA exhibit tells one story (scroll to data and select full program - req flash 7) and the New Yorker reaffirms the influence on art today. However, the real story is with Richard Huelsenbeck, the ring leader and founder of the DaDa movement An interview with him from December 1960 (45 mins mp3) explains the start - as one of the few German artists in protest to the war. My favourite part is where he tells of picking out the name DaDa from an encyclopedia at a cabaret.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 6:13 PM PST - 23 comments

If you want to see all the interesting stuff hidden in Google Maps then you need look no further than a site like Google Sightseeing, but what about the other way around? If you've ever wished Google Maps was better labeled then Wikimapia might be what you're looking for.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:18 PM PST - 29 comments

I'm Just Drinking is Paul Kahn's attempt at making a bartending guide to webcomics. Here you'll learn how to make any one of several Penny Arcade themes drinks, a Diesel Sweetie, a VG_Cats and my personal favorite, a Something Positive (whose latest comic is how I came across this project).
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:51 PM PST - 10 comments

Discovering Electronic Music (1983) pt 2, pt 3 [youtube, via linkfilter]
posted by MetaMonkey at 3:38 PM PST - 23 comments

"So last night, at a press screening of 'Clerks II' in New York City, 'Good Morning America' movie critic Joel Siegel decided he’d had enough of my shenanigans, and walked out of the flick at the forty minute mark. You’d imagine this would bother me, and yet, I’m as delighted by this news as I was with the eight minute standing ovation 'Clerks II' received in Cannes. I mean, it’s Joel Siegel, for Christ’s sake." - Kevin Smith
posted by tsarfan at 3:21 PM PST - 205 comments

Lots of people are not happy with Bechtel Engineering, the giant-sized general contractor and designer of The Big Dig, who are also in trouble for problems with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal plant. How many nuclear generating stations did Bechtel build?
posted by baylink at 2:47 PM PST - 15 comments

AcceleRacers: Track Mod is a fun little Pipe-Dream-esque Flash game in which your object is to manipulate sections of track in order to get each of your six racecars to the finish line inside the time limit. Gets a lot harder as you go up in levels and more obstacles are added. Yes, it is a HotWheels game.
posted by Gator at 2:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Minimum Sudoku. It is believed (though not proven) that the minimum number of entries in a Sudoku grid that will lead to a unique solution is 17. Gordon Royle of the University of Western Australia has collected 36,628 "minimum Sudoku" grids. Additional reading: an article in American Scientist on determining the difficulty of a Sudoku problem; Wikipedia article on the mathematics of Sudoku; the Sudoku Programmers' Forum on Sudoku mathematics.
posted by Prospero at 11:14 AM PST - 27 comments

Bush's threat to veto stem cell funding is a joke. Scott Rosenberg says flat out why Bush's threat is shamelessly amoral and hyporcritical, and purely political in nature. (via)
posted by Doorstop at 10:41 AM PST - 123 comments

OpenDNS is an interesting idea -- take the basics of DNS, add a bunch of features like caching servers, a phishing blacklist, and search engine fired off for misspelled domain names. Pretty handy and nice to see a service pop up where I thought browsers would someday fix (like typos). No software to install, just point your DNS at their IPs.
posted by mathowie at 10:08 AM PST - 52 comments

Iraqi Death Toll Rises Above 100 Per Day, U.N. Says
Baghdad starts to collapse as its people flee a life of death
Iraq : Costs, quotes and other things
posted by y2karl at 9:19 AM PST - 102 comments

50 Albums that changed music. Fifty years old this month, the album chart has tracked the history of pop. But only a select few records have actually altered the course of music.
posted by caddis at 8:47 AM PST - 268 comments

Game Theory at the movies. The Princess Bride demonstrates the use of common knowledge, Butch Cassidy laments pareto equilibrium, and Swingers is an example of pooling equilibrium. Though no longer on the site, you can still see the most involved rock, paper, scissors game ever filmed [.mov].
posted by blahblahblah at 7:20 AM PST - 25 comments

"I have an agenda." Luis Jimenez, a Latino sculptor who worked primarily in fiberglass, portraying Latin themes, died last month in an accident in his art studio.
posted by John of Michigan at 5:58 AM PST - 20 comments

Elliott White Springs, heir to a southern cotton fortune, World War I flying ace, successful writer, and industrial leader who inherited a $13 million dollar company at the height of the Depression and increased its value more than tenfold. Springs created Springmaid sheets, invented an advertising strategy that used sex to sell his product. (more Springs sex.) Now Springs Global is an international icon. But is that because Springs understood "cultural competencies"? Or was he just a smart guy?
posted by CCBC at 1:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Blogspot, Geocities, and TypePad blocked in India. Indian ISPs, who had been ordered by the Indian government to block certain blogs, have blocked the entire blogspot.com, geocities.com, and typepad.com (by IP), rendering hundreds of thousands of blogs inaccessible in India. The block was ordered by the government apparently because terrorists were using blogs to co-ordinate their activities. Indian bloggers, upset at the blanket ban, have started a wiki to keep track of the situation. They have also created a mailing list to discuss the issue. Some prominent Indian bloggers are also tracking updates. Indian laws require ISPs to install filtering equipment and follow government orders to block sites, or the can lose their licence to operate. This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. In 2003, the government ordered a block on a Yahoo group that was supposedly anti-national. Indian ISPs ended up blocking Yahoo Groups completely. India's recently introduced Right-to-Information Act, which many bloggers are planning to use, gives the government 30 days to respond to an RTI request. In the interim, despite national and international coverage of the issue from the likes of New York Times (linked earlier), Washington Post, CNN, New Statesman, and WSJ (paid reg. required), these major blogging sites remain blocked.
posted by madman at 12:51 AM PST - 34 comments

2006 biomedical image award nominees.
posted by delmoi at 12:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Eyes Of The World A 14-minute Google video of the Grateful Dead playing a mid-70s classic in New Jersey in 1991.
posted by persona non grata at 12:19 AM PST - 59 comments

Cat massages dog.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:07 PM PST - 48 comments

The cast of Star Trek (TOS) sings Camelot, from The Holy Grail and my inner nerd explodes
posted by jonson at 10:26 PM PST - 68 comments

NewsFilter: Restoring faith in the electoral process (a little bit at a time): "An upbeat Reed told a crowd of a few dozen cheering supporters that, although his candidacy had ended, his conservative message will live on." [CNN] Ralph Reed loses the election for Georgia lieutenant governor (56% to 44% at the writing of this bit). Apparently a few people in Georgia read GQ. Or maybe MetaFilter. Or the news, too, I suppose.
posted by scblackman at 10:24 PM PST - 42 comments

PediaPress. Print-on-demand compendiums of Wikipedia articles.
posted by stbalbach at 7:17 PM PST - 30 comments

D*I*Y Planner : Tired of all those pricey organizers of dubious usefulness being sold by overpriced retailers? Why not roll your own with Douglas Johnson's DIY Planner?
posted by rossination at 2:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Think of Cancellation Calls as Sales Leads! Why did Vincent have such a hard time cancelling his AOL account? It turns out that his customer service rep was just following the AOL Retention Manual, a copy of which was sent to consumerist.com. Nicholas Graham, executive vice president of AOL Corporate Communications, had sent Vincent a formal apology (Google cache - right now his site's been pummeled beyond capacity) saying, "The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care." Um...really? New York Times article on the cancellation-call hoopla. via digg.
posted by granted at 1:56 PM PST - 37 comments

Hell hath no fury, etc. etc.
posted by docgonzo at 11:16 AM PST - 243 comments

Project Rooftop! Rogue streamlined by Nuno Plati of Portugal. The Spectre re-imagined by Dean Trippe (creator of "Butterfly). Black Widow redrawn by Stuart Immonen (artist for Warren Ellis's Nextwave). Tracing its origin back to January's "Batgirl Meme," Project Rooftop is an excellent exercise in meta-fashion. Edna Mode would be so proud. Project Runway? What's that?
posted by grabbingsand at 11:00 AM PST - 16 comments

Microsoft acquires Winternals Software. It's impossible to know what the repercussions will be, but you can be sure it won't take long for every possible worst-case scenario to be predicted. Any why wouldn't it? The possible loss of invaluable FREE tools like the Registry Monitor, Process Explorer, Port Monitor and File Monitor is a little scary - both have saved my developer hide on several occasions. Will they get folded into Vista? Will they still be available as PowerToys? Unknown. "Microsoft is still evaluating the best way to leverage the many different technologies that have been developed by Winternals" The site's a little slow right now - I wonder if that's people madly downloading copies of the current versions out of fear they'll go away any moment?
posted by phearlez at 10:39 AM PST - 49 comments

If you keep doing that, you'll go blind. Watching TV late at night, that is. Cartoon Network has brought back Pee Wee's Playhouse. When CN announced plans to add Saved By The Bell to the Adult Swim roster, opinions were decidedly mixed. Hopefully, people will feel better about seeing Lawrence Fishburne dressed as a cowboy. Personally, I'm waiting for them to resurrect Krofft Superstars. (They actually had a giant puppet caller H.R. Pufnstuf. Ahh, the 70s.)
posted by 1-2punch at 10:20 AM PST - 65 comments

A Practical Guide to Defeating The Radical Right, Cyberwar & Netwar, and non-facetious uses of the word matrix, courtesy of the Well's mythical gopherspace. (Firefox users check out what search used to look like; IE users try http).
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 10:04 AM PST - 22 comments

A documentary about Al Gore that was never aired. "The 22-minute documentary that might have changed the entire course of the 2000 Presidential Election", it shows a very human, personable Al Gore and Tipper. I first saw it on McSweeney's Wholphin project, and now it's trickled down to google video.
posted by craniac at 9:37 AM PST - 68 comments

Foreign owner of internet gambling site arrested as he attempted to change planes in Dallas. The Department of Justice announced his indictment on 22 counts and caused stock prices to drop rapidly on publicly traded gambling issues. A cynic might suppose that the arrest was related to his outspoken role as a critic of the pending anti-gambling legislation. The proposed legislation is clarified on the Daily Show
posted by Lame_username at 8:58 AM PST - 57 comments

Two recent papers examine networks among Republicans: one among lawyers and the other among judges. Lawyers of the Right: Networks and Organization concludes that conservative lawyers, and particularly the Federalist Society, occupies a structurally important core bridging the gap between the religious and business constituencies on the right, which otherwise wouldn't interact. Meanwhile, Do Republican Judges Cite Other Republican Judges More? concludes that judges tend to base outside-circuit citation decisions on the political party of the cited judge, tend to cite judges of the opposite political party significantly less, are more likely to engage in biased citation practices in certain high stakes situations, and cite disproportionately more to those judges that cite back to them frequently. [via Professor Bainbridge and Empirical Legal Studies]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Pending Approval, WalMart Horns in on MySpace, Badly
WalMart wants in on MySpace's lock on teen minds. So they've launched schoolyourway to give kids a place to "express their individuality" so long as the WalMart censors approve of it.
posted by fenriq at 8:37 AM PST - 42 comments

Daniel Pinkwater's newest novel, "The Neddiad"—serialized weekly for your reading pleasure. (Previous Pinkwater Post)
posted by interrobang at 8:16 AM PST - 18 comments

The rhythm method kills more embryos than condoms. Some proponents of the pro-life movement argue against morning after pills, IUDs, and contraceptive pills on grounds of a concern for causing embryonic death. What has gone unnoticed, however, is that the pro-life line of argumentation can be extended to the rhythm method of contraception as well. Given certain plausible empirical assumptions, the rhythm method may well be responsible for a much higher number of embryonic deaths than some other contraceptive techniques.
posted by caddis at 8:13 AM PST - 87 comments

The National Potrait Gallery held a competition for new entries into the gallery. The winner is a fabulous painting by David Lenz. There is a great deal of focus in the exhibit of imagery that is truthful, but not necessarily flattering. The winner is both truthful and flattering. Lenz's subject is is his son, who has Down syndrome. The title, "Sam and the Perfect World" is quite poignant. There is a long NPR program covering the entire topic of portaiture in general and this portrait specifically.
posted by plinth at 7:58 AM PST - 31 comments

QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject. via
posted by bigmusic at 4:25 AM PST - 3 comments

Masturbate-a-thon 2006 will be the first event featured on UK Channel 4's "wank week", and will involve hundreds of Londoners gathering in a hall to have a televised toss-off. Participants will be fapping away in hopes of garnering prizes for number of orgasms and endurance - the current record stands at over eight hours of continuous onanism. In other news, kittens everywhere are getting their affairs in order.
posted by LondonYank at 2:17 AM PST - 90 comments

Frank Morrison "Mickey" Spillane, 1918-2006. Author, actor, circus performer, comic book writer.
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:48 AM PST - 23 comments

Tell Your Sex Story - a blog by Daniel and Sabrina (NSFW)
posted by persona non grata at 11:33 PM PST - 21 comments

History of the Israel/Paestinian conflict from a pro-Israel point of view. Like many Americans I have no real idea what's going on "over there." Also like many Americans when I need some "truthiness" in the answers to my questions, I consult Canada and the UK. NPR can be trusted up to a point (drawn from a previous thread), but it's also good to hear from the other side too.
posted by BeReasonable at 10:24 PM PST - 138 comments

There are many organizations seeking to reconstruct European swordsmanship. Both modern and more traditional tools are being used train in this art. Well balanced and accurate replicas of swords are becoming the norm. Sparring videos for those needing more visual appeal. Of course, it’s not all about swords. A general forum for all things sword related here. Read about the father of Medieval European sword typology here. Some websites above were previously mentioned here and here.
posted by Mister Cheese at 9:33 PM PST - 13 comments

More Shakespeare than you can shake a spear at.
posted by Mr. Six at 9:04 PM PST - 19 comments

Video: President Bush creeps out German Chancellor with unwelcome massage
posted by edverb at 8:24 PM PST - 158 comments

"King Anfortas currently owns this magic stone, schmooze him, take him surprise, how ever you will get it, but bring me this stone! As award I promise you my daughter and a place on the crown!" -- The Mystery of Castle Wildenburg, a slightly goofily-translated game that combines point-&-click with classic text adventure gameplay, and photos of the lovely German countryside. Read the "Prehistory," mouseover everything, save often (though you lose your accumulated points on loading a saved game), and be careful not to die of thirst.
posted by Gator at 7:05 PM PST - 6 comments

Art Under Control in North Korea. A slide show from Jane Portal's book by the same name (Reaktion Books, May 2005). You can find an essay by Portal here.
posted by MarshallPoe at 3:16 PM PST - 12 comments

US Citizen in Lebanon? The US State Department would like to remind its citizens that they do not provide no-cost transportation. Want to leave? Just sign this promissory note, and we'll be happy to fly you out on our gunship. We'll bill you at standard commercial rates, plus interest. We simply do not have the resources to pay for it ourselves.
posted by jeversol at 2:35 PM PST - 245 comments

Here's an interview with Richard Linklater about A Scanner Darkly and Philip K. Dick, in comic-book format. Also: the much longer transcript of the interview.
posted by whir at 1:26 PM PST - 25 comments

Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America. Radley Balko (also mentioned here and here) has released a year long study of the militarization of police departments across the United States. Cato has a corresponding interactive map to track and filter botched paramilitary raids.
posted by ryoshu at 12:22 PM PST - 84 comments

“If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.” Buying a megayacht is soooo 1998. Today’s hip gazillionaire knows that the future of disgustingly conspicuous consumption lies beneath the waves. Advances in technology (and corresponding concentrations of wealth) have made the personal submarine a reality for the super-rich. And what about the rest of us, who do have to ask how much it costs? For us, the plebeian majority, there’s a website devoted to rolling your own.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:07 PM PST - 36 comments

Life (Briefly) Near a Supernova (pdf, Google cache) by Steven Dutch (UW-Green Bay). What might it be like on a planet orbiting a star that went supernova? "It would take on the order of 100,000 seconds, or about a day, to receive enough energy to vaporize the Earth." Yes, Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven are name-checked. (And yes, the Sun is too small to actually go supernova, killjoy.) Via the nonist.
posted by languagehat at 12:02 PM PST - 19 comments

The U.S. Navy has one. So does the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Air Force. They're history research centers and their corresponding websites. Some are great, some aren't as great. They offer photographs of planes, soldiers, Honored Marines, and ships. Also available are official histories. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships is interesting to peruse, but there's also oral history transcripts from Vietnam. Coast Guard fan? Everything you need to know about lighthouses.
posted by Atreides at 12:01 PM PST - 5 comments

300 Miles High
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:20 AM PST - 18 comments

Human Space Invaders
1 theatre
67 extras
4 hours of shooting
390 images
--------------
= 3 minutes of video [16 MB QT]
[Site in French, video without words]
posted by kika at 10:13 AM PST - 45 comments

Modern Tales, the subscription-only webcomics site, today makes most of its content available for free. Joey Manley explains why. Any recommendations?
posted by barjo at 9:49 AM PST - 9 comments

"Good food, cold beer and pretty girls never go out of style." Robert H. Brooks, the 69-year-old Chairman of the 425-restaurant chain Hooters, has gone tits up has passed away.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:59 AM PST - 68 comments

Legal Theory Lexicon. A companion to Prof. Larry Solum's Legal Theory Blog, the Lexicon collects Solum's introductory posts on various aspects of legal theory. The Lexicon does a spectacular job of providing both a clear introduction to a wide range of basic and advanced topics, as well as references for more advanced reading.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:52 AM PST - 4 comments

In this episode of the George & Tony Show the President and the Prime Minister are in Russia eating brie, discussing geopolitics, leaving their mics open, and whatnot.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:04 AM PST - 138 comments

The state of higher education. Consumerist students, declining state budgets. What impact will all of this have on the future functioning of democracy?
posted by hank_14 at 6:31 AM PST - 50 comments

The World: processed, metered, distorted, littered with icons, or just floating there in front of you. [java, flash, all that jazz]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:21 AM PST - 15 comments

Brooklyn (via Grow a Brain)
posted by caddis at 9:37 PM PST - 40 comments

"Famous people who died in aviation accidents" -- notables and not-so-notables who have perished in crashes in the last 100 years.
posted by persona non grata at 9:24 PM PST - 46 comments

Is the U.S. Bankrupt? [332Kb PDF] Laurence Kotlikoff, writing in this month's Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, says "yes" - to the tune of $66 trillion! [more inside]
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:34 PM PST - 67 comments

Peruvian Gothic. "Don Benigno Aazco carved his way 36 years deep into the green heart of the Andean forest, founded 14 settlements, abandoned his wife and many children, married his daughter, slew his son-in-law, fought drug peddlers, tamed the wilderness, and reclaimed, as best he could, the Inca Empire. And now I was going to find him." [via]
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:15 PM PST - 23 comments

The Urban Pantheist is the livejournal of Jef Taylor, where he works out articles for his two zines: The Urban Pantheist: Loving Nature while Living in the City and Urban Nature Walk. The LJ became a bit more as he embarked on a project called 365 Urban Species, where he'll post a current photo and short article about a different living thing found in the city each day.
posted by FunkyHelix at 6:25 PM PST - 10 comments

The Punch Below The Belt is a WWII U.S. Government propaganda pamphlet scanned & hosted by our own fake & jonson. [Via Projects]
posted by guruguy9 at 5:24 PM PST - 51 comments

World War III...maybe IV? Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. He has plans for North Korea and Iran...and a newsletter, too. Related: 1, 2, 3, 4.
posted by taosbat at 2:51 PM PST - 114 comments

I remember reading "The Dead" and thinking the discussion about sweet tenor voices...Caruso vs. Parkinson...was a bit strange. Hearing the admiration of beautiful male voices over the years, especially by men (women's opinions are understandable), I never quite got it; I've always been partial to a woman's sound. Then I heard this (embedded yourdailymedia.com vid) and I think now I do.
posted by sluglicker at 2:48 PM PST - 33 comments

In 1993, Damien Echols, Jesse Miskelley, and Jason Baldwin were tried and imprisoned for the ritual satanic slaying of 3 8 year old boys. I just finished watching Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost 2 and was compelled to check out the West Memphis 3 in more depth.

Echols has written an autobiography. Miskelley, with an IQ of 72, made a confession which believed to have been a textbook example of coercion.
Jason Baldwin is active in petitioning Arkansas Governer Mike Huckabee.

Most articles I've come across are convinced of their innocence and consider this case a result of 'satanic panic'. What's not so convincing, is the innocence of John Mark Byers.
posted by pieoverdone at 1:22 PM PST - 34 comments

Apollo Panoramic Images [note: Quicktime VR]
posted by crunchland at 1:15 PM PST - 14 comments

Call the Future let's you send a phone message in the future. It sounds scary, but it could be useful for reminders. Or for pranks. The site creator's own prank was not that great, though.
posted by easternblot at 1:07 PM PST - 15 comments

French photographer Cedric Delsaux takes pictures of Star Wars characters (in figurine) and superimposes them onto French architecture, with interesting results.
posted by jonson at 11:52 AM PST - 16 comments

Underside of MySpace "The groups allow users to trade tips and advice or to discuss shared interest in drugs, self-harm or other topics." Can't seem to understand why this site has become some popular, especially for young folks.
posted by TurkeyWalk at 11:49 AM PST - 51 comments

Colors of Islam. "Islam 1,400 years ago gave women the right to choose her own husband, have her own business and finances, the right to ask for divorce and control her own body."
posted by semmi at 8:46 AM PST - 69 comments

The neurophysiology of political reasoning: "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones." But where do we get our initial biases? (via)
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:00 AM PST - 21 comments

The art of Hitler. For sale. What a roundabout way to up the value of your paintings.
posted by 6am at 6:57 AM PST - 66 comments

50 Animated Shorts from the National Film Board of Canada Focus on Animation. Including René Jodoin, Norman McLaren, Caroline Leaf and more. [streaming quicktime]
posted by MetaMonkey at 4:52 AM PST - 19 comments

Nice gun camera shots from WWII. Includes a bit of strafing. The Plane.
posted by IronLizard at 2:31 AM PST - 27 comments

Kokigami: origami for Mr. Happy. (Not, not this. And not ninjas, either.) The sensuous practise of Kokigami originated from the ancient Japanese art form of giving beautifully wrapped gifts.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:11 PM PST - 11 comments

Where all my ships at?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:18 PM PST - 32 comments

Catholic High School Girls in Trouble (embedded QT video w/ sound and definitely not safe for work)
posted by persona non grata at 9:07 PM PST - 52 comments

In the late 50's Milton Rogovin, started taking pictures at churches on the east side of Buffalo. His next project Family of Miners, began in Appalachia but would eventually span 10 countries. He returned to Buffalo's east side a number of times creating triptychs and quartets of families spanning decades.
posted by arse_hat at 12:12 PM PST - 5 comments

Much of the United States currently in a heat wave. First half of 2006 warmest on record in US - Global Warming fuels U.S. forest fires. Global Warming is not going away.
posted by stbalbach at 11:50 AM PST - 104 comments

Great Work, If You Can Get It
President Bush employs a Director for Lessons Learned with an annual salary of $146,000, a Director of Fact Checking ($46,500) and two ethics advisors ($114,688 and $100,547). The National Journal has a comprehensive list of who makes what in the White House.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) runs through a few “lessons” the White House apparently missed.
posted by ericb at 10:05 AM PST - 44 comments

From Democracy Now!, Noam Chomsky offers an interesting look at the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. There's really no good that can come from the current escalation of conflict. Although the Bush Administration has remained complacent in the situation, the conflict will have direct repercussions toward the United States. There's also the argument posed by the EU that the attacks are "disproportionate." Inevitably this could be caused by the growing "Shiite Revolution."
posted by j-urb at 10:02 AM PST - 95 comments

A Piano In A Gallery. David Cunningham (the guy behind The Flying Lizards! Wikipedia because the main at-least-quasi-official site's down, but while you wait 16 days for that, why not read this interview with Deborah Lizard for your FL Fix) and his new project... A Piano In A Gallery. No, he's not actually PLAYING the piano -- the visitors are. It's a sort of similar thing to both Brian Eno's gallery work with ambient tape loops on different time cycles, creating an ever-shifting collage of sound and David Byrne's recent Playing The Building. The room is mic'd, and the sound is run through a piano, and amplified, both bringing background noises to the foreground AND creating feedback-style loops, as those sounds are also run into the mics and so forth. So... if you happen to be in London.... [via WFMU]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 9:05 AM PST - 5 comments

Most of us saw The Wizard of Oz when we were kids, and discovered Dark Side of the Moon in high school. At some point someone decided to combine the two, and we ended up with the Dark Side of Oz (or Dark Side of the Rainbow). To set this up at home, you needed to start the album just as the MGM lion roared for the third time. Or you could watch it on Turner Classic Movies (who showed the film synched with DSotM in 2000). And now you can watch it on Google Video, while it lasts. My favorite part is when Dorothy walks out into the colors of Oz just as the cash registers of Money kick in.
posted by Who_Am_I at 8:45 AM PST - 74 comments

Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

Stabbed in the Back !
posted by y2karl at 7:41 AM PST - 36 comments

IN THE PARTY OF GOD This is archival from New Yorker but well-worth know in light of events taking place in Middle East.
posted by Postroad at 7:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Vader Sessions Don't be a hater. Heeere's Vader (YouTube)
posted by Arch_Stanton at 7:12 AM PST - 34 comments

Biro-art - fantastic ballpoint drawings.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:54 AM PST - 19 comments

learnitalianpod - a thoroughly archived podcast that can teach you to speak Italian. RSS
posted by nthdegx at 2:58 AM PST - 26 comments

SoupToys Toybox is a digital physics simulator for Windows that lets the user create semi-elaborate machines with real world physical effects (gravity, velocity, impact, etc). For a lengthier explanation, see here. Until today, the software was trial/purchase, but as of now, it's switched to freeware.
posted by lilbrudder at 9:32 PM PST - 16 comments

An end to mondegreens? It looks like Gracenote, the company behind the CDDB (CD database), is looking to enhance your music-listening experience by providing an expansive and "legitimate" lyrics database in association with major on-line digital music providers. Will this be the end of the road for existing lyrics sites? [more inside]
posted by persona non grata at 7:39 PM PST - 34 comments

Motherfucker: The Movie to document the well known travelling party in NYC. Is it a "turn of the century Studio 54" or a "scene even beneath most hipsters"? And will we ever see a film of Michael T's other project, Rated X: The Panty Party? [photos here -- NSFW]
posted by rottytooth at 3:42 PM PST - 81 comments

Tony Bourdain trapped in Lebanon. (On Jason Perlow's very good blog; also seen in the NYPost via TFS Appetizers.)
posted by rxrfrx at 3:15 PM PST - 222 comments

Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc. (147 F.Supp.2d 668) "Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins."
posted by Kat Allison at 2:56 PM PST - 28 comments

Jam On It! Moistworks uncovers some long lost Newcleus treasures. Electro fans rejoice.
posted by vronsky at 1:59 PM PST - 18 comments

Rock n' Roll Summer Camps for Girls, including this one in Brooklyn which has some clips and tunes posted (via).
posted by bardic at 1:58 PM PST - 19 comments

Cricinfo. The most extraordinary database and news site of the game of cricket, with records going back over 200 years. [much more inside]
posted by athenian at 1:55 PM PST - 16 comments

Free The Tucson Two. Or don't. If you find someone lost and dying in the desert, should you help them? What if they turn out to be attempting to enter the country illegally? Then is it OK to leave them to die? These folks say no, not really. And these folks say yes, probably. Previously discussed immigration fun on MetaFilter: 1 2 3
posted by bokeh at 1:47 PM PST - 75 comments

FLASH GAME FOR YOUR FRIDAY: Multiplayer Asteroids The name, Multiplayer Asteroids (or is it Asteroids Multiplayer?) is a bit of a misnomer since the asteroids did not actually make it into this version of the game. Instead, each player (up to 16 in a room) pilots a ship in an all-out deathmatch, melee style, with the objective being to rack up more kills than deaths. link and description via jayisgames
posted by boo_radley at 1:45 PM PST - 20 comments

The Internet is not a big truck! It's a series of Tangled Up TUBES! Evhead mixes up Ted Stevens & a dance beat with fantastic results.
posted by jonson at 12:54 PM PST - 32 comments

BOARDPUSHER is basically Cafepress, but for skateboard decks. If you've always wanted to design your own deck, now is your chance.
posted by mathowie at 11:53 AM PST - 29 comments

Zidane! In the wake of Sunday's World Cup, pranksters are hard at work transforming a man's name into a bold new verb. First link to a silly little flash game, all others, YouTube. 'metacafe?'
posted by mwhybark at 11:44 AM PST - 17 comments

The Supreme Court is increasingly anti-abortion, and they have already agreed that next year they will be deciding on so-called partial birth abortion bans. Given this context, you might need to learn how to do it yourself. (Here's more on some useful equipment.) Also see more inside.
posted by serazin at 11:18 AM PST - 90 comments

A new kind of hate has come to Provincetown. The victims? Not who you'd think. "Police say they logged numerous complaints of straight people being called ``breeders" by gays over the July Fourth holiday weekend." People call the police over this kind of thing?
posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 10:36 AM PST - 150 comments

The first 24 minutes of the new movie of Phillip K. Dick's classic A Scanner Darkly. *NSFW*
posted by crunchland at 9:56 AM PST - 82 comments

I liked it better when it was called "WarioWare"... If you you ever wanted to play a WarioWare knockoff on your PC, now you can. Armor Games brings Four Second Fury to life, and they have several other games on their main site. Nifty.
posted by andreaazure at 8:25 AM PST - 13 comments

the cartoon church - a site full of cartoons that gently mock some of the foibles of the church of england. Created by Dave Walker, a cartoonist for the Church Times
posted by talitha_kumi at 7:16 AM PST - 19 comments

A Confederacy of Dunces. Wildwood, New Jersey, is the go-to place for Rebel-flag merchandise, from beach towels to hermit crab shells.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:18 AM PST - 173 comments

"It's as I always say... all really intelligent people should be cremated for reasons of public safety!"
Hot on the tail of the forthcoming Hellboy animated series, the Sci-Fi Channel has adapted Mike Mignola's marvellous, absurd Eisner-Award-winning comic The Amazing Screw-On Head into a 22-minute animated pilot. The episode is available for viewing on Sci-Fi's site right now.
posted by terpsichoria at 6:10 AM PST - 33 comments

The end of the lawnmower era is nigh. Microbiologist Joanne Chory may change the face of suburban one-upmanship as we know it. Imagine a weekend morning without the sound of lawnmowers. Can it really be just around the corner? Will men be willing to terminate their love/hate (mpg) relationships with their lawns? After all, a man and his mower are not easily parted.
posted by pmbuko at 6:10 AM PST - 52 comments

"I am sitting in a room (mp3), different from the one you are in now." is the opening phrase from Alvin Lucier's (Wikipedia) best known work, simply titled 'I am sitting in a room'. The piece involves playing a recording of a short speech back into the room and re-recording the result. This is done again and again, with the resonant frequencies of the room reinforced each time, until all that is left are the characteristics and resonances of the room. (Interview and documentary also available at ubu.com
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:58 AM PST - 28 comments

Is it time to get excited? Looking at the Rapture News, I'd say yes! However, the Rapture Index (previously) remains unchanged. For some, the timing is in doubt.
posted by pandaharma at 5:27 AM PST - 64 comments

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by kyleg at 12:42 AM PST - 181 comments

A US court has decided that Persian antiquities on loan to the University of Chicago can be confiscated and sold to compensate American victims of Hamas violence in Israel.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:18 PM PST - 80 comments

The Drug War Goes to the Dogs. SWAT teams (usually the young ones) seem to commit a lot of puppycide. (Via The Agitator, who is also a MeFite.)
posted by homunculus at 8:51 PM PST - 31 comments

"In the reign of Harad IV there lived at court a maker of miniatures, who was celebrated for the uncanny perfection of his work. Not only were the objects of his strenuous art pleasing to look at but the pleasure and astonishment increased as the observer, bending closer, saw that a passionate care had been lavished on the smallest and least visible details. It was said that no matter how closely you examined one of the Master’s little pieces you always discovered some further wonder." [via]
posted by jessamyn at 8:14 PM PST - 17 comments

...Record collectors are typically thought of as irascible loners, but in the Washington of the ’50s and early ’60s, there existed a group of scruffy young blues and folk fans who could’ve given the Illuminati a run for their all-seeing eyes. They thought of themselves as the guardians of a tradition the rest of the world had either forgotten or misinterpreted. They adopted fake names. They invented strange mythologies. They hatched plans to bring their favorite historical figures back from the dead--or at least back from the commercial oblivion to which the music biz had consigned them. But most of all, they inspired admiration and awe. Though they never used the term themselves, this bunch of vintage-78 obsessives was known by others as the East Coast Blues Mafia.

The Thong Club
via FaheyGuitarPlayers
posted by y2karl at 7:32 PM PST - 20 comments

Seeing is believing : Illustrations were essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas and it was often the case that new developments in the sciences were accompanied by corresponding developments in illustrative techniques.
posted by dhruva at 6:55 PM PST - 5 comments

The U.S. Naval Observatory Library features high-res scans of images from antique books dealing with astronomy and navigation. Wallpapers, ahoy!
posted by Gator at 6:40 PM PST - 18 comments

It is America's most profitable industry, number one in return on revenues, return on assets, and return on equity. From barbiturates, to benzodiazepines, to everyone's favorite delysid, we come to the new age: SSRI's. There are thousands of studies showing that they work. And very few that question their efficacy. (very informative meta-analysis, a follow-up [pdf]). A quantitative explanation.
posted by dminor at 6:20 PM PST - 72 comments

Red Boldface. The blog of world renowned aristocrat rebel Mike Topp, author of whimsical little ditties, disjointed lists (is there a better sort) and (sometimes) absurd poetry.
posted by panoptican at 5:04 PM PST - 5 comments

So these guys built a crazy y-shaped guitar that can produce sounds that sound like a regular guitar or a steal drum_[wav]. There are more sound examples on that page. Meanwhile Mari Kimura has figured out a way to produce sub harmonics on a regular violin, extending the range down an octave, producing some [intresting_[mp3] results. via]
posted by delmoi at 4:40 PM PST - 15 comments

3,000 photographs of Glaswegians taken by Glaswegians, between 1989 and 1992.
posted by jack_mo at 3:43 PM PST - 27 comments

Red Buttons, a comedian perhaps more famous for his dramatic roles and for his famous "Never got a dinner!" line at many Friar's Club roasts. (He finally got his own roast in 1982), died yesterday at the age of 87. Glad you got your dinner, Red.
posted by WhipSmart at 3:28 PM PST - 21 comments

"Mortgaging Old Black People" --Abramoff, Ralph Reed, the Black Churches Insurance Program, with the old folks' benefits going to Abramoff. They had previously tried it with the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribe of El Paso. (original GQ story here)
posted by amberglow at 3:20 PM PST - 18 comments

Public Relations professional Jim Hoggan created desmogblog to counter the PR firms that spin the science around global warming.
posted by btwillig at 3:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Every Brian Jonestown Massacre album for free. Druggy, poppy, woozy, Rolling-Stonesy music. Want more free music? Butthole Surfers- Double Live Jad Fair- Sunshiney Sunshine Complete Dolly Mixture discography Animal- Sawn Creator and Deaf Ox and John Vanderslice. (some via)
posted by klangklangston at 2:32 PM PST - 29 comments

Newsfilter: Former CIA officer Valerie Plame sues Cheney, Rove, Libby, close on the heels of columnist Robert Novak kinda-sorta coming clean about his role.
posted by bardic at 1:19 PM PST - 78 comments

FoodCandy. A foodie hang.
posted by liam at 12:06 PM PST - 17 comments

Keep on Shrugging: apparently the planned film of Ayn Rand's much-beloved Atlas Shrugged -- a chief vehicle for her philosophy "Objectivism" -- is moving ahead. It's now planned as a trilogy and has a studio, a (draft) script, funding, and (tentatively) Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart (the star) -- she's apparently a big fan. For background, here's the Objectivism Mockery links page, including the brilliant, now-vanished "Objectifism."
posted by grobstein at 12:04 PM PST - 107 comments

Ever Wonder How Newspapers Decide Which Photos to Print? NYT Online's Talk to the Newsroom has a question and answer session with the Assistant Managing Editor for Photography, Michele McNally. She addresses a few of the more common questions many people have about how editorial decisions are made in regards to which photographs get published, and which don't among other topics.
posted by stagewhisper at 11:33 AM PST - 13 comments

Kiteboarding is an argument for the existence of God. And even if, like me, you don’t buy that particular argument, it’s still insanely cool. Armed with a kite, a harness and a board, you can show up your local skate rats (soundtrack includes language that is Not, strictly speaking, Safe For Work), fly over snow, ride waves and even indulge yourself over plain-vanilla dry land. Be careful, though. If angered, the wind could easily take you into orbit.
posted by jason's_planet at 11:00 AM PST - 27 comments

Kids on Fire Summer School of Ministry is not, actually, a school about setting children on fire. Unless you mean the fire of religious fervor! Jesus Camp indoctrinates young kids in the true dangers inherent in our secular lifestyle, including a proper fear of gays, Harry Potter & all other manner of sin. Camp activities include the pentacostalist trifecta: laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, and letting the holy spirit inhabit you. A brief clip from an A&E documentary about the school can be seen here, with the highlight (for me) being at 2:25 in.
posted by jonson at 9:21 AM PST - 123 comments

London's 'flushers': "If you really thought about where you were going and what you were doing you'd either be shit scared or you wouldn't go there. We're shit shovellers. Some of the jobs I do a high percentage of the country would turn around and say: 'Poke that up yer arse mate as far as you can put it.'" The history of London's sewers. The craptacular sewerhistory.org. More entries in the Night Haunts series.
posted by OmieWise at 9:01 AM PST - 14 comments

Math gets a patent.
"The field of invention relates generally to performing division operations using processing components and, more specifically but not exclusively relates to techniques for performing efficient software-based integer division using reciprocal multiplication."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:35 AM PST - 33 comments

Three prisoners in the gulag get to talking about why they are there. "I am here because I always got to work five minutes late, and they charged me with sabotage," says the first. "I am here because I kept getting to work five minutes early, and they charged me with spying," says the second. "I am here because I got to work on time every day," says the third, "and they charged me with owning a western watch." via BoingBoing.
posted by Tomatillo at 6:06 AM PST - 47 comments

"You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you?

30 questions to elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live.
posted by Hartster at 5:27 AM PST - 31 comments

kama3d ~ Made by an anonymous French artist, this series of sculptures of kama sutra positions was supposedly exhibited at the Chambéry Modern Art Museum (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire) recently. Now you can virtually walk around them. Reminscent of that sculpture of Britney giving birth on a bearskin. But are they real? *NSFW* (Note: FLASH)
posted by crunchland at 3:31 AM PST - 36 comments

The anti-globalisers are flakes, Samuel Huntingdon is all about the decline of white hegemony, Bin Laden is ‘the illegitimate child of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’ – Fred Halliday tells it like it is. (via, but you might well have filtered it out on the assumption that it's one of the tedious right-ring rants that they seem obsessed by nowadays.)
posted by Mocata at 2:42 AM PST - 30 comments

Schaulager, Basel, Switzerland. "If art is not seen it is dead. If art is not conserved, it decays. Schaulager - a new type of space for art." Originating from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, whose collection is stored at Schaulager under optimal conservation conditions, Schaulager is an institution dedicated to contemporary art – its conservation, research and dissemination. Building designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron.
posted by booksprite at 11:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Honey, where you been so long? A music blog featuring almost daily links to mp3s of pre-war blues musicians. Previously mentioned in-thread here and here.
posted by persona non grata at 9:49 PM PST - 24 comments

The 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy — Take a 28 year old future U.S. President on a two month long, 3,251 mile, transcontinental road trip (where relatively few have gone before). Wait while he shoulders a little responsibility, add some autobahn^{^} envy, and 37 years later he signs into law over 40,000 miles of the National Defense Highway System (later renamed: it recently passed 50 years of growth.) About his favorite domestic program, Ike said, "More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America. ...Its impact on the American economy - the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up - was beyond calculation." More documents, logs, and first-hand reports from the 1919 convoy here.
posted by cenoxo at 9:47 PM PST - 27 comments

What do you do with a steel plate, two anvils, and black powder? Anvil shooting!
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Flipping through the sales booklet, which has pages of unit plans, is like reading the assembly blueprints for some massive urban machine with interlocking component parts... The end result is a staggering 76 floor plans in 221 units—with none repeated more than a dozen times and well over a dozen of them unique. via BLDBLOG
posted by signal at 9:01 PM PST - 7 comments

For a brief moment in the 1880s, Volapük^ seemed like it could be the language everyone spoke. The reform of 1931 notwithstanding, it has become the universal language no one speaks (though a few people at next week's Esperanto convention in NYC will reportedly try). It does have its own Wikipedia, the Vükiped, and there's even a a website entirely in the language. The language's bizarre appearance inspired the quasi-Cyrillic Volapuk Encoding^. You can learn the language and use it in email, or if you're daring even try to meet up with a Volapük speaker in your area. Or just appreciate this oddity that tried to build the tower of Babel .
posted by graymouser at 7:45 PM PST - 17 comments

"Saddam Hussein after his capture addressed the court with the same challenge that Charles I threw at his judges: ‘By what legal authority do you try me?’" "Therefore, let me know by what authority I am called hither." ...and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise;... "‘Lex is Rex’, is what they’d said in the ship money case. The king is the law, the king is above the law, and the king can’t be brought to trial." "-- the president is always right, Senator."
posted by orthogonality at 5:01 PM PST - 76 comments

My shit doesn't stink. I'm serious—my mother told me so. So there. Abstract of study published in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, "My baby doesn't smell as bad as yours: The plasticity of disgust", found here.
posted by emelenjr at 3:35 PM PST - 28 comments

"he's making this ARRROOOOOOOOO noise...it's awesome." The story of Lance Bearworthy and the Ursine Shaft of Doom.
posted by ryoshu at 1:30 PM PST - 30 comments

Remember the little brown dress? It's gone missing after the artist held an 'undressing' party and is now living its life like a 'wayward lawn gnome.'
posted by drstein at 1:03 PM PST - 29 comments

What is people's fascination with playing the Mario theme on the piano? Blindfolded, even. Super Mario World, too. And Mario 64, and... some other rubbish.
posted by reklaw at 12:46 PM PST - 32 comments

The 9: Metafilter with tits.
posted by cillit bang at 12:16 PM PST - 96 comments

Among Springsteen fans, the song "Meeting Across The River," has become something of a point of contention and parlor game in terms of what happens to the protagonists afterwards. Many speculated that "Jungleland," was a continuation of the story. Several authors have taken the enterprise a step further in a new anthology.
posted by jonmc at 12:08 PM PST - 12 comments

Laws for an Outlaw Culture. Robert Greene is an unlikely guru for the Hip Hip Nation - a geeky white freelance writer & filmmaker. But his 48 Laws of Power have been embraced by the movers & shakers in the Hip Hop scene as their path to personal power. He's also written another book you may have heard of, The Art of Seduction. And he's just started his own blog.
posted by scalefree at 11:56 AM PST - 26 comments

Garfield, Deconstructed! An engaging, adoring daily analysis of Garfield—behold such a lens through which even Jim Davis' legacy starts to seem redeemable.
posted by cortex at 11:49 AM PST - 61 comments

Unflinching Triumph. A free movie (see director's manifesto) about something you thought was a kid's game. The National Association of Staredown Professionals is the real deal. Are you an enthusiast?
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:40 AM PST - 15 comments

Mr R. A. Zimmerman has confirmed his intention to release Modern times, his forty-fourth official LP and first album of new material in five years, on August 29, 2006. (Unofficial track-listing from RollingStone.com; report on an advance listen from the NME; Dylan namechecks Alicia Keys?; Dylan covers 'When the levee breaks'?;)
posted by docgonzo at 11:27 AM PST - 32 comments

New research finds that the human brain registers the avoidance of an anticipated punishment in pretty much the same way as it registers a reward. (See this link for a less technical discussion of the research.) Do these findings suggest that the use of punishment as a deterrent to undesirable behavior in effect actually motivates the undesirable behavior (as opposed to the use of negative reinforcement, or in other words, the withholding of reward)? Do punishment-oriented models of socialization/behaviorial conditioning actually encourage cheating, by in effect selecting for better cheaters?
posted by saulgoodman at 11:18 AM PST - 28 comments

Steven Thomas Erlewine prosecutes Sufjan Stevens A solid indictment of both Stevens and Indie Pop, from AMG's Whole Note series. Hopefully, the Arcade Fire get theirs next.
posted by klangklangston at 10:58 AM PST - 156 comments

Homeland Security Ranks Indiana As State With Most Terror Targets

The Homeland Security's National Asset Data Base [PDF] of vulnerable critical infrastructure and key resources "reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified 'Beach at End of a Street.'" The report noted that Indiana has 8,591 assets listed in the database — more than any other state and 50 percent more than New York. New York had 5,687 listed. Inspector General Richard Skinner finds that the database "is too faulty to accurately help divide federal funds to states and cities."
posted by ericb at 10:50 AM PST - 66 comments

Sleep Deprivated Nation "Sleep is the new sex, as the experts in sleep disorders like to say. Men think about it every seven seconds or so. Women romanticize it. Teenagers yearn for the weekends, when they might get a little of it." Even worse, we may sleep less than we think
posted by TurkeyWalk at 9:50 AM PST - 60 comments

Is this the best way to revive the legendary British marque?
posted by punkfloyd at 7:25 AM PST - 39 comments

Advice for the Chap at heart.... "The web site you are about to enter contains words and images that may induce excessive languidity and an increase in levels of panache, leading to an overall rise in self-esteem. So sink into your deepest armchair, pour yourself a gin and tonic, light a cigarillo, and prepare to join the sophisticated world of The Chap." Being a Chap is, apparently, much more than just an excuse to wear a fedora and spats. The proper Chap has a Manifesto and a valet, shops at the Chap Emporium, and possibly practices the gentle art of househusbandry.
posted by orange swan at 6:24 AM PST - 41 comments

Report from the Committee on Government Reform Minority Office: Under the Bush Administration, the “shadow government” of private companies working under federal contract has exploded in size. Between 2000 and 2005, procurement spending increased by over $175 billion dollars, making federal contracts the fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending. ... Federal spending on Halliburton contracts increased over 600% between 2000 and 2005. If you're short on time, read the one-page summary of the report, or just hit the database of problem contracts.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:06 AM PST - 37 comments

CON-CAN Movie Festival is an online international short film festival connecting creators and viewers all around the world. (Win/Mac compatible)." Thirty international short films available in the screening room.
posted by dobbs at 6:02 AM PST - 1 comment

Free Lecture On The Wonders Of Social Democracy And The Evils Of Alcohol With Every Bottle Of Booze: Outside sunny Islam, are there are worse places to get a drink than Sweden?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:50 AM PST - 73 comments

A fascinating series of Japanese toilet training videos for the very young (duh). Of note, the anthropomorphizing of the toilet, the weird bits of Engrish thrown in, and the remarkably frank approach to the whole messy business.
posted by jonson at 11:04 PM PST - 19 comments

On June 15, 1957, a new gold and white 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe was buried in a time capsule in downtown Tulsa, OK. The car was entombed in a concrete vault beneath the then lawn of city hall as part of Tulsa's semi-centennial.The interment, forgotten by Chrysler Motors according to one report by a former employee, is sparking interest largely due to the fact that the car is scheduled to be exhumed on June 15, 2007 as part of Tulsa's centennial celebration. It was buried to establish the timelessness of Plymouth design, an assertion that has proven both ironically wrong and ironically right. Oh, the car goes to the person who correctly guessed the population of Tulsa in 2007 at the time the car was buried, or that person's heirs. The problem will be finding them.
posted by VMC at 10:56 PM PST - 47 comments

The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit - a 1961 instructional clip from 85-year old master animator Bob Godfrey, also known for such classic works as Instant Sex, Henry's Cat, and Roobarb. (alert: some links to YouTube)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:46 PM PST - 7 comments

Edward James (1907 - 1984) was a millionaire Scottish, art patron and surrealist who moved to Mexico in 1947 to grow orchids. After the orchids were destroyed by a freak snowstorm in 1962, he decided to switch to experiments in architecture. He built a monument to surrealism called Las Pozas, just outside of Xilitla. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:03 PM PST - 21 comments

MusicLens enables users to find pieces of music using very vaguely described criteria, such as loudness (perceived volume), mood or purpose. The search or recommendations query can be enhanced or limited by adjusting the ten control sliders. Example : All slow titles by Madonna from the 90s that also sound sexy. (Note: FLASH)
posted by crunchland at 8:43 PM PST - 15 comments

If you're interested in military geography, this ebook from the National Defense University website should be good reading for you.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:38 PM PST - 5 comments

"What Do I Put in My Portfolio?" Irene Gallo, art director for science fiction/fantasy publisher Tor Books (and its mainstream imprint Forge), lays down wisdom on how to impress an art director and maybe get one to hire you for a book cover. Aside from being a practical primer for artists on everything from picturing the human figure to how not to annoy an art director at a party, for everyone else it's a glimpse into why SF book covers look the way they do.
posted by jscalzi at 6:36 PM PST - 24 comments

"I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in 'Who's Who in America.'" Bob "Prince of Darkness" Novak comes clean (sort of) on his role in the Plame scandal. Novak asserts that Fitzgerald knew the identities of his source for Plame's identity. "That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act," Novak says. Further, he says that his source spilled the beans inadvertently: "After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part."
posted by Heminator at 3:37 PM PST - 48 comments

Remember cleanflicks the outfit that digitally sanitized films? The Directors Guild of America recently won their lawsuit against them and companies like them for copyright violation. Prev
posted by Smedleyman at 2:04 PM PST - 61 comments

Job? Fuck it. from Packard Jennings. Also, A Day At The Mall. (Mildly NSFW due to cartoon nudity and copulation. But, screw it, y'know? via.)
posted by loquacious at 1:27 PM PST - 27 comments

Mark Wieczorek has put together some graphs of US federal revenue and spending and the US trade deficit, with a minimum of editorializing. They're shown using nominal dollars, real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, and as a percentage of GDP.
posted by russilwvong at 12:58 PM PST - 32 comments

On the great Ukrainian bride hunt. "These are not American women, our guide was telling us. They do not care about your age, looks, or money. And you are not going to have to talk to them for half an hour and then have your testicles handed back to you! Let me tell you: over here, you're the commodity; you're the piece of meat. Ive lived in St. Petersburg for two years, and I wouldnt date an American woman right now if you paid me!"
posted by soiled cowboy at 12:46 PM PST - 118 comments

The Case of the Ugly Bride. They said she would be of fair complexion and able to speak English, but she wasn't - so the groom's family is suing the bride's relatives for fraud, deciet, conspiracy, unjust enrichment, violation of the Civil Rights Act, amongst other torrid claims.
posted by contessa at 11:46 AM PST - 55 comments

Rake Art. Patterns raked in the sand, then photographed from far above with a kite. (More info on the artist's blog)
posted by Gamblor at 11:37 AM PST - 25 comments

The Fillmore St. Jazz Festival and the Mitch Marcus Quintet Live. via BayTaper.com
posted by semmi at 11:24 AM PST - 3 comments

135 or more dead, 7 blasts, terrorists to blame
posted by bmpetow at 10:03 AM PST - 91 comments

Daniel Raeburn's story about his daughter's still birth is one of the most depressing things I've read in a while. Thankfully, there is a much happier update to the story. (via Kottke)
posted by chunking express at 8:22 AM PST - 89 comments

“If you don’t apply it when it’s inconvenient,” he said, “it’s not a rule of law.”
posted by kittyprecious at 7:16 AM PST - 39 comments

Syd Barrett passes on. Pink Floyd founder (paid tribute to by his former bandmates in "Shine On You Crazy Diamond) who had succumbed to mental illness passes away due to complications of diabetes. RIP.
posted by jonmc at 6:39 AM PST - 208 comments

Pro-life blogger just doesn't get it. (via)
posted by May Kasahara at 5:09 AM PST - 158 comments

From cooperation to complicity. In 1988, the German chemical giant Degussa commissioned a study (by American historian Peter Hayes) on its collaboration with the National-Socialist regime. The corporation's involvement in the production of Zyklon B has been well publicised, due to the controversy over the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but it's only one chapter of a larger story that, according to the author (PDF), "suggests that most people, when presented with opportunities or imperatives that they have every imminent or material reason to accept or accede to and only potential or moral grounds to reject, will choose the course of least resistance, internalize the arguments that legitimate it, and balk at admitting that one could or should have done otherwise."
posted by elgilito at 4:48 AM PST - 18 comments

A landmark rigorous study, 36 years after Walter Pahnke's Good Friday study ocuments the ability of psilocybin - the chemical in "magic mushrooms" - to trigger mystical experiences. 16 of 24 participants, who had no history of psychedelic use, rated the drug episode (after 2 months) to be among the 5 most meaningful experiences in their lifetime. A longer 40-year follow-up by MAPS on those who took LSD under the supervision of psychiatrist Oscar Janiger in the 1950s, found qualitatively the same result.
posted by daksya at 11:16 PM PST - 236 comments

Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Martin Fugate & his descendents, the 1982 article from Science magazine entitled "The Blue People of Troublesome Creek" is a fascinating read; a recessive gene & decades of inbreeding lead to a clan of Kentucky hill folk with deep blue skin from head to toe.
posted by jonson at 10:59 PM PST - 56 comments

For the past three years the National Endowment for the Arts has sponsored a writing project called Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, inviting U.S. troops and their families to share letters, e-mails, poems, stories, and memoirs to be collected in a national archive. An anthology of the work, edited by the historian Andrew Carroll, will be published this fall by Random House. Here, in an audio slide show [Flash required], five servicemen read from their work, accompanied by photographs. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 9:38 PM PST - 5 comments

Some dark thoughts about happiness.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:39 PM PST - 29 comments

8=8 is a group of four programmers = four performers = four artists. We each built our own program for my Hypertable platform, then created a program that would group them together for a public performance. More videos &c.
posted by signal at 7:20 PM PST - 9 comments

Metal Storm Limited specializes in weapon systems featuring rapid fire electronically fired bullets, up to 1 million a minute. The weapons platform can be used to make the worlds strongest handgun as well as be used to equip unmanned drones with firepower. The most frightening of which is perhaps the "dragonfly" micro copter. Their site has a number of videos showcasing some of the various weapons applications. Metal Storm has been around for a while, without getting a product to market, but with a recent influx of funding it doesn't look like they are going to go out of business any time soon.
posted by reverendX at 6:44 PM PST - 50 comments

Suppose you were like this guy and you had devoted nearly a decade of your life to figuring out how to make oil from turkey gizzards. Now suppose this guy and a bunch of pencil-pushers like these guys came along and started challenging the long-term viability of carbon-based fuels (whether of the freshly-squeezed variety or not). For sake of argument, suppose they were right. How reluctant do you suppose you'd be to admit it, even to yourself?
posted by saulgoodman at 2:42 PM PST - 44 comments

Wrestling Bears
No, not this [NSFW].
Or this.
Sort of like this.
Or this, in a steel cage ("C'MON BEAR!").
And then there's the history.
posted by StopMakingSense at 2:38 PM PST - 23 comments

NES Zidane A fairly accurate recreation of the World Cup final. Also, ze headbutt explained.
posted by jcruelty at 2:18 PM PST - 63 comments

Dr. Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper in 1989 titled White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies (later released as White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack), which she wrote because, "...have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious." Since then the lesson she sought to teach has inspired other lists, such as The Male Privilege and now The Daily Effect of Straight Privilege.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:17 PM PST - 130 comments

Max Factors: What do Tom Hanks, Patrick Swayze, and Sigourney Weaver have in common? Well, let's just say that da Vinci isn't the only code featuring Tom Hanks these days. (Previously, on MetaFilter) (Some text may be NSFW)
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:35 PM PST - 18 comments

For those who enjoy (or despise) the netubiquitous (Hey! A new word! Feel free to meme it for me. Thanks.) "Engrish" sites, here, via ctheory, is a more theoretical explanation of the phenomenon than you're likely to get by Googling "Engrish." (Two million hits and rising!)
posted by kozad at 1:17 PM PST - 15 comments

The Diamond Age has arrived, but no one will admit it. Experts chafe at the mass-production of diamonds. The leading gem analysts refuse to rate them. Duh. "If we could succeed, at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks." Capital, Karl Marx (previously)
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:57 PM PST - 95 comments

Then, as he escorted me to the elevator, he said, “New Yorker? How many people see that shits?” He reflected a moment. “Damn. Who needs Hot 97? I got New Yorker and MySpace.”
posted by jne1813 at 12:56 PM PST - 32 comments

Beat This! A Hip Hop History (BBC - 1984)
posted by vronsky at 12:23 PM PST - 11 comments

Some old news regarding Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Further proof that tigers don't change their stripes. Tiger Force in operated in Vietnam, led by the recently-deceased Colonel David Hackworth), with the task of out-guerilla-ing the guerillas. Their attrocities were covered up by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and James Schlesinger, who most recently headed an independent panel probing Abu Gharib. Others incidents inside...
posted by rzklkng at 11:22 AM PST - 63 comments

The 10th day? A day of rest. Thank goodness for Caroline Yang's TdF photos. Ever wondered why McEwan rides so hard to stay in Green? What Ukrainian joy looks like? When you can wear socks with sandals? She's also got some decent shots of speed skating (oh, and real blood sports, like weddings).
posted by OmieWise at 10:39 AM PST - 16 comments

As in the 2004 elections, several useful sites have sprung up to keep track of the 2006 midterms for House, Senate and state gubernatorial races. Some have a political point of view, others don't, but they don't differ significantly on the outcome at this point. One of the veterans in this game is ElectionProjection.com, which was pretty close to actual results in '04. (A creation of "the Blogging Caesar"). From the right, there's MyElectionAnalysis.com, while ElectionPredictions seems to come from a neutral corner. All of these track statewide polls as they are published; they may differ in how they weight results. For a more subjective approach, see Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball or the Cook Political Report. Overall, the consensus seems to be that the GOP will hold both houses, but with slimmer margins, and lose on the gubernatorial front.
posted by beagle at 9:54 AM PST - 30 comments

World eBook Fair - Project Gutenberg opens the door to even more books online for free (through Aug 4). Not just public domain stuff, but copyrighted works like Ulysses (PDF), T.S. Eliot (500 pp. PDF), and Neal Stephenson (PDF). Over 300,000 additional works online.
posted by mattbucher at 8:43 AM PST - 51 comments

Do stay at home moms need business cards? Apparently, yes. Ask Linda Hirshman, she'll tell you all about it. Wait -- no, she won't. But this writer probably would. Maybe Caitlin Flanagan would recommend them for nannies instead?
posted by bitter-girl.com at 7:44 AM PST - 118 comments

The Fifteeners: The Earliest Printed Books. Incunabula or incunables are the very first examples of books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed with moveable type in Western Europe. They range from the very first examples of the two-column Latin Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s to works printed through the end of the year 1500. The term "incunable" derives from the Latin word cunabula for "cradle" or "origin", hinting at their status as the earliest of all books. Incunabula are also sometimes referred to as "fifteeners" from their appearance in the fifteenth century. In 2002, the Countway Library embarked on an ambitious and long-needed project to describe and catalog fully its holdings of incunabula and make online descriptions of these items accessible to scholars and researchers for the first time. All of the books and woodcuts in this exhibit have been drawn from the collections of the Boston Medical Library and the Harvard Medical Library and have one common element—each is at least five hundred years old. The Fifteeners highlights some of the extraordinary treasures in the Countway's incunabula collection and allows the public a glimpse of these rarest of printed medical works. [Previously]
posted by sluglicker at 7:20 AM PST - 11 comments

Meet the bureaucrats. The unnerving similarity of bureaucrats' offices.
posted by js003 at 6:48 AM PST - 23 comments

A la "I Am Cuba" the folks at Caution Zero bring you a seven minute tracking shot of a vampire with bunny slippers being attacked by zombies. We've obviously done our zombiefilter tracking here, here, and here, but I figured new advances in zombie aesthetic were worth noting.
posted by HellKatonWheelz at 5:57 AM PST - 6 comments

Hero Tomorrow. Superman Returns had a budget of $260M. X3? $210M. So what kind of superhero film can you make for a mere $100K? Check out Hero Tomorrow, making its big screen debut next week at the San Diego ComicCon.
posted by grabbingsand at 5:49 AM PST - 31 comments

Geek goddesses or calendar girls? Female IT professionals have posed for a provocative calendar to try and shake off their industry's geeky image and encourage young women to consider a computing career. Yup, that'll work...
posted by Tokil at 1:18 AM PST - 93 comments

Hitler in a dress singing showtunes about being gay? You bet. (Embedded Quicktime link.) (YouTube link here.) (By Magic Box Films.)
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:43 PM PST - 14 comments

How to make your own wireless camera remote. Man buys Minolta 5-D, can't find a remote for less than $30 on eBay; can't find any that are wireless; goes to an electronics store, buys the parts; makes his own wireless remote; then takes pictures of himself skating, using the remote!
I love diy stories like this. (Warning: popups at the linked site.)
posted by Lynsey at 10:32 PM PST - 22 comments

The Vanishing. "Bees are in grave danger. So is our food supply. Why something so small matters so much."
posted by homunculus at 10:04 PM PST - 39 comments

The Thong Bikini Piano. (For Phlash non-Phriday)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Recent Shuttle Launch from Unusual Angles
+ Right forward Solid Rocket Booster camera (Windows media)
+ Right aft Solid Rocket Booster camera (Windows media)
+ Left aft Solid Rocket Booster camera (13.7 Mb Quicktime movie)
+ Left forward Solid Rocket Booster camera (13.6 Mb Quicktime movie)
+ Separation composite view (10 Mb Quicktime movie)
posted by crunchland at 5:05 PM PST - 41 comments

A counterfeiter and a convict. A merchant marine and a safecracker. This is Donn Pearce's story before he turned twenty. This is his story before he could grow a beard, before he wrote Cool Hand Luke, was nominated for an Academy Award, went broke, and chased bail jumpers. You'd like to think you've got stories of your own, that you've lived a full life, and then you travel up Florida's I-95 to spend the afternoon listening to Donn Pearce.
posted by thisisdrew at 3:41 PM PST - 10 comments

"Listen bitch, don't call in an hour & a half late and then complain you're tight on time." My favorite 80 seconds of radio so far this year, as Ann Coulter dials into the Adam Carolla show to plug her stupid book. (link goes to transcript, with MP3 available for download)
posted by jonson at 3:11 PM PST - 131 comments

Mud Mosques: The Black and White Prints / Various locations in Mali.via BldgBlog.
posted by signal at 2:17 PM PST - 11 comments

We all have to go sometime. Frank Russo has an obsession, dead ballplayers. Some died in accidents, some were murdered, some couldn't take it anymore, and some were cursed. They were all human. (via HNT)
posted by caddis at 1:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Dr. Schelling's neighborhood. Is segregation the holdover of a racist past or an inevitable result of simple mathematical processes? After you've read the theory, try it for yourself here, here & here. Dr. Thomas Schelling won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing these ideas, but not everybody agrees that he deserved to.
posted by scalefree at 1:37 PM PST - 31 comments

The World Cup! This is your spoiler-free post... Don't be a dick. Don't post a FPP revealing who won!!!
posted by Cyrano at 12:59 PM PST - 228 comments

Richard Hell & the Voidoids play CBGB's, 1977 (youtubefilter). Check out the crowd interviews between the two songs. Also, Richard Hell tries to learn a Television song from Tom Verlaine parts One and Two.
posted by bardic at 11:15 AM PST - 13 comments

Hot Town, Cool City : You live in the best city in the U.S. and you want to go back to Houston, Texas? Maureen McNamara came home from San Francisco and has now produced a web "treasure map" and a film about the hidden gems of Houston. Love it, hate it, is Houston worth it?
posted by Robert Angelo at 9:50 AM PST - 48 comments

The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
posted by Gyan at 9:12 AM PST - 17 comments

Child brides of Afghanistan. A child bride is very often just that: a child, even a preteen, her innocence betrothed to someone older, even much, much older. Images by Stephanie Sinclair who's work on women's issues in Afghanistan is always eye opening.
posted by photoslob at 8:09 AM PST - 76 comments

"And any woman with a nature so cold as not to be aroused by the perfect execution of the waltz, is entirely unfit to make any man happy as his wife, and if she be willing to indulge in such pleasures with every ballroom libertine, she is not the woman any man wants for a wife." Fact: two-thirds of the girls who are ruined fall through the influence of dancing.
posted by sluglicker at 4:14 AM PST - 31 comments

The New "Science" of Siblings An amusing article from Time magazine by Jeffrey Kluger which reports that your siblings have more influece on your personality than any other group-- parents, peers, spouses, children, etc. My ex-wife thinks I'm sarcastic, combative, insensitive, etc. Do I get to blame my brothers and sisters for this now? Another article on this issue "The Science of Siblings". Apparently, they could have made me more likely to be gay too.
posted by notmtwain at 2:45 AM PST - 28 comments

Dutch broadcast station VPRO's website is Holland’s biggest platform for alternative music. Here's a link to a shitload of streaming live concerts and tracks. You'll have to do a bit of cut and paste once there, but it's the easiest way for me to link to the list. For the cut-and-paste-inept, there's a standard interface, but the site's not in english.
posted by dobbs at 8:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Phlash Phriday: "Iron Chef America, Battle for Kitchen Stadium". Can you catch the stuff your sous chef is tossing in the air?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:15 PM PST - 17 comments

The kantele is the national instrument of Finland, strongly associated with traditional Finnish folk music. A psaltery-like string instrument of somewhat obscure origin, it prominently figures in the Kalevala. Despite this association with the past, the kantele is very much a living instrument- it was used in the soundtrack to "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" for its "pure, chilly sound", and electric kanteles have been made. [more inside, with sound samples]
posted by a louis wain cat at 6:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Ink drawings by Ben Tolman: Huge, intricate, somewhat NSFW. There may be an issue with the side frame not scrolling in Firefox; if this is the case, click here, here, here, and here to see the galleries.
posted by Gator at 6:41 PM PST - 16 comments

Remember Oxyd? You can find this shareware game on abandonware sites, but you probably won't have much luck playing it on your new PC. Even if you run it under DOSBox, it's hard to get it looking and sounding right. Fret no more! There's Oxyd extra for Windows and Enigma for lots of platforms. Time to dust off my Oxyd Book...
posted by rxrfrx at 6:25 PM PST - 9 comments

Will Wright & Brian Eno, Playing with Time. (MP3, Vorbis) Will Wright, creator of the video games "Sim City," "The Sims," and the forthcoming "Spore," spoke with Brian Eno on many subjects, including time, and generative programming, on June 26, 2006, in seminar put on by the Long Now Foundation. (Summary).
posted by crunchland at 2:57 PM PST - 26 comments

You're 18. You got your driver's license in February, and you just graduated from high school. Last Wednesday night you're zooming down Hwy 101 at 100 mph, racing another car, and you smash into the side of an SUV, killing all three people inside.Turns out two of them were Prince Tu’ipelehake and Princess Kaimana Aleamotu’a Tuku’aho of the Tonga royal family, the only royal monarchy left in the Pacific. Now an entire nation is is mourning and your bail is $3 million.
posted by gottabefunky at 12:00 PM PST - 192 comments

Have you ever seen a synth and said "Man, what this needs is cartoon eyes?" A bit similar to the Buchla Box or theremin in that they don't have a keyboard to control the sounds -- it's probably closest to the Booper, invented by The Weatherman from Negativland (or, well, Circuit Bending), the Thingamagoop is a photosynthesizer... which means it basically uses light sensors to generate sounds. The signal's run through a couple oscillators and, well, it comes out as somethin' that's pretty dang awesome. I'm on the fence on pickin' this one up. On one hand, it's a really neat toy that makes noise... on the other hand, um.... um.... I dunno. It's not made of candy?
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 11:40 AM PST - 18 comments

Stevie Ray Vaughn, Part 1 - a great little video documentary made by two Norwegian students as an English project. Part 2, Part 3. (YouTube alert)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:35 AM PST - 21 comments

Sudoku Combat. Sudoku, head to head style. The stress mounts as your challenger's board blinks and fills. Bring it on.
posted by jonah at 9:36 AM PST - 20 comments

Posit: Settlers of Catan is the greatest board game of all time. (Read the rules and see for yourself, just don't go too crazy with changing them.) Why not spend Saturday playing online? There are several java versions available for those leery of installing things.
posted by absalom at 9:05 AM PST - 28 comments

From the OC to al Qaeda. Meet Adam Gadahn, former Southern California metal-head with a messy bedroom, current al Qaeda propaganda chief. Once a Santa Ana rocker from a prominent Jewish family, "Azzam the American" appeared yesterday in a video linking the terror group to the London bombings.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 8:11 AM PST - 24 comments

One red paperclip has, after 14 trades, been turned into a farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan. Previously, previously.
posted by cerebus19 at 7:15 AM PST - 73 comments

The one that got away? GIVE a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a world-famous English artist a fish, however, and he'll pickle it in formaldehyde, flog it to a South Korean art gallery for $5.7 million, and trouser the difference.. A controversial shark hunter learns of Damien Hirst adding value to "a freebie".
posted by bunglin jones at 3:26 AM PST - 54 comments

Private Phone is a free new (as of last month) service from NetZero that allows anyone to sign up for a unique private voicemail number; now phone numbers are as disposable as web based email accounts. For use by craigslisters, ebayers, and random cads, bounders & ne'er do wells, not to mention women who aren't sure if that hot guy is, in fact, dangerously crazy.
posted by jonson at 12:08 AM PST - 17 comments

Is Catholic-Anglican Reconciliation the only way forward? The Anglicans aren't Protestant, they're Catholics! In 1920 the Church of England - Anglicans - called for its reconciliation with the Catholic Church, and in 1925 the Catholic Ecumenical movement sought to make the Anglicans an autonomous Catholic church with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its patriarch. It would have been similar to the Coptic and Syro-Malabarese churches. The move was quashed by Pope Pius XI, who ended the ecumenical movement there and then. If conservative Anglicans chose this third way, instead of infighting over sexuality and gender issues or establishing a new model for membership, it could keep its married priests, its land, its churches, it's membership, and the Archbishop of Canterbury would still have a job.
posted by parmanparman at 9:28 PM PST - 26 comments

The Encyclopedia of Strange Vehicles. This is really just an excuse to link to the Fab 1, a car I wish I could drive even once.
posted by The Castle at 9:18 PM PST - 31 comments

Abandonded buildings: photos of.
posted by econous at 5:43 PM PST - 20 comments

A daily intelligence brief on Iraq, prepared by a private contractor for the U.S. military and companies working in Iraq--SOC-SMG Inc --paints a grim picture of life in Baghdad. The information in large sections of the brief? It came from this blog: Iraq the Model
posted by amberglow at 4:39 PM PST - 129 comments

The Mario Brothers Tragedy reaches the finish line. After a 2 year wait Alexander Leon has finally finished his Mario Bros. flash epic. (previously here and here)
posted by hugecranium at 4:28 PM PST - 42 comments

The World's Most Amazing Dog (YouTube) A clip from Montel Williams' show about a dog born without front legs. The owner has trained it to walk upright. As my boyfriend said, "After watching this, I'll never complain about anything in my life again."
posted by ArsncHeart at 3:36 PM PST - 57 comments

"Trademarks are not verbs.
CORRECT: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.” [via]

Adobe Adobe® has a strict policy on how they want your buddies to use their trademark, even as slang. Proprietary Eponyms are increasingly common, with “google, ('gü-g&l) tr. v.” entering the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Is photoshop next?
posted by yeti at 3:14 PM PST - 65 comments

China is reported to be harvesting organs from Falun Gong members without their consent. Elsewhere, to increase the numbers of donated organs, the organ donation system is opt-out rather than opt-in for the entire population.
posted by DataPacRat at 3:01 PM PST - 47 comments

Jewsfilter: Rabbinic Council of America bans smoking for all Orthodox Jews "Jewish law is fully able to incorporate new realities, recognize new and reliable scientific findings, and embrace the need to change heretofore acceptable behavior." Read the full technical legal opinion here. [pdf] Now if only the Orthodox Union would stand up for the LBGT community in same the way that it has for Darfur, stem cell research, heck, even global warming...
posted by ericbop at 1:42 PM PST - 44 comments

Sam Harris on why religious moderates are worse than fundamentalists. (Salon click-through ad) "Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:29 PM PST - 112 comments

For Orthodox Jewish mothers with small children, the Shabbat can be challenging. The answer, for many communities, is the establishment of an eruv (discussed previously here, in passing). This San Francisco Chronicle article details the history behind Berkeley, California's unique instance. This isn't the first time an eruv has been attempted in the Bay Area: the failed effort to create one in Palo Alto was covered by the Chronicle, as well as the Jewish News Weekly. Berkeley isn't the only United States city with an eruv—the Boston eruv maintains a large list of domestic and international eruvim—nor is it the city with the most unusual eruv, or even the largest. Inevitably, perhaps, there's a blog entirely dedicated to the subject of eruvim, and vigorous commentary on the subject from several others.
posted by scrump at 12:55 PM PST - 59 comments

Hobby religion considers major change. The Church of England is considering a motion to dump its patron saint, St. George, noted for slaying dragons and being a fictional character. You see, he might be offensive to muslims. Next up, "Should 'Jerusalem' be abandoned for 'Peace Train'?"
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:39 PM PST - 37 comments

Blastwave
posted by MetaMonkey at 12:26 PM PST - 28 comments

kawaii not?
posted by me3dia at 11:45 AM PST - 43 comments

Breast Ironing : More african female-on-female child abuse
posted by mischief at 11:15 AM PST - 72 comments

Portraits of the Freedom Riders Eric Etheridge has been taking pictures of people who participated in the Freedom Rides (map) to accompany the people's 1961 mug shots. Some of the photos were in the July 2 issue of the New York Times Magazine, and there are more photos at his web site. Also, an excerpt from a recent book about the rides. [via]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:15 AM PST - 4 comments

Halo Zero. The Fall of Reach, old-school style. Some plucky French coders have borrowed a page from Codename: Gordon, the side-scrolling homage to Half-Life. As a result, Master Chief and his cohorts are now fighting the Covenant in 16-bit, 2D graphics. PC download only - though Mac owners at least have Boot Camp to avoid waiting for an OS X port. via Aeropause
posted by Smart Dalek at 11:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Cheney's Cheney and the Unitary Executive Theory. An excellent article from the New Yorker on the mysterious forces at work behind the Bush administration's expansion of executive powers.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:45 AM PST - 36 comments

"Most of us have a plan -- it's like, make hay while the sun shines." While this may be a slogan for mercenaries currently serving in Iraq, it may also be one for extremists infiltrating the military in order to gain skills necessary for their own sinister plots. This of course, isn't counting those in service who may one day snap. Could this be the beginning of another cruel example of "blowback?"
posted by j-urb at 10:30 AM PST - 7 comments

What do you get the man who has it all? How about a solar-powered flashlight.
posted by huskerdont at 10:28 AM PST - 40 comments

Tom Weir, climber, writer, broadcaster and cult figure, best known for the show 'Weir's Way' has passed away at age 91. Recently honoured for bringing Scotlands environment and its issues to public attention. I'll be climbing a munro in rememberance. RIP.
posted by Shave at 10:20 AM PST - 11 comments

Amphibian Extinction Crisis: "For the first time in modern history, because of the way that humans are impacting our natural world, we're facing the extinction of an entire class of organisms....This is not the extinction of just a panda or a rhino, it's a whole class of organisms." Original declaration of the Amphibian Conservation Summit (pdf). More details in the BBC and San Francisco Chronicle. Previously.
posted by salvia at 10:01 AM PST - 9 comments

We need to get Stephen Hawking an AskMe membership. Stephen Hawking asks the Yahoo public how the human race is going to survive. Yahoo staff are excited. But the answers? Well, let's just say that there may be more utility in eating tweens after the nuclear apocalypse than listening to their ideas. To balance the stupid, Hawking has several of his lectures online. And there's great stuff on PBS's Stephen Hawking's Universe (though it's aimed at providing a basic understanding of astrophysics). Or, for a more animated view MC Hawking's (sometimes clumsy) "What We Need More of Is Science. (Previous mefi hawking here, here [where he seems to be answering his later question], here [where he presents another view on how humans will survive], and here.)
posted by klangklangston at 9:56 AM PST - 56 comments

Teenage Hoboes in the Great Depression. During the Great Depression over 250,000 young people left home and began riding freight trains or hitchhiking across America. Most of them were between 16 and 25 years of age. Many finally found work and shelter through the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government relief project that Franklin D. Roosevelt established in 1933 as part of the New Deal. From 1933 to 1942, CCC enrollees built new roads, strung telephone wires, erected fire towers, and planted approximately 3 billion trees. By 1935, the program was providing employment for more than 500,000 young men.
posted by matteo at 7:45 AM PST - 25 comments

Friday Flash Fun- Fancy Pants Adventures is a terrific 2D platform game. Plays like a cross between Mario and Sonic, with a really nice artistic style.
posted by mkultra at 7:29 AM PST - 17 comments

When an accident becomes a community attraction... It's not one of these, but when some lads from Sheffield couldn't fit their piano into their house, they inadvertently created a new concept - the 'street piano'. Start your own street piano community today!
posted by altolinguistic at 3:18 AM PST - 25 comments

John Powers, artist. Simple, uncluttered site showing his sculptures, drawings and installations. Some more info here.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 1:35 AM PST - 5 comments

We hold that the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex. By a 4 to 2 margin, the New York Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, upheld (70 page pdf) the state's Domestic Relations law that bars same-sex couples from getting married in New York and denying same-sex couples the hundreds of family protections provided to married couples. The court accepted the justifications advanced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for the state law barring marriage by same-sex couples. "Pointing out that stable relationships between parents are important for children, that straight couples can conceive children by 'accident,' and that gay couples can only have children with advance planning, Bloomberg and Spitzer argued that straight couples need the stability of marriage, but gay couples do not." The ruling was denounced by the ACLU, criticized by Howard Dean as based on "outdated and bigoted notions about families," and applauded by the Marriage Law Foundation pleased by the "superb and straightforward legal analysis." Background from NPR.
posted by three blind mice at 1:20 AM PST - 104 comments

Claude Théberge is a Canadian artist. Watch out for the umbrellas and hats. [MI]
posted by nervousfritz at 11:16 PM PST - 9 comments

The Museum of Fantastic Specimens is an online (virtual) museum of taxidermy specimens of imaginary creatures, all created by hand by Japanese artist Hajime Emoto. The museum itself can be difficult to navigate, as all the links are in Japanese, so the link in this post goes to an unrelated overview page in English.
posted by jonson at 9:18 PM PST - 12 comments

Today Jefferson County Sheriff's office released over 900 pages of documents [32MB pdf] relating to what happened at Columbine High School in 1999.
posted by BeerFilter at 8:15 PM PST - 117 comments

"White people call them Unidentified Flying Objects." This blog covers the incorporation of contemporary UFO myths into the Nation of Islam's peculiar pigmentational eschatology. It includes a link to a fire-and-brimstone speech by Reverend Farrakhan himself on this topic. (Due to subject matter and racial themes, these might not be the best links for work.)
posted by jason's_planet at 6:46 PM PST - 11 comments

For his 60th birthday, Nintendo of America sends President Bush a present: a DS Lite and a copy of the smash-hit game Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes A Day along with a great covering letter. An astute piece of marketing? An honest gift? Or just a nice bit of guerrilla humour?
posted by Hogshead at 5:36 PM PST - 22 comments

Screamin Jay Hawkins got around. Over the course of five decades, he put out dozens of albums, which were fairly hit or miss. Though he would never top his 1956 hit "I Put A Spell On You", which would years later land him a roll in the Jim Jarmusch film "Strangers in Paradise", he was well known for his live act where he would jump out of a coffin with a variety of skulls he named Henry. I got bored and looked him up on the youtube today, and lo and behold, instant fun. Bonus: here's a video of Diamanda Galas performing his oft-covered hit, it's better than the limp Marilyn Manson version, but I kinda wish she'd done "Constipation Blues" instead.
posted by elr at 5:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Goals are become scarce in the final 16 knockout phase of the World Cup. A discussion has been going on over at the Guardian's World Cup blogs. In the knockout phase the number of goals has declined from 42 in 1986 to about 25 in 2006. There hasn't been a World Cup Final since 1986 where both teams scored. There have been a mere 3 games in the knockout phase from 14 where both teams have scored. For the first time ever a team, Switzerland, has been eliminated without conceding a single goal. Does something need to be done? Do bigger goals, no goalkeeper, fewer players or changed rules need to be considered?
posted by sien at 4:31 PM PST - 124 comments

How to Spot a Jap ... scan of a 1942 US military educational comic strip, illustrated by Milton Canniff.
posted by crunchland at 4:29 PM PST - 61 comments

Birds As Art: Photographer Arthur Morris shares his dazzling images of (mostly) feathered creatures in his (up to 196 so far) email bulletins. It's quite worth wading through the archive.
posted by of strange foe at 4:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Boston's population woes may have been partially solved.
posted by RTQP at 3:19 PM PST - 29 comments

Power vs. knowledge. [via 3qd]
posted by panoptican at 3:17 PM PST - 23 comments

Harlem's in the house. More specifically, 5-10 year old rappers from Harlem are in the house. Unbridled innocence, spacey '80s electro-scifi production and candy as a metaphor for candy. Brought to you by the fine folks at WFMU.
posted by arto at 2:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Live in Thames Town, and enjoy the distinctly English atmosphere of this unique place! (Thames Town is in Shanghai.)
posted by jack_mo at 12:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Two weeks ago, the Small Business Administration proudly announced that they surpassed the legally required 23% of Federal contracts to small businesses. "This is excellent news for small businesses doing business with the federal government,” said Administrator Barreto. “For the third year in a row, the federal government has met or exceeded its small business contracting goal. The President and his administration are committed to helping small businesses get their fair share of government contracts.” [pdf] They however failed to mention that they continue to classify Boeing (member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average), GTSI ($900M in revenue last year), and other "small" businesses in that category.
posted by pwb503 at 12:48 PM PST - 18 comments

Ralph McQuarrie is a fabulous conceptual artist best known for his work on the Star Wars films. His new webpage showcases his art from the past 25+ years. He now has Parkinson's and cannot draw anymore, but it is an amazing site.
posted by bove at 12:09 PM PST - 21 comments

"Lawsonomy is the knowledge of Life and everything pertaining thereto." The collected works of Alfred Lawson - professional baseball player, aviation pioneer, economist, scientist, theologist, and philosopher - are available to all. [more inside]
posted by UKnowForKids at 11:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Richard Simmons visits "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (youtube) Drew Carey falls out of his chair; audience members literally roll in the aisle; Wayne Brady regresses into infancy. It's that sort of funny.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 10:49 AM PST - 100 comments

Whale shot in front of tourists. What would you do if you were a tourist, eco or not, and you saw a whale being harvested right in front of you?
posted by pezdacanuck at 10:43 AM PST - 96 comments

Two goals worth a million words. In Arabic, English, Chinese, Portuguese and yes, German. Italy's 2 goals against Germany, from 8 different commentators, one of them being Diego Maradona. Heavy YouTube usage unfortunately, although the post links to the leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera.
posted by keepoutofreach at 10:24 AM PST - 26 comments

Microsoft has announced sponsored plug-in for OpenDocument after months of FUD. OpenDocument beat Microsoft's format to ISO Standardization and has been considered by the governments of Belgium and the State of Massachusetts. The existence of a pug-in should ease concerns that adoption of ODF shuts out workers with disabilities. The plug-in is available on sourceforge. (Requires .NET 2.0 and Word 2007 Beta)
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:09 AM PST - 22 comments

The Secret is the brainchild of Australian TV producer Rhonda Byrne. There's a bulletin board where those in on The Secret can discuss their vibrational progress. What happens when you carry the ideas of positive thinking and the power of intentions too far? Sometimes the results are heartbreaking, other times damned creepy. You may need all three gratitude rocks to soothe your soul if you think about this stuff too much.
posted by fleetmouse at 8:57 AM PST - 50 comments

"It's filthy. It's toxic. But it's water. And as we know in California, people are fighting over it." It's North America’s most polluted river, made up of 70% waste material and raw sewage. The New River, which starts in Mexicali, Mexico, flows past homes in the California border town of Calexico and winds up in the Salton Sea. The river contains a nightmare stew of about 100 biological contaminants, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and pesticides including: DDT, PCB, selenium, uranium, arsenic and mercury. The scary part? It's enough water for about 300,000 homes. Filthy or not, that’s real water. So L.A.’s Metropolitan Water District has filed a claim on New River water.
posted by thisisdrew at 8:29 AM PST - 38 comments

the new urban jungle . . . is a growing movement led by cities like San Francisco, New York, and Leiden to restore active and vibrant natural systems in urban areas. Far from the eden-like depictions of nature of yesteryear, i.e. the garden of earthly delights (nonetheless, still attracting some dynamic new christian converts), the movement has morphed into today's backyard and grassroots environmental movement which is more and more a picture of hybridity, compromise, mixed-use, and ultimately, taking nature out of the walled islands of zoos, aquaria, national parks and other thick-walled institutions and offering a different kind of everyday "unmediated" community experience with the new urban wilderness. VIDEO LINK
posted by huckhound at 7:51 AM PST - 1 comment

"The best selling stoves and refrigerators at Jowers Appliances these days aren't sleek models with computerized controls. What folks can't get enough of are the stoves and refrigerators that the store would have sold when it opened more than 50 years ago." Welcome to the world of vintage appliances! Stove/range porn (SFW): O'Keefe & Merritt, Wedgewood, Western Holly. How about doing your own old stove restoration? Need some guidance? Want to see what your vintage stove might be worth? It might surprise you!
posted by spock at 6:10 AM PST - 56 comments

Unless you read Danish, there have been few primary texts by Søren Kierkegaard on the internet. I've always blamed the gentle tyranny of the Hong family, who control the English translations. But this site has begun supplying full texts: Fear and Trembling, The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety, even the mammoth Philosophical Fragments!
posted by anotherpanacea at 5:45 AM PST - 27 comments

Sound Team didn't think much of the review that Pitchfork gave them and replied via YouTube. [via] (which also reports on the winner of the Moo & Oink contest).
posted by tellurian at 7:57 PM PST - 89 comments

I like to write in a plain-text editor, and I've finally found a way to track edits! I've just started col[][l]aborating on a k[k]new book. This si[i][y]stem will come in handy. [][][thanks, Internet!]
posted by grumblebee at 7:05 PM PST - 71 comments

Andrey Kuznetsov makes delightful lubki (sing. lubok), a form of Russian folk art, out of some well-known modern movies. Some information (in English) about the medium and its origins with many examples can be seen here (warning: Java). Shamelessly ganked from AskMe. Thanks jonson!
posted by Gator at 7:02 PM PST - 15 comments

David Webber makes awesome sound art things from christmas trees, pot plants, household stuff, food blenders and hard drives. His good friend Ray Wilson builds awesome modular synths. Ray will also show you how to make your own Weird Sound Generator.
posted by nylon at 6:29 PM PST - 8 comments

When it comes to collaborative art projects, the internet is kind of a mixed bag. Now with TheBroth, that bag gets a whole lot mixier.
posted by absalom at 5:27 PM PST - 11 comments

Revenge of the Third World Virgins! If you were worth $600 million by age 40, how would you spend the rest of your life? For Larry Hillblom, the "H" in DHL, the plan wassimple: move to the tax haven of Saipan, fly restored WWII seaplanes, restore colonial-era resorts in Vietnam, and -- of course -- bed as many teenaged virgins as possible. When the apparently unmarried and childless Hillblom died in 1995, after the seaplane he was piloting crashed into the South Pacific, his will left nearly his entire fortune to establish a foundation for medical research at UCLA (in gratitude for their treatment of him after an earlier plane crash). But claims on his estate were almost immediately made by several of Larry's virgins, who claimed to have borne children by him. Thus began a bitter court battle for Larry's millions, which resulted in four previously penniless children winning $90 million each after DNA testing proved his paternity. The money may be a mixed blessing for his kids, but considering that Larry almost certainly knew that he could have disinherited them with a few words, he probably wanted it that way.
posted by banishedimmortal at 5:04 PM PST - 31 comments

Pirates! in an Adventure With The Internet Author Gideon Defoe offers the missing link between ham and piracy in his hilarious Pirates! novels. Feel free to thrill at the marvelously dry NPR interview
posted by drezdn at 3:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Pay to shock a man, or to prevent him from being shocked. MeFi's own bleucube wears an electric dog collar for a study in...well...shocking a man, or preventing him from being shocked. Shall good or evil prevail - charity or malice? It's all on the line. And by "on the line," I mean "available for $1-4 a pop." 10% of the proceeds go to charity. The other 90% go to being awesome. Via Projects.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:24 PM PST - 50 comments

free downtempo music Try this or this if you like Thievery Corporation or maybe Brian Eno. Or Boards of Canada.
posted by lw at 3:19 PM PST - 26 comments

"NetVocates then recruits activists and consumers who share the client’s views in order to reinforce those key messages on targeted blogs – and rebut misinformation when appropriate." The offending company, and some other blogs making noise about it.^{via sonofsamiam}
posted by signal at 2:58 PM PST - 14 comments

Attention Darren Sherman: When you go on a date with someone, and they offer to split the tab, once you've declined their offer it can be perceived as bad ettiquette to threaten to get a court summons for the money if they refuse a second date with you. Voicemails & emails of a JDate gone awry.
posted by jonson at 2:57 PM PST - 73 comments

Three people have been arrested for stealing secret information about Coke's drink recipe. Apparently the recipe isn't just restricted to two guys who never fly the same plane.
posted by exogenous at 1:58 PM PST - 54 comments

Much like synchronized swimming or a standard drill team, a book cart drill team requires coordination and panache and is complicated enough to warrant its own manual. This year at the 2006 American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans, the winners of the “golden cart” in the Second Annual Book Cart Drill Team Competition were the city’s very own Tulane University “Booked on New Orleans”, (YouTube video, no sound) who had only started rehearsing 6 weeks prior and had practiced in the formerly flooded basement of the library.
posted by nekton at 1:45 PM PST - 21 comments

Amanda Congdon leaves Rocketboom. Precise reasons seem to vary.
posted by crunchland at 1:09 PM PST - 85 comments

Kobayashi wins the world speed hot dog eating contest again, but finally there is a real challenger. American Joey Chestnut (W) , a 22 civil engineering student from San Jose managed 52 to Kobayashi's (W) 53.75 dogs.
posted by sien at 1:00 PM PST - 35 comments

CIA Gives Up on Bin Laden Search says a post full of links on Sploid, it was revealed yesterday (when no one was paying attention) that the CIA disbanded its Bin Laden unit one year ago. The post also links to news that the FBI has "no hard evidence" connecting Bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks.
posted by cell divide at 11:25 AM PST - 54 comments

"We need to go to Tennessee to pick up some fireworks, and someone owes me money in Kentucky." Tom Waits goes on tour for the first time in years.
posted by timory at 9:38 AM PST - 27 comments

Crowdsourcing is the hottest way for companies to get a lot of content for not a lot of effort. From spaceships to t-shirts to iconic characters to lunar landers (via) to the latest entry, open source with money.
posted by Isabeau Sahen at 8:38 AM PST - 29 comments

5000, no, 20,000 --- wait 30,000... oh, what the hell.. 45,000 Bottle Rockets. (sorry, a day late) (youtube links)
posted by empath at 7:38 AM PST - 33 comments

"This statue proves that Jesus Christ is Lord over America, he is Lord over Tennessee, he is Lord over Memphis."
posted by naomi at 7:32 AM PST - 145 comments

Ken Lay is dead.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:23 AM PST - 189 comments

[T]his pattern, grade for the sake of a grade, work for the sake of work, can be found everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, the spirit of intellectual thought is lost. I speak today not to rant, complain or cause trouble, and certainly not to draw attention to myself. I have accomplished nothing and I am nothing. I know that. Rather, I was moved by the countless hours wasted in those halls. Today, you should focus on your child or loved one. This is meant to be a day of celebration, and if I’ve taken away from that, I’m sorry. But I know how highly this community values learning, and I urge you all to re-evaluate what it means to be educated.

- from a graduation speech by the valedictorian of Mainland Regional High School, Kareem Elnahal, critiquing his school's education process.

The principal's reaction? “My hope was they did not hear or understand what he was saying. ... He was belittling the diplomas of every one of those kids.”.
posted by divabat at 7:15 AM PST - 156 comments

Tourfilter: Track your favorite bands. See who else is tracking them. Never miss another show! [Boston, Chicago, New York for now - other cities on the way.]
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 7:07 AM PST - 15 comments

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson mezzo-soprano, voice, human, wife, died on Monday at the age of 52. (more inside)
posted by bobot at 5:07 AM PST - 9 comments

The new Sony PSP adverts are stupid and offensive. Welcome to yet another chapter in sony's self inflicted annus horribilis. (More: 1, 2)
posted by seanyboy at 4:51 AM PST - 105 comments

The Outlandish Art of Mahlon Blaine. The highlight for me was Nova Venus.
A short biography of Blaine.
Another smaller gallery, which includes illustrations he did for translations of the works of Hanns Heinz Ewers.
[Many/most images on all pages NSFW]
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 4:25 AM PST - 7 comments

Myspace for education. Nietzsche is a cat person. Isaac Newton scores the hotties. School assignment, or for fun? Social software is being used in many different ways in the classrom, but some schools have ruled that the safety conerns outweigh the benefits. The Deleting Online Predators Act 2006 wants to restrict access to social networking sites by law.
posted by goo at 3:54 AM PST - 12 comments

God's Next Army a british documentation about the Patrick Henry College. It's only goal: to train more soldiers for God and the evangelical agenda in US politics. Shouldn't there be a separation of education and ruthless fundamentalist indoctrination? (FPP)
posted by homodigitalis at 3:45 AM PST - 32 comments

"Our society really doesn't deal well with the whole dying process." No, it's not a hoax. Through the magic of soft teddy bears, pillows, and plush dogs or cats, you can hold your deceased loved one, thanks to Huggable Urns. It's founder, Alexandra, Lachini was inspired to form the enterprise after her recently departed father spoke to her. "All I wanted to do was hold him again, but the urn was hard and impersonal." For less than $100, her solution can be yours too.
posted by motherfather at 2:50 AM PST - 34 comments

The biggest concern in striking North Korean nuclear facilities is the threat of North Korean counter-attacks. When considering the text of the "strong statement" promised by President Bush in response to yesterday's missile tests by North Korea, military planners face a grim tactical situation. Seoul, the South Korean capitol and home to 10 million, lies within easy range of North Korean long-range artillery. Five hundred self-propelled 170mm Koksan guns and thousands of mobile multiple-launch rocket systems could hit Seoul with artillery shells and chemical weapons, causing panic and massive civilian casualties. North Korea has between five and six hundred Scud missiles that could strike targets throughout South Korea with conventional warheads or chemical weapons. North Korea could hit Japan with its 100 No-dong missiles. Seventy percent of North Korean army ground units (approximately 700,000 troops, over 8,000 artillery systems, and 2,000 tanks) is postured within 90 miles of the demilitarized zone positioned to undertake offensive ground operations. These units could fire up to 500,000 artillery rounds per hour against South Korean defenses for several hours. So forget about forcibly dismantling North Korea's nuclear-production facilities.
posted by three blind mice at 2:30 AM PST - 46 comments

UK stroke victim wakes up with a Jamaican accent Linda Walker has apparently developed foreign accents after waking up following a stroke.
posted by ArunK at 11:31 PM PST - 35 comments

President Ulysses S. Grant: Civil Rights Hero. A reappraisal of a president considered ineffective and mired in scandal.
posted by pandaharma at 10:09 PM PST - 17 comments

Canadian PM Stephen Harper expressed his "disgust" over the Canada Day incident. Royal Canadian Legion spokesperson Bill Butt described it as “abhorrent” and “vile,” and demanded increased security. Ottawa police described the case as a priority. If only we had some sort of fence, or corral, to prevent this sort of disaster. The virtual manhunt has begun, but we need your help: have you seen this man?
posted by mek at 8:56 PM PST - 56 comments

Santa Cruz's 2nd Annual Old Time American Flag Burn at Seabright Beach. Every holiday has its dissenters, or people who want to make a point. Some call it a celebration. Others, I'm sure, would call it something else.
posted by pyramid termite at 7:20 PM PST - 28 comments

Man comes out of coma (or minimally conscious state) after 20 years. Apparently his brain grew entirely new structures not found in normal brains.
posted by Paris Hilton at 6:29 PM PST - 28 comments

Don't try this at home.
Pyro Boy wraps himself in pyrotechnics and ignites them so you don't have to. Happy 4th.
posted by mecran01 at 6:27 PM PST - 10 comments

"When the stars are right, R'lyeh will rise from the sea, never to sink again, and Cthulhu will awaken and revel across the world... ravening for delight." This must undoubtedly be Russian President Vladimir Putin's answer when (or indeed, if) he is asked, among other things, what he thinks about the re-awakening of Cthulhu. On July 6, Mr Putin will respond via the Internet in his first-ever webcast to some of the questions posted through the BBC Online and Yandex sites, where queries can also be voted on, as part of a Kremlin media charm offensive ahead of the G8 Summit in Saint Petersburg on July 15-17. Some of the most popular questions being put by Russian web surfers to their President so far include; when he lost his virginity, when he will legalise marijuana and, as previously mentioned, when a giant fictional octopus sleeping at the bottom of the ocean will awaken. Oh, and why he kissed a young boy on the stomach. Not that any of that matters in comparison to the awesome power of Cthulu!
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:58 PM PST - 10 comments

" 'How is it,' asked Samuel Johnson, 'that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' The British author was only one of many Europeans who thought it strange that a nation run by slave owners should be so noisily demanding its own freedom."
posted by j-urb at 5:51 PM PST - 32 comments

Walrus situps. Some July 4th entertainment (with bonus rocky music!).
posted by null terminated at 5:45 PM PST - 14 comments

Rocket's red glare! STS-121 lifts of successfully on the Forth of July, on a mission to deliver equipment, supplies and an additional crewmember to the International Space Station. Said Wayne Hail, Shuttle Program Manager, "Great nations dare great things and take risks along the way, and I can think of no better way to explore the space frontier than the way we set out today." Photos - Videos
posted by BeerFilter at 3:35 PM PST - 36 comments

"The Naked Truth" This Google Video is a documentary (pack a lunch, it's nearly two hours long) that systematically eviscerates the purported origins of the Old and New Testaments. Turns out, it's really all about astrology. Who knew? The evidence is tremendously compelling, well documented, and sure to raise the ire of people whose minds are made up on the subject.
posted by wordswinker at 3:26 PM PST - 45 comments

Anti-Americanism So, on this July 4th, how do the British feel about America? A yougov poll from 2 July found that most Brits have great doubts about the USA. The Daily Telegraph, a conservative newspaper reported the poll and in its leader told them off saying "Hate America, Hate Mankind." Forbes thinks it is all envy while this German thinks it's lonely at the top...
posted by A189Nut at 3:14 PM PST - 73 comments

The astronomical clock in the French city of Besancon is quite a mechanical marvel. Built in 1860, its inner workings are comprised of more than 30,000 interoperating pieces, driving 37 separate clockface gauges. It is one of the finest intersections between art & mechanics that I've ever come across.
posted by jonson at 2:26 PM PST - 12 comments

Newsfilter: North Korea tests at least two smaller missiles, and one long-range which was unsuccessful, failing in flight. Bush says last week: "Should they launch a missile, that will cause various -- we would apply various pressures. ... I believe it is best that I do not discuss what specific pressures we were talking about."
posted by nitsuj at 2:16 PM PST - 65 comments

The Works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi: high-resolution scans of all of Piranesi’s etchings. Also, the plates from Les Ruines De Pompei by François Mazois (1812-38), and, the complete 9-volume Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (The Antiquities discovered in Herculaneum) published in Naples from 1755-62. Also, at the same site (UT-PICURE: the Center for Research on Pictorial Cultural Resources, at The University of Tokyo), images from the Stibbert Collection of Japanese costume.
posted by misteraitch at 1:56 PM PST - 11 comments

steely dan fans - the making of peg
posted by vronsky at 1:33 PM PST - 31 comments

In early 1777 Gen Burgoyne assumes command of the northern Redcoat column marching from Canada. On June 20, 1777 he issues his infamous Proclamation of how & why he's coming down to kick Rebel behind. History records one unknown patriot's snark-filled reply that July. By October, Burgoyne's flying column is bottled up and defeated at Saratoga. Here ends the history lesson. Have a great 4th, peeps.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:55 AM PST - 17 comments

From Muddy York to the Toronto of today.... My search to discover the exact age of the house I recently bought led me to the fabulous Toronto Archives. Even if you don't have the good fortune to live in Toronto and so have the ability to visit the Archives to take a free tour and check out their massive holdings, they have a whack of stuff on line. Of their million photographs dating back to 1856, over 21,000 are online. Check out some of their virtual exhibits. I couldn't begin to give you an overview of the site or even the best of its many gems, but check out Chinatown's VE day victory parade, Bay and Wellington as it was after a huge fire in 1904, old advertisements, letters and postcards (including some from the disenchanted), snapshots of a, er, less politically sensitive time (thanks, Capn!), and — inevitably! — hockey artifacts. A friend of mine makes a hobby of Toronto's history, and after this search of mine, I better understand her interest. It’s fascinating to see what lies beneath the layers of time on a surface so familiar and loved.
posted by orange swan at 7:57 AM PST - 23 comments

Look, just take some time and read the Declaration of Independence and The Bill of Rights at the very least. Got sometime? Try the Articles of Confederation. Or the Constitution. Still with us? Then go hog wild.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:27 AM PST - 80 comments

Imagining the Tenth Dimension (Flash). 10th dimensional physics and string theory don't get any easier than this.
posted by Jimbob at 5:38 AM PST - 75 comments

Its a rare 1962 Peanuts album recording from Charles Schulz. The first Peanuts comic strip was originally printed on October 2nd, 1950 and in 1962 Charles Shulz wrote an entire album featuring the gang released by Columbia Records. In 1965, he moved into TV with the brilliant Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Nearly 50 TV specials have been made since, but lately with the help of media sharing portals like Youtube, The Gang has gotten several NSFW remakes (youtube filter)
posted by Funmonkey1 at 5:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Iran is the next target of the U.S. because of the establishment of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which would trade in Euros, not dollars.
No, it isn't.
Yeah, it probably is.
No, seriously, it's not. (Yeah, really though, it is)
Ok, maybe it is, maybe it isn't either way the odds were running 50/50 we'd bomb Iran by the end of the year. (previously - here)
posted by Smedleyman at 12:50 AM PST - 43 comments

Crazy Eddie. His prices were in-sane! After a failed attempt to revive the home electronic brand known for wacky commercials, the name is being auctioned off on eBay.
posted by Yakuman at 12:08 AM PST - 27 comments