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American customers “demand soft and comfortable, recycled fiber cannot do it.” [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 11:52 PM PST - 72 comments

A recent study [PDF] conducted by Benjamin Edelman (Harvard Business School) found that conservative and religious states consume the most online porn. "The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1,000 home broadband users....Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election..." [more inside]
posted by ericb at 9:42 PM PST - 68 comments

Meta-efficiency is the analysis of efficiency at a more comprehensive level. Metaefficient Review assesses products considering not only their energy efficiency but also the embodied energy, toxicity, affordability, and usability. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 9:01 PM PST - 4 comments

Sufficiently usable read/write platforms will attract porn and activists. If there's no porn, the tool doesn't work. If there's no activists, it doesn't work well.
Some interesting commentary from an early employee of Tripod. Systems designed for the sharing of cute cats and other banal user-generated content will inevitably attract political activists, provided they work well enough.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 8:09 PM PST - 18 comments

What if you were one of the Rohingya people, and you faced death in trying to escape, or were expelled from your Homeland. Would you wait for others to help, or would you try and do it yourself...
posted by hadjiboy at 7:18 PM PST - 6 comments

The Armadillo (with audio) by Elizabeth Bishop + Lantern Festival"... between the kite sticks of the Southern Cross, receding, dwindling, solemnly and steadily forsaking us, or, in the downdraft from a peak, suddenly turning dangerous. Last night another big one fell. It splattered like an egg of fire against the cliff behind the house. The flame ran down. We saw the pair of owls who nest there flying up and up, their whirling black-and-white stained bright pink underneath, until they shrieked up out of sight. The ancient owls' nest must have burned. Hastily, all alone, a glistening armadillo left the scene, rose-flecked, head down, tail down, and then a baby rabbit jumped out, short-eared, to our surprise. So soft!—a handful of intangible ash with fixed, ignited eyes. Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry! O falling fire and piercing cry and panic, and a weak mailed fist clenched ignorant against the sky!"
posted by vronsky at 6:02 PM PST - 9 comments

Paul Harvey 1918 - 2009. At 7:30 PM the Paul Harvey site looked like this. Now if looks like this. (via) [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 5:48 PM PST - 103 comments

15 year old girl in holding cell beaten by Seattle Cop Caught on Camera. 15 year old girl in holding cell beaten by Seattle Cop. Not surprisingly the cop's lawyer didn't want this video published.
posted by ginky at 4:16 PM PST - 161 comments

Urban legend has it that the province of Saskatchewan, Canada appeared in red in some 1950's American social studies textbooks, along with other "communist" countries such as Russia, China and Cuba. It is true that Saskatchewan's "natural governing party", the socialistic New Democratic Party have held power in the province for 47 of the last 65 years. And it's true that the NDP's most famous leader (and Canada's Greatest Canadian), Tommy Douglas, brought universal healthcare to the province, an achievement which paved the way for it to come to the rest of Canada. But now, after suffering their worst defeat in 20 years, Saskatchewan's New Democratic Party is searching for a new leader... [more inside]
posted by Jaybo at 4:13 PM PST - 20 comments

Japanese voice actresses cover legendary punk songs (SLYT)
posted by MegoSteve at 3:56 PM PST - 44 comments

Egg Timer. Instructions here, not that you need any.
posted by william_boot at 3:27 PM PST - 42 comments

His name is Ugly Bat Boy, and no, there's nothing wrong with him. He's perfectly normal.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 1:55 PM PST - 47 comments

Scans_daily is was a LiveJournal community specializing in posting scans of comic books, both older and current ones. On Friday night, however, the community got suspended, allegedly because comics author Peter David complained that one of his books was posted to it (David denies this in the linked blog post.) Regulars at scans_daily are outraged that the community has been shut down, claiming that the ability for people to "try before they buy" encouraged readers to buy more comics. Other comics fans are not so kind and cite that, for better or worse, the community was knowingly violating copyright. The community has resurfaced and is at least discussing what changes should be made to avoid this "unpleasantness" in the future and make the community more "copyright friendly". We've seen these issues come up with movies, games, and music; now it's comic books' turn to try to figure out what to do about the internet and digital technology.
posted by Legomancer at 1:55 PM PST - 49 comments

Herod's Temple, originally an expansion on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Now a retired farmer has spent 30 years building a scale model of it
posted by Deflagro at 1:29 PM PST - 34 comments

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive is an astounding collection of historical material on mathematics, especially biographies. (Previously: 1 2 3 4.)
posted by parudox at 12:47 PM PST - 5 comments

China hits back at US criticism on human rights After the US needles China with human rights criticism, China responds with Human Rights Record of United States in 2008. From its preface: "As in previous years, the [United States'] reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but mention nothing of the widespread human rights abuses on its own territory."
posted by shetterly at 11:31 AM PST - 76 comments

It seems that there is a large DDoS attack targeting Time Warner's DNS servers in Southern California. JeffTWC's latest statement. A solution for those affected? [more inside]
posted by wayofthedodo at 9:42 AM PST - 46 comments

Hate Group Numbers Up By 54% Since 2000 according to Southern Poverty Law Center. Glen Beck thoughtfully wonders about the coming civil unrest (that he'll be stoking from the sidelines) And Sean Hannity takes down a poll on his forum about "What kind of revolution appeals most to you?" [more inside]
posted by nola at 9:23 AM PST - 75 comments

In a recent report for the Abell Foundation, University of Maryland Criminologist Peter Reuter asks whether, in light of the evidence from Switzerland, The Netherlands and elsewhere, Baltimore might not be the best place to try the first US heroin maintenance programme?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:14 AM PST - 17 comments

The OMB has a blog (feed) -- Peter Orszag started one at CBO (still going under Douglas Elmendorf née Bob Sunshine) and carried blogging over to the White House. The Atlanta Fed has one too (not to be confused with Macro Man). David Altig unofficially began it as an economist at the Cleveland Fed and then, when he became research director in Atlanta, made it official (altho still hosted on TypePad). Are there any other (federal/state/local/non-US) worthwhile government blogs (wikis sure) out there from our shiny new iPod gov't? cf. DoD live (check out the other service blogs, e.g.)/air force live & USAgov on twitter
posted by kliuless at 8:32 AM PST - 5 comments