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500 Years of Science, Reason & Critical Thinking via the medium of gross over simplification, dodgy demarcation, glaring omission and a very tiny font.
posted by IvoShandor at 11:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Time to get laid. Yep, we've seen Kate Micucci before, but, the addition of William H. Macy makes this all worthwhile. (DLYT which I've promised not to ever do again but, what the hell!) How did I miss this movie?
posted by HuronBob at 9:54 PM PST - 28 comments

Tin Soldiers. Lead Soldiers. Plastic Army Men. But if you like your toy soldiers not so harmful to the environment and a little more do-it-yourself, you can get paper soldiers. Here are some Print-fantry soldiers you can download for free. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 8:40 PM PST - 19 comments

Much-mourned shelter magazine Domino has a new online home for its archives. Stories will be added on an ongoing basis.
posted by Anonymous at 8:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Fidel Castro takes blame for persecution of Cuban gays. 'Fidel Castro has said that he is ultimately responsible for the persecution suffered by homosexuals in Cuba after the revolution of 1959.' 'The former Cuban president told La Jornada the persecution of gays, who were rounded up at the time as supposed counterrevolutionaries and placed in forced labor camps, was a "great injustice" that arose from the island's history of discrimination against homosexuals. He said he was not prejudiced against gays, but "if anyone is responsible (for the persecution), it's me." "I'm not going to place the blame on others," he said.' But 'there is a Castro who is fighting to introduce radical changes in Cuba.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 5:25 PM PST - 112 comments

São Paulo, Brazil. With a population upwards of 11 million people and a population density of more than 7,000 people per square kilometre, it is a pretty crowded place. But on July 2, 2010 during the second half of the Brazil-Netherlands World Cup quarterfinal, the streets were completely deserted.
posted by salishsea at 4:17 PM PST - 33 comments

A montage of movie dance scenes set perfectly to "Footloose"
posted by desjardins at 1:26 PM PST - 103 comments

Lots of people remember the Cray-1A. And how could you not, it was a supercomputer with built-in seats. But Chris Fenton has done more than just reminisce, he he built his own 1/10 scale Cray-1A. It's not just a model, it actually runs Cray software. The only problem is there doesn't seem to be much Cray software on the net, so if you have some let him know.
posted by tommasz at 12:52 PM PST - 66 comments

Alan Jacobs laments the Hobbesian reality that is modern Internet discourse in his article "The Online State of Nature" at Big Questions Online.

A now-famous cartoon on the xkcd “webcomics” site shows a stick figure typing away at his computer keyboard as a voice from outside the frame says, “Are you coming to bed?” The figure replies: “I can’t. This is important. . . . Someone is wrong on the Internet.” I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.

posted by ob1quixote at 12:15 PM PST - 81 comments

Laurent Fignon, French cycling champion, two-time winner (1983-84) of the Tour de France, has died of cancer at 50. [more inside]
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:07 AM PST - 34 comments

Vintage calculator museums [more inside]
posted by get off of my cloud at 10:56 AM PST - 26 comments

The CERN Choir sings about the Higgs Boson in the Particle Physics Song (slyt).
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:29 AM PST - 11 comments

According to a new study [abstract] by doctors at Boston University and the VA Medical Center, repetitive head trauma suffered by athletes is linked to the motor neuron disease CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), which may have been previously misdiagnosed as ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's Disease. This result may explain the extreme prevalence of ALS-like symptoms among former athletes and people in the military and suggests that Gehrig himself may not have suffered from Lou Gehrig's Disease. [more inside]
posted by albrecht at 9:54 AM PST - 36 comments

A New Look for the Oval Office Obama makes his mark on the First Office. It is a different look than the office of George W. Bush and the presidents before him. And yes, the rug is gone (previously).
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:13 AM PST - 165 comments

Shinya Kimura likes motorcycles. (A short film about a custom motorcycle engineer.)
posted by dobbs at 9:07 AM PST - 11 comments

The Creator's Project unleashes The Eclectic Method’s (previously) latest video, Super Mario Mashup onto the world with a bonus genre-exploding montage and Q&A trying to put it all together.
posted by The Whelk at 9:00 AM PST - 8 comments

Rhetorical analysis of Rush's "Free Will"
posted by jtron at 8:49 AM PST - 85 comments

"Why TB you ask. The house I grew up in, from 1961 to the 1974, faced the grounds of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium. There was a fence around the property and it was patrolled by security guards daily. That was all I knew." Via.
posted by bibliogrrl at 8:08 AM PST - 9 comments

"Freedom" by Jonthan Franzen: is one of the most hyped, most anticipated literary novel in years and it goes on sale today. Jonathan Franzen's new book Freedom is being hailed as "The Tolstoy of the Internet Era" [slate]. "The novel of the century" [guardian]. "a novel that turns out to be both a compelling biography of a dysfunctional family and an indelible portrait of our times." [nytimes] "Jonathan Franzen: one of America's greatest living novelists?" [telegraph] Jonathan Franzen is best known for his award winning book The Corrections [nytimes]. Maybe you're wondering why his name is familiar, [Oprah Book Club sticker incident].
posted by Fizz at 7:56 AM PST - 157 comments

Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322, Oakview, CA 93022. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.
posted by 445supermag at 6:42 AM PST - 83 comments

Swarmation is a collaborative game (a bit like Everybody Edits) in which each player controls a pixel. The goal is to create formations with other players before the time expires.
posted by sveskemus at 4:36 AM PST - 29 comments

Britain's longest running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine came to an end on Sunday, gathering 5.4 million viewers rather than the 20 million of its heyday. Filmed in Holmfirth, Yorkshire it followed the exploits of playful, cantankerous retirees for 37 years. Though the last bathtub has rolled, Britons can watch the final episode on Iplayer. Location map, some quotes, scriptwriter Roy Clarke interview. We won't see its like again, but you can hear Ronnie Hazlehurst's theme tune set to words for Compo's funeral.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:34 AM PST - 22 comments

Heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:34 AM PST - 137 comments

So, I was looking for a version of "The first time ever I saw your face" to send to a friend. [more inside]
posted by willF at 10:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Electric airplanes are not a new idea, but there have been recent developments in building affordable production electric sport aircraft. They are super quiet, low vibration, highly reliable, simple and gas-free. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 8:54 PM PST - 52 comments

All-girl a cappella group tackles "Bitches Ain't Shit". [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 8:45 PM PST - 146 comments

So it's only the start of the week and already you feel sucky and stressed? Maybe you should lay back, take a sippy, or light a spliffy, and get lost in some French down-tempo chill-hop from Wax Tailor, then some slicky Tricky, and let's finish off with Bonobo Ketto. That's right, I said Bonobo Ketto. So very much more from goldNskilL, Like Chopin and Stand By Me.
posted by puny human at 8:44 PM PST - 17 comments

Notes From The Stall
posted by sciurus at 7:42 PM PST - 44 comments

Interpol have a new, self-titled album coming out September 7 (the 13th in the UK). Hey, guess what! It sounds like Interpol, so this is the kind of thing you will like, if you like this kind of thing. "Lights" (and here in HD) already has me imagining doing a thousand-yard stare out of a bus window on a cold, late November night. The second video, "Barricade" is here (and here in HD).
posted by jackrational at 6:03 PM PST - 43 comments

Have you taedium vitae? Watch then, as: Dog dances merengue
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:28 PM PST - 49 comments

The Taxi Gourmet Every week, I get in a taxi, ask the driver to take me to his or her favorite restaurant. [more inside]
posted by jontyjago at 5:05 PM PST - 98 comments

Life of a woman. Bare, simple line drawings. Many open to interpretation.
posted by twirlypen at 4:11 PM PST - 102 comments

Once you have met the entrants, you can watch the race: Japan World Cup horse racing. [more inside]
posted by maxwelton at 3:36 PM PST - 10 comments

Pitchfork counts down the top 200 tracks of the 1990's this week. Strippertweets invites you to play pretend Pitchfork editor and predict the songs and order of the top 10 in their Pitchfork Pool. [more inside]
posted by incessant at 3:16 PM PST - 157 comments

Oahspe is what might have resulted if L. Ron Hubbard took so much ketamine he time-phased into 1882. The product of an automatic-writing ex-prospector dentist, the 900-page tome includes submerged continents, bizarre dictionaries, and plenty of space travel. [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 3:08 PM PST - 19 comments

National Smile Week is celebrated in the second week of August, but it's not too late to start smiling. Perhaps you can get some inspiration from this gallery. My favorite, so far I think, is number 21 (NSFWish).
posted by lauratheexplorer at 2:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Want a new secret lair, but don't like the Adirondacks? On a bit of a budget? How about a Kirkbride design State Hospital in Fergus Falls, Minnesota? It comes with it's own Flickr set, for your informed shopping
posted by pjern at 2:24 PM PST - 30 comments

Conde Nast to revive Gourmet- sort of. A gesture of contrition? An attempt to appease unrefunded subscribers? Yet another attempt to cash in on the Gourmet brand? Only time will tell, but Conde Nast will apparently take another stab at repackaging the magazine- by publishing a few "Special Editions" of the much mourned Gourmet Magazine.
posted by Lisitasan at 2:21 PM PST - 12 comments

Pennsylvania Outlaws Shackling of Prisoners Giving Birth. Amnesty International has tried to raise awareness of this issue in the past. [more inside]
posted by whimsicalnymph at 1:52 PM PST - 41 comments

Fabulous Secret Powers
posted by Avenger50 at 1:10 PM PST - 12 comments

While the rest of Europe was expressing itself mainly in the medium of poetry¹, focused largely on romantic exploits of the aristocracy, the people of early Iceland were trying something different. At the Icelandic Saga Database you can read of the explots of the late Viking era, in Icelandic or English translation. If you seek a more direct experience, you can view scans of original collections at Saganet. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 12:59 PM PST - 28 comments

The third edition of the OED will not come out in print -- or will it?
posted by angrycat at 12:58 PM PST - 74 comments

David Addington is coming out of the shadows and joining the Heritage Foundation as vice president of domestic and economic policy studies which is financed by the normal culprits. Addington was the legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror and normally lurks in the shadows.
posted by adamvasco at 12:42 PM PST - 15 comments

You've heard of the IPCC, but have you heard of the MEA? The term "global warming" has been with us for 35 years. The idea that CO2 would cause the planet to heat up has been with us significantly longer, discovered in the early 20th century by the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius (previously). However, the concept of global warming is not without its problems (and this has nothing to do with solar flares). [more inside]
posted by outlandishmarxist at 12:01 PM PST - 25 comments

RussianFilter: Historical Chronicles with Nikolai Svanidze is an ongoing Russian television documentary series which, starting with 1901, picks out one person per year, every year, of the 100 years of the 20th century in Russia. It's entirely in Russian, of course, but for them as speaks it, it's one fascinating perspective on Russian history, with excellent narration, copious detail, and fascinating interconnections of events, people and places. All of the episodes that are available through Google Video and various other sources, and [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 11:38 AM PST - 8 comments

Out of the blue, Sufjan Stevens, most famous for his epic indie symphony Illinois (which can be streamed from this link), released an "EP" called All Delighted People. It's 60 minutes long, you can play it all online for free, and the title track is a deliriously gorgeous 12-minute epic. He's also announced an upcoming new album, scheduled for release this October, called The Age of Adz. You can stream its first single, I Walked. [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:07 AM PST - 51 comments

Haiku Quest is an indie rpg featuring voiceover from Christopher Walken. Yes, really. (windows only) [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 10:51 AM PST - 30 comments

Our Universe consists of between thirty to fifth billion trillion stars, arranged in eighty to one-hundred-forty billion galaxies. Our nearest neighboring star is called Proxima Centauri and it's four light years away. We need some bread, but it's really hot outside and I can't be bothered to walk around the corner. Try to make sense of the things that you think.
posted by Lord_Pall at 10:37 AM PST - 47 comments

For Sale: historic Adirondack camp with 48 buildings on 92 acres of parkland. Camp Gabriels is truly a multi-purpose property and has been used as a tuberculosis sanitarium, college campus and most recently as a minimum security prison. Now it can be yours.
posted by cedar at 9:40 AM PST - 28 comments

The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive film featuring a new Arcade Fire song. (HTML5 & Processor intensive)
posted by gwint at 8:17 AM PST - 76 comments

Iowa State University students have been campaigning on Facebook for Professor Tin-Shi Tam to play Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" on the carillon. On Friday, Gaga's desire for leather studded kisses in the sand rang out across campus.
posted by magstheaxe at 7:57 AM PST - 50 comments

"In Japan, animation is not seen as the exclusive realm of children's and family films, but is often used for adult, science fiction and action stories, where it allows a kind of freedom impossible in real life. Some Hollywood films strain so desperately against the constraints of the possible that you wish they'd just caved in and gone with animation." -- Roger Ebert on anime, with this excerpt being related to Tokyo Godfathers. Ebert has been a fan of anime for a while, especially the works of Hayao Miyazaki. Ebert has reviewed 6 of the 18 Studio Ghibli films released to date, and even interviewed Miyazaki with a bit of fanboy glee. More reviews and videos inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:46 AM PST - 92 comments

The Spatial History Project at Stanford University creates striking visualizations of historical data, including an 1850 yellow fever epidemic in Rio de Janeiro, and prostitution arrests in Philadelphia in the teens.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:25 AM PST - 7 comments

yep yep yep yep yep yep commmmmpewwwwtorrrr! butttonnsss. buttttttonssssss!
posted by Fizz at 7:04 AM PST - 55 comments

Säkkijärven polkka. YouTube.
posted by Anything at 10:50 PM PST - 40 comments

Lost Rod Serling Video Interview
posted by Artw at 10:15 PM PST - 20 comments

GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale [previously1] [previously2] shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray (played by Robert Lindsay), the Militant Labour leader of a city council in the North of England and Jim Nelson (played by Michael Palin), the headmaster of a school for disturbed children. The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council - in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts an accidental meeting with Hatton before the series, who indicates that he has caught wind of Bleasdale's intentions but does not mind as long as the actor playing him is "handsome". [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:16 PM PST - 22 comments

10 Rules for Radicals Video link. (Transcript in a variety of sources) Carl Malamud, public domain advocate extraordinaire, describes lessons learned from his years of bringing government documents into the true public domain. (via Boingboing)
posted by zabuni at 7:59 PM PST - 6 comments

Dave Pike: Jazz For The Jet Set
posted by puny human at 7:02 PM PST - 7 comments

The contraption was "created from a mishmash of lenses and computer parts and an old Super 8 movie camera." It was the size of a toaster, ran off "sixteen nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter" and took 23 seconds to record an image to cassette tape. But when Steve Sasson and his team of Kodak technicians presented the world's first digital camera to the public in 1975, they were asked: 'Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on a TV?' [more inside]
posted by zarq at 6:27 PM PST - 56 comments

Gallery: 30 Awesome College Labs
posted by andoatnp at 5:14 PM PST - 25 comments

In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, in 1997 Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth, and nearly halving the number of gun-owning households. Leigh and Neill (2010) find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, or about 200 lives per annum (with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates). This translates into an annual benefit of $500M, or $800 000 per weapon destroyed. However, Baker & McPhedran (2006) have previosuly concluded that there was no impact on homicides.
posted by wilful at 5:08 PM PST - 131 comments

Danny Gatton, 'the greatest unknown guitarist in the world' has been eulogised here previously, but that was before someone had digitised and uploaded his instructional video and put it on You Tube. Here it is: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
posted by mhjb at 4:52 PM PST - 13 comments

A Search Service that Can Peer into the Future. A Yahoo Research tool mines news archives for meaning—illuminating past, present, and even future events. Showing news stories on a timeline has been tried before. But Time Explorer, a prototype news search engine created as a venture of Yahoo's Research Lab and the Living Knowledge Project, generates timelines that will stretch into the future as well as the past. Here is what a search for MetaFilter produces. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 1:40 PM PST - 27 comments

"My First Period" is a spoken performance Staceyann Chin, the author of the memoir The Other Side of Paradise, at the 2009 Campus Progress Conference.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 1:19 PM PST - 24 comments

The 20-day Expedition Titanic will use remotely operated submersibles to complete an unprecedented archaeological analysis of the two- by three-mile (three- by five-kilometer) debris field, including Titanic's two halves. The ship's bow and stern separated before sinking and now lie a third of a mile (half a kilometer) apart. [more inside]
posted by gman at 12:19 PM PST - 17 comments

21st century enlightenment - "Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today, and the role that can be played by organisations such as the RSA." (via br; previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:00 PM PST - 8 comments

How panhandlers use free credit cards-"What would happen if, instead of spare change, you handed a person in need the means to shop for whatever they needed? What would they buy?"
posted by nevercalm at 11:54 AM PST - 75 comments

They Might be Giants geeks out about electric cars in a new song (slyt)
posted by Glibpaxman at 10:48 AM PST - 34 comments

Fidel Castro has a blog. via
posted by lazaruslong at 10:26 AM PST - 17 comments

Balkan sexual supersititions (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by swimming naked when the tide goes out at 9:48 AM PST - 64 comments

Mr Controversial (video, transcript): an in-depth report by Dateline (SBS One, Australia) on Geert Wilders, and the most comprehensive English-language profile of him I have seen to date.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:16 AM PST - 35 comments

"Good news -- this is the point in the graduation speech where I tell you a personal anecdote about perseverance and then quote a song." Lexington High School in suburban Boston is the alma mater of comic theorist Scott McCloud, evironmentalist Bill McKibben, a winner of Survivor, an SNL cast member, thinky writer Melanie Thernstrom, and MetaFilter favorite Amanda Palmer. But when it was time to choose a commencement speaker they wisely went with Eugene Mirman, LHS class of 1992. (SLLOLYT) (Eugene Mirman battles the pink robots, previously on MetaFilter.)
posted by escabeche at 8:57 AM PST - 24 comments

Westerners vs. the World: We are the WEIRD ones
posted by bardophile at 7:19 AM PST - 81 comments

Fortepan is a collection of 4973 found amateur photos sourced mainly in Budapest. Pick a year and browse - photos are organized in chronological order from 1900 to 1990, accessible via a slider. "Users are encouraged to use, copy, send to friends, clip or paste the photos, which are free for they are not our property." (via Szanalmas, sometimes nsfw)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:01 AM PST - 19 comments

Lviv Interactive, a project of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, is mapping the history, architecture, and human landscape of the City of Lions - including locations no longer there. [more inside]
posted by mdonley at 4:38 AM PST - 10 comments

John Kay’s Heyoka Magazine project January 2005 though June 2010 is now completed. All 34 volumes are online.
The Interviews section is a treasure trove from Shirin Neshat to Rick del Savio to David Michael Kennedy
Many reference Native American culture today: Tommy Lightening Bolt and Mala Spotted Eagle and William Under Baggage and Pete Catches
The range is great from Photos of the Apatani in Arunachal Pradesh to extreme bikram yoga and Leonard Cohen Everybody knows. The list goes on. Heyoka has morphed into non duality magazine
posted by adamvasco at 4:30 AM PST - 2 comments

The “Rich Second Generation” (富二代) refers to people who mostly were born after 1980s, Children of early China’s first generation of private entrepreneurs “Rich first Generation” after China’s “opening door policy”. Now they are wealthy because of the inheritance. They enjoy roses, wine tasting, marriage opportunities, studying abroad, 43 luxury vehicles, and legal privileges.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:12 AM PST - 16 comments

Smarties Australia paired 8 kids up with 8 artists to create art based on each Smarties colour. Here's orange video art, a song about moonwalking under the deep blue sea, the spoken word saga of a disco karaoke'ing duck, an upside-down red pop art world, The Pink Moon, photos of the purple Filecian dancers, a green tree sculpture, and the dance of insects burrowing through brown earth.
posted by divabat at 1:02 AM PST - 28 comments

Death of a Nation – East Timor. [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 11:10 PM PST - 12 comments

Those old Disney cartoons too slow-paced for you? BLAM! (Original.) Are you confounded by physical humor? BLAM! (Original.) BLAM! (Original.) Does a cartoon without wisecracks leave you unsatisfied? BLAM! (Original.) BLAM! (Original.) BLAM! (Original.)
posted by griphus at 7:32 PM PST - 99 comments

Designers'Couch is a new community of creatives whose goal is to create a vibrant community of passionate writers, artists and designers by providing them a space to showcase their work - encouraging them to network and share critiques. They also feature helpful articles to inspire, teach, and inform artists.
posted by fantodstic at 6:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Hipster Dinosaurs
posted by Artw at 4:51 PM PST - 78 comments

An Amazing 3D Light Show From Russia (watch in 480p)
posted by empath at 4:17 PM PST - 30 comments

Meet Arria, a new sculpture which is also the new figurehead of Cumbernauld, Scotland. Links to the construction phases here and here. Via
posted by lizbunny at 3:16 PM PST - 29 comments

From the Wikipedia article:

Founded by Eliot Wigginton in the 1960s, Foxfire has published Foxfire Magazine continuously since 1966, and the highly popular Foxfire books since 1972. Both the magazine and books are based on the stories and life of elders and students, featuring advice and personal stories about subjects as wide-ranging as hog dressing, faith healing, blacksmithing, and Appalachian history.

[more inside]
posted by hanoixan at 3:02 PM PST - 30 comments

In May, Jacob Lambert wrote in The Millions about the subversive messages hidden in classic children's books in the essay Are Picture Books Leading Our Children Astray? His conclusion: "What I previously considered whimsical trifles now reveal themselves as other things entirely: thinly-veiled endorsements of chaos, malfeasance, naïveté." Now Lambert's back, with: Again, I Ask: Are Picture Books Leading Our Children Astray? [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:15 PM PST - 48 comments

europe-cities is a beautifully organized, practical site for information about traveling to cities in Europe. All the information is in one place: info about specific cities, cuisine, history, overview information, weather, a variety of cultural interests from English Christmas Markets to Hungarian culture. And, best of all, finding the cheapest/best places to stay. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:13 PM PST - 15 comments

Bull-Killer, Sun Lord. "Foreign religions grew rapidly in the 1st-century A.D. Roman Empire, including worship of Jesus Christ, the Egyptian goddess Isis, and an eastern sun god, Mithras."
posted by homunculus at 2:12 PM PST - 28 comments

The page served by Network Solutions for parked domains was serving malware until two weeks ago. Apparently it had been like that for months without anyone taking notice.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:41 PM PST - 19 comments

The Twin Who Didn't Make It is an excerpt from Alexa Stevenson's memoir Half Baked: The Story of My Nerves, My Newborn, and How We Both Learned to Breathe.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 1:10 PM PST - 12 comments

1996 BBC documentary of the proof of Fermat's last theorem is now a Google video. John [Lynch] began researching the project, but Wiles was being very elusive. Although John did not know it, the flaw in Wiles's proof had been found, which is why Wiles was in hiding. Eventually the existence of the flaw emerged, and the TV project was abandoned A year or so later, the flaw was fixed... More at SimonSingh.com.
posted by Obscure Reference at 12:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Recreating pictures of your parents on zefrank.com. (Previous Project) [more inside]
posted by gman at 10:32 AM PST - 24 comments

Ravishing Beasts is a blog about all kinds of taxidermy. From taxidermy as fashion to pet taxidermy to taxidermy dioramas.
posted by Thin Lizzy at 10:12 AM PST - 5 comments

Fried Beer. As the Dallas Morning News reports, the Fried Beer was the result of a painful process of trial and error for creator Mark Zamble. His initial efforts kept exploding once they hit the fryer, and he kept getting burned. Zamble has already applied for a patent and trademark for Fried Beer, which appears to be a pocket of pretzel dough filled with its signature beverage.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 9:59 AM PST - 53 comments

The Lone Wolf 'choose your own adventure' series [previously] is considered by many to have been the best of its kind. Author Joe Dever licensed the books in 1999 to be distributed for free online. Project Aon, the organization which distributes the books has now released a dedicated client for playing Lone Wolf, automating all record keeping and randomization. Kieron Gillen, comic book writer and games journalist, writes an appreciation of the series and review of the new client. If you don't want take the time to go through it on your own, rpg.net had a 'let's play' series starting here (index here). But go play it yourself, epic fantasy adventure awaits!
posted by Kattullus at 8:24 AM PST - 49 comments

On the 18th June 1912 workmen burst through the floorboards of a disused London tenement at 30-32 Cheapside and discovered "Probably the most remarkable find ever recovered from British soil." The stock of an early Stuart goldsmith - the most astonishing array of precious and semi-precious stones from around the world - hidden c.1630, The Cheapside Hoard is the finest collection of Elizabethan jewellery in the world. [more inside]
posted by fire&wings at 7:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous, "I have a dream speech". The Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP, National Action Network and others will hold a rally starting a Dunbar High School. Glenn Beck and conservative leaders will hold a rally of their own on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Graduate students studying journalism and the media at American University are covering the events with a team of embedded bloggers.
posted by humanfont at 6:19 AM PST - 287 comments

A gynoid is a humanoid robot designed to look like a human female, as compared to an android modeled after a male. NSFW; includes Photoshop work of famous female faces on robot bodies. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 4:51 AM PST - 89 comments

The Gender-Neutral Pronoun: 150 Years Later, Still an Epic Fail. Wordsmiths have been coining gender-neutral pronouns for a century and a half, all to no avail. Coiners of these new words insist that the gender-neutral pronoun is indispensable, but users of English stalwartly reject, ridicule, or just ignore their proposals. [Via].
posted by amyms at 12:19 AM PST - 121 comments

The dhol has traditionally been played by men at Punjabi weddings and sufi shrines. Rani Taj, the first professional British-Kashmiri female dholi, trained by the Dhol Blasters and Azaad dhol, plays the dhol at public events.
posted by bardophile at 10:44 PM PST - 15 comments

She agreed to be filmed for 90 days. A woman with AIDS is filmed briefly, every day, for 90 days, and the changes she undergoes are dramatic. The very end may make you weep, but perhaps not for the reasons you expect... [Link is a single video hosted on Vimeo.]
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:12 PM PST - 51 comments

The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation loved Stevie Ray Vaughan. (SLYT)
posted by Huplescat at 3:48 PM PST - 46 comments

Tony Washington, an NFL prospect, has a black mark on his record. At the age of 16, he was convicted of incest for sleeping with his then 15 year old sister, and forced to register as a sex offender. Washington feels this is the reason he is being ostracized by the NFL.
posted by reenum at 3:34 PM PST - 119 comments

What if Lovecraft had Lived into the 1960′s? - recording from a 1978 WorldCon panel featuring Fritz Leiber, and S.T. Joshi. Bonus files: A reading by Donald R. Burleson of his story The Last Supper, and a reading of Fungi from Yuggoth. (via)
posted by Artw at 2:27 PM PST - 31 comments

What language obliges us to think about. The NYTimes has a fascinating article on how language affects thought, from the gender-specificity of many European languages to the pure geographic directions of Guugu Yimithirr.
posted by bitmage at 2:09 PM PST - 57 comments

The "Benign Violation Theory" posits that for something to be funny, three conditions must be met. First, there must be a violation of the norm. Second, the violation must be perceived to be benign. Last, both these perceptions must occur simultaneously. [more inside]
posted by cosmac at 12:47 PM PST - 102 comments

La Roux Auditions for Harry Potter. Ke$ha Auditions for Glee.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 12:39 PM PST - 26 comments

Facebook, and initially Reddit, have refused to run an ad campaign for the marijuana-legalizing Prop 19 in CA, to much controversy from users. However, Reddit has decided to run the ads for free, since their owner Conde Naste has gone on the record saying they oppose profiting from "this issue" (while they have run ads opposed to prop-19, and controversial organizations like this one for an anti-gay right wing organization). Facebook has said they will consider running an ad which does not include a hemp leaf.
posted by mccarty.tim at 12:04 PM PST - 271 comments

"In 1500 the first Bohemian Land Ordinance was completed, and within it was an article that forbade anyone from hunting with a firearm. However, only twenty-four years after the 1500 constitution firearms had apparently been involved in so much social violence that a specific firearms Ordinance was promulgated in 1524. Ultimately, the handgun had shifted from a rural nuisance, to a violent, social problem." Between Menace and Utility: Handguns in Early Sixteenth-Century Bohemia [PDF]. (From Bad Behaviour in Medieval and Early Modern Europe)
posted by not_the_water at 11:08 AM PST - 13 comments

Ten thousand tourists have tramped above the spot where the latest find has just been made. Other archeologists, looking for the needle entrance to the royal tomb of Tutankhamen in the limestone haystack of el Qorn, came within a few feet of where, after sixteen years of labor, the late Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter found their reward. National Geographic republished the photos (flash gallery) and the text of the 1923 account of the opening of the tomb of King Tutankhamun. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:06 AM PST - 12 comments

Crew on a British Airways flight from London to Hong Kong accidentally trigger a message to the cabin that "This is an emergency. We may shortly need to make an emergency landing on water." The pilot then had to get on the PA and calm everyone's nerves. This probably caused even more panic than the famous message on BA Flight 9 in 1982, when the caption announced "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress."
posted by kaszeta at 11:06 AM PST - 51 comments

The world's largest solar power plant will probably be cleared for construction in California. At 1GW it is the size of a nuclear power plant and nearly doubles the US installed base of commercial-scale solar power. It will take 6-years, $6-billion and 7,000-acres. Proposed site (on Google maps). It will use parabolic trough's (video). It is being built by a German company (construction video / operation animation). There are many other CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) projects.
posted by stbalbach at 10:51 AM PST - 67 comments

Photographer Luke Powell captures the beauty and dignity of Afghanistan from the cities in the news to remote villages reachable only on horseback. He photographed the country extensively throughout the 1970s as a tourist and again from 2000 – 2003 in the employ of the United Nations to document minefields, mine victims, and demining efforts. Glimpses: Boys in the Bazaar l Koochie Tents (nomadic pastoralists). [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 10:40 AM PST - 7 comments

"Pianist Liu Wei sits quietly to compose himself before plunging into the music. Then he takes off a sock. The 23-year-old, whose arms were amputated after a childhood accident, plays the piano with his toes."
posted by gman at 10:23 AM PST - 16 comments

"A Collection of the Best Marriage Cartoons by the Foremost Comic Artists" from 1955. Part Two. The good old days, when you could beat your husband and bash your wife. Selected for the web by a 2010 cartoonist who's better than that.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:57 AM PST - 18 comments

Earlier this week, the Mounties arrested Khurram Sher along with two other Ottawa men and charged them with terrorism related offences. This is where it gets complicated… [more inside]
posted by Brodiggitty at 9:00 AM PST - 39 comments

"Many of his speeches were rambling, disorganized, repetitious, and as time went by, they became increasingly full of bigoted rhetoric. But as a champion of the poor, a foe of big business, and a critic of federal indifference in the face of widespread economic distress, he spoke to the hopes and fears of lower-middle class Americans throughout the country." His popularity rivaled that of the President, and he used his pulpit to not only attack Washington's progressive agenda, but America's enemies as well, who he blamed for being anti-family and making divorce too easy. [more inside]
posted by mkultra at 8:57 AM PST - 33 comments

Why You Got Fat An insightful 3 minute look into how fat is stored and utilized by your body. [more inside]
posted by christonabike at 8:45 AM PST - 58 comments

If only IKEA furniture could be assembled this quickly. The Swedish furniture chain's catalog has surpassed the Bible as the most published print in the world (previously), but did you know that all of your furniture purchases are actually charitable? [more inside]
posted by eenagy at 8:09 AM PST - 32 comments

Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961 is an exhibition drawn from the collections of the University of Chicago's Chicago Jazz Archive.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:20 AM PST - 18 comments

Unwise: Hungover Owls. (SLTumblr)
posted by CheeseLouise at 7:07 AM PST - 61 comments

A new study mapping the locations of artifacts around Ötzi the Iceman's final resting place suggests he was transported there for a ceremonial burial, and did not die alone as previously suggested. Via.
posted by jjray at 6:51 AM PST - 26 comments

A detailed exposition of the roles of the White House economic team. This isn't a discussion of Obama's team per se, but rather an explanation of the mechanics and relationships of the various economic advisers to the President.
posted by OmieWise at 6:51 AM PST - 4 comments

Labor Day Weekend is coming up. You could have a barbecue. Or you could write a novel. Previous winners of the International 3-Day Novel Contest, which has been running since 1977.
posted by escabeche at 5:45 AM PST - 20 comments

May of 1662. Thence to see an Italian puppet play that is within the rayles there, which is very pretty, the best that ever I saw.. The story changes a bit over the ages and is still definitely not PC.
Amongst the puppets is a hangman, a policeman and a crocodile.
Some videos; some galleries 1; 2; and a hall of fame. (First introduced to Metafilter by thomas j wise).
posted by adamvasco at 3:47 AM PST - 6 comments

Zero Views: The best of the worst of YouTube.
posted by sveskemus at 2:44 AM PST - 29 comments

A robot puts a sock on a pole.
posted by empath at 10:23 PM PST - 56 comments

Challenging the notion that humans are motivated by monetary reward, Dan Pink presents a variety of studies that test this notion. Inspired by his newest book, Drive
posted by fantodstic at 10:15 PM PST - 34 comments

The Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection (University of Washington) offers digitized examples of "Western marbled paper, paste papers and decorative papers, such as Dutch gilt and lithographically or linoleum block printed paper." Marbled paper, which many of you will have seen in the endpapers of nineteenth-century books, developed independently in Japan (suminagashi) and Turkey (ebru), although the Turkish form is best known in the West. Some very striking endpapers have been known to crop up in unexpected places. For further historical examples, see the Salem Athenaeum, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
posted by thomas j wise at 9:54 PM PST - 9 comments

President - White
V-President - Black
Sec-Treas - White
Reporter - Black

The racial categories for Nettleton Middle School's next class election.
posted by nestor_makhno at 8:21 PM PST - 117 comments

"Serial Killer Roguelike" is exactly what it sounds like. Here's a video of it in action. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:53 PM PST - 46 comments

Investigative reporting continues to attack the credibility of the IPCC reports on climate change, as well as vicious personal attacks. These stories gain wide coverage in the denialist echo chamber, yet several months down the track, after thorough independent investigation, they are found to be false. Weak retractions are published in newspapers, but the damage is done.
posted by wilful at 6:51 PM PST - 35 comments

"Michel de Montaigne, whose essays transformed Western consciousness and literature, was not capable of solving basic arithmetic problems. And most other people would not be able to do so either, if not for the invention of decimal notation by an unknown mathematician in India 1500 years ago." The Greatest Mathematical Discovery? (expanded pdf) a paper written for the US Dept. of Energy makes this assertion based in part on the work of Georges Ifrah. [via] [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 6:36 PM PST - 43 comments

The American Society of Magazine Editors and Amazon.com have announced the finalists for best magazine covers of the year. There are 12 categories: News & Business; Most Controversial; Sport & Fitness; Lifestyle; Science, Technology & Nature; House & Home; Fashion & Beauty; Funniest; Entertainment & Celebrity; Most Delicious; Sexiest; and, Best Vampire. Favourites: Obama with Google-eyed glasses, Colbert looking crazy on skates, Ryan Reynolds's abs, and a couple of great-looking hotdogs.
posted by anothermug at 6:20 PM PST - 24 comments

New York voice teacher Claudia Friedlander provides a classical analysis of 5 male heavy metal singers.
posted by ivey at 5:20 PM PST - 125 comments

Radical Cartography has made a lot more maps since greasy_skillet posted it in 2005, including maps showing housing prices and segregation of all kinds in New York, Chicago, DC and elsewhere, counties named for Presidents, the night sky, the US in agriculture, the US as projected to other spots on the globe, and a physical atlas of the world.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:09 PM PST - 4 comments

Hay Baling Fun (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 3:00 PM PST - 63 comments

How much does it cost to run a country? Somalia's Prime Minister released the government budget for 2009 (PDF) today. They had $11 million dollars to spend. That's million. With an M.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 2:54 PM PST - 41 comments

Today, Deadspin leaked financial documents detailing the finances of several MLB teams, including a few that are getting revenue sharing money. They show that several of MLB's "poorest" franchises turned a profit due to these cash infusions. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 2:05 PM PST - 56 comments

Yesterday morning, social news juggernaut Digg.com finally unveiled its much-ballyhooed redesign: Digg 4.0. More than a simple cosmetic makeover, the new edition of the popular link-sharing platform fundamentally alters the underlying mechanics of the site. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 1:38 PM PST - 133 comments

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010: an animation of the solar system that highlights asteroids as they are discovered. I would suggest watching it in a high resolution.
posted by brundlefly at 1:14 PM PST - 26 comments

(pdf) Chris Gottlieb writes in the "Baltimore Law Review" about judging parents. The article discusses instances of racism and classicism in the family court systems. An adaptation of the "Baltimore Review" article appears in the New York Times. [more inside]
posted by zizzle at 12:27 PM PST - 55 comments

Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom [more inside]
posted by Dim Siawns at 11:02 AM PST - 46 comments

If your brain and body were separated, which one would be "you?" Philosopher Daniel Dennett explores what might happen in that event. (Previously)
posted by Obscure Reference at 10:50 AM PST - 210 comments

The early days of british comics fanzines, by Dez Skinn, one time head of Marvel UK and founder of Warrior.
posted by Artw at 9:48 AM PST - 3 comments

THQ's Cory Ledesma opened the flood gates in his interview about used games. Penny Arcade sides with publishers on the issue, citing issues with the used game market. [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 9:29 AM PST - 169 comments

Choice blindness occurs when subjects are unaware that the choice they made is opposite their previously stated preferences. In this recent paper, subject preferences were reversed between tastes of jam and scents of tea. Overall, only a third of all the manipulated trials were detected by subjects whose preferences had been switched by the experimenters. [more inside]
posted by scrutiny at 9:28 AM PST - 31 comments

There are 100 ways to love a cat. [more inside]
posted by BeerFilter at 9:00 AM PST - 100 comments

Dowling Duncan redesign the US bank notes . [more inside]
posted by domnit at 8:08 AM PST - 170 comments

Pictures of people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa (non-Flash but still annoying interface warning)
posted by silby at 7:48 AM PST - 55 comments

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Desi Style. [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 7:42 AM PST - 17 comments

Best selling authors Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult speak out about how the New York Times treats "chick lit": "when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention." [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:36 AM PST - 82 comments

My assignment for the day was to photograph Jerry Stiller in front of The Costanza House in Astoria, Queens. As we pulled up to the house he decided to ring the doorbell not knowing if anyone would answer. Story from the Daily News.
posted by thisisdrew at 7:33 AM PST - 34 comments

Street Dance vs Ballet - Dance It Up (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:49 AM PST - 20 comments

Cheap Flights by Fascinating Aida is a new song from a trio of satirical women who have been making people laugh for over a quarter of a century. As they say on their homepage "It started by going fungal, then it went bacterial, and is in severe danger of going viral. Hurrah! We write a hit - it's only taken 27 years!". Other notable songs include their ode to viagra Getting it, White's Blues, and an old gem Time, from 1987.
posted by handee at 5:29 AM PST - 9 comments

How great would you feel if a real person called you every day to tell you, "You're Awesome!"?
posted by sveskemus at 1:15 AM PST - 68 comments

11 scandalous stories about Saved By The Bell, from Dustin "Screech" Diamond's autobiography.
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:10 AM PST - 108 comments

Submachine: 32 Chambers is the winner of the Jay is Games 8th Casual Gameplay Design Competition (theme: sandbox). It's by Mateusz Skutnik. You may be familiar with some of his other flash games. In other news, there's Grow Valley which is a new Eyemaze game.
posted by juv3nal at 11:22 PM PST - 22 comments

Four years after being spawned Fraser River Sockeye salmon return to the same creeks in which they were born to mate, spawn and die. Salmon have a strong preference for heavier returns every four years. Prior to 1913 this cycle peaked every second odd year (IE: 1905 - 1909 - 1913). However in 1913 (a year that had a record high 31 million fish harvested) construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway along side the Frasier river resulted in massive rock slides that prevented most of the returning fish from making it to their ancestral streams. Clean up efforts in subsequent years and the construction of fish ladders at Hell's Gate saved the Salmon from extinction and switched peaked returns to every second even year (IE: 2010 - 2014 - 2018) but numbers of fish returning were way down. Until now. This year's projected returns are the highest since 1913's record year and not far short of it. This is bound to make the organizers of Salute to the Sockeye very happy. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 9:45 PM PST - 34 comments

Announcer Larry Collmus calls the 7th at Monmouth Park, 8/22/10 (slyt)
posted by pyramid termite at 8:48 PM PST - 28 comments

Do we live in a world where there is magic and meaning, or is it all just chance? Radiolab meets two young women who share a nearly unbelievable story of coincidence and fate. Then they consult with statisticians for a very different take on the same story. This short audio documentary is charming and delightful. A Lucky Wind won a Best Documentary: Honorable Mention Award in the 2009 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition as well as the 2009 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award (Radio Documentary). [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:45 PM PST - 87 comments

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was born in Wisconsin on July 31, 1910. He lived in a small house in Milwaukee with his wife Marie, and he worked in a bakery. Between 1954 and 1963 he used his fingers, combs, quills and bakery tools to create hundreds of explosively colorful semi-abstract landscapes that evoke primordial soup biology, Lovecraftian horror, scifi weirdness and hellish alien beauty ('Full-Screen View' and its zoomable interface increase the pleasure dramatically). The 12 galleries of paintings at his memorial site are all available for free hi-res download, you can hear him talking about drugs, brain chemistry and visions at the 'Listen' link, and there's currently an exhibit honoring the centennial of his birth at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.
posted by mediareport at 8:10 PM PST - 24 comments

"The Japanese Tradition" was a series of nine short, parody "How To" videos that gently mocked the formality of Japanese culture, from comedy duo Rahmens (ラーメンズ) and Japan Culture Lab. They're available on DVD, but nearly all of them can be seen on YouTube, including Sushi and Ocha (tea). [more inside]
posted by zarq at 4:26 PM PST - 54 comments

Director John Krasinski's film adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is available on Hulu. [more inside]
posted by puddleglum at 4:18 PM PST - 26 comments

Make your own glow sticks! No, not like that! With complete chemical recipes for different colors, information on how fluorescent dyes work, and bonus fun camera light balance behavior. [via]
posted by phunniemee at 4:14 PM PST - 11 comments

Ken Mehlman, the former Republican Party chairman who ran George W. Bush's gay-bashing 2004 presidential campaign, has come out of the closet. He does not apologize, but says he will now work to legalize gay marriage.
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:02 PM PST - 233 comments

YOUR BRAIN ON COMPUTERS “Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
posted by wherespaul at 3:55 PM PST - 42 comments

Top female tennis stars hitting the ball in slow motion. [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:21 PM PST - 89 comments

With the passing of Executive Order 13505, Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells, in 2009 President Obama expanded federal funding and rescinded George W. Bush's policies that eliminated most federal funding and restricted human embryonic stem cell research to the use of existing, contaminated cell lines. On Monday, federal judge Royce C. Lamberth blocked this new order after protestations from James L. Sherley, a former scientist with the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, and Theresa Deisher, who operates the Ave Maria Biotechnology Company, which aims to do "pro-life" therapeutic research without the "taint of embryonic or electively aborted fetal materials". [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:11 PM PST - 43 comments

Nova Roma is an international organization dedicated to the study and restoration of ancient Roman culture. From its founding until it ceased to be the center of Imperial authority Rome laid the foundation for our modern Western civilization. Founded 2,750 years after the Eternal City itself, Nova Roma seeks to bring back those golden times, not through the sword and the legions, however, but through the spread of knowledge and through their own virtuous example.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:29 PM PST - 23 comments

The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk [more inside]
posted by MustardTent at 1:36 PM PST - 13 comments

Nike has filed a patent for the power-lacing sneakers from Back to the Future II. There have been false alarms before, but this time there are Nike-made descriptions and diagrams.
posted by cashman at 12:50 PM PST - 62 comments

Katrina: Then and Now. Comparing scenes of devastation after Hurricane Katrina struck 5 years ago and what they look like now.
posted by nomadicink at 12:29 PM PST - 34 comments

The message of Majora's Mask. Majora's Mask was always the strangest of the Zelda series for me and if you also felt like there was something going on in that game that you couldn't quite put your finger on, this analysis should shed some light. Or will at least make you want to play it again.
posted by litleozy at 10:43 AM PST - 47 comments

Cloud surfing the strange and marvelous looking Morning Glory. This film shows at 2:07 an animation of how the cloud is formed. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 10:41 AM PST - 4 comments

FiveThirtyEight.com is no more! Long Live Five Thirty Eight! Independent political statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.com has been absorbed by the New York Times. Nate Silver, the stats genius, baseball freak and predictor of 49 of 50 states in the last presidential election began his blog on DailyKos. As of this morning, the blog has moved to the New York Times. [more inside]
posted by Ironmouth at 10:27 AM PST - 55 comments

Inside the secret world of Trader Joe's. [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 10:20 AM PST - 127 comments

I Was with Coco. "If you’ve ever seen a criminal standing before a firing squad and felt jealous of all the attention he was receiving, then you would have loved writing for Conan O’Brien." [via] [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:06 AM PST - 29 comments

Jillian Lauren recently wrote a book about her experiences as a harem girl in Brunei. LA Weekly also went in-depth into her story. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 9:32 AM PST - 87 comments

Reznor got angry, Springsteen got angry, everyone is angry....so Ticketmaster finally responds. But will anything really change?
posted by mikoroshi at 9:30 AM PST - 105 comments

A Letter To My Students A letter from Michael O'Hare, professor of Public Policy at UC Berkley to his students. He lets them know about how the world of his generation cheated them, both by their own and their choices in government leaders, who all fell along the wayside due to the swindle, and how they can pick themselves up by the bootstraps to right it.
posted by deezil at 8:33 AM PST - 77 comments

... Apple will know who you are, where you are, and what you are doing and saying and even how fast your heart is beating. ... This patent is downright creepy and invasive— certainly far more than would be needed to respond to the possible loss of a phone.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:26 AM PST - 158 comments

How to Lose A Legacy - a curator writes about the problem of what to do with stuff after death. (via.) Professional organizers give advice. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 7:56 AM PST - 35 comments

Mike Snook collects police patches from all over the United States, including state, local, federal, and many K-9 units. Yes, the site design is unfortunate but the collection is really cool.
posted by Gator at 7:03 AM PST - 11 comments

A man believed to be a MI6 employee has been found murdered in a flat in Pimlico. [more inside]
posted by acb at 5:00 AM PST - 83 comments

Ahmed Rashid writes about The Anarchic Republic of Pakistan as amid the flooding the CIA resumes its drone campaign and Pakistan is to clamp down on Islamist militant charities while the Chinese give Military Assistance. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 4:53 AM PST - 17 comments

(MLYT) Danyk666 and his microwave oven, danyk and his unshielded Source, danyk's little jacob's ladder, danyk heats water, zaps a CD, uses wrong AC power. Also hairspray high-volt abuse, his flyback transformer no workee (wait for it), carbon scoring on your droids? And danyk's small shaded-pole motor ...OF DEATH!!! [more inside]
posted by billb at 12:47 AM PST - 34 comments

Journeyman Pictures has uploaded nearly 4000 videos to YouTube. Many of these are trailers for the documentaries they sell, but they have also posted hundreds of full-length videos. Most are for short documentarie, but there are a lot of features too. It's somewhat daunting to explore, but the playlists are a good place to start, and so are the shows: Features, Shorts, News and Savouring Europe, a European travelogue series. Here's a few interesting ones: Gastronauts, about French culinary students working to make astronaut food more palatable, Demon Drummers, about student Kodo drummers, India's Free Lunch, about the effects of free school lunches on Indian society, The Twitter Revolution, about YouTube and Twitter's role in the 2009 Iranian uprising, Europe's Black Hole, about Transnistria, the breakaway region of Moldova, Small Town Boy, about a gay male carnival queen in a small town in England, The Vertigo of Lists, Umberto Eco talks about the ubiquity of lists in modern culture and Monsters from the Id, about scientists in the science fiction films of the Fifties.
posted by Kattullus at 11:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Solar flares may be affecting radioactive decay rates
posted by Confess, Fletch at 9:29 PM PST - 57 comments

The people have spoken mumbled a bit. The Australian Federal election held last Saturday has produced an extraordinary result. A minority government with the support of 1 Green and (maybe) 4 very independent independents will should result, but which way will it fall, left or right? Every Westminster-style government, claimed to produce strong stable majorities, now has a hung parliament. Even though results may not be known for several days yet, we can acknowledge the outstanding work of the Australian Electoral Commission. (Previously).
posted by wilful at 8:51 PM PST - 131 comments

The list of New York artists who died of AIDS over the last 30 years is countless, and the loss immeasurable. Last Address uses images of the exteriors of the houses, apartment buildings, and lofts where these and others were living at the time of their deaths to mark the disappearance of a generation. The film is a remembrance of that loss, as well as an evocation of the continued presence of these artists work in our lives and culture. (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:32 PM PST - 26 comments

The Pinball Ninja has assigned himself a daunting task: repair 500 pinball machines in the 365 days of the year 2010! He's a little behind at the moment (#289 at last count), but the journey is still entertaining, and filled with insights into pinball repair. [more inside]
posted by luvcraft at 8:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Satoshi Kon, the director of such celebrated anime movies as Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Paprika, has died (reportedly of cancer) at the age of 47. Kon's movies dealt with the slipperiness of the boundaries between performance and reality, truth and illusion. His death leaves the status of his next movie, The Dream Machine (Yume miru kikai), in doubt. As outsourcing and a long recession have taken their toll on Japan's increasingly insular anime industry, David Cabrera notes, I cannot think of a single person alive in the Japanese animation industry who would have been a greater loss than Mr. Kon.
posted by Jeanne at 7:10 PM PST - 99 comments

Web of stories - "There are few things more interesting or more pleasurable than to watch someone tell a good story. And one story always leads to another."
posted by unliteral at 6:53 PM PST - 5 comments

This year is the 40th anniversary of the publication of Deliverance. "Dickey wrote about men, neither dudes nor (although they were fathers) dads. The men in “Deliverance” meet real monsters and recognize their ability to become, in Dickey’s phrase, countermonsters."
posted by Xurando at 5:33 PM PST - 68 comments

Do you feel overwhelmed trying to understand the driving forces behind our economic collapse. When listening to the latest Planet Money podcast, do you find yourself yearning for something a bit more toe-tappin'? Meet Merle Hazard. "He is the first and only country singer to write about mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, and physics."
posted by mkultra at 4:21 PM PST - 8 comments

UVB-76 has sent a new message.
posted by Artw at 4:08 PM PST - 120 comments

Early color film tests : 1912, Chronochrome, Deauville, France :: 1922, Kodachrome, Paragon Studios, Fort Lee, New Jersey (details)
posted by crunchland at 3:04 PM PST - 23 comments

Fantastic Zoology - A graphical interpretation of J.L. Borges "Book of Imaginary Beings" [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 2:58 PM PST - 13 comments

One-Button Arthur: Puzzles, quick thinking, and a lot of clicks. [more inside]
posted by lholladay at 2:56 PM PST - 10 comments

It was revealed today that on July 20th about 1.8kg of yellowcake uranium was seized in Chisinau, Moldova. The asking price was 11 million dollars. [more inside]
posted by atypicalguy at 2:37 PM PST - 54 comments

The Perfect Five posts five songs per week(ish): a recent hit, a cover, a classic, a remix, and a wildcard. "A music blog for people who don't have time for music blogs."
posted by theodolite at 2:05 PM PST - 10 comments

Pinball - a fun brainstorming and decisionmaking online tool from the BBC.
posted by Miko at 1:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Human society cannot be rationally understood until what it is seen it for what it is: The Story of Your Enslavement. [more inside]
posted by at the crossroads at 1:17 PM PST - 340 comments

Hipmunk is a new easy-to-use flight search tool from the co-founder of Reddit and the author of AppleScript: The Missing Manual, funded by Y Combinator.
posted by grouse at 12:15 PM PST - 48 comments

Rape used as a tool of war: 200 women gang-raped near Congo base U.N. says. UN Chief outraged, FWIW. All links to news articles, but not for the weak of stomach.
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:00 PM PST - 52 comments

AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ Trailer. What's the 'The Walking Dead'? Previously.
posted by Fizz at 11:36 AM PST - 108 comments

This past Saturday evening a woman dumped a rescue cat into a garbage bin on the side of a residential street in Coventry, U.K. Fifteen hours later owner Darryl Mann: "I came down to feed Lola on Sunday morning but couldn’t find her anywhere. It was really hot day outside and I searched nearby alleyways but suddenly heard a tiny meowing coming from the bin. I looked inside and I found her in the bin, she was terrified and covered in her own mess....At first I thought she’d somehow climbed inside the bin herself but when I checked the CCTV I was gobsmacked to see some a woman had done it deliberately." Mann posted the video to YouTube and Facebook in an effort to find the perpetrator. As a result, the woman was identified by this morning. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 10:11 AM PST - 236 comments

On August 16th 1951 a number of people in the quiet southern French town of Pont St.Esprit began to fall ill. Stomach pains were soon followed by violent and often terrifying hallucinations. Local hospitals were soon overwhelmed and more than thirty people were taken to asylums in nearby towns. It was soon decided that the cause was bread poisoning and the evidence pointed to just one Bakery. The reason, it was believed was 'ergot', a fungal infection found in Rye bread which had often caused mass poisonings in Medieval times. Journalist Hank Albarelli, however, claims that a recently released CIA memo shows that the CIA were in fact testing LSD on the inhabitants of the town. [more inside]
posted by dng at 9:48 AM PST - 56 comments

In addition to being a five term US senator, Barry Goldwater was an accomplished photographer, particularly of people and landscapes of the American West. [more inside]
posted by Nelson at 9:34 AM PST - 27 comments

After 17 days, 33 Chilean miners have been found alive 2,300 vertical feet underground in a gold and copper mine. Now the only thing left to do is get them out safely -- in about four months.
posted by Gilbert at 8:59 AM PST - 115 comments

Quicksand is deeper than I knew. [more inside]
posted by everichon at 8:43 AM PST - 26 comments

Nine species of bats have been affected by White Nose Syndrome so far, and it has killed over one million bats to date. [more inside]
posted by bibliogrrl at 8:31 AM PST - 36 comments

A 60-mile traffic jam in northern China has entered its tenth day, and could last for weeks longer.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:01 AM PST - 88 comments

Washington Monthly has released its annual college rankings, which focus on a univerisity's contribution to the public good, including the number of ROTC and peace corps graduates relative to size, the percentage of work study spent on community service, the percentage of students served recieving Pell grants, and quality of research. UCSD, Morehouse College and St. Mary's University of Texas were big winners. Alongside it, feature articles on college dropout factories, the bare-bones education experience at University of Minnesota-Rochester and the ever-increasing amenities and costs of George Washington University.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 7:29 AM PST - 91 comments

The Smoking Gun has come into possession of an unusual RFP from the DEA: they want 'Ebonics experts' to help decipher wiretaps.
posted by reenum at 7:13 AM PST - 75 comments

Electron microscope images of insects and other tiny critters. Art embedded in your microchips, under an electron microscope. Zooming in on a tooth, with the help of an electron microscope. Electron microscope checks out a record's grooves.[previously] A flower so small only those with electron microscopes can see it! Raspberry under an electron microscope! Zoom in on an ant's head, with the power of electron microscopy! An electron microscope makes a self-portrait! An electron microscope examines a leaf! Want to see something else under an electron microscope? Send it to these guys!
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:50 AM PST - 18 comments

TRON-a-Sutra (NSFW), or Geeks. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 6:34 AM PST - 17 comments

"If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter." - PJ O'Rourke visits Kabul
posted by TheOtherGuy at 4:03 AM PST - 54 comments

Have you ever found yourself frustrated while reading some stupid comments written on a website? We've all been there. This addon, CommentBlocker, is the perfect solution for us who get annoyed daily on comment posts. Firefox only. (via)
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:09 AM PST - 37 comments

You've read the press release, watched the video, and checked out the how-to blog. You, too, could follow in the tracks of the Space Squid folks by publishing your prose in clay tablets, immortalising it for the ages.
posted by rodgerd at 3:07 AM PST - 11 comments

25 Hong Kong tourists were held hostage in Manila in a 12-hour bus siege that ended with ten dead and six injured. [more inside]
posted by monocot at 1:20 AM PST - 30 comments

The comic series Ex Machina [PDF preview] was started in 2004, created by Y: The Last Man writer Brian K. Vaughn and artist Tony Harris. The main character, Mitchell Hundred, is an ex-superhero who hangs up his jetpack and successfully runs for mayor of New York City in an alternate post-9/11 timeline. The last issue (#50), released this week, concluded the series with a harsh yet wonderfully written view of Hundred's political fate. BKV talks about the final issue with IGN [Spoilers].
posted by benzenedream at 12:56 AM PST - 10 comments

There are 9 Lego Certified Professionals. Nathan Sawaya, Rene Hoffmeister, Sean, Kenney Nicholas Foo, Dan Parker* , Robin Sather, Adam Reed Tucker, Beth Weis and Dirk Denoyelle. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 12:43 AM PST - 23 comments

The area of each icon is proportional to the sum of the reach of all sites using that icon. ... The largest icon (Google) is 11,936 x 11,936 pixels, and the whole diagram is 37,440 x 37,440.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:47 PM PST - 21 comments

Bottled in Cork is a new video for a song by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. It was written and directed by Tom Scharpling, and features the comedic talents of Paul F. Tompkins, John Hodgman, and Julie Klausner. It is, therefore, the most important thing that has ever happened ever.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 8:20 PM PST - 42 comments

The unpleasant hyperrealistic artwork of Karl Persson ( nsfw ) "My intellect doesn’t come into play when I am channeling something subconsciously. There is plenty of time for interpretation after a painting is finished. Whenever I look at my finished paintings it is like analysing a dream"
posted by boo_radley at 8:02 PM PST - 42 comments

"What I loved, as I sped through the rest of Pynchon’s oeuvre, was that unravelling prose. Lines like the following got me through those long books, their difficult sections, the vertiginous moments when I was no longer sure what was happening (let alone to whom) ... Perhaps it made us feel that we were more than pale and pitiful creatures who worshipped the books of a man we would never see, let alone meet, about whom we knew almost nothing," Nick Holdstock on attending International Pynchon Week in Poland. [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 7:09 PM PST - 63 comments

Our minds boggle at how the wolf could become the chihuahua, the Saint Bernard, the poodle and the Komondor. Artificial selection was likewise responsible for transforming the humble wild mustard plant Brassica oleracea into cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and the breathtaking fractal Romanesco, all in the span of a few centuries. [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 6:36 PM PST - 52 comments

Blurry People is perhaps best summarized as a combination of ChatRoulette and a dating site. On Blurry People, you engage in random video chats with people like you would in ChatRoulette. The significant difference here is that both video portraits start out blurred and sharpen over time as - or if - your conversation goes on. [more inside]
posted by blook at 4:28 PM PST - 42 comments

Canadian carmaker Motive Industries Inc has announced a new electric vehicle, the Kestrel, with body parts made of a hemp composite. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:54 PM PST - 40 comments

Remembering an Explosive Encounter with Dennis Hopper. Edited video footage and brief account of Dennis Hopper's performance(?) of the "Dynamite Death Chair Act" in 1983. Another account of the event.
posted by unknowncommand at 3:07 PM PST - 9 comments

'They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.' 'The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.''Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.''The brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 2:59 PM PST - 88 comments

"During the 1860s, several photographers based in Moscow and St. Petersburg produced series of cartes-de-visite showing Russian 'types.' These remarkable portraits provide a fascinating record of working-class townspeople, artisans, street vendors and peasants, some staged performing an activity, such as drinking tea or gaming, and some photographed in the performance of their occupation."
posted by gman at 1:55 PM PST - 22 comments

"We could have reprogrammed it to steal votes, but that's been done before, and Pac-Man is more fun!"
posted by griphus at 1:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Auto-wrecker turned artist James Corbett makes amazing things out of old parts.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:54 AM PST - 9 comments

One-liner artist Tim Vine has won the award for the funniest joke told at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but you'll have to click the link to find out what it was. The BBC's article lists the top ten best jokes and a selection of the worst.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:36 AM PST - 232 comments

How "The Last Washington Painting" Became "The Lost Washington Painting": Losing- and finding again- Alan Sonneman's "apocalyptic image of nuclear doom".
posted by jjray at 11:35 AM PST - 12 comments

Pay Up! "Got a blog that makes no money? The city (Philadelphia) wants $300, thank you very much." [...] "After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made."
posted by Fizz at 11:30 AM PST - 95 comments

Police Arrest Zombies. Zombies go to Appeals Court. Zombies settle out of Court for $165,000.
posted by Xurando at 11:27 AM PST - 34 comments

And then, from across the room, their sewn-on eyes meet. Why do socks fall in love? (Single-link Flash video player. And it’s a park, not a room)
posted by joeclark at 11:11 AM PST - 3 comments

"It would have been quite a news conference, and it very nearly happened. Last fall, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, after months of intense, private talks, agreed to face the media together to declare their agreement that research shows the 'benefits' and 'positive impacts' of supervised injection sites for intravenous drug users. For the RCMP, making such a statement would have been a turning point: the Mounties would have had to distance themselves from dubious studies, commissioned by the force itself, that were critical of Insite, Vancouver’s pioneering safe injection facility."

But it didn't happen.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:49 AM PST - 50 comments

Please enjoy one of collage artist Lewis Klahr's haptic, romantic meditations on materiality and mortality, False Aging, and a look at his process.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:37 AM PST - 2 comments

North Korean Tourism Video
posted by KokuRyu at 10:30 AM PST - 16 comments

The annual Orbit books survey of Fantasy cover art: Fantasy Art, The Changing Fashion of Urban Fantasy Heroines, Color trends in Dragons, Title Trends and Fonts.
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM PST - 74 comments

The Stone Forest of Madagascar: Huge, spectacular pictures of another world by National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez. A non-Flash version of the site is also available.
posted by Gator at 8:12 AM PST - 22 comments

The Spoon Theory. A story specifically about living with lupus but which also applies to many other chronic diseases. From the site ButYouDontLookSick.com, a resource for those with chronic illnesses and invisible disabilities. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 7:53 AM PST - 41 comments

From the BBC blog of documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis: Experiments in the Laboratory of Consumerism 1959-67: "I have quite a lot of film from the archives that was shot in the Madison Avenue agencies in the mid 1960s, and I thought I would put some sections up. It is great because it shows some of the major advertising men and women of the time, many of whom are the real-life models for characters in Mad Men." Includes a 9-minute video interview with the late Herta Herzog. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:43 AM PST - 17 comments

A photo essay by Steve McCurry of people reading books all over the world.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:29 AM PST - 17 comments

The Oxford Reading Tree was a set of books for reception-age children to learn how to read, staring Biff, Chip and their dog Kipper. One blogger has decided to keep the memory of teaching her kids by embroidering her own versions.
posted by mippy at 6:30 AM PST - 3 comments

When Parents Won't Cut the Cord. As a reaction to helicopter parents (who read books about the stages of grief so they can cope with their kid's growing up), colleges are literally shutting the gates on parents who can't let go.
posted by dzaz at 4:01 AM PST - 271 comments

"If, through this deluge, there emerges a last man, a Noah to carry on, that Noah must be all of us. Even then the outcome is uncertain. All we know for sure is that the 40 days and 40 nights of this deluge of pollution and erosion began centuries ago. Now we are living through--and dying through--its last hours on this Ark." [more inside]
posted by maxwelton at 3:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Movies reimagined by way of their poster. Movie posters are sometimes considered art and we've had posts on Metafilter about movie posters being redesigned and reimagined but, these posters appear to be from another universe. I want to be there.
posted by DaddyNewt at 11:06 PM PST - 39 comments

James Patterson Inc.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:30 PM PST - 154 comments

I was a bit disheartened to discover that one of my favorite frozen treats, the Creamsicle, has an "official" day (August 14th) and that I'd missed it. Well, that will never have to happen again thanks to the handy Food Holidays Calendar, part of the Bizarre American Holidays page (Warning -- the graphic design will make your eyes bleed). Today (August 22nd) was Be an Angel Day, but for most of you reading this, I wish you a frabjous National Spongecake Day
posted by Deathalicious at 7:47 PM PST - 37 comments

Art by Magda Boeysza. She's a graphic artist living in Scotland. Her sketchbook.
posted by nickyskye at 4:06 PM PST - 12 comments

Futurama has always been a haven for geek humor, but last week's episode "The Prisoner of Benda" pushed things to the next level. First hinted at in an American Physical Society interview with showrunner David X. Cohen (previously), staff writer and mathematics Ph.D. Ken Keeler devised a novel mathematical proof based on group theory to resolve the logic puzzle spawned by the episode's brain-swapping (but no backsies!) conceit. Curious how it works? Read the proof (in the show or in plain text), then see it in action using this handy chart. Too much math for a lazy Sunday? Then entertain your brain with lengthy clips from the episode -- including two of the funniest moments in the series in the span of two minutes.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:46 PM PST - 125 comments

john Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Joe Sanford directed a documentary about the departed writer, John Kennedy Toole: the omega point [more inside]
posted by nola at 12:45 PM PST - 49 comments

AD 79: Destruction and Re-discovery is full of information about the Roman cities wiped out by Vesuvius in Titus' reign.
posted by moonbiter at 12:38 PM PST - 22 comments

The indie music and indie games scenes collide in a Brooklyn bar.
posted by empath at 12:35 PM PST - 17 comments

Jet Trains! Jet Trains! The Americans built one, so the Soviets had to build one, too. The Soviet one appears to be in disrepair now.
posted by klausness at 11:40 AM PST - 16 comments

The Indian government describes their electronic voting machines as 'perfect', but has never permitted an independant evaluation. A team of three academic researchers received access to a machine from an anonymous source, and demonstrated several flaws. Concerns are being expressed in India. At 5:30 this Saturday morning, police arrested Hari Prasad, one of the research team, at his home, transporting him to Mumbai. [more inside]
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 10:30 AM PST - 31 comments

The Hughes family does a good deed and gets beaten up by some in the international development community, reigniting the debate on poverty tourism. (previously)
posted by Xurando at 10:27 AM PST - 83 comments

Introducing CATFIGHT! Battle for the Internet's Favourite Feline. The Bracket. Round 1: Old School Cats. Round 2: Eight Down, Eight Return to Duke It Out. Round 3: The Final Four. Last Round: The FINALS! And the Winner is...
posted by Fizz at 10:13 AM PST - 18 comments

ROWR. Chewie's dialogue coach must be proud. [more inside]
posted by neetij at 10:07 AM PST - 9 comments

This is England '86, the television series sequel to the film This Is England by director Shane Meadows will broadcast in the UK next week. Meadows started his career with a number of ultra-cheap short films on borrowed equipment, a couple of which have found there way onto the internet. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:25 AM PST - 22 comments

Some people make DIY drones. Some people build WiFi-hacking UAVs. Somethingawful members build their own submarines, floating launch-platforms, and tow their own manned spacecraft out to sea.
posted by fake at 8:37 AM PST - 34 comments

An oral history of DIY pioneers CRASS - with details about the court battle that may soon mar 30+ years of advocacy for anarchism, permaculture, workers' rights, and free thinking. [more inside]
posted by ryanshepard at 7:43 AM PST - 39 comments

100 Helpful Photography Tutorials for Beginners and Professionals. Photography as both a profession and a hobby is an expansive topic that covers a vast range of subjects from science and art. No matter where you lie on the spectrum, there is always more to learn. From the folks at Tuts+.
posted by netbros at 7:34 AM PST - 15 comments

The hooligan problem and the football violence that just won't go away. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 7:10 AM PST - 36 comments

It's about ethnomusicology, immigrants, and a tiny bit about depression. Read about Ian Nagoski and the music he discovered in a box of records that survived a foreclosure (WaPo link - register or bugmenot). Listen. Podcast. Buy some.
posted by ersatzkat at 6:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Author JD Salinger's toilet put on sale for $1m.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:53 AM PST - 36 comments

American Apparel, the clothing company which became synonymous with the "hipster" look of the 2000s, is facing bankruptcy. [more inside]
posted by acb at 2:10 AM PST - 137 comments

What Happened in My Birth Year? If you have the patience for the slow onscreen text printout, you might find some interesting tidbits. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 12:59 AM PST - 43 comments

“No, no. Academia is now part of the real world. Everything goes.” Just before dawn, on August 24, 1970, Dwight and Karl Armstrong, Leo Burt, and David Fine parked a van outside Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin. The van was filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, and when it blew, it killed Robert Fassnacht, a young physicist working through the night. The Army Mathematics Research Center, the bombing's target, was untouched. The bombers, known as the "New Year's Gang," went underground, and enthusiasm for the radical movement in Madison was permanently dampened. The University of Wisconsin collection of transcribed interviews about the Sterling Hall Bombing. [more inside]
posted by escabeche at 10:02 PM PST - 32 comments

Richard Meier [...] once declared that “white is the most wonderful color of all, because within it one can find every color of the rainbow.”
"We think of white marble figures as aesthetic monuments ... frozen in a museum installation."
Most scholars haven't paid much attention to the light traces of pigment that remained on the surface of marble statues, but a flood of recent exhibitions has set out to put their color back.
Listen to Helen of Troy, in the Euripides play that bears her name:

My life and fortunes are a monstrosity,
Partly because of Hera, partly because of my beauty.
If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect
The way you would wipe color off a statue.

It is a wonder how it took us as long as it did to realize the colorful truth behind some of Man's oldest artistic relics. [previously] [via]
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:49 PM PST - 41 comments

Hercule: Sunday Morning Fever + Little Green Man. "One of the most valuable and rare Italo Disco 7" of all time gets a timely reissue on DJ friendly 12" vinyl. what you have here is a remastered, cleaned up version of this quirky funk disco nugget that sounds as dope today as when it was released back in 1978." Produced by Jean-Pierre Massiera.
posted by puny human at 6:39 PM PST - 13 comments

Although Fables in Slang were written in 1899, they describe people who are clearly recognizable today. Partly because of his style, though, George Ade (1866-1944) is forgotten as H.L. Mencken predicted he would be. From 1890 to around the close of WWI, Ade was widely known within the US as a humorist and playwright. [more inside]
posted by jet_silver at 5:48 PM PST - 6 comments

The Rap Map is a mashup of notable places and geographical lyrics in rap and hip-hop. It's brought to you by Rap Genius, a site that explains rap lyrics like "I'm getting jacked, I'm breaking myself" (Warren is getting “jacked” (robbed) and “breaking himself” (generally befuddled)) and "One day you're cruising in your 7, next day you're sweating, forgetting your lies" (Street life can be tough — one day you’re riding high in your BMW 7 Series luxury car, the next day you’re arrested and cracking under pressure. The rest of this verse is a classic warning that the hustling lifestyle is not for everybody)
posted by desjardins at 5:36 PM PST - 43 comments

In what seems to be a growing trend, Australian voters have spoken a resounding "meh". Rejecting both major parties, the most likely result of yesterday's election is a hung parliament.
posted by coriolisdave at 4:44 PM PST - 186 comments

A Star Wars/Calvin & Hobbes mashup t-shirt has gotten a lot of buzz, but the 'relentlessly cheerful' James Hance did it first (and it went semi-viral just a few days earlier). But Calvin and Hobbes have gotten 'mashed-up' before... a lot.
« Cthulhu and Hobbes.
« Batmin and Robbes.
« Fight Club (spoiler) illustrated and in text (previously).
« The controversial (for here) Calvin and Jobs.
« Calvin Rockwell
« Kraven the Hunter from Ryan Dunleavy's mashup collection (previously).
« Buddy Cops (incorrectly labeled as P.I.s).
« Semi-related: C&H meet Christopher Robin & Pooh, Hobbes Meets Tony and Role Reversal.
« And, of course, Calvin and Hobbes. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:24 PM PST - 26 comments

The Most Isolated Man on the Planet.
posted by homunculus at 2:40 PM PST - 68 comments

Christoph Schlingensief is dead. [more inside]
posted by Glow Bucket at 2:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Little North Korean girl playing guitar. North Korean children playing guitar.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:33 PM PST - 34 comments

Do we worry too much? Lenore Skenazy, who let her 9-year old ride the subway on his own and wrote about it, says yes. A lot of people were very unhappy about it. Now she finds herself at the head of a movement, complete with its own manual, to let kids be more self-reliant. [more inside]
posted by TNLNYC at 12:15 PM PST - 124 comments

The American Great Plains rival the Serengeti, according to National Geographic, but unlike in apparently more progressive Africa, the USA never protected the plains on a large scale. Now private interests under the The American Prairie Foundation are buying up land in Montana hoping to create a multi-million acre preserve that would be the largest privately funded conservation land venture on the planet, bigger than Yellowstone National Park, that one day may see the return of great migrating herds of bison, pronghorn antelope, deer and elk. Not all Montana ranchers are happy with the new Serengeti neighbor.
posted by stbalbach at 12:14 PM PST - 33 comments

The Tragic Death of Practically Everything -- a sad litany of technological defeatism and FUD.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:49 AM PST - 31 comments

Tomorrow after 37 previews and 1000 performances, Broadway will bid farewell to the critically-lauded, award-winning, first-ever revival of the classic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical South Pacific. [more inside]
posted by cvp at 8:05 AM PST - 17 comments

j and Bear have a baby. The Small Person Acquisition Project^MP3.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:58 AM PST - 19 comments

Macho Salad. [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 6:31 AM PST - 33 comments

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is wanted by the Swedish police, for a rape charge, according to the BBC. WikiLeaks has, of course, been highly controversial, since it published 91,000 documents on the war in Afghanistan. [more inside]
posted by ijsbrand at 4:52 AM PST - 520 comments

Fate of Universe revealed by galactic lens [spoiler alert] [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 10:16 PM PST - 43 comments

The Rub have completed their Hip Hop History series, creating a mix for every year between 1979 and 2009. Most mixes are average two hours in length. For some golden age hip hop, try a mix from 1987, 1994 or 1996.
posted by mattgeeknz at 10:03 PM PST - 38 comments

Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles--and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:46 PM PST - 54 comments

"Earth From Above" is the result of the aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand's five-year airborne odyssey across six continents.
posted by seagull.apollo at 9:32 PM PST - 19 comments

Jack Horkheimer, host of "Star Gazer" (formerly known as "Star Hustler") has died. See this excellent post on Horkheimer's work.
posted by achmorrison at 6:20 PM PST - 106 comments

Solipskier. Fri Flash Fun - Draw Snow, do tricks, ski fast don't crash and burn. Might want to mute the music.
posted by edgeways at 5:25 PM PST - 20 comments

Gnarls Barkley vocalist Cee-Lo Green has emerged as a music interview show host and a soloist with a distinctly funk style. His cover of Band of Horses' No One's Gonna Love You was featured on the Twilight soundtrack and his new single Georgia was featured in a recent episode of This American Life. His newest single is called Fuck You (lyrics NSFW, obviously).
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:32 PM PST - 83 comments

Not all queer or LGBT people are for legalizing gay marriage. The Against Equality collective argues that legalizing marriage values one type of relationship over another (.pdf), doesn't do enough for queer people of colour, and plays into the larger class struggle. Beyond Marriage calls for "access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status". Queer activists in Maine consider the marriage issue a "distraction from improving the lives of gay people", and Questioning Transphobia argues that "marriage by its very nature is an exclusive practice, its purpose is to ennoble some relationships and by default render other relationships to be less meaningful and less worthy of legal and social recognition". Mainstream queer women's website Autostraddle ponders all this and asks: does gay marriage make gays straight?
posted by divabat at 4:12 PM PST - 232 comments

Friday food sites for your weekend feast. eatingRD — from a registered dietician · A Conscious Feast — features cooking for company · Steamy Kitchen — focusing on fast, fresh, and simple Asian · Veggie Belly — something for the vegetarians. If that isn't enough, try Project Foodie, a one-stop, independent recipe search site with over 100,000 recipes all in one place. All found because of this cute trailer for Baked Explorations.
posted by netbros at 3:05 PM PST - 4 comments

Facebook Places is the latest creation of the Facebook team. Similar to Foursquare, it seeks to make it easier for people to share their location with their friends. Perhaps predictably, people are publicizing steps for how to disable it on your Facebook account. Over at Slate, writer Farhad Manjoo debates the impact Places might have on society. Ready, set, go!
posted by elder18 at 2:41 PM PST - 68 comments

A Warm Hug from a Cold Algorithm: Ta-Nehisi Coates checks out an inner-city school where every student takes a diagnostic test daily, and then is assigned individual work and tutelage based on a computer's nightly re-assessment.
posted by darth_tedious at 1:52 PM PST - 29 comments

Ultimate Frisbee as a Business model? [PDF] - An interesting take on the latest corporate scandal - the Christian Science Monitor points out that Spirit Of The Game could/should apply to big business. It's long been part of the Tech Startup world (google Cache Only - sorry). [previous Ultimate Thread]
posted by Metheglen at 1:43 PM PST - 27 comments

How to be frugal and still be asked on dates Though saving and overall frugality are making a comeback in all areas of life, dating remains the one area where it is (probably) not acceptable to be cheap.
posted by The1andonly at 1:39 PM PST - 42 comments

Beyond City Limits: The age of nations is over. The new urban age has begun. "The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city. In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. This new world is not -- and will not be -- one global village, so much as a network of different ones."
posted by homunculus at 1:10 PM PST - 31 comments

The online anthology of SciFi Strange.
posted by Artw at 12:08 PM PST - 17 comments

Telephoneme: Even if your Alphabet Conspiracy succeeds and you destroy the books, machines have no minds of their own. They are easily confused by different voices and different accents. It is the brain of man that tells them what to do. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:14 AM PST - 10 comments

Is our present defined by decisions we make in the future? And maybe we don't know who killed JFK because the universe hasn't decided yet. A Huffington Post science blogger discusses the nature of history from a quantum perspective. To quote Stephen Hawking, "The histories of the universe depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history." [more inside]
posted by GnomeChompsky at 10:35 AM PST - 91 comments

"This is crack cocaine," Bush solemnly announced, holding up a plastic bag filled with a white chunky substance in his Sept. 5 speech on drug policy. It was "seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House . . . . It could easily have been heroin or PCP." In 1989 the White House came up with the idea of having George H.W. Bush hold up a bag of crack on national television in order to illustrate how bad the US drug problem had gotten. They decided to have a drug buy set up in Lafayette Park, directly across the street from the White House, to obtain the props for his speech. They contacted a DEA agent who set up a drug buy with a Spingarn High School senior with no prior arrest record, but things didn't go as planned: [more inside]
posted by Challahtronix at 10:26 AM PST - 82 comments

In coming months, The [Los Angeles] Times will publish a series of articles and a database analyzing individual teachers' effectiveness in the nation's second-largest school district — the first time, experts say, such information has been made public anywhere in the country. This article examines the performance of more than 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers for whom reliable data were available. [more inside]
posted by Anything at 9:59 AM PST - 53 comments

Postcards from Berlin is a call from a Berlin (Germany) design studio for virtual postcards from all of the places in the US named Berlin.
posted by mkb at 8:25 AM PST - 29 comments

Mappiness is a free iPhone app that allows you to keep track of your happiness. It's also a research tool for London School of Economics scholars Susana Mourato and George MacKerron, who are using it to learn "how people's feelings are affected by features of their current environment—things like air pollution, noise, and green spaces." [more inside]
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:11 AM PST - 15 comments

More research into into the effects of ketamine on depression published today in the journal Science [abstract]. [more inside]
posted by yoHighness at 7:58 AM PST - 28 comments

MetaFilter users are
    55% male
    68% 18-49
    83% Caucasian
    54% >$60k/yr

How do I know? Perhaps a little zombie told me.
posted by DU at 7:48 AM PST - 91 comments

Linguistics Challenge Puzzles! (Difficulty ranging from green circles to double black diamonds...Friday fun for all!) [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam at 7:38 AM PST - 34 comments

A lot of old advertising, like the copy here, reads like literate AOL kids. They spell and capitalize and punctuate, but they're still hype machines stuck on exclamation marks and shouting and… boldface and underlines. Today, the fashion is for much shorter ad copy. If sound came along today, we'd come up with a catchphrase and call it a day. "Hear the difference." In 1929, if you didn’t have at least five catchphrases, some capitalized buzzwords, and several exclamation marks, you just weren't with it. [more inside]
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 7:38 AM PST - 6 comments

"German authors during this period wrote ceaselessly. Around 14,000 new publications appeared in a single year in 1843. Measured against population numbers at the time, this reaches nearly today's level ... the majority of the works were academic papers. The situation in England was very different ... we see deplorable progress in Great Britain. Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development -- in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom." (Related, Hoffner's presentation)
posted by geoff. at 7:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Tyler Cowen wonders if there will be a helium crisis. Nobel Prize Winner Robert Richardson says Yes, because in 1996 Congress passed an act requiring that this strategic reserve, which represents half the Earth's helium stocks, be sold off by 2015. As a result, helium is far too cheap and is not treated as a precious resource. The problem has been around for years. Most helium is NOT used for balloons but rather in industry, and in the US most helium comes from a few natural gas fields in the mountain states.Only 15 commercial plants worldwide have the ability to separate helium from other gases and to purify it. [Previously, see also LHC Accident]
posted by Blake at 5:33 AM PST - 44 comments

brentalfloss is a comedian, musician, and gamer. He first gained notoriety when he added lyrics to the title theme from Mega Man 3 and created the "With Lyrics" series on his Youtube channel, though his most recent hit is Dr. Mario With Lyrics. [more inside]
posted by ShawnStruck at 12:44 AM PST - 16 comments

It's Pelé Week on The Run of Play. Following some public spats between Maradona and Pelé (previously) at the recently concluded World Cup, Brian Phillips of The Run of Play (previously featured) observed that "it's bizarrely hard to care about [Pelé]", despite his unquestioned legendariness and unimpeachable skill with a football. But why? He and other writers attempt to address that question. [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty at 12:19 AM PST - 9 comments

Liger cubs attack a zookeeper while an uncle and nephew have a conversation. Liger Channel has a number of videos, so does Big Cat Rescue's ligers, tigers and lions section. For answers to the basic liger and tigon questions, Timothy J. Fuller has got you covered. I leave you with these tigon cubs: 1 and 2.
posted by Kattullus at 11:49 PM PST - 39 comments

Air New Zealand's new on-board safety video has been released and this time it features the All Blacks. (YouTube) Following on from its last innovative safety video (previously), Air New Zealand has produced another quirky safety video, this time featuring the national rugby team, the All Blacks. And the soundtrack features the iconic hit, "Why Does Love Do This To Me?" (YouTube) by the The Exponents. Pure kiwiness.
posted by vac2003 at 11:36 PM PST - 26 comments

Las Vegas as it almost was, as it was going to be, as it never will be, and as it still might.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:08 PM PST - 40 comments

"The idea behind this game was to push how large of a single Movieclip I could make each level, and in the process pay tribute to my absolute favourite game on the PS2, Shadow of the Colossus."
posted by griphus at 9:50 PM PST - 21 comments

Rock Band 3 features something new called "Pro Mode." What makes it Pro? Well, first of all, instead of the little colored flashers, the guitar and bass lines will stream down in tablature. Second, the guitar tracks in the game can also be played on the new Fender Squier Stratocaster (embedded video contains a couple of swear words), which is an actual guitar with Rock Band controller functionality.
posted by KathrynT at 9:29 PM PST - 80 comments

It's a nice day for a KRULL WEDDING. Back in 1983, a dozen lucky couples were married as a promotion for the 1983 scifi swashbuckler Krull. This is weird enough, but what's even more baffling is that Columbia Pictures scheduled this wedding before Krull even came out.
posted by Strawman at 9:08 PM PST - 84 comments

The BBC's Dimensions site lets you view a range of phenomena overlaid on different parts of the Earth. What if the moon was sitting on Alice Springs? What do the Pakistan floods look like if placed on England? What would the walls of Beijing look like around London? Much more to explore.
posted by Jimbob at 5:09 PM PST - 11 comments

Now get all your Simon's Cat needs fulfilled in one handy website. There's a new film (yay!) that would make Maru weep with envy, plus various downloads, as well as the inevitable online store and book. There's even an app for that cat. Sadly, I haven't been able to find a simple audio file of the PRRRRP! of accomplishment.
posted by maudlin at 5:04 PM PST - 31 comments

"Ever since the time of dinosaurs, man has told jokes. Humor has been evolving for literally millions of years. And many historians now believe that the current era may very well be the funniest time in the history of history. We’ve moved from an era of knock-knock jokes to a more sophisticated and mature form of comedy that represents the culmination of man’s struggle to evolve: The Deez Nuts Joke." [more inside]
posted by dhammond at 4:08 PM PST - 83 comments

The Timeless Beauty of National Geographic (and it's not about the photographs!)
posted by desjardins at 4:05 PM PST - 25 comments

Is the Trailer for 'The Shining' the Actual Film? [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 3:27 PM PST - 132 comments

Immigration crackdown creates insecure communities. The Makers of DeportationNation have a new report out calling into question the idea behind Secure Communities. Meanwhile, more immigrants are deported under Obama than Bush.
posted by history is a weapon at 3:26 PM PST - 19 comments

The Art of Videogames, a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit set to open in March 2012, has been featured on CNN today. But you don't have to wait until 2012 to get your fix of gaming history. CNN has let the cat out of the scanner: our very own Jason Scott (jscott) has finished GET LAMP. It's now shipping! [more inside]
posted by honest knave at 3:08 PM PST - 16 comments

The Tornado History Project: Google Maps meets historical data Tornado data turned into Google Maps that you can slice and dice any way you want: By State, by Date range, by Fujita number. Even records the path of long-track tornadoes. Hours of fun for weather weenies (like me!) and those interested in investigating trends over time. [more inside]
posted by spock at 2:46 PM PST - 14 comments

88-year old selling 400k record collection [more inside]
posted by msconduct at 2:44 PM PST - 39 comments

A comparison between my two new cameras: The $1,800 Canon 7D versus the brand new $50 Barbie Video Girl... available in the girlie aisle of your local Toys R Us. [more inside]
posted by heyho at 2:42 PM PST - 33 comments

Archon and M.U.L.E. Two of the best 8-bit games ever made, in the elder days when Electronic Arts was the best gaming company around. Play them again in modern re-creations.
posted by bitmage at 2:02 PM PST - 33 comments

Yesterday, reports leaked out that KFC was releasing a new sandwich, consisting of 5 layers of fried chicken skin between two (bread) buns. Sadly, it was later revealed to be a hoax. Undaunted, some people at the Chicago Tribune went ahead and made the sandwich anyway.
posted by reenum at 2:02 PM PST - 92 comments

Climate change and the vuvuzela leave mark on Oxford Dictionary of English. Other words and phrases introduced for the latest edition include 'toxic debt', 'staycation', 'cheesebal' and 'national treasure'. To balance them out among the 2,000 or so new items there are a few more left-field choices. Among them are 'cheeseball', which refers to someone or something lacking taste, style or originality, and the more disturbing phenomenon of 'hikikomori', the Japanese word for the acute social withdrawal that occurs in some teenage boys.
posted by Fizz at 1:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Can a stand-up comedian's performance be objectively evaluated and ranked? In the recent documentary I Am Comic [imdb | clips], Steve Roye demonstrates his product, the Comedy Evaluator Pro. A "Positive Audience Response" (PAR) score is the percentage of PAR during the time the comedian is on the stage (not taking into account other factors such as venue size, etc.). Of course, this method stirs controversy about the art vs. science of stand-up. Ritch Shydner, the protagonist of I Am Comic, thinks that booking agents shouldn't rely on PAR scores to choose who gets to be on stage, while the director of I Am Comic, Jordan Brady, disagrees, seeing PAR as a way to elevate the quality of stand-up. So, drum roll, please: Who is the world's funniest comedian? According to PAR score, it's J.R. Redwater, during this bit at the Pow Wow Comedy Jam. [agree | disagree]
posted by not_on_display at 1:38 PM PST - 112 comments

Japanese navy recruitment vs. American navy recruitment. American military advert vs. a Swedish one. Just for fun, a Ukrainian military ad. All links from this Reddit thread.
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:56 PM PST - 35 comments

Christiane Kubrick is interviewed by Jon Ronson on the sad events of her life since her husbands death in 1999... After a triumplant screening of Paths of Glory in central London's Somerset House Christiane Kubrick speaks to Jon Ronson, the producer of the revelatory 'Stanley Kubrick's Boxes' documentary. Various Kubrick resources can be found on the web but one of the oldest, academicly themed resources can be found here. Previously on the blue here and here. If you are in or visiting London then the fantastic University Of The Arts archive is amazing. These developments make me sad but let's look forward.
posted by Mintyblonde at 12:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Noncoding "junk" DNA is a signature part of the genomes of eukaryotes. Scientists have now identified a case of such DNA causing a genetic disease (Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy) in certain genetic backgrounds by stabilizing the messenger RNA of a gene.
posted by jjray at 12:42 PM PST - 19 comments

The Gray And The Brown - why the baby boom generation's concerns about race may mean that it's stabbing itself in the back as it moves into retirement.
posted by Artw at 12:04 PM PST - 66 comments

What different sorting algorithms sound like. "[...] audibilization is just one of many ways to generate sound from running sorting algorithms. Here on every comparison of two numbers (elements) I play (mixing) sin waves with frequencies modulated by values of these numbers." Two older ^[previously] attempts (with code).
posted by spiderskull at 11:28 AM PST - 24 comments

Perhaps following the original Stig, the current masked driver on Top Gear announced they would write an autobiography. Un/fortunately the secrecy clause of his contract has been brought up, and the lawyers rear their heads. There is talk-talk of 'human rights' issues. British radio talk shows seem to be amused (no links fellows, alas)
posted by LD Feral at 11:27 AM PST - 26 comments

rage is a weekend-only night-time music video show on Australia's ABC1 that started back in 1987. The presentation was minimal, with an intro, hours of music videos, and then the outro, no adverts, and a few variations from this no-frills format. The format remains largely unchanged to date, and you can check the archive of playlists (back to 1998) and see a mix of local talent and international hits, but one thing was missing: the videos. Enter the rage YouTube playlist generator. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:02 AM PST - 26 comments

There comes a time in every child's life when they must dance to 'Thriller' at a roller rink dance party
posted by jtron at 10:49 AM PST - 10 comments

Goodwill: Monetary policy for the 21st century
Here's my proposal. We should try to arrange things so that the marginal unit of CPI is purchased with "helicopter drop" money. That is, rather than trying to fine-tune wages, asset prices, or credit, central banks should be in the business of fine tuning a rate of transfers from the bank to the public. [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:56 AM PST - 20 comments

'Jazz' is the best word to use in hangman.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:26 AM PST - 95 comments

Over the course of four months earlier this year, Dave at Goodfella's Movie Blog posted 100 (!) sharply written analyses of a wide range of classic Noir films. The top position was a bit of a surprise amid the obvious standards, but the real meat is in his informative takes on dozens of lesser-known gems. [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 5:43 AM PST - 62 comments

Space Settlements collects various resources relating to the human colonisation of space: online books (including NASA studies from 1975, 1977 and 1992), a contest for schoolkids (so NASA can steal their ideas, natch), but most importantly, kitschy 70s pictures of proposed space colonies (toroidal, spherical, OR cylindrical!).
posted by Dim Siawns at 4:57 AM PST - 17 comments

Although Americans' appetite for local, grass-fed beef is growing, regional livestock farmers face a nagging problem: a shortage of slaughterhouses. Now some of them are turning to mobile operations to butcher their animals on their own farms. Mobile slaughter units feed the local food movement
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:40 AM PST - 62 comments

Reflections on expat parenting in China
posted by bardophile at 3:08 AM PST - 23 comments

Yeasayer's first album was so deeply 'World Musicky' you'd be forgiven if you thought they were from Kathmandu or Uzbekistan rather than Brooklyn. Their second album is somewhat more accessible, but their videos...well, "Ambling Alp" is full of people without clothes (semi-blurred NSFWness!) or without faces or made of clay or liquid metal, and "O.N.E." is a visit to a sci-fi rave and a game of tetra-dimensional-backgammon with a CGI morphing dude. But their newest, "Madder Red" features Veronica Mars' Kristen Bell and her pet... uh... welll... WTF IS THAT THING?!?
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:52 AM PST - 27 comments

The last combat troops have left Iraq. Civilian contractors are expected to continue the effort.
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:18 AM PST - 162 comments

The Story of Hanny So Far [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:10 AM PST - 12 comments

On August 28th 1990, between 3:15 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. a devastating tornado ripped a 16.4 mile-long path through portions of Kendall and Will counties in northern Illinois. At its strongest, the tornado was rated F5, the highest rating a tornado can be given. A total of 29 people were killed and 350 more were injured. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 1:40 AM PST - 22 comments

Health, Grooming, and Medicine in the Viking Age. "John of Wallingford, the abbot of St. Albans Abbey wrote in his chronicles that the Norse invaders in England were far more attractive to Anglo-Saxon women since, unlike Anglo-Saxon men, they combed their hair daily, took baths weekly, and laundered their clothing regularly."
posted by rodgerd at 12:28 AM PST - 48 comments

For 133 years, over half its citizens remained disenfranchised, merely because of an accident of their birth. The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause did not grant them rights. But ninety years ago yesterday -- within living memory --, a minority majority finally gained its rights.
posted by orthogonality at 11:48 PM PST - 51 comments

Le blog de VelosVintage is a gorgeous French blog chock full of detailed photographs and history of beautiful vintage racing bicycles from older to newer.
posted by loquacious at 11:30 PM PST - 10 comments

Let's take a walk through the Google graveyard.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:58 PM PST - 45 comments

Japanese Ice Cream Robot (Warning: opera music in videos done circus style.)
posted by LeLiLo at 9:47 PM PST - 9 comments

How to avoid visiting any Stephens Group publications even by accident, if you use FireFox. The Stephens Group (AKA Righthaven) has been suing bloggers who link to and quote any of their publications' web sites. (Such as.) So now there's a FireFox plugin you can use to make sure you don't visit any of them. Use it in good health.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:54 PM PST - 31 comments

After nearly a decade in dark blue, the entertainment review aggregator site Metacritic.com launched its first major redesign last week, abandoning its old data- and list-heavy format for graphics, features and a more professional white background. The site invited users to comment on the changes on its blog, where they are being almost universally panned. [more inside]
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 7:56 PM PST - 65 comments

This is CTRL+W33D it is a gay weirdness tumblr blog. It is NSFW.
posted by The Whelk at 7:34 PM PST - 39 comments

Scottish researchers have developed what they call a “super” biofuel using by-products of whiskey production. Given the enormity of Scotland’s £4 billion ($6 billion) whiskey industry, scientists say there is the potential for whiskey biofuel to emerge as a significant source of fuel for cars and even airplanes.
posted by stbalbach at 6:36 PM PST - 39 comments

Road to the Stars (Doroga k Zvezdam, 1958) was a remarkable Soviet documentary about the future of space exploration, directed by the "Godfather of Star Wars" and still admired for its impressive miniature effects. Watch the entire film.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 5:30 PM PST - 7 comments

Marcel is a friendly young shell with pink sneakers A very cute stop-motion short by filmmaker Dean Fleischer-Camp. Via The Daily Wh.at
posted by Morrigan at 5:14 PM PST - 8 comments

the unsettling truth about life (slyt), via trey parker and matt stone
posted by Avenger50 at 4:58 PM PST - 33 comments

Today, Mexico announced new, tighter tariffs on American goods, including restrictions on U.S. chewing gum. Some say it's because of Teamsters, but the hatred of American chewing gum may harken back to a 19th century military coup. Exiled after numerous attempts to rule Mexico as a military dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (yes, that General Santa Anna) spent part of his time in exile in -- of all places -- Staten Island. Santa Anna planned to fund his new army with a secret asset: he intended to sell chicle to the Americans. Although the General thought it had more uses, inventor Thomas Adams found the stuff fun to chew on. A few years later, Adams flavored his gum, inventing Black Jack Gum, the oldest continually-made chewing gum in the United States. Sadly, due to recent tariffs, General Santa Anna's army-building Black Jack chewing gum will now cost 20% more to export to Mexico.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:53 PM PST - 15 comments

Joseph Gordon-Levitt covers an iconic song that does not belong to him. [via Katie West's NSFW tumblr]
posted by cgc373 at 4:02 PM PST - 65 comments

"This is a blog documenting a project that will span exactly one year, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. On each of those 365 days, I will photograph or draw (and occasionally paint) one collection. Most of the collections are real and exist in my home or studio; those I will photograph. Some are imagined; those I will draw or (occasionally) paint."
posted by gman at 3:33 PM PST - 11 comments

As the "ground zero mosque" story approaches bipartisan consensus, thanks to unexpected statements by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (joining a growing opposition), several journalists trace the origins of how the Park 51 community center became(warning: CNN) a toxic subject. What they found was Pamela Geller, a blogger at Atlas Shrugs, who has some very interesting vlogs. You may previously know her from this cozy 2006 interview with Bush's infamous anti-UN UN ambassador John Bolton.
posted by mek at 2:27 PM PST - 413 comments

Twenty-somethings today don't quite fit the definition of adolescence or adulthood. This has thrown the human development gurus for a loop. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 1:51 PM PST - 132 comments

2010 Miss Universe national costumes. "Because there is nothing more cracktastic than the national costumes portion of the Miss Universe Pageant. It makes competitive figure skating costumes look understated and minimalist."
posted by arielmeadow at 1:46 PM PST - 99 comments

You know what's great about Hawaii? Its isolation can produce interesting forms of life, such as Eupethecia staurophragma i.e. carnivorous caterpillars! Don't believe it? Watch the video or view the photos (via boingboing).

Aww, are you giant carnivorous centipede lovers feeling neglected? No, problem Mefi has covered that.
posted by nomadicink at 1:35 PM PST - 21 comments

The Web is dead. Or maybe it isn't.
posted by Artw at 11:59 AM PST - 73 comments

"You know that moment when you are at your favourite restaurant and you bite into a juicy steak? Well, we create those steaks by sharing the wine with the cattle." So says the mission statement for Sezmu Meats. You've probably heard of Kobe beef which according to popular belief is fed one beer per day, massaged with sake daily, brushed to set their fur, and fed on grain fodder. "The cattle at Semu Meats are raised in the beautiful Okanagan Valley located in British Columbia, Canada. They enjoy a diet of grass until they reach a desirable size at which point their diet matures. Then they are fed a proprietary blend of grains with a cow sized glass of red BC wine every day until production. A cow sized glass is well over a bottle of wine! Then the beef is dry aged for 21 days to achieve maximum flavour." Check out their blog: Okanagan Daily Special to view some pictures that compare beef fed without wine and those with.
posted by Fizz at 11:50 AM PST - 46 comments

A Complete History of the Soviet Union through the eyes of a humble worker, arranged to the melody of Tetris by Pig With The Face Of A Boy. (previously)
posted by HumanComplex at 11:33 AM PST - 12 comments

Once as a youngin, I got mad lost trying to drive home in Philadelphia and thought I saw a horse looking at me from a knocked out window of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. I wasn't hallucinating. [more inside]
posted by WeekendJen at 11:17 AM PST - 29 comments

'In 1951, there wasn't a more passionate rivalry in sports than the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Giants fans hated Dodger fans. Dodger fans hated Giants fans. Fathers passed it on to sons. In August, the Giants were thirteen and a half games out of first place. That's insurmountable. Your season's over. But mnh-mnh. Giants come back from thirteen and a half games, fall into a first-place tie with, guess who -- the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now, they play a playoff game to see who gets to go to the World Series and the Dodgers have it won, right? Until a guy named Bobby Thomson hit what they called "the shot heard 'round the world."' -- Sports Night. Bobby Thomson, who hit the possibly the most famous home run in baseball history, has died at age 86. [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:24 AM PST - 43 comments

Tao Lin will have the scallops.
posted by TheWash at 10:19 AM PST - 40 comments

"For friends and fans of John Lurie, there’s a disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker. The title of the piece is Sleeping With Weapons (sadly, abstract only for non-subscribers) and it's a strange and sad tale. John has been in hiding for the past 18 months to avoid a former friend who is supposedly stalking him. In addition, he has a mysterious illness that kept him a virtual prisoner in his apartment for six years." [more inside]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:02 AM PST - 60 comments

Fraktur mon amour: Ruud Linssen’s Book of War, Mortification and Love is a collection of “essays on voluntary suffering” that works as a specimen of the Fakir blackletter typeface issued by merry pranksters Underware. Bored already? Well, try this on for size: It’s “printed in the author’s blood.”
posted by joeclark at 9:59 AM PST - 10 comments

As weird themed tumblrs go, this one is a weird, themed tumblr. (Some images NSFW, all images Not Safe for Your Sanity)
posted by jacquilynne at 9:37 AM PST - 40 comments

One psychology professor, looking at the oversupply of PhDs for a very limited number of academic jobs, thinks that programs should simply stop admitting PhD students, and has decided not to add any others to her own lab.
posted by grouse at 8:09 AM PST - 118 comments

The surreal art of Alex Andreyev. The Invincible - Eden - Metronomicon - Kin-Dza-Dza [more inside]
posted by BeerFilter at 7:26 AM PST - 8 comments

Did you ever wonder how they come up with new Jelly Belly™ flavors? Me neither, but this article's actually kind of interesting. Did you know that Blueberry was invented for the 1981 Presidential Inauguration? Some people review the flavors (even the awful ones). Of course, you can mix the flavors (previously) - but some people take it so much further than others. And the inventor's story has been made into a film! [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:42 AM PST - 35 comments

Who Killed Captain Alex - Uganda first action movie (Possible NSFW if offended by the most unrealistic cgi blood in the history of cinema)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:17 AM PST - 26 comments

After making his 1967 gangster film Branded to Kill, director Seijun Suzuki was fired from the Nikattsu studio and didn't find work again for ten years. He sued for wrongful termination, but was still blacklisted. Still, he has managed to amass an impressive body of work. [more inside]
posted by dortmunder at 4:00 AM PST - 12 comments

In a series of two essays, author Tim Wise (previously) discusses similarities and differences between how the American political right and left manifest racism. [more inside]
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 1:24 AM PST - 58 comments

Ray Kurzweil: Reverse-Engineering of Human Brain Likely by 2030. PZ Myers: Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain.
posted by homunculus at 1:11 AM PST - 195 comments

This will be helpful if crossing out to-do lists and calendars work for you when you want to get organized... [more inside]
posted by fantodstic at 11:56 PM PST - 14 comments

A Series of Questions is an ongoing photo project that "explores the power dynamics inherent in the questions asked of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender-variant people."
posted by lullaby at 10:51 PM PST - 36 comments

Valentino Achak Deng was a young Dinka boy in southern Sudan in the 1980s when his village was destroyed by government militia. He became one of the over 25,000 refugee children collectively known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan." Valentino spent nine years living in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya before emigrating to the US in 2001. In 2003, he met American writer Dave Eggers, and the two collaborated on the fictionalized "What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng." The two always intended for the proceeds from the book to support Valentino's hometown of Marial Bai in Sudan. They created the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation as a vehicle for this. In May 2009, the Foundation opened the Marial Bai Secondary School, the only "fully functioning secondary school in the entire region." The school is free and admissions policies favor orphans. However, many families wouldn't let their daughters attend, so Valentino built a girls' dormitory, and now 100 girls are able to live on-campus and focus on school full-time. The school has 260 students total. [more inside]
posted by bluedaisy at 10:33 PM PST - 12 comments

jetBlue Unlimited Flights for 30 days $499 (or $699) [more inside]
posted by MrBCID at 10:22 PM PST - 58 comments

Töken Experience It's only a prototype, but I think the video more than makes up for it. Via
posted by fizzzzzzzzzzzy at 10:19 PM PST - 12 comments

Rush Limbaugh with an audience. [SLYT]
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:43 PM PST - 59 comments

Greg's Cable Map: the world's undersea data-cable architecture.
posted by jjray at 9:43 PM PST - 21 comments

Bears guarded B.C. grow-op: RCMP
posted by joannemerriam at 7:43 PM PST - 55 comments

2010 yo-yo chamion. (SLYT)
posted by twirlypen at 7:22 PM PST - 28 comments

Blago walks, mostly. Short and sweet: Jury was hung on 23 counts, convicted him on 1. That count was "lying to federal investigators" when he told them that he didn't care about nor was involved with fundraising. Max jailtime for this one is 5 years. They were, reportedly, 11-1 on all others. [more inside]
posted by gjc at 6:52 PM PST - 57 comments

In an unusual about-face for such a public Conservative personality, Ann Coulter (the "Right-Wing Judy Garland") will be headlining an upcoming gathering of Gay Conservatives called HOMOCON 2010. Reaction on all sides of the aisle is mixed, to put it charitably. [more inside]
posted by Azazel Fel at 6:44 PM PST - 94 comments

A Kindle, iPad and printed book are magnified 400x.
posted by stbalbach at 6:17 PM PST - 53 comments

This document is confidential.
posted by scalefree at 5:32 PM PST - 53 comments

The Ice Fracture Explorer is Joseph Shoer's concept for an unmanned expedition into the oceans of Europa. [via]
posted by brundlefly at 5:08 PM PST - 19 comments

X-Japan, arguably Japan's most famous rock band ever, is touring America for the very first time. The founders of the musical movement known as Visual Kai, X-Japan are virtually unknown outside of the kotaku and metalheads with a penchant for the dramatic. But their distinctly Japanese fashion and dramatic, theatrical speed metal music proved to make them enormously popular in Japan during their hayday. Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi even is an admitted fan of the band. Over the course of 6 studio albums the band presented everything from raw speed metal to 30 plus minute epics. And now, for the first time ever, be touring North America after a featured spot on Lollapalooza's main stage this summer.
posted by mediocre at 4:35 PM PST - 40 comments

The Twinkie is made up of 37 or so ingredients and this is what they look like. (previously) [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:22 PM PST - 63 comments

Is It Okay to Be a Luddite? Thomas Pynchon wants to know. In an essay from 1984, Pynchon responds to the 25th Anniversary of C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." [more inside]
posted by outlandishmarxist at 3:20 PM PST - 38 comments

"This is the best day of my life. I want a cold beer and a shotgun. I’m definitely losing my mind." The third annual NW Rapha Gentleman’s (Bicycle) Race took place this past weekend. Featuring a punishing route that follows the northern base of Oregon's Mt. Hood from Forest Grove to Portland, six-person teams traverse 125 miles over a 6400 foot elevation gain. It's 20% dirt and many miles of gravel climbs. Route Map. Another Recap. Photos. Background. A Saturday in Hell. (Via mathowie)
posted by zarq at 1:32 PM PST - 19 comments

Sans Soleil is a pseudo-documentary meditation on memory by Chris Marker (of La Jetée fame)
posted by juv3nal at 12:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Don't be a dick, you're speaking with God's voice!
posted by jtron at 12:32 PM PST - 156 comments

Gifts from The King of the Internet. Observe, Falconer; the great consulting detective and pervert. His early years as a male prostitute had quite ruined his spine, although they'd also gifted him with his sharp senses and preternaturally strong tongue. Consider also, Cathcart Zen; chemical atrocity and monument to manhood. [more inside]
posted by Lorc at 12:11 PM PST - 13 comments

When all your information is digital, meals are takeout, and your daily wardrobe consists of a black turtleneck and jeans, what’s the point of having, well… stuff? Meet the ultra-minimalists, people who have decided to purge their possessions down to a hundred items or less.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:05 PM PST - 203 comments

Robert A. Heinlein: The Tor.com Blog Symposium - a series of blog posts commemorating the publication the first half of a new biography of Robert Heinlein. Interview with the Biographer.
posted by Artw at 11:53 AM PST - 23 comments

The first time I met ERIC, I fell in love. Maybe you will, too. The Education Resources Information Center is a project of the US Department of Education. Some of you may especially be interested in the wide variety of language learning materials, journal articles, and more, that go way beyond even the public domain Foreign Services Institute offerings, from Aymara for Spanish speakers (English, too) to Uzbek study for Peace Corps volunteers. There is also non-language stuff of all kinds like World Myths and Legends in Art and teaching (or learning) buckyballs. Best results when using advanced search for their full-text links only.
posted by whatzit at 11:46 AM PST - 11 comments

John Billes—whose extracurricular exploits as an undergraduate at UT Austin brought us iPhone-controlled dance floor lights, R/C cars, and yes, even full-size automobiles—has created the KegMate—a keg-mounted, Arduino-controlled data-logging suite with an iPad-based user interface—in his spare time, while working at Yelp.
posted by defenestration at 9:46 AM PST - 8 comments

“That’s what the badge says.” Dear God, celebrity had already wreaked havoc on me. —A single-link Paris Review blog entry in which voice actor Colin Nissan tries to find himself in Red Dead Redemption.
posted by kipmanley at 9:25 AM PST - 48 comments

"I did not humiliate those detainees. I didn't hit them, I didn't act toward them unpleasantly. It's completely different than the American soldier some are trying to compare me to," she told Israel Radio. The IDF has condemned her behavior. Meanwhile, this is not the first time Facebook has caused an issue for the IDF.
posted by griphus at 9:23 AM PST - 45 comments

In October 2008 Grammy and Golden Globe award winner Joaquin Phoenix announced his retirement from acting in order to make his name in the world of hip-hop, with the help of Sean 'P-Diddy' Combs and brother-in-law Casey Affleck, who documented the effort on film. No word on whether footage from the very strange Letterman appearance is included (previously) although other, odder behavior does play a role. Now watch the teaser trailer for I’m Still Here: The Lost Year Of Joaquin Phoenix.
posted by waraw at 9:18 AM PST - 50 comments

"Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude." Jonah Lehrer for The Wall Street Journal writes about recent findings on power, corruption, and authority and what can be done about it.
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 AM PST - 28 comments

The 25 Most Disturbing Films Ever. Starts at #25, but the full list with links can be found below the fold. Some pages NSFW. [more inside]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:36 AM PST - 252 comments

If you have some time that needs to be filled with music, you might want to listen to all the symphonies of Shostakovich and perhaps all of Bruckner's as well - Bernard Haitink's recordings of these two cycles are available for listening on myspace (of all places).
posted by Wolfdog at 8:34 AM PST - 8 comments

Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, wanted to find out how the human brain processes time in a near death situation. [more inside]
posted by two lights above the sea at 8:20 AM PST - 24 comments

Even though Starbucks was founded by an english teacher, history teacher and writer, the company has grown to have a particular relationship with language, especially with its drink menu. Notably, the sizes of drinks defies commonly understood usage as it attempts to engage customers on multiple levels while providing a new experience. Said experience has resulted in a glossary of terms and even step by step instructions on how to order and decode the lingo.

All of this helps to explain the recent trouble English professor Lynne Rosenthal had at a Starbuck's on New York City's Upper West Side when she ordered a plain multigrain bagel. [more inside]
posted by nomadicink at 6:51 AM PST - 332 comments

Who comes up with that annual list of generational markers that aims to help college faculty better understand their incoming freshmen? These guys do. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 6:24 AM PST - 77 comments

Real-life Quasimodo uncovered in Tate archives. A new discovery appears to reveal the real-life inspiration behind the character from Hugo's seminal novel, which tells the story of the deaf bell-ringer of Notre Dame and his unrequited love for the gipsy girl Esmeralda.
posted by Fizz at 6:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Tests indicate that imported “extra virgin”olive oil often fails international and USDA standards. (pdf) The UC Davis Olive center reports that "69 percent of imported olive oil samples and 10 percent of California olive oil samples labeled as extra virgin olive oil failed to meet the IOC/USDA sensory (organoleptic) standards for extra virgin olive oil." [more inside]
posted by three blind mice at 4:18 AM PST - 60 comments

The Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project was a large-scale, four-year, experimental study of reduced class size. This year researchers examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children (now adults) from Project STAR. They found [PDF] the kids who learned more in kndergarten were more likely to go to college, less likely to become single parents, more likely to be saving for retirement and they were earning more. They estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year in extra income for the entire class. The NYT Has More.
posted by Blake at 4:16 AM PST - 32 comments

Justin Bieber's 'U Smile', played 800 time slower. Sounds like Sigur Ros doing Vangelis covers in a cathedral being washed away by the sea. The original song.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:25 AM PST - 174 comments

One more thing to ease our collective guilt: Organic Golf. "Opened eight years ago, the club is thought to be the only completely organic golf course in the United States, its 18 holes groomed without the use of a single synthetic pesticide, fertilizer, herbicide or other artificial chemical treatment."
posted by Xurando at 3:07 AM PST - 7 comments

Rice University to sell student-run radio station KTRU 91.7FM for a reported $9.5million to the University of Houston. [more inside]
posted by unknowncommand at 12:33 AM PST - 38 comments

Plastica, covering some of your favorites - on toy instruments. Metallica, Rush and a decent stab at Dream Theater.
posted by lifeless at 12:24 AM PST - 19 comments

Chantix (aka Champix) is a drug developed to help people quit smoking. It works by binding nicotine receptors in the brain. It has side effects -- nausea, gas, suicidal ideation, and strange dreams. "Strange dreams"? Yep, it's right there in the official side-effects from Pfizer (17.13). Here's a strange dream. Here's another. Here's some more. [more inside]
posted by CCBC at 10:25 PM PST - 62 comments

The man who walked around the world. SLYT of actor Robert Carlyle advertising scotch whisky, elegantly and entertainingly done in a single take.
posted by wilful at 9:17 PM PST - 89 comments

8 poeple died on Saturday, August 14th when an off-road truck race driver accidentally veered into the crowd of spectators in California's Mojave Desert. Andrew Therrien , 22, was there and pushed three people out of the way when the truck jumped off course, saving their lives. One of them was his three-year-old daughter. Therrien was killed instantly.
posted by Tenacious.Me.Tokyo at 8:58 PM PST - 74 comments

"databending is, in essence, the artistic misuse of digital information." [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 8:09 PM PST - 13 comments

Ray Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction. Now, his reputation is complete, with a work-inappropriate music video about sleeping with him. [more inside]
posted by audacity at 8:01 PM PST - 57 comments

"A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone" Walt Whitman wrote these words in the poem Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60. Not until this year did a team of forensic astronomers at Texas State University, with the assistance of a painting from the Hudson River School, figure out what he was really talking about. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 7:55 PM PST - 15 comments

Having taken on the biggest job in biomedicine — leading the US National Institutes of Health — Francis Collins must now help his agency over a funding cliff.
posted by jjray at 7:22 PM PST - 19 comments

Jonathan Franzen makes a video partially about why he doesn't like making videos.
posted by anothermug at 7:10 PM PST - 11 comments

John Campbell, of Pictures for Sad Children fame, had an art show.
posted by JimBennett at 6:32 PM PST - 8 comments

Last Friday, prop 8 supporters filed an emergency stay of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling with the 9th circuit. Today the stay was granted but the appeal has been expedited and oral arguments will be heard on the 6th of December, less than four months from now. [more inside]
posted by Talez at 5:22 PM PST - 138 comments

I want something like Facebook. And don’t try to rip me off, I know that Facebook is free.
A collection of anonymously contributed client horror stories from designers. [more inside]
posted by i_cola at 3:16 PM PST - 141 comments

(MeFi's own) defective yeti popularized the Bad Review Revue, but I think Scott Pilgrim vs The Critics may have perfected it!
posted by straight at 2:26 PM PST - 130 comments

"It was two final actions in the weeks before Mr. Morrissey's death that his family and friends believe pushed him over the edge. First, Mr. Genoways sent an e-mail message to Mr. Morrissey in mid-July, 10 days before his death (a copy of which The Chronicle has obtained), telling Mr. Morrissey that he had "engaged in unacceptable workplace behavior." [Second,] On the morning of Mr. Morrissey's death, Friday, July 30th, Mr. Genoways sent Mr. Morrissey another e-mail message, says Mr. Morrissey's sister, accusing Mr. Morrissey of ignoring a plea for help from a man who had worked under dangerous conditions to help VQR with a recent story. Ms. Morrissey says Mr. Genoways wrote that in ignoring the man, Mr. Morrissey had put the man's life at risk." A look into the death of Virginia Quarterly Review editor Kevin Morrissey. (Previously)
posted by geoff. at 2:25 PM PST - 45 comments

Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future. 'Music labels and radio broadcasters can't agree on much, including whether radio should be forced to turn over hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for the music it plays. But the two sides can agree on this: Congress should mandate that FM radio receivers be built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable electronics. The Consumer Electronics Association, whose members build the devices that would be affected by such a directive, is incandescent with rage. "The backroom scheme of the [National Association of Broadcasters] and RIAA to have Congress mandate broadcast radios in portable devices, including mobile phones, is the height of absurdity," thundered CEA president Gary Shapiro. Such a move is "not in our national interest." "Rather than adapt to the digital marketplace, NAB and RIAA act like buggy-whip industries that refuse to innovate and seek to impose penalties on those that do." But the music and radio industries say it's a consumer-focused proposition, one that would provide "more music choices."' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 2:22 PM PST - 91 comments

30 Dates. 30 Days. 30 Cities. "Kevin Richberg, a 32-year-old gay man (and good man) from Boston, is looking for the love of his life. He’s picked an unusual way to find him." (Interview with Kevin.) [more inside]
posted by andoatnp at 2:17 PM PST - 20 comments

Many have pointed to the debilitating payments that Haiti had to make to France to compensate slave owners at the begining of the country's history as the key reason why it has been mired in poverty ever since - in stark contrast to it's neighbour the Domican Republic. Now there are calls for France to repay $23 Billion via an open letter. Of course, the US has had it's own debate over this sensitive issue for a while now.
posted by helmutdog at 12:34 PM PST - 41 comments

Persona. Jason Travis creates diptychs of people and the stuff in their bags.
posted by chunking express at 12:09 PM PST - 38 comments

The great jazz photographer Herman Leonard is dead at 87. Leonard took photos of some of the best, including Art Tatum, Dizzie Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie "The Bird" Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Miles Davis -- to name a few. He led an interesting life, which included losing thousands of prints (though not, fortunately, the safeguarded negatives) to Hurricane Katrina. Here are a few of his shots. Previously on Metafilter.
posted by bearwife at 12:02 PM PST - 6 comments

Microsoft’s IE turns 15. Starting as a licensed version of Mosaic, it is now up to version 8 and a platform preview of version 9 was recently released. Don't expect everyone to migrate over to 9 in a hurry though: It's for Vista and Windows 7 only. Meanwhile, despite everyone's best efforts, IE6 grimly hangs on to life.
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM PST - 93 comments

Energy shortages and poor sanitation are two of the most serious problems in refugee camps. Now engineers say they can solve both problems by harvesting energy from human excrement.

Refugee camps to use gas from human waste.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:27 AM PST - 34 comments

Umineko no Naku Koro ni (warning: that entire description is possibly a lie) is a dojin visual novel (or, as the creators prefer, a sound novel) that has recently reached its seventh chapter Japanese. In addition, a group called the Witch Hunt has recently released an English patch for the sixth chapter. Forming the third and fourth part of the When They Cry series that began with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Umineko cranks the concept of metanarrative up to 11 and then breaks the knob. [more inside]
posted by charred husk at 11:10 AM PST - 9 comments

China is now the world's second-largest economy.
posted by knave at 9:26 AM PST - 70 comments

The Plague Dogs (can also be watched instantly on Netflix) is a gory animated feature adapted from Richard Adams' novel about two escapees from an animal research lab. It was released in 1982 but effectively vanished because of its spotty video release history and its mature content. Enjoy the trailer. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 9:22 AM PST - 66 comments

Bammi is an easy little distraction game I've had saved to my bookmarks bar for a couple years now. It just occurred to me that others might like it, too. [more inside]
posted by phunniemee at 8:16 AM PST - 45 comments

Scientists go off the grid to see what happens to their brains. A group of experienced brain scientists come together and take a rafting and hiking trip in wild Utah. Their experience is enlightening (though perhaps not transformative).
posted by GnomeChompsky at 7:51 AM PST - 44 comments

FACTUM. To produce the series of works collectively titled FACTUM (2010), Candice Breitz conducted intensive interviews with seven pairs of identical twins and a single set of identical triplets in and around Toronto during the summer of 2009, footage from which she then edited seven dual-channel video installations (and one tri-channel video installation). Like Robert Rauschenberg's near-identical paintings FACTUM I and FACTUM II (both 1957), from which the series borrows its title, each interviewee in FACTUM is an imperfect facsimile of their twin: their apparent identicality is soon disrupted by a host of subtle differences. FACTUM KANG, FACTUM TREMBLAY, FACTUM MISERICORDIA, FACTUM TANG, FACTUM McNAMARA.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:31 AM PST - 11 comments

Washington, We Have a Problem. On the heels of a New Yorker feature exploring the question, "Just How Broken Is The Senate," Vanity Fair publishes a look at the (mindboggling) day-to-day life of the modern US Presidency.
posted by availablelight at 6:36 AM PST - 121 comments

In 1939, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark performed an experiment with dolls which was instrumental to Brown vs Board of Education, a case that struck down black/white segregation in American education. Earlier this year, CNN's AC360 aired the results (update, also) of a follow up statistical study on racial bias in today's children. Anderson Cooper himself explains his motives. [more inside]
posted by knz at 12:04 AM PST - 72 comments

Relatives of the passengers, survivors, and crew of the RMS Titanic are planning a Centenary Cruise on April 8th, 2012, 100 years after the sailing of the ill-fated liner. (The actual centenary of the sailing is April 10th.) [more inside]
posted by pjern at 9:12 PM PST - 54 comments

Jetting through the Grand Canyon in a Lockheed T-33 in 1959. RAF pilot Ron Dick flies a Lockheed T-33 through the Grand Canyon in 1959. Video hosted by Air and Space magazine. Music by Joe Satriani. [more inside]
posted by smcameron at 7:44 PM PST - 96 comments

Kevin Warwick plugged his nervous system into his wife's. [more inside]
posted by mhjb at 7:33 PM PST - 55 comments

Sixth-grader Jackson C. Frank was horribly burned when the boiler at his Cheektowaga, New York, elementary school exploded March 31, 1954, killing fifteen of his classmates. While recovering from his injuries, Frank was introduced to the guitar, and the insurance settlement he received a decade later helped fund a trip to England, where he recorded his first and only album. [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 6:30 PM PST - 34 comments

Journey Through Canyons — a stunning HD time-lapse of the canyonlands in Arizona and Utah, featuring the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion Canyon. A thorough way to explore these magnificent geologic marvels is to follow The Hayduke Trail, one of America's Best Adventures.
posted by netbros at 5:47 PM PST - 11 comments

In all my years of architecture school and practice, there seems to be a pervasive myth that my job is pretty and easy. Here, I reveal the painful, ugly truth about why it takes so long to build a building, what it is exactly that we do, and why that's not creamer you smell in my coffee.
posted by Joe Beese at 5:35 PM PST - 47 comments

Glass Candy is singer Ida No, whose vocal stylings have been compared to Nico and Debbie Harry, and producer Johnny Jewel, who cites as his influences Italo disco, freestyle, Krautrock, hip hop, new wave, and '80s cop show and John Carpenter soundtracks. "The group has also said that stores could appropriately file their music between Olivia Newton-John, Suicide and Schoolly D." Here for example, they mash up 'Mind Playing Tricks On Me' by the Geto Boys with 'Iko Iko'. And here is a cover of Kraftwerk's Computer Love. [more inside]
posted by puny human at 5:03 PM PST - 27 comments

Need something energetic and fun on a lazy sunday? Consider this amusing flash toy. [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:38 PM PST - 26 comments

The Haenyo divers: Korea's women of the sea [more inside]
posted by grounded at 3:32 PM PST - 11 comments

Earlier this week, on August 11th, the street performer, musician, and actor Bruno Schleinstein passed away. After spending much of his youth in mental institutions, "Bruno S" became famous when German filmmaker Werner Herzog cast him as the lead character in two seminal German New Wave films, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:17 PM PST - 17 comments

Marketing firm Flowtown has an Updated 2010 version of the Social Networking Map first created by xkcd.
posted by Phire at 3:05 PM PST - 35 comments

Welcome to Culturebot, a NYC-based website all about performing arts and culture locally, nationally and around the globe. Culturebot.org is a multidisciplinary, contemporary arts + culture blog, launched in December 2003. Based in NYC we cover contemporary cultural news, events and ideas from NYC and around the world. Culturebot was envisioned and created by founding editor Andy Horwitz. It was initially made possible from a grant to Performance Space 122 by the National Performance Network. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:00 PM PST - 1 comment

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit fostering and preserving meaningful conversations between two people who are important to each other. The vignettes are addictive little heart-grabbers, some unearthing long-held secrets. Here's a sampling: I don't know anything about white people; A son's premonition; Bathtub gin; Adoption; Two canoes; Where's the colored section?; Good hugger; Court every day; A schmear; Stonewall memories; and one video animation - a charming talk between a 12 year old with Asperger's and his Mom. There are hundreds more. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 1:57 PM PST - 28 comments

"Darwin Fest" videos of talks given at the 50th anniversary of the Darwin Conference at the University of Chicago in 2009. [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 1:32 PM PST - 15 comments

Your Lucky Day. A short film involving a lottery situation in a convenience store that gradually escalates out of control. Rather grim, but very well made.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:54 PM PST - 29 comments

"We pray to God that this will not happen to the Jewish people or to any people anymore." -- a group of American imams visits Dauchau and Auschwitz.
posted by empath at 12:35 PM PST - 38 comments

WAFF-TV reported the story of how Antoine Dodson saved his sister Kelly from a rapist intruder in her bed. Antoine's passionate sound-bite becomes an internet sensation as the "Bed Intruder" meme. Things go to the next level when the Gregory Brothers auto-tune it and turn it into a surprisingly good hit song. [more inside]
posted by w0mbat at 12:23 PM PST - 63 comments

The Culture, in its history and its on-going form, is an expression of the idea that the nature of space itself determines the type of civilisations which will thrive there ... The thought processes of a tribe, a clan, a country or a nation-state are essentially two-dimensional, and the nature of their power depends on the same flatness ... The contention is that our currently dominant power systems cannot long survive in space; beyond a certain technological level a degree of anarchy is arguably inevitable and anyway preferable. [more inside]
posted by memebake at 11:57 AM PST - 75 comments

How are heatwaves in Russia and flooding in Pakistan related? Both result from a kink in the jet stream that has frozen in place. (Previous coverage of the disasters in Russia and Pakistan on the blue.)
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 11:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Scott Horton writes at harpers.org on most weekends posts about music and literature. Typically he'll post poems or philosophy (and often translate same from one of the many languages he's, apparently, fluent in) and link to youtube clips of music to complement the passages he writes about, along with images of classical paintings. Pretty neat. This weekend the clips are Glenn Gould playing Beethoven's Sonata No. 17, op. 31, no. 2 (1802)(the “Tempest”) tied to a passage by Hegel. And Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and its lyrics which were written by someone named Kuffner. Check it out.
posted by fartknocker at 10:18 AM PST - 15 comments

In Praise of Fast Food: A historian takes on the "Culinary Luddism" the fresh/local/natural food movement. Originally published in the journal Gastronomica and featured as part of a series on food culture from the Utne Reader. [more inside]
posted by donovan at 9:19 AM PST - 117 comments

The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe (and what happened to it) [more inside]
posted by nangar at 8:04 AM PST - 35 comments

For the more visually-directed chef: CookBlast - a search engine for cooking and recipe videos. [via mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk at 8:00 AM PST - 2 comments

The website for LA 36 Public Access [WMA plugin required to view shows] is where you should be when you want incredibly diverse programming to come at you right this second. And by "incredibly diverse programming," I mean "what the hell is this." Absorbing niche programming is offered together with some of TV's greatest inexplicabilities.

Particularly recommended is The Roots of the Earthman, a full-length movie produced by the Unarius Academy of Science of El Cajon (previously) without a script, starring cult members who "relived past lives" in order to bring you this historical reenactment. [Youtube clip of intro, 3:44] [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 7:58 AM PST - 4 comments

What's China up to in Africa? What books should I read on the world's most populous nation? How's their environment doing? This, and much more from the weekly updated Sinica podcast. Hosted by Popup Chinese.
posted by klue at 6:53 AM PST - 5 comments

Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity. Apparently it was just a faulty conveyor belt. The solar minimum of 2008 is gone but not forgotten.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:53 AM PST - 7 comments

frontsection.net is a tasteful, politically right-on and truly curatorial take on aggregating web content. Careful, combined with an MF habit, this is going to eat up a lot of hours. Although the site is MetaFilter-inspired, all links are the fruit of one intrepid reader whose work, it must be admitted, sometimes grinds to a halt for up to a week at a time.
posted by Roachbeard at 10:59 PM PST - 36 comments

Raising Chicago: An Illustrated History. Lilli Carré takes a look at an unusual civic project: 'Mid-19th-century Chicago was an emerging titan of agribusiness, a burgeoning transit hub, a potential star of the Midwest—and a disease-infested swamp in danger of being reclaimed by Lake Michigan. By 1855, with roads knee deep in sludge, city hall faced a massive undertaking: hoisting Chicago out of the muck by raising the streets and structures as much as 14 feet.' More about the raising of Chicago. (via)
posted by shakespeherian at 10:33 PM PST - 12 comments

“Living until 150 years old is impossible in the natural world,” said Akira Nemoto, director of the elderly services section of the Adachi ward office. “But it is not impossible in the world of Japanese public administration.” Up until the end of July, no one knew how many people over the age of 100 were missing in Japan. Now, officials are scrambling to check on the elderly. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 9:25 PM PST - 57 comments

Not just a singer, but a songwriter. Not just an actress, but an activist. Abbey Lincoln helped to push the expectations that the jazz loving public had of jazz vocalists beyond the stereotype of sexy chanteuse delivering someone else's lyrics. From sexy and sultry (as in this clip from "The Girl Can't Help It") to quirky and passionate to elegant and expressive, Ms. Lincoln was a true original in every sense of the word. [more inside]
posted by jeanmari at 8:19 PM PST - 21 comments

Max Fleischer's Superman (1941-1942) In the early 1940s, Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons gave the Man of Steel an Art Deco flair and plenty of robots to defeat. Here's a brief history and some episodes of the cartoon (Previously)
posted by Artw at 8:14 PM PST - 40 comments

The 300th issue of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics will be the last. It is not an exaggeration to say that when John Baez started publishing TWF in 1993, he invented the science blog, and an (academic) generation has now grown up reading his thoughts on higher category theory, zeta functions, quantum gravity, crazy pictures of roots of polynomials, science fiction, and everything else that can loosely be called either "mathematical" or "physics." Baez continues to blog actively at n-category cafe and the associated nLab (an intriguingly fermented commune of mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers.) He is now starting a new blog, Azimuth, "centered around the theme of what scientists can do to help save the planet."
posted by escabeche at 7:19 PM PST - 17 comments

The Language of Food is a blog with only four entries, but each one is an excellent, well-researched essay on, yes, food and language: ketchup, entrée, dessert, and ceviche. The author, Dan Jurafsky, teaches a parallel course at Stanford, the syllabus for which you can peruse here. via (mefi's own) honestengine.blogspot.com
posted by Rumple at 5:42 PM PST - 9 comments

(TYLM) There are actually many ABBA fans who believe their songs sound good even played backwards (and ABBA haters who think they sound better backwards). So, of course, there are now Backwards ABBA music videos on YouTube*: "eM nO ecnahC A ekaT", "emaC uoY erofeB yaD ehT", "emaG ehT fO emaN ehT", "llA tI sekaT renniW ehT", "sleeH revO daeH" "suoV-zeluoV", "yenoM yenoM yenoM" [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:37 PM PST - 65 comments

True Blood: The First 21st Century Vampires. [Spoilers, Previously, Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:38 PM PST - 203 comments

Dorchester Publishing (an original paperback publisher that distributes the Hard Case Crime series and is home to Leisure Books, which is "the only mass-market house with dedicated lines for Westerns [four books a month] and horror [two books a month]," and which also publishes a romance line that features six to eight titles monthly) will transition to an e-book only model. Perhaps only temporarily? Perhaps not so temporarily after all! Currently, e-book sales account for just 12% of Leisure's business, and their overall sales saw a 25% loss over the course of 2009. Popular horror novelist Brian Keene has already jumped ship from the house, citing lack of payment for his work.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:24 AM PST - 18 comments

Indian Pole Gymnastics [more inside]
posted by empath at 11:23 AM PST - 45 comments

Monster Commute: A webcomic about the hell that is driving to work in the cute Orwellian steampunk monster-infested mirror universe of Monstru. [more inside]
posted by Gator at 11:20 AM PST - 2 comments

NPR is streaming the sets from the Newport Jazz Festival. Highlights include Dave Douglas' Brass Ecstasy, Marshall Allen with Joe Morris and Matthew Shipp, Ken Vandermark's Powerhouse Sound, and Rez Abbasi.
posted by kenko at 11:12 AM PST - 7 comments

Among the Flutterers: In this long, thoughtful essay for the LRB, Irish novelist Colm Tóibín examines the relationship between the Catholic church and homosexuality.
posted by puny human at 11:04 AM PST - 38 comments

Ving Rhames gives a rather eccentric radio interview to promote his latest film. (SLYT) (Pepsi Piranha)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:52 AM PST - 19 comments

Introducing: Lady Java. (Follow-up to the almost SFW "Java 4-Ever".) [more inside]
posted by iviken at 9:19 AM PST - 37 comments

Quayle v2.0 [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 9:07 AM PST - 44 comments

Retroblog - the web version of one American student's year abroad, 1988-89
posted by mippy at 9:01 AM PST - 8 comments

Ampersand Food Groups by Dan Beckemeyer.
posted by sveskemus at 9:01 AM PST - 11 comments

Of Course I've Read This, Way Easier to Watch Than Read, This Is The First Book I've Read In Six Years and more delightful Better Book Titles.
posted by griphus at 7:49 AM PST - 21 comments

The Menstruation Machine: an invention created by artist Hiromi Ozaki. "As a female designer I had one big problem I wanted to solve. "It’s 2010, so why are humans still menstruating?" "Fitted with a blood dispensing mechanism and lower-abdomen-stimulating electrodes, the Menstruation Machine is a device which simulates the pain and bleeding of an average 5 day menstruation process of a human (As a female designer I have done my best to simulate my own, at least)." Also: Menstruation Machine - Takashi's Take is a music video about a boy ‘Takashi’, who builds the menstruation machine in an attempt to dress up as a female, biologically as well as aesthetically, to fulfill his desire to understand what it might feel like to be a truely 'girly' girl. He determinedly wears the machine to hang out with his kawaii friend in Tokyo, but…"
posted by Fizz at 6:49 AM PST - 78 comments

Evolution?
posted by aqsakal at 5:39 AM PST - 14 comments

Paula K. Shimatsu-u, who worked behind the scenes at Twin Peaks, has a book coming out with previously unpublished photos from on and off the set. Wired has a gallery that boasts, among other delights, Michael Horse reading a book beside a deer's head, and Sheryl Lee with Sherilyn Fenn wearing, respectively, a lovely bobble cap and a very fetching jumper.
posted by Stan Carey at 3:43 AM PST - 14 comments

Another professional wrestling death. Former WWE wrestler Lance Cade has died at age 29 of apparent heart failure. This brings the number of professional wrestling performers who have died before the age of 50 since 1985 to 77.
posted by Tenacious.Me.Tokyo at 1:39 AM PST - 48 comments

Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process. [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty at 1:21 AM PST - 12 comments

Magic highway
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:30 PM PST - 47 comments

Theory 11 is your source for the latest and greatest magic tricks, instructional magic videos, and playing cards. [more inside]
posted by ColdChef at 9:25 PM PST - 23 comments

Learn how to operate the world's first fully electronic digital computer in this helpful instructional video. No, not ENIAC - the Atanasoff Berry Computer. Here's an operator's manual. More information about the reconstruction.
posted by loquacious at 8:49 PM PST - 23 comments

The Age of Uncertainty is my new favorite blog. It's by a gentleman bookseller who works in a warehouse in Sussex processing lorryfuls of used books. He shares the most interesting things he finds, commenting with wit and sensitivity. He also writes entertainingly about his everyday life. Let me point you towards his series of extracts from a diary that came to his warehouse, detailing the life of Derek, an employee of the government who converted to Mormonism. It was a fairly normal life, but the excerpts are fascinating. Here are the entries in order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. He also posts beautiful images he finds, such as Victorian color plates: 1 and 2. Still, it is the remains of ordinary lives washing up on his shores that most enthralls me, such as this tear-inducing post about a family photo album which was sent to his used books warehouse.
posted by Kattullus at 8:33 PM PST - 26 comments

After 900 years, Giorgia Boscolo has become the first female to pass Venice's rigorous gondolier examination, something she has been trying for years to accomplish.
posted by karminai at 6:58 PM PST - 32 comments

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the Defund ACORN Act of 2009 is not a Bill of Attainder (pdf). [more inside]
posted by thesmophoron at 6:12 PM PST - 102 comments

Devour seems to have good taste in videos. Hand-picked videos from YouTube isn't really a new idea, but Devour seems to be executing it really well.
posted by scottreynen at 5:44 PM PST - 15 comments

It's an important topic for many of us: how to live well in a tiny apartment. You can be seriously organized, or use Ikea furniture in unusual ways. You can do it with modular walls, or you can build an awesome loft. It's a topic that many people care about: Apartment therapy has an annual contest devoted to small apartments, there's a Flickr group devoted to it, and of course Metafilter has covered some of this ground before. (Inspired by.)
posted by jiawen at 4:58 PM PST - 25 comments

The Call of Cthulhu in Under 2 Minutes (SLYT)
posted by Artw at 4:42 PM PST - 34 comments

Animated danger! Flashing lights! Exciting sounds! Dungeon Escape! Quick reflexes or DOOM! Happy Flash Friday, from MeFite luvcraft [via mefi projects]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:28 PM PST - 22 comments

Record label Fool's Gold, run by DJs A-Trak and Nick Catchdubs, has just put their entire catalogue online for free streaming with links to paid downloads for each track. [more inside]
posted by battlebison at 1:44 PM PST - 9 comments

The Memory Hole: The real tragedy of the Omar Khadr trial.
posted by homunculus at 12:25 PM PST - 35 comments

Now playing in Star Wars Reenactment Theater: "Homer Simpson IS Darth Vader"! [via]
posted by ardgedee at 12:20 PM PST - 18 comments

Richie Hayward, who, along with Bill Payne and Lowell George founded arguably the greatest jam band in history succumbed to complications from liver cancer. In addition to his contributions to Little Feat, Hayward sat in on sessions with a veritable Who's Who of contemporary musicians, from Joan Armatrading to Warren Zevon. Previously on the Blue: Ready, Willin,' and Able. [more inside]
posted by spacely_sprocket at 11:24 AM PST - 33 comments

Bringing It All Back Home. The relatively long-running (since 2006) webcomic Bellen! will come to a close in early September as its author goes on to other things (pdf). In preparation for the end of the series, the creator is taking "a longer eye-opening look into the origin of Bellen!" which dispenses with the strips regular old timey-yellowing paper style "because there are no more veneers in Bellen! it’s the pure unadulterated truth from here on out." An interesting look at the creative process in the digital age.
posted by ND¢ at 10:53 AM PST - 11 comments

The Royal Shakespeare Company presents Hamlet, starring David Tennant as Hamlet, Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius and the Ghost, Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius, Mariah Gale as Ophelia, and Edward Bennet as Laertes. Directed by Gregory Doran. [more inside]
posted by Ndwright at 10:47 AM PST - 102 comments

Looking for love among the bookstacks? Try Alikewise, a dating site based on book tastes, instead. [more inside]
posted by peripathetic at 10:32 AM PST - 52 comments

12 Events that Will Change Everything is an interactive article from Scientific American that offers rich information on potential major discoveries or cataclysms that could change the world, as well as their chances of happening. The list is a surprisingly sane look at future discontinuities as these sorts of lists go: it includes human cloning, artificial life, asteroid collisions, ice caps melting, and room temperature superconductors. For less sanity, see fifty or so ways the world could end at Exit Mundi.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:24 AM PST - 50 comments

Bob Bragman has been collecting images of men being affectionate with each other for many years. Here is a small part of that collection posted on sfgate. Some are tender, some are awkward and some are from long ago.
posted by agatha_magatha at 10:00 AM PST - 34 comments

Yesterday the conditions for the Hindenburg Omen, a combination of technical analysis indicators suggesting an increased probability of a market correction were all met (maybe) for the first time since 2008. Fortuitous timing for the soon to be released movie of the same name, if no one else. (Previously).
posted by BigSky at 9:50 AM PST - 23 comments

Fur-ocious Pics From The Cat Fashion Parade
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:35 AM PST - 54 comments

Roger Ebert on Christopher Hitchens, illness, medicine, religion, and death. [via] [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 7:56 AM PST - 84 comments

Back in January, Dr. Megan Argo and an international team working at Jodrell Bank detected a powerful jet of energy from supernova 2007gr. Her way of announcing it? Doctor Who fan fiction describing the event from a TARDIS eye view. [via]
posted by quin at 7:48 AM PST - 22 comments

When greedy sports team ban press photographers, cartoonist saves the day. Southampton Football Club decided to ban press photographers from their home matches, and sell their own photos to the press. Plymouth Herald hires a cartoonist instead. [more inside]
posted by iviken at 7:14 AM PST - 31 comments

Cyglo Tires Will Help You Live Out Your Light Cycle Fantasy. Just in time for the release of Tron: Legacy, a British firm is gearing up to release a bicycle tire embedded with LED bulbs. While these lighted rubber tubes won’t lay down trails for your opponents to crash into, they may very well keep you safe. Cyglo tires are intended to create a highly visible ring of light to maximize cyclists’ visibility on busy roads. No pricing has been set yet, but we understand that the flying disc to destroy MCP will be sold separately. Watch Cyglo in motion.
posted by Fizz at 6:21 AM PST - 58 comments

Minor Delays - a short story for every station on the London Underground. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 6:04 AM PST - 5 comments

Noam Chomsky A brief interview with Chomsky. Starts with some I/P stuff, then talks about Bush and Obama and then his new book. "The ones you are concerned with are the victims, not the powerful, so the slogan ought to be to engage with the powerless and help them and help yourself to find the truth. It’s not an easy slogan to formulate in five words, but I think it’s the right one."
posted by marienbad at 5:39 AM PST - 31 comments

Matt Simmons, investment banker to the oil industry, has passed away unexpectedly. (Previously, previously) Simmons was a vocal proponent that peak oil is at hand and authored an influential analysis of Saudi oil reserves that lends credence to his view. An energy policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and regular on financial media, Simmons believed emergency action to counter peak oil is required, beginning with independent audits of global reserves.[PDF] [more inside]
posted by bystander at 5:10 AM PST - 53 comments

The London Underground. Every Londoner has used it, but has everyone really seen it? The old map is looking a bit dusty. Perhaps its time for Geographic precision or maybe 3D projection. If we add bicycles to the map, is it still an underground? [more inside]
posted by 0bvious at 4:47 AM PST - 33 comments

prettymaps from Stamen (requires safari/firefox and patience) [more inside]
posted by shoepal at 3:38 AM PST - 9 comments

"... some guests turn off all the room lights, turn on the train set lights and play with the diorama until dawn." Room 1304 of the Akihabara Washington Hotel in Tokyo (Japanese link) used to be a twin, but the second bed was removed to make room for a train set featuring 30 meters of track and a model Tokyo Tower. The room is available for 'only' 23,000 yen (weeknight rate), but be warned, you are expected to bring your own trains to run on the track (rental trains apparently also available). See some video of the room in this TV news report, read about it in this (English) news story, or follow along with the room's own Twitter feed (also in Japanese).
posted by woodblock100 at 3:25 AM PST - 8 comments

Make Art! Change the World! Starve!: The Fallacy of Art as Social Justice
posted by divabat at 3:08 AM PST - 40 comments

"Graphic Atlas is a new online resource that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic identification tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and the general public."
posted by lucia__is__dada at 2:20 AM PST - 2 comments

"Repairing the English Language since 1998." Based on Ambrose Bierce's Original Devil's Dictionary [more inside]
posted by fantodstic at 12:19 AM PST - 18 comments

Before the development of rubber technology and tubing made medical gavage feasible for the average patient doctors used to feed people through the ass. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious at 10:31 PM PST - 55 comments

It's an otter playing with a rock!
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:07 PM PST - 84 comments

S Thomas Summers teaches writing and literature, and writes poetry about the American Civil War. Some of my favorites. Hat tip: The Atlantic.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:04 PM PST - 1 comment

A Unicorn Being a Jerk
posted by empath at 7:49 PM PST - 58 comments

Nintendo's latest handheld console will display images in 3D, without glasses (and also without burning your eyes out. Again.) How? Jeff Grubb explains. [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:33 PM PST - 55 comments

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time, a finding that stunned observers and theorists alike. (via)
posted by Joe Beese at 7:10 PM PST - 18 comments

Of course our new football field is cranberry red. What do you think we are – savages? Watch paint dry Eastern Washington University install its forearm-staining turf on its TurfCam. Hey, for a million bucks what do you expect – something that looks like grass? (Via)
posted by joeclark at 6:17 PM PST - 33 comments

Tuesday on her radio program Dr. Laura Schlessinger took a call from a woman who wanted advice about her mixed-race marriage. Things quickly degenerated. Dr. Laura repeatedly used the N-Word, told the woman she was being too sensitive and suggested that maybe she shouldn't entered into a mixed marriage. The blogosphere responds. Dr. Laura apologized that day.
posted by Bonzai at 6:10 PM PST - 222 comments

Am I supposed to be laughing or taking notes? Comic Charles Fleischer, who played Carvelli on Welcome Back, Kotter and voiced Roger Rabbit, gives a Ted talk which degenerates into what appears to be a dissertation about the number 37 and its relationship to string theory, delivered in a rapidly shifting sequence of accents; watch the audience get more and more uncomfortable as they try to figure out whether they're watching a stand-up routine, a Kaufmannesque prank, or a guy going crazy right before their eyes. TED should have known what they were getting; Fleischer has been performing some form of this routine for decades. (Warning: numbered suit.) Transcript of the routine. Fleischer's strange myspace page. (Warning: strange music/talking on click which I can't figure out how to turn off.)
posted by escabeche at 5:45 PM PST - 17 comments

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. Remember David Stockman? Reagan's budget director, recently indicted for fraud? It is he who is the author of this searing NYT op ed piece about the GOP's responsibility for disastrous U.S. economic policy decisions.
posted by bearwife at 5:39 PM PST - 18 comments

New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase has been found in India and Pakistan, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and the US. "Medical tourism, family travel and international migration have combined to import a potent new form of antibiotic resistance halfway around the planet—and the physician-researchers who have tracked its rapid spread say it is already on the verge of becoming untreatable." You hear that? UNTREATABLE!
posted by vidur at 5:09 PM PST - 34 comments

Getting screwed, even in death. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 4:39 PM PST - 40 comments

Dutch MP and vehement Islam critic Geert Wilders will travel to New York to speak at a Sept. 11 protest against Park51, the so-called "Ground Zero mosque", sparking controversy in the Netherlands where he is currently taking part in negotiations to form a new government. Dutch diplomats are worried. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:38 PM PST - 151 comments

Did 'Star Wars' become a toy story? Producer Gary Kurtz looks back “The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire. It’s a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It’s natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that’s not the best thing for making quality films.” He added: “The first film and ‘Empire’ were about story and character, but I could see that George’s priorities were changing.” (via) [more inside]
posted by octothorpe at 3:18 PM PST - 120 comments

You know that real-life Light Saber you always fantasized about getting as a kid? Good news! It's finally here! Sort of. And for only $299 USD. Oh, wait, no--turns out, it's not a light saber at all and any resemblance is purely coincidental. No, this thing is actually more like a sharp-pointed laser stick for poking people's eyes out and setting things on fire from as much as a mile away. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 3:11 PM PST - 91 comments

Inside the private jets of African dictators and other heads of state. (Slideshow of photographs by Nick Gleis.)
posted by WPW at 3:03 PM PST - 29 comments

Shane Harris of the Washingtonian looks at the increasingly aggressive pursuit by the Obama administration of people (especially journalists) who leak sensitive information to the public.
posted by reenum at 2:39 PM PST - 23 comments

At the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris. each of fifteen artists were given a dressmaker's mannequin as their canvas and encouraged to transform the figure in any way they desired.
The artists included (in order of appearance in this video) Salvador Dalí, Óscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, Léo Malet, André Masson, Joan Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Jean, Max Ernst, Espinoza, Maurice Henry, Sonia Mossé, and Man Ray. Here are some stills.
posted by adamvasco at 2:36 PM PST - 3 comments

A couple decades after the first appearance of Steam Men in the 19th century, and a few years after the word "robot" was coined, one Professor Harry May from London toured around the US with Alpha the robot. The one ton mechanical man was built from a combination of modern inventions that granted Alpha certain skills, from product model and vocal promoter of the automatic electric toaster, to gunslinger. The problem with giving Alpha a gun was that the robot revolted (PDF, via), shooting his master and creator in 1932. After this incident, Alpha became Mary Ann (via), complete with new hair, a dress, and a soprano voice.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:58 PM PST - 16 comments

And it doesn't suck. The Jeff Koons BMW art car is out. Here's Wired's take on it, and Autoblog with a little piece of video from the unveiling. [more inside]
posted by Nabubrush at 12:26 PM PST - 52 comments

HELVETICTOC A time-full tribute to a timeless typeface.
posted by Venadium at 12:00 PM PST - 49 comments

Interested in how businesses can be more environmentally responsible while maintaining profitability? Greenbiz.com is "the leading source for news, opinion, best practices, and other resources on the greening of mainstream business," with sections focusing on climate, buildings, design, and green computing. [more inside]
posted by albrecht at 11:47 AM PST - 7 comments

New "cat-sized" monkey discovered! The Callicebus caquetensis (a type of titi monkey) was just discovered, pre-endangered for your convenience.
posted by mikoroshi at 11:00 AM PST - 39 comments

Improve your grades, win big money. Ultrinsic allows students in 36 colleges and universities in the US to place bets on their grades, and sends them cash for doing well. Will it motivate students to do better, or just encourage more grade-grubbing? Is it legal?
posted by MrVisible at 10:30 AM PST - 19 comments

Paul Graham weighs in on what happened at Yahoo. TLDR: too much money and adult supervision.
posted by swift at 9:56 AM PST - 89 comments

"The risk reduction associated with the daily consumption of most statins is more powerful than the risk increase caused by the daily extra fat intake associated with a 7-oz hamburger (Quarter Pounder®) with cheese and a small milkshake...Although no substitute for systematic lifestyle improvements, including healthy diet, regular exercise, weight loss, and smoking cessation, complimentary statin packets would add, at little cost, 1 positive choice to a panoply of negative ones." Is having free statin drugs at the fast food counter by the napkins and ketchup packets a good idea? Some doctors think the idea has merit (original paper .pdf). Hmmm... maybe if they were minty flavored.
posted by cross_impact at 9:31 AM PST - 68 comments

World War II was a time that called for many things from many different people. However, one Polish soldier stepped above and beyond the call of his nature. He carried ammunition, he helped his squad members get better at wrestling, and he drank and smoked with the rest of them - Wojtek, the soldier bear. [more inside]
posted by lizarrd at 9:07 AM PST - 44 comments

Anderson Cooper attempts to reason with the wild-eyed Debbie Riddle, a Texas State Representative who wants to save the US from bomb-throwing "anchor babies".
posted by hermitosis at 8:25 AM PST - 234 comments

Using its College Results Online database, The Education Trust has released two reports examining the black-white and Hispanic-white college graduation gap. The worst offenders? Wayne State University in Detroit, where fewer than one in ten African-American students graduate in six years, and CUNY Brooklyn College, where 19% less Hispanic students graduate on-time than whites. [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 7:54 AM PST - 28 comments

Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn't Read Atlas Shrugged. [more inside]
posted by Chipmazing at 6:55 AM PST - 113 comments

"I have started an archive of photographs deemed "too hard to keep." The reason you can't live with the photo or photo album I do not need to know..."
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:38 AM PST - 36 comments

Ack! [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 6:17 AM PST - 121 comments

A family traveled to France and Germany in 1938 and shot this footage which features two appearances by Adolf Hitler. It's creepy seeing this Nazi spectacle shot by an amateur. It's a perspective I don't know if I've ever seen. The video opens in France and the Nazi footage starts around 1:45.

The collector writes: "The Basement Collection presents: An 8mm film bought at an estate sale back in the 90's. This reel is part of a series of a family vacation movies to Europe in 1938. On this reel the family visits France and then Germany. The footage of Hitler is from a celebration in the Berlin Stadium on what I think is a May Day celebration (May 2, 1938) then another celebration at Berlin's Lustgarten. (on May 1st). (I think the reel was edited together out of order)."
posted by zzazazz at 5:14 AM PST - 93 comments

A message from Dan Simmons. Dan Simmons SFF author shares some thoughts in his most recent blog post on publishing, writing, and the latest ideas for an upcoming novel: "The Five of Hearts" - In December of 1880, Henry Adams and his wife Clover moved into a rented house at 1607 H Street on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.. That was also the year they became lifelong friends with two men who had previously been mere acquaintances -- assistant secretary of state John Hay and the hazel-eyed bachelor, explorer, surveyor, mining expert, and general man-of-action in the West, Clarence King. The two, along with Hay's wife Clara, became constant callers at the Adamses small but wonderfully select 1607 H Street salon. In the words of one biographer, the five "delighted in their delight of one another" and began calling their little daily tea-time group "the Five of Hearts." Henry James and Sherlock Holmes will also make appearances.
posted by Fizz at 4:44 AM PST - 74 comments

Around the late 1800s and early 1900s, receipts, envelopes, letterheads, and other corporate correspondence often featured drawings of a factory or storefront. Columbia University's Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery contains over 1600 examples. Why not browse through? [more inside]
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 10:39 PM PST - 15 comments

While most of the attention in the war on drugs has been focused on Mexico of late, the opium trade in Afghanistan is still alive. Though perhaps not as well this year, as Tajikistan reports far less opium crossing the border, attributed to more use within Afghanistan as well as an unexplained poppy blight. With yields dropping and prices rising, US-backed efforts to encourage farmers to grow alternate crops (previously) may be derailed, despite a trade agreement with Pakistan which promises to open the country's borders to more trade in legitimate consumer goods with India. Meanwhile, people are looking into ways to turn the poppy fields into biofuels.
posted by jackflaps at 9:18 PM PST - 21 comments

Retrospace will bring back all those memories. '70s home decor. '80s teen comedies. Lifestyle magazines from 1977. And so much more. So very very much more. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:14 PM PST - 60 comments

Meet Sara and Clare Bronfman. Their father is rich. Their brother is sort of dumb. Their nephew is married to MIA. Sara is a poet, and Clare an equestrian. Now they have handed over $100 million to a cult called NXIVM.
posted by oldleada at 7:06 PM PST - 78 comments

Got a lot of tomatoes? Looking for some thing different to DIY? How about DIY ketchup? "Whether it's pickles or preserves, DIY food is all the rage. But when I told a group of food-loving friends that I was planning to make my own ketchup, their response was muted. First, there was an awkward pause. Then, one piped up with the question that everyone must have been thinking: Why? Ketchup, apparently, is an exception to the everything-is-better-if-you-make-it-yourself ethos. "
posted by Xurando at 5:54 PM PST - 61 comments

"My Humps" translated into sign language. (SLYT) via Reddit
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 4:21 PM PST - 45 comments

In a couple of weeks there will be a Federal Election in Australia. One of the key issues is migration policy, and policy relating to the processing of refugee claims, particularly those who escape from their home country and travel to Australia by boat. This one-page web comic is the most detailed examination of the issue I've seen anywhere in the media.
posted by awfurby at 4:20 PM PST - 45 comments

The Perseids Meteor shower will peak Thursday night through early Friday morning. Use the Dark Sky Finder to find a good place to watch. The Perseids is visible every year, but it's easier to see during the new moon. [more inside]
posted by NoraReed at 4:16 PM PST - 30 comments

Few phenomena have the power to confound as many different types of people as pareidolia. It doesn't discriminate by culture or religion. It causes Christians to see Jesus and Mary, Muslims to see the names of Allah and the Prophet, Jews to see the Star of David, Hindus to see the monkey-god Hanuman, and Buddhists to see — you guessed it — the Buddha. Even atheists who haven't devoted themselves to skepticism have puzzled long and hard over the famous face, and more recently, Bigfoot, on Mars. Now video has surfaced on YouTube of pseudoscientist and perennial attention-seeker Richard Heene (yes, Balloon Boy's dad) seeing things on the red planet too. If you'd prefer the filler edited out, the remix is highly entertaining. [more inside]
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:58 PM PST - 20 comments

A two-part panorama of London originally made in 1845 by the Illustrated London News, later updated with text descriptions. Other formats can be found on the blog post. [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:04 PM PST - 8 comments

In the wake of high-profile "take this job and shove it" reenactors Steven Slater and Jenny Fictional, New York magazine sought out some other amusing walkouts.
posted by GrammarMoses at 3:00 PM PST - 29 comments

(Sewing Filter) Judith Neukam explains how to sew on a button [more inside]
posted by IndigoJones at 3:00 PM PST - 25 comments

Carson Entertainment Group, which owns the archive of the late-night host's 30 years on "The Tonight Show," is set to announce Wednesday that it has digitized all 3,300 hours of existing footage from the program and created a searchable online database for producers and researchers. (way previously) [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 2:24 PM PST - 24 comments

[Cooking Filter] Serious Eats' Kenji Lopez-Alt explains what to look for in a meat cleaver.
posted by BZArcher at 2:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Mid-week pick-me-up, straight outta Japan: Soil & "Pimp" Sessions, live in 2009 at the annual North Sea Jazz Festival. If those live clips are a bit noisy, check out Pop Korn, My Foolish Heart~Crazy on Earth~, and My Foolish Heart ~Foolish in Mind~. And for a cool-down, try Welsh producer Doc Daneeka's bassy slowed down house version of Pop Korn (image source: Fotos+Mono, from the Chilean artist Relleno De Mono). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Grinderman - Heathen Child SLYT NSFW via Dangerous Minds
posted by xod at 1:24 PM PST - 22 comments

Scottish trade unionist, journalist and broadcaster Jimmy Reid has died aged 78. Often described as the best MP Scotland never had, Reid was the instigator of the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders famous work-in, where rather than striking, workers demonstrated the viability of the shipyards by working to fill the orders on the books, drawing national and international support (including a fat cheque from John Lennon). The year after, he was elected as rector of the University of Glasgow, where he delivered a speech (behind a paywall, sadly) that the New York Times (which saw fit to print it in full) called one of the finest since the Gettysburg Address [more inside]
posted by Len at 1:03 PM PST - 40 comments

Words can change the way we think and feel. An exploration of how language connects our inner thoughts to the outside world. [more inside]
posted by Narrative Priorities at 12:30 PM PST - 23 comments

Artisinal Pencil Sharpening That is all.
posted by grateful at 12:15 PM PST - 61 comments

"I built the bus for two reasons. The first is to entertain people because, come on, it's a jet bus. The second is to keep kids off drugs. Jets are hot, drugs are not." [more inside]
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:30 AM PST - 59 comments

A recent drowning tragedy in Shreveport, Louisiana has brought to light a startling statistic in America: a majority of black youth can not swim. [more inside]
posted by nomadicink at 11:00 AM PST - 206 comments

The Point of No Return. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.
posted by lullaby at 10:37 AM PST - 84 comments

Christiane Kubrick, widow of film director Stanley Kubrick, talks with the Guardian about her marriage to the film director, his lost project about the Holocaust, and his love of the waltz [via | Flash req'd].
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:21 AM PST - 4 comments

The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers by Anis Shivani [more inside]
posted by shotgunbooty at 10:09 AM PST - 162 comments

Traffic cameras aren't required to track your driving. Researchers from Rutgers and USC have determined that low-pressure sensors in car tires can be passively read, tracking a vehicle's route.
posted by boo_radley at 9:55 AM PST - 62 comments

Do not be alarmed if South Africans announce that they were held up by robots.

Aimed at warming the welcome for the 2012 Olympics tourist explosion, VisitBritain, has released a number of helpful tips on being social, internationally. Prepping for Serious Business? You can visit Executive Planet and learn all about being courteous across the world. And here are some reasonable solutions for your 112 gripes about the French (Previously). [more inside]
posted by griphus at 9:49 AM PST - 24 comments

Inspired by the cage matches between popular characters over at Suvudu, Random House's SF/fantasy blog, Heather Zundel and friends have started a YA Fantasy version. At least 3 of the characters' authors are involved in the fight write-ups, although one author reacted differently. All I know is that I have a lot of books to check out.
posted by booksherpa at 9:41 AM PST - 17 comments

Dommune is a fairly new nightclub in Tokyo. It's only open Sunday through Thursday night and they close at midnight. The room only holds 50 people. Nevertheless, the place attracts top-flight talent; Jeff Mills, Derrick May, Claude Young, Prosumer, and Shed have all performed. What's the gimmick? Every party is streamed live. (from mnml ssgs) [more inside]
posted by mkb at 9:36 AM PST - 20 comments

Eight daguerreotypes from 1848, taken by Charles Fontayne and William Porter, which comprise a panorama of the waterfront of Cincinnati, Ohio, at the city's zenith have recently been restored revealing astonishing detail for photographs of that era, like a legible clocktower 1mm wide in the original, and people walking the streets of the city. [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 9:09 AM PST - 18 comments

QWERTY keyboard, how do you plead? Gluty! (Stephen) Fry's English Delight tackles the sociotechnical history of the QWERTY keyboard. [more inside]
posted by carter at 8:40 AM PST - 42 comments

Wikileaks Attack Data by Year and Type Projected on Afghanistan Regional Map [more inside]
posted by Hammond Rye at 8:19 AM PST - 6 comments

Actresses Mia Farrow and Carol White have cast doubt on supermodel Naomi Campbell's version of a story involving midnight mystery men, a sack of blood diamonds, and ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 8:10 AM PST - 44 comments

After years of "If You Suspect It, Report It" (the more Big Brotherly British equivalent of "See Something? Say Something."), it has been finally been determined what level of encouraging people to turn in their neighbours is just too much.
posted by 256 at 6:53 AM PST - 46 comments

A pioneer of UK late night television The Word is twenty years old. From the sublime (Television debut of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit') to the ridiculous (Snoop Dog vs Rod Hull and Emu) to the down-right disgusting (The Hopefuls) it was always memorable. (Much NSFWness) [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:34 AM PST - 29 comments

Pocket music apps are letting composers and artists create music anywhere - and they're developing fast. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 4:51 AM PST - 51 comments

Cooking Issues (mentioned here and here previously), from French Culinary Institute Instructors Dave Arnold (previously) and Nils Norén (former Executive Chef at NYC's Aquavit and Top Chef Masters participant) is a blog exploring cutting-edge cooking techniques. While some techniques they describe require expensive and specialized equipment like liquid nitrogen dewars, a 1750°F custom-made loggerhead (also profiled here), a wet grinder (for ketchup "chocolate", of course!), or a turkey whose leg bones have been replaced with aluminum tubes through which an immersion circulator pumps hot oil, many others are well within the reach of the motivated home cook: gin-infused cucumbers, clarifying lime juice with agar, using enzymes to dissolve citrus pith for zest and supremes, quick-infusing liquor with a whipped cream maker, or making the world's best french fries (part 1, part 2). Here they are demonstrating some of their techniques on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. [more inside]
posted by joshuaconner at 3:34 AM PST - 25 comments

We're all familiar with extremely disturbing fanfic by now. But steamy Hermione/Snape fantasies are tame compared to the depths of madness that are explored in the latest installment of Excursions into Madness, in which our anonymous author reimagines his favorite movie characters through the lens of absolute psychosis. Part I: Star Wars, E.T., Interview with the Vampire. Part II: The Fellowship of the Ring, Back to the Future. From the same twisted mind that produced The Obama Proxy.
posted by ELF Radio at 2:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Eminem's new video, featuring Rihanna, makes domestic violence sexy as only a (literally) smoldering Megan Fox can. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 5:46 PM PST - 197 comments

We see it every day on signs, billboards, packaging, in books and magazines; in fact, you are looking at it now — the Latin or Roman alphabet, the world’s most prolific, most widespread abc. Typography is a relatively recent invention, but to unearth the origins of alphabets, we will need to travel much farther back in time, to an era contemporaneous with the emergence of civilisation itself. The origins of abc.
posted by netbros at 5:26 PM PST - 24 comments

Those wacky New Scientists are reporting on a "new challenge" to part of Einstein's theory of special relativity that changes the relationship of Space to Time. No, this has nothing to do with Conservapedia's laughable challenge to the theory*. Petr Hořava** won't replace Einstein*** in scientific importance in this new Century, but maybe Hendrik Lorentz whose theories on symmetry apparently take a beating****. Remember kiddies, Science (especially Physics) doesn't have Absolute Truths, it just keeps getting closer to them. And even ol' Albert E. can and WILL be improved upon. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:20 PM PST - 37 comments

How do black people use Twitter? Why is Twitter more popular with black people? (The Root asks, "Really?") What were black people talking about on Twitter last night? [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 4:13 PM PST - 88 comments

Pelé and Maradona: the glorious, ludicrous feud between soccer's two biggest stars. In the summer of 2000, FIFA, which does not understand computers, decided to celebrate the arrival of the millennium by hosting an online poll. Its object: to determine the best soccer player of the past 100 years, with the victor to be fêted at a gaudy banquet in Rome. The organizers of the vote assumed it would be won by Pelé, soccer's silky ambassador, who'd been cheerfully ensconced in his Greatest of All Time sinecure for 40 years.
posted by Fizz at 3:59 PM PST - 30 comments

Scandal brewing at Harvard. Marc Hauser, evolutionary biologist/psychologist who is an authority on how animals think, is taking a year's leave of absence because a university review has concluded that there were "irregularities" in the conduct of his research. One article is being withdrawn. Others under suspicion. Hauser is well-known for his studies of cotton-top tamarin monkeys. Not clear if he will be required to give up his edge.org page. His most recent book is about morality (previously).
posted by cogneuro at 3:36 PM PST - 117 comments

How did the World Wide Web look before this Internet boom,⁽¹⁾ before it became a riot for star backgrounds, bouncing envelopes and under construction signs?⁽²⁾ Before web design, there was Prof. Dr. Style. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:01 PM PST - 43 comments

Huge solar storm triggers unusual Auroras.
posted by gman at 2:53 PM PST - 18 comments

Stop Fashion Piracy! Senator Chuck Schumer and ten co-sponsers have introduced the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act (Govtrack). Similar to legislation from previous Congressional sessions, this would extend copyright protection to fashion designs. Currently, the fashion industry does have trademark protection, which allows legal recourse for designers and brands to go after counterfeiting, but designs and concepts are free to be imitated. The bill has the support of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the American Apparel and Footwear Association. This is the cumulation of a multi-year effort to extend copyright protections to fashion designers (that included sidestops where they tried to co-opt Michelle Obama into their efforts and where one of the top fashion copyright proponents gets caught copying other people's designs), and would change an industry that historically has worked within a dramatically different culture from other creative industries. [more inside]
posted by Weebot at 2:24 PM PST - 53 comments

Soul Toons: DeStorm Power creates a one-man a cappella soul medley of cartoon theme songs.
posted by Lutoslawski at 2:07 PM PST - 2 comments

The XXXXXXAct ofXXXX bill passes the United States Senate.
posted by swift at 1:43 PM PST - 55 comments

The Puffins of Norway make their home in nests along cliffs and in caves. These nests were inaccessible to human hunters. The hunters needed a special kind of dog. A spelunking dog. [more inside]
posted by dogmom at 1:36 PM PST - 18 comments

Yakuza video game reviewed by actual Yakuza [more inside]
posted by BZArcher at 1:30 PM PST - 31 comments

On August 5, 2010 in the north-east corner of Greenland, about 100 square miles (251 square kilometers) of the Petermann Glacier broke off (or calved, see: glacial geology terminology), and in time for the 35th anniversary for the coining of the term "Global Warming". The glacier has been showing signs of breaking up in the last few years, but this is the most dramatic loss for the Petermann Glacier in ten years, yet still far from being the largest calving event in recorded history. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:20 PM PST - 22 comments

Abhay Khosla reviews comics for the Savage Critics. —In April of 2008, he posted “Why Do Nerdy Things Work? Abhay Rereads Blue Beetle, Episode I,” the first post in an “irregular, multipart series” that ended up being about much, much more than the John Rogers era of the most recent retooling of the Blue Beetle. [more inside]
posted by kipmanley at 12:53 PM PST - 15 comments

Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican. In the twelve years since he resigned in defeat and disgrace, he has been carefully plotting his return to power. As 2012 approaches, he has raised as much money as all of his potential rivals combined and sits atop the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. But just who is Newton Leroy Gingrich, really? (SLEsquire)
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:35 PM PST - 89 comments

Ted Stevens has died in a plane crash near Dillingham Alaska. [more inside]
posted by Nabubrush at 12:10 PM PST - 121 comments

OK Cupid statistics fun: We collected 552,000 example user pictures. We paired them up and asked people to make snap judgments. Here's what we found.
posted by nomadicink at 10:39 AM PST - 109 comments

The three annoying train monsters shown in the poster are Nesshii (the sleeping monster), Asshii (the leg-crossing monster), and Shinbunshii (the newspaper-reading monster). Tokyo Subway Manner Posters, '76-'82
posted by griphus at 9:43 AM PST - 55 comments

Carrot Bacon. More or less exactly what it says. [Single Link Flicker Set]
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:41 AM PST - 51 comments

moot explains 4chan to a jury [PDF], via The Smoking Gun. [more inside]
posted by BeerFilter at 8:21 AM PST - 122 comments

Andrew Hussie's latest comic enterprise at MSPaintAdventures.com (previously), Homestuck, has been hurtling along at a truly absurd pace. Designed as a pastiche and parody of videogames in general and text-based graphical adventures in particular, updates are structured as a hypothetical game's response to your typed commands, such as "Examine room." The art may not look like much up front, but it enables AH to maintain his multiple-updates-every-day pace for weeks at a time; it also lets him modulate the quality where appropriate for the storytelling. It's sort of a multimedia extravaganza: the story is told using static and animated gifs, narrative text, dialogue presented as instant messaging chat transcripts (click the Show Pesterlog button to see the text), flash-based static animations with music and/or sound effects, interactive vignettes reminiscent of console RPG-style combat, interactive sound mixers and animation compendia, GameFAQs walkthroughs, an enormous hyperlinked synopsis presented by the author himself during a highly indulgent self-insertion into the story, multiple webcomics within webcomics, and in at least two cases, an entire miniature action/adventure game. [more inside]
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 7:58 AM PST - 22 comments