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Easy grades, light reading loads, and above all a professor you can enjoy. Today’s university culture is one of all entertainment all the time.. an essay by Mark Edmunson based on his new book Why Read? about the the "crisis in the humanities", called the most provocative look since Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. (via Arts and Letters Daily)
posted by stbalbach at 11:41 PM PST - 54 comments

"Flavorpill Productions is a publishing and creative services company which develops filtered cultural content, and distributes it through permission-based emails": earplug (electronic music); boldtype (books); JC Report (fashion). Don't like mailing lists? There are archives: e b jc.
posted by dobbs at 9:54 PM PST - 3 comments

Blog catches FoxNews.com in mocking fabrication Are you surprised it was in a story quoting Senator Kerry? (A sequential account. Scroll upward to follow developments.)
posted by fleener at 9:34 PM PST - 57 comments

A Tale Of Two Believers: Blair hides his church attendance - because he may be a secret Catholic; Bush promotes Faith Based Initiatives, yet doesn't seem to go to church at all. Does your leader have a secret spititual life?
posted by dash_slot- at 7:32 PM PST - 24 comments

The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)
posted by andrew cooke at 5:29 PM PST - 17 comments

Build your own ramjet for under $60.
posted by clockwork at 5:25 PM PST - 8 comments

The amazing debate spotter text analysis tool is a fun way to look at the words our leaders use. Bush had a lot of obvious ones: hard work, wrong time, wrong place, he forgot poland. Kerry name dropped Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden quite a bit and had the highest kill ratio. Here's Cameron's post about how it came to be and how it works. Politics in the age of the internet are certainly an interesting time.
posted by mathowie at 2:52 PM PST - 36 comments

The Price of/for Attention

"While it's interesting (and soul-crushingly depressing) to discover bidding wars over keywords associated with human suffering, I'm focused on the idea that I can pull data about web users' interest in different subjects out of this data."

The fight to get attention on humanitarian crises, the dynamics of web browsing, and something like statistical game theory meet for a greased wrestling match in GoogleAds.
posted by freebird at 2:48 PM PST - 6 comments

Very descriptive screen caps This how-to section features some of the most hilariously notated screen caps I've ever seen. I'm...well, I'm speechless.
posted by glenwood at 2:10 PM PST - 25 comments

You Forgot Poland.
posted by reklaw at 1:56 PM PST - 61 comments

Mount St. Helens Erupting.
Anybody have any money riding on this?
posted by Parannoyed at 1:05 PM PST - 11 comments

The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet. In the spring or summer of 1596, William Shakespeare received word that his only son Hamnet, 11, was ill. In the summer he learned that Hamnet's condition had worsened and that it was necessary to drop everything and hurry home. By the time the father reached Stratford the boy—whom, apart from brief visits, Shakespeare had in effect abandoned in his infancy—may already have died. On August 11, 1596, Hamnet was buried at Holy Trinity Church: the clerk duly noted in the burial register, "Hamnet filius William Shakspere." It might have been possible that Shakespeare's Catholic father urged his son to have prayers said to speed the child's release from purgatory. The problem was that purgatory had been abolished by the ruling Protestants, and saying prayers for the dead declared illegal. Hence, the possible dilemma for Shakespeare was whether to risk punishment by praying for their deceased loved ones or obey the law and allow those souls to languish in flames. This anxiety regarding one's obligations to the dead, Stephen Greenblatt suggests, lies behind Hamlet's indecision about whether to obey his father's ghost and take revenge on his uncle Claudius.
posted by matteo at 1:00 PM PST - 21 comments

Another master taken: Richard Avedon, dead at 81. Arguably the greatest portrait photographer in history, Avedon was famous not only for his fashion or celebrity shots, but also his interest in the common man, best emphasized by the book "In the American West". He was recently working on a piece, "On Democracy" when he suffered a brain hemorrhage. Many may be familiar with his simple black & white on white style from his shots for the New Yorker (he was their first staff photographer). His site is currently shrouded in respect.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:47 PM PST - 13 comments

Canada's participation in the U.S. missile defence program will not be voted on by Canadians. The Liberal government believes George W. Bush will win the US election and "given the potential for negative consequences" wants to do whatever it takes to make him happy. 7 out of 10 Canadians oppose participation in the program.
posted by Stuart_R at 12:41 PM PST - 31 comments

Stovokor! Captain pInluH and Commander Khrell are stuck in Portland, the sneaky Ferengi having sold them a 'faulty temporal device.' Life is hard on Earth, it seems. Did anyone get a set list? No matter. It's my beleif that we will not see these warriors astride golf carts. Look out, number 1: perhaps they are looking to pull a Titor on your burgeoning data empire!
posted by mwhybark at 11:27 AM PST - 13 comments

In the wake of last Sunday's New York Times piece on gang-driven strife in Central America, the heartbreaking photography of Donna De Cesare. (Hat tip: Sharon Schoen.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:04 AM PST - 1 comments

Extinct animals action figures - get yours and make them fight. Recreate the famous battles of Dodo vs. Caribbean Monk Seal, or Little Swan Island Hutia vs. the Balinese Tiger.
posted by milovoo at 10:50 AM PST - 6 comments

Mount Saint Helens Web Cam provided by the US Forestry Service. Just in case. Also, Valerie Smith's Mount Saint Helens pages, and a comprehensive Mount Saint Helens site from the US geological survey.
posted by carter at 10:13 AM PST - 18 comments

So I saw this image online (of a Michigan absentee ballot...which arrow is for Kerry, and which is for Bush?) and it made me think, what the hell is going on with this election? On the one hand, I'm told your vote might just be worthless if you use electronic voting machines but on the other hand the alternative (in my state, at least) is to use an absentee ballot, which, according to some, might be easier, if only because I can have members of a political party help me fill it out.
posted by taumeson at 9:49 AM PST - 49 comments

Nick's Mathematical Puzzles. Something to keep you on your toes and exercise your brain this Friday. [not Flash]
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:21 AM PST - 5 comments

Mountaintop Removal Mining. Now in High Resolution. Some amazing pictures of this mining process.
posted by grefo at 8:29 AM PST - 8 comments

How Berkeley Can You Be Parade?
NSFW (unless your work doesn't mind naked men strutting their stuff).
Found during my surf after the debate last night and well worth a peek, the outraged commentary is pretty funny but it might be lost on the intolerant or those who've never been out to visit Berkeley. Among the pics is this true, true gem (Klingons do NOT ride in golf carts, not even fat Klingons!)
posted by fenriq at 7:34 AM PST - 20 comments

The Toronto Star asked its reader to pick the winner in Thursday's debate between George Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry.
posted by johnnydark at 7:19 AM PST - 62 comments

Tragedy + time = comedy. "This incredible slide captures the heart of both young and old with its beautiful design and fast dual slide lanes."
posted by Robot Johnny at 7:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Chocolypse Now.
I love the smell of Oompa-Loompas in the morning.
posted by Optamystic at 6:06 AM PST - 10 comments

This is Pinky. He's a very loving cat. [Link to Coral cache, 1.9MB WMV file, playable in mplayer]
posted by majick at 5:06 AM PST - 21 comments

In-your-face shoot-em-up action by bedroom-coders/games designers. From Japan: Warning Forever; Perfect Cherry Blossom; Cho Ren Sha 68K; Bullet Philharmonic Orchestra; Score Soldier; rRootage; Every Extend; TKKN / Crazy Game; and Galshell: Blood Red Skies [NSFW]. Be attitude for gains! From the West: Deadeye; Strayfire; Warblade; Mutant Storm; Bugatron; Space Birdz; Spheres of Chaos; Battle of Yavin; Demonstar; 'Troid; Platypus; Gridrunner; Intensity XS; and Tsunami 2010. From the pages of Edge magazine.
posted by nthdegx at 3:02 AM PST - 9 comments

The legacy of the mutiny on the Bounty. Three cheers for the Empire!
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:22 AM PST - 34 comments