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A site full of mesmerizing visual travel. It is distant. It is frozen. It is obscured, nostalgic and cavernous. Without bound and yet finite. But does it float?
posted by cashman at 11:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Victor Kahn. Jim Warren. Artie Kornfeld.
posted by Esoquo at 10:12 PM PST - 12 comments

Strangemaps presents a unique map of the United Statements of America; it's a map of the USA with each state's motto (or a translation thereof) by artist Emily Wick. The strangemaps post includes an explanation of most of the mottoes below the image.
posted by Eideteker at 8:24 PM PST - 30 comments

ComixFilter | The First Post hosts the full versions of a few great graphic novels (some NSFW): Joe Matt's The Poor Bastard • Marisa Acocella Marchetto's Cancer Vixen • Rosalind B. Penfold's Dragonslippers • Rich Koslowski's The King • A slew of Tony Millionaire's Maakies strips • And, since it's his birthday, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum
posted by not_on_display at 6:43 PM PST - 24 comments

Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. [more inside]
posted by caddis at 6:40 PM PST - 30 comments

Progressive rock was kicked off American radio circa 1985 (not so much fired as pressured into resigning); today, there's virtually nothing on mainstream radio in an odd meter (5/4, 7/8, etc.). At Odd Time Obsessed, though, everything is. [more inside]
posted by kurumi at 5:27 PM PST - 73 comments

Walkie Tonky is a physics-based action game which puts you in the shoes of a giant robot invading Earth. Smash and kick your way forward using the robot's every limb to cause mayhem and clear the road ahead. (Download required, from a sort of funky filehosting site. Probably Windows only, but I'm not sure.) [more inside]
posted by Caduceus at 5:20 PM PST - 9 comments

A tempest in a Livejournal: It starts with author Elizabeth Bear's post Writing for The Other. Or maybe it started with Jay Lake's Thinking about the Other. It leads to a wide ranging, intense and angry debate on the portrayal of ethnicity in fiction, culture and the media. Avalon's Willow responds with an open letter on the racial content in one of her books, and relates it to media portrayals of ethnic peoples. Deepa D follows up with a post on, cultural appropriation. And then things get intense. [more inside]
posted by happyroach at 3:53 PM PST - 82 comments

Savage 2 is an innovative mix of first-person shooter, third-person action rpg, and real-time strategy. Teams consisting of 18 different classes, each with unique abilities, are divided in squads led by an officer, and under the direction of a single commander with a top down view of the action. Players must help their commander capture resources, advance their front line, and eventually destroy the enemy’s stronghold while accumulating experience and improving their abilities. Did I mention as of December 9th, it has become free to play? [more inside]
posted by paradoxflow at 3:18 PM PST - 10 comments

The Remnants. It seemed so promising at first. From the writer of GO and Big Fish, comes a pilot for a post-apocalyptic comedy unlike anything you've ever seen, starring, among others, the much celebrated Zefrank, Justin Bateman,and Ernie Hudson. But after six months of shopping it around the major networks, it seems the The Remnants might just die on the vine. But wait! what's this flurry of press coverage? Go put in your two cents (or hopefully a lot more) here!
posted by Parannoyed at 3:12 PM PST - 20 comments

Ensuring that at least someone gets his legacy right, Ex-President Bush has on his final day in office commissioned a series of Official Legacy Booklets with such unlikely titles as 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record. These weighty tomes inform us, for example, that "the Afghan economy has doubled since 2001"-- an accomplishment perhaps assisted by the arrival of American forces spending some $3 billion per month there. [more inside]
posted by shii at 2:28 PM PST - 64 comments

Your favorite music blog sucks.

Rock/Psych/Prog/Indie/Folk
ChrisGoesRock
Prog Not Frog
Like Dynamite to your Brain
YoungMossTongue
Glamorous Indie Rock'n'Roll
FANTASY
SONZEIRANANET
A L A I N F I N K I E L K R A U T R O C K
Orexis Of Death
[more inside]
posted by swift at 1:51 PM PST - 55 comments

Economist Bryan Caplan is author of the best contemporary critique of democracy and democraticness (previously), and therefore the person I'd most like to visit Singapore and share his thoughts. He recently took a trip to this quasi-democracy lauded for both its pro-growth policies and its strong, competent government (and criticized for its repression and its draconian penal code). The trip to what is in some ways an economist's utopia allowed Caplan to think about the implications of his own writings, and the validity of Churchill's dictum on democracy. Here's what he had to say: [more inside]
posted by grobstein at 1:38 PM PST - 19 comments

Bill Ayers, arriving in Toronto to lecture on inner-city education, has been denied entry to Canada. [more inside]
posted by bicyclefish at 1:19 PM PST - 145 comments

UK MPs trying to block publishing their expenses - they're voting on Thursday to overturn last year's High Court ruling. TheyWorkForYou is emailing members to let them know that the UK government buried the news of this vote amongst last week's Heathrow runway anouncement. They are trying to reverse the 16 May 2008 High Court decision that MPs' expenses must, under the Freedom Of Information Act, be made public. What can you do about this mixture of Jo Moore and Krusty? [more inside]
posted by TheDonF at 11:22 AM PST - 58 comments

Today marks the 200th birthday of Edgar Alan Poe, and as happens every year the mysterious Poe Toaster marked the date by placing three red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac at his Baltimore grave. The identity of the toaster isn't the only question surrounding Poe - his presence in Baltimore and the circumstances of his death remain a mystery. Some speculate that he may have had rabies, others that he may have been a victim of cooping. And while Baltimore embarks on a year long celebration of Poe some argue that his body shouldn't be there at all.
posted by Artw at 11:12 AM PST - 39 comments

Margot & the Nuclear So and So's (page auto-starts music, loads slowly) bid farewell to President Bush in music video form.
posted by !Jim at 11:07 AM PST - 16 comments

An American woman is showing off her amazing mouth on Japanese TV shows.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 8:38 AM PST - 93 comments

King's Anti-Imperialism and the Challenge for Obama.
posted by homunculus at 8:29 AM PST - 23 comments

R.I.P. Bob May - better known as "The Robot" in the 60s T.V. series "Lost in Space." [more inside]
posted by Muddler at 8:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Velociraptor Roulette. Click the button, win a Velociraptor, or not. [via a very dramatic mefi projects thread]
posted by silby at 7:30 AM PST - 21 comments

The whole eight years of Bush in Onion articles. (Via)
posted by Del Far at 7:28 AM PST - 36 comments

"Then I started stripping and cleaning. I told myself it would help sell the flat. How could anyone think of buying it? But I also imagined that if I cleaned long enough and hard enough, the dull patina of dried blood that seemed to cling to every surface would finally go. I hoped that if I emptied the flat of its objects, and pared back its contents to nothing, I would uncover the place that I grew up in, before Ivor was the old man, before he was a legend. I couldn’t find that place, and I didn’t think I would find it in the boxes and among the papers either." David Goldblatt traces his murdered father's life through unpaid bills and unopened letters.
posted by marmaduke_yaverland at 4:40 AM PST - 19 comments

The End of the Affair. Like many followers of Judaism around the world, Sir Gerald Kaufman, a British MP and friend of Golda Meir, has gone through an internal battle over their views regarding the State of Israel. Kaufman rejected the Sharon government and later made a remarkably prescient 2002 documentary (.ram) on Israel. Though he has been targeted by zionist webistes, and has repeatedly received death threats, hate mail, and has even been harassed during worship, Kaufman remains outspoken about Israel's attack on Gaza: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza . . . they're not simply war criminals, they're fools."
posted by markkraft at 1:44 AM PST - 184 comments