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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 - 77 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 - 147 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 - 134 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 - 49 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 - 96 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 - 8 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 - 35 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 - 10 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 - 67 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 - 50 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 - 48 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