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The Supreme Court of the United States has held only one criminal trial in its history: United States v. Shipp. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 9:52 PM PST - 30 comments

THE HISTORY (AND MYSTERY!) behind Action 52 and Cheetahmen, FINALLY REVEALED! And, if you have five hundred bucks to spare, NES cartridges of the newly unearthed(?) CHEETAHMEN: THE CREATION is available for sale! VINCE PERRI AT HIS DESIGN BEST, the web site proclaims, though it's unclear what this is expected to mean to us!
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:32 PM PST - 15 comments

Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil
posted by Meatbomb at 8:48 PM PST - 32 comments

Justice Sonia Sotomayor stops by Sesame Street for a cup of coffee...
posted by Navelgazer at 8:02 PM PST - 32 comments

Rick Santorum predicted winner in Minnesota & Missouri. Mr. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator best known for his feud (and subsequent google-bombing) with Dan Savage over his comparison of homosexuality with bestiality, is the predicted winner of Republican primaries in Minnesota and Missouri, and is currently leading in the third, Colorado.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:46 PM PST - 512 comments

Argentina will take Falklands claim to the UN Cristina Kirchner warns of 'grave risks to international security' and states intention to prevent war over natural resources. (Argentina) has mobilised much of South America and the Caribbean in a diplomatic and commercial squeeze. Ships flying the Falklands flag are barred from the region's ports, depriving the islands of bananas and other fresh fruit. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 7:27 PM PST - 124 comments

Florence Green, the last know WWI veteran, passed away today. She was two weeks away from her 111th birthday. [more inside]
posted by piratebowling at 6:37 PM PST - 45 comments

How do robots see the world? This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye. [SLVimeo]
posted by jivadravya at 5:06 PM PST - 14 comments

Did you find Heidi Klum's Halloween costume hot? Then these muscle leggings are right up your alley.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:50 PM PST - 45 comments

Woman, 83, Has World’s First Lower Jaw Replacement – In 3D [abc.com] In what has been called the first operation of its kind, an 83-year-old woman in the Netherlands has been fitted with a custom-made artificial jaw that was created by a 3D printer. The titanium implant, which weighs less than 4 ounces, was created by taking a CT scan of the woman’s lower jaw and duplicating it with a 3D printer that lays down titanium powder instead of ink. The printer followed the pattern of the woman’s jaw bone layer by layer, fusing the titanium powder in place with heat. In just a couple hours, the 3D replica was ready.
posted by Fizz at 3:27 PM PST - 43 comments

How Marvel Comics screwed Jack Kirby out of millions
posted by Artw at 3:24 PM PST - 92 comments

Chill to the re-created chirrups of Jurassic crickets.
posted by Laminda at 3:05 PM PST - 15 comments

How to go from fit to fat in 5 hours. Yes, that's from fit to fat.
posted by desjardins at 2:37 PM PST - 31 comments

A documentary by Ariel Nasr, "The Boxing Girls of Kabul" (National Film Board of Canada trailer), profiles a group of young Afghan women training to compete in women's boxing in the 2012 Olympics (which will feature boxing for the first time as a women's event). Radio Netherlands interviews 18 year old Shabnam Rahimi, and the Toronto Star has a photo album on the athletes. If all that inspires you, petition President Hamid Karzai's government to support the team, via this petition page. (Nasr is also known for his documentary, "Good Morning Kandahar".)
posted by aught at 1:54 PM PST - 3 comments

Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young is a long and link-heavy examination of the relationship between Neil Young's "Southern Man" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." If you'd prefer a briefer, much more rocking version of the story, try the song "Ronnie and Neil" by the Drive-By Truckers.
posted by Bookhouse at 1:16 PM PST - 39 comments

If Nicholas Carr is right, and consuming words on a screen is a "more primitive way of reading," then the iPad is a little bit Neanderthal and a little bit Prometheus. Its potential for creative ways to interact with literature makes it more than just an e-reader. And while it took more than a year and a half since the iPad's launch, some publishers are beginning to experiment with that potential. Last year saw several forays into innovative literature apps, most notably T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land; Atlas Shrugged and On The Road also received the "enhanced" app treatment.
Laura Miller (Salon.com co-founder, NY Times Book Review columnist, author) and Maud Newton (writer and critic for The NY Times Book Review, Granta, The Awl) have both written extensively about digital reading and publishing and they've launched The Chimerist, tagline: Two iPad lovers at the intersection of art, stories, and technology. Newton writes: [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 12:34 PM PST - 20 comments

Google's answer to TED talks has gone live. Solve For X, a "forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork," currently contains links to YouTube videos from the likes of Neal Stephenson, Rob McGinnis, and Privahini Bradoo. Videos range from 10 to 20 minutes in length. [more inside]
posted by sutt at 12:26 PM PST - 28 comments

Shortly after a small Iranian toy company "returned" (a pink plastic replica of) the captured RQ-170 unmanned drone, Mohammad H. Farjoo, Iran's Secretary for Policy-making at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Tehran (IIDCYA) has decreed an import ban on all toy Simpsons figurines. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 12:00 PM PST - 31 comments

With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, produce could travel all over the United States with ease. To stand out from competitors, farmers shifted from stencil-marked crates to vivid crate labels, which were largely replaced by lower-cost cardboard boxes in the 1950s and 60s, allowing images to be printed right onto the boxes. These vivid bits of history are now bought, sold, and traded by collectors (related gallery). Blue Sky Search and California Bountiful have articles on the rise and fall of produce labels, and the subsequent collection of these art pieces. Boston Public Library has a high-quality, larger format Flickr gallery, but the collection is limited. Pat Jacob's Fruit Crate Labels has a collection of small images and a lot of information for collectors, and Crate Label Museum has an extensive collection, though the images are smaller than those in the Boston Public Library's collection.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:52 AM PST - 19 comments

Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker Responds to Question about NJ Marriage Equality Referendum (proposed by Governor Chris Christie) (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by beisny at 11:29 AM PST - 55 comments

Tim Schafer: I mean I get a lot of, on Twitter or whatever, daily questions about Psychonauts 2. And I would love to do Psychonauts 2, I've actually pitched that to publishers several times and no-one has taken the bait so far...I'd love to do that game, but I'd have to convince someone to just give me a few million dollars, that's all.

Notch: How many millions exactly?
posted by juv3nal at 10:54 AM PST - 130 comments

Atomic Bread Making At Home is an in-depth article covering the ingredients, manufacture, and chemistry of; market research into; and social impact of the 1950's-era USDA No.1 white pan loaf.
posted by TheDonF at 10:16 AM PST - 23 comments

Three years after California voters approved a ban on gay marriage in California, a Ninth Circuit court has ruled (in the appeal case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger) that Judge Vaughn Walker's previous decision is valid, maintaining that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional and in violation of California's due process and equal protection rights. The decision came down to a 2-1 vote in favor of Judge Walker's decision. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:14 AM PST - 274 comments

Indigenous groups in Panama have shut down parts of the Pan American Highway in an increasingly violent protest. The root of the conflict is the Martinelli government’s refusal to enact environmental protection that was promised for the Ngöbe-Buglé Comarca from both Hydro-Electric and mining exploitation. Outside press is being denied entry to cover the conflict. This is not the first time this has happened. Ongoing updates in English can be found here.
posted by white_devil at 9:15 AM PST - 6 comments

Neil Young isn't happy about the current state of music consumption. A 30 minute panel discussion from D: Dive into Media. Whether you agree or disagree with him, it's hard to deny the man still cares.
posted by davebush at 9:06 AM PST - 119 comments

A lovely time-lapse of the Aurora Australis - The striking red color is the result of charged particles from the sun exciting oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere. [more inside]
posted by quin at 8:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Bobcat Goldthwait, ex-comedian and purveyor of such how-did-that-ever-get-made entertainments as Shakes The Clown and World's Greatest Dad, presents his newest film, God Bless America, a nasty piece of wish fulfillment.
posted by fungible at 8:30 AM PST - 75 comments

On the other side of the flimsy fence separating them from his neighbor Terry Thompson's property, Kopchak noticed that Thompson's horses seemed even more agitated. They were circling, and in the center of their troubled orbit there was some kind of dark shape. Only when the shape broke out of the circle could Kopchak see that it was a black bear.

Yesterday, Esquire and GQ each published lengthy pieces on the suicide of Terry Thompson and the crisis at his exotic animal zoo in Zanesville, OH. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:48 AM PST - 35 comments

And now, ladies and gentlemen, OK Go will play 1000 instruments with a car.
posted by swift at 7:47 AM PST - 59 comments

Ichi! Ni! San! Shi! Come on, everybody! Train kara-tee! SLYT '80s karate-promoting rap video.
posted by ignignokt at 6:29 AM PST - 26 comments

Discover Europe's television heritage. EUscreen offers free online access to videos, stills, texts and audio from European broadcasters and audiovisual archives. Explore selected content from early 1900s until today. [more inside]
posted by Lezzles at 6:00 AM PST - 6 comments

Is online dating destroying love? We are doomed, perhaps, to be unsatisfied creatures, whose desires are fulfilled only momentarily before we go on the hunt for new objects to scratch new itches. Which suggests that online dating sites will be filling us with hopes – and disappointments – for a good while yet. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 5:59 AM PST - 124 comments

When did the middle finger become offensive?
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:31 AM PST - 84 comments

One of the last surviving members of the Edelweiss Pirates, a group of rebellious teenagers from western Germany who formed a resistance network against the Nazis, has died aged 82: Jean Jülich [more inside]
posted by Mister Bijou at 12:42 AM PST - 19 comments

"It’s a very ancient idea that the universe runs by the principles of the gift...in fact the purpose for our existence, the reason why we’re here, is to give." Writer Charles Eisenstein speaks on his book Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.
posted by velvet winter at 12:16 AM PST - 41 comments