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Detcord burns extremely quickly. One of the finest applications of high speed photography I've ever seen. Merry Christmas! [more inside]
posted by butterstick at 5:58 PM PST - 23 comments

In years past, Eirik Solheim has been interested in capturing the passing of a year, as seen in his wooded yard in Oslo. In 2010, he set up his camera to take an image every half hour, and from that, he selected 3888 photos to serve as single pixel-wide samples in a photo collage of the year. He also selected 3500 shots for a timelapse video of the year, with and without zoom. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:48 PM PST - 20 comments

And no doubt you need to find gifts for people you dislike. Ideally gifts that are plausibly considerate, thoughtful gifts but aren't. [more inside]
posted by jeather at 3:52 PM PST - 102 comments

"Hey, Andrew.
I dig your music and what you stand for, but I'm kind of getting sick of all the hippy-dippy love stuff lately. Please don't take this the wrong way, I just think your whole message has kinda gotten corny. Maybe I'm out of line, but I don't see how all this cheesy lovey-dovey stuff makes sense in the real world. You're naive. Sometimes love just doesn't work. Sometimes people need to experience a bunch of bad shit in order to wake them up and see the truth. You have to admit that sometimes violence is the only way to make real change and get people's attention. Love isn't always the answer, man."
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM PST - 84 comments

Frank and Louie, the world's oldest Janus, or two-faced cat, has passed away in Worcester, Mass at the age of 15. Since the normal lifespan for such a cat is one to three days, it is safe to say that he (they?) more than beat the odds. There's another video in the Boston Globe article.
posted by Curious Artificer at 2:44 PM PST - 34 comments

Guardians of the Corpse Ways is a thorough one-stop resource for all of your canine Underworld mythological needs. Why did countless cultures associate dogs with the realm of the dead? Here's a tiny sample: "The essence of the hellhound is his intermediary position - at the border of this world and next, between life and death, hope and fear, and also (given its pairing with the dog of life) between good and evil. For this role, the dog is perfectly suited, being the domestic species par excellence, the tamed carnivore who stands midway between animal and human, savagery and civilization, nature and culture [26]. 'The growl of the hellhound is yet another expression of this liminal position, for the growl is a halfway station between articulate speech and silence. It is a speech filled with emotion and power, but utterly lacking in reason. Like death itself, the hellhound speaks, but does not listen; acts, but never reflects or reconsiders. Driven by hunger and greed, he is insatiable and his growl is eternal in duration. In the last analysis, the hellhound is the moment of death, the great crossing over, the ultimate turning point.' [27]" [more inside]
posted by quiet earth at 2:00 PM PST - 8 comments

How Ambi became Paisley: "It began as a teardrop in Babylon. Where the sunlight came from Astarte, shameless goddess of the fecund feminine. The boteh. Stylized rendition of the date palm shoot, tree of life, fertility symbol. It danced through Celtic art, until the heavy feet of Roman legionaries tramped over the Alps. Then it fled the wrath of Mars and Jupiter, dove underground as Empire rose ." From Shailja Patel's Migritude. Here's a short film about the Migritude project (book on Amazon).
posted by dhruva at 1:02 PM PST - 6 comments

"Re-Do Studio is a design studio founded by two friends Gaspard Tine-Beres and Tristan Kopp. They are dedicated to investigating alternative ways of production with the aim of shortening the cycle between the final consumer and the manufacturer." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:21 PM PST - 6 comments

What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings. D. Brian Burghart, editor of the Reno News and Review, has spent two years compiling Fatal Encounters, a croudsourced national database of police violence and publishing stories with his findings.
posted by qi at 11:27 AM PST - 21 comments

For 45 minutes on Dec. 6, 1989 an enraged gunman roamed the corridors of Montreal's École Polytechnique and killed 14 women. Marc Lepine, 25, separated the men from the women and before opening fire on the classroom of female engineering students he screamed, "I hate feminists." Almost immediately, the Montreal Massacre became a galvanizing moment in which mourning turned into outrage about all violence against women. December 6th is now commemorated in Canada as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Twenty-five years after the Montreal Massacre, the Montreal Gazette interviews four of the survivors: Jocelyne Dallaire Légaré, Heidi Rathjen, Nathalie Provost and Michèle Thibodeau-DeGuire. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:11 AM PST - 33 comments

Does Sean Bean really die more than other actors?
posted by Sara C. at 10:48 AM PST - 44 comments

The student is lying on a public bench, at the end of a trail of vomit. He is unconscious; his front pocket gapes, a wallet falling partway out. An officer shakes him, and again, finally rousing him. “How much,” the officer demands, “have you had to drink?”

This week the Chronicle of Higher Education published a multi-part series about drinking at college:
A River of Booze: Inside one college town's uneasy embrace of drinking
6 Campuses and the Liquor Surrounding Them
Protecting the Party: With focus on sexual assault, students look out for one another while drinking just as much
Why Colleges Haven’t Stopped Binge Drinking: Decades of attention without much difference
On Camera, Alcohol Is Central to College Experience
4 Campuses Respond to Risky Drinking
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:37 AM PST - 45 comments

The Boy Who Grew Up by Christopher Barzak is a Peter Pan story featured in the first issue of Uncanny Magazine, a kickstarter funded SF/F magazine co-edited by Hugo Award-winner Lynne M. Thomas and Hugo Award-nominee Michael Damian Thomas. Issue One contains fiction by Kat Howard and Max Gladstone (Gladstone previously) as well as non-fiction essays including "The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Films On The Web".
posted by The Whelk at 10:01 AM PST - 3 comments

An amateur dance group of five dads break out their Christmas sweaters and best dance moves to the beat of a remixed "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy". (SLYT)
posted by orange swan at 10:01 AM PST - 9 comments

The Making of an Underground Film, originally broadcast on CBS News with Walter Cronkite on New Years' Eve 1965, begins with reporter Dave Dugan saying, "Not everyone digs underground movies, but those who do can dig 'em here." in front of the Bridge Theatre in New York City's Greenwich Village. An interview with avant-garde filmmaker and exhibitor Jonas Mekas then segues into footage of the making of Dirt by filmmaker/poet Piero Heliczer, as a pre-Nico incarnation of the Velvet Underground (with both Maureen Tucker and original percussionist Angus MacLise) plays silently in costume in the background. Other highlights include interviews with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick, plus the uninterrupted airing of a Stan Brakhage film in tribute to poet Michael McClure.
posted by jonp72 at 9:21 AM PST - 2 comments

Eric Rosenberg is a graphic designer that got his start twenty years ago helping to create the distinctive look of The Hudsucker Proxy. His website features some of his work over the years on films including Fight Club, The Truman Show, Almost Famous, Dreamgirls and a whole lot more.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:36 AM PST - 6 comments

In the investigate hub where you can ask Krem about his past in Tevinter, the first draft had him deserting after fighting off someone who discovered his secret and tried to assault him. My friends noted that this played directly into the sad “attacked trans person” cliché, and while it was plausible, it was an ugly event that could well trigger trans people who have experienced harassment in real life. The goal was for Krem to be a positive character who was living his life happily now, and I revised his departure from Tevinter accordingly.

Despite lead Dragon Age writer David Gaider being worried about opportunities to include trans characters in any but minor roles in AAA games only a year ago, Bioware did do just that with the inclusion of Cremisius “Krem” Aclassi, a trans man voiced by Jennifer Hale. In a blog post his writer, Patrick Weekes, talks about the challenges in creating his character.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:18 AM PST - 74 comments