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The great British guitarist Davey Graham died Monday at 68. Every aspiring acoustic guitar player who came of age during the 60s knew of Davy Graham, composer of Anji and inventor of the DADGAD tuning. His own records were never commercial smashes, but his influence was felt by all his contemporaries in the world of folk music and by legions who came after who knew nothing of him personally. The Guardian has a brief obit and assembles a fine video tribute .
posted by rdone at 10:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Out of Africa. As award-winning Globe and Mail Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolen bids farewell to a place she's come to love, she reflects on how it has changed, and how it changed her. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 9:55 PM PST - 4 comments

Difference Games offers you 9 spot-the-difference games. The 3 categories are Graphic Novels and Comics, Play With Mum and Difference Xtreme! My favorite is The Dragon and the Wizard, which makes failure interesting.
Difference Games offers you 9 "spot the difference" games. The three categories are Graphic Novels & Comics; Play with Mum and Difference Xtreme! My favourite is The Dragon and the Wizard, which makes success interesting.
posted by Kattullus at 8:09 PM PST - 33 comments

Max Corkill and his cat Rastus were a site to behold as they motorcycled through New Zealand with Rastus perched on the fuel tank, sporting his custom helmet. They were tragically killed in a collision nearly 11 years ago. A series of books about, and inspired by, Rastus can still be purchased (worth the click for the cute photo) although it isn't clear if the proceeds go to the charities for which Max & Rastus raised funds. More photos on their memorial MySpace. Another motorcycling kittah and further details.
posted by NailsTheCat at 7:58 PM PST - 27 comments

Prospect 1. From the New Orleans Museum of Art in the City Park, to the Lower Ninth Ward's multiple installation locations, Prospect 1's curation is tasteful and moving, sometimes heart breaking but mostly promising. An unbelievable concentration of impressive artist's commentary on New Orleans. And it's free to get around (shuttle service available also) if you simply register. [more inside]
posted by priested at 6:43 PM PST - 7 comments

Architects Arturo Vittori and Andreas Vogler of Architecture and Vision will design the interior of Project Enterprise by Talis Enterprise – a privately-funded Space Tourism program in Europe that plans to bring the first individuals into space from Airport Magdeburg Cochstedt by 2013. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:02 PM PST - 2 comments

The City Concealed A video tour of New York's infamously toxic Newtown Creek, with historical illustrations. The creek is the site of a 17 million gallon underground oil-spill (50% larger than Exxon-Valdez) which remains to be cleaned up, resulting in a Supreme Court battle between residents and oil companies. (Previously on MeFi.)
posted by hermitosis at 5:28 PM PST - 16 comments

Roger Ebert called it "one of the finest, truest, most deeply felt movies in my experience". Rated X on initial release, it still has not appeared on DVD. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 4:18 PM PST - 66 comments

Do girls toys and boys toys lead to a gender gap?
posted by Artw at 3:44 PM PST - 134 comments

A contestant becomes a Double Showcase winner by bidding the exact price on The Price is Right. The last time this happened was 1972. (via BWE)
posted by spec80 at 3:33 PM PST - 60 comments

Giles Walker created fully animated robot pole dancers to see if it was possible to make CCTV cameras sexy using simple mechanics. Part of the “Mutate London” exhibition at the Behind the Shutters Gallery. SFW
posted by gman at 3:24 PM PST - 16 comments

A Dinosaur Paleontologist's View of Godzilla; fabulous views from Godzilla (previously); an alternate history view of Godzilla; a view of Godzilla's insides.
posted by mikepop at 3:10 PM PST - 15 comments

David Stairs channels Ivan Illich on design, professionalization, and why he stopped joining clubs. [more inside]
posted by puckish at 3:05 PM PST - 10 comments

The End of an Era. Apple has just announced this January will be the last Macworld.
posted by four panels at 2:17 PM PST - 58 comments

MetaFilter's Eric Gjerde has just come out with a book, Origami Tessellations: Awe-Inspiring Geometric Designs. Eric also makes really unusual, complex and mathematically interesting origami. His site has all kinds of cool things to look at and explore, like Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament, Joel Cooper's amazing paper sculptures and Ernst Haeckel's awesome book, Kunst-Formen der Natur. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:54 PM PST - 8 comments

ZIRP! Not an exclamation, it stands for Zero Interest Rate Policy. One country to try this was Japan in 2001, using the euphemism Quantitative Easing in an attempt to fight a multiple year long recession. The most current country? The United States of America. [more inside]
posted by eriko at 1:08 PM PST - 50 comments

Cute things falling asleep.
posted by Korou at 11:47 AM PST - 64 comments

"Some people hustle pool; some people hustle cars. Then there's that man you've heard about, the one who hustles stars!" Greetings, greetings, fellow stargazers! Looking toward your computer screen today, you'll find Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer, a five-minute show that has been in weekly production for over thirty years, airing in-betweensies on many PBS stations. Contrary to the cheeky bio on Jack's website, it wasn't always easy for Jack to "keep looking up!" This 9/19/1982 Miami Herald article reveals that he grew up as a sickly boy, eventually meandering to Florida to stumble into his avocation and vocation as Director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium, only to watch his life's work almost crumble due to a PR nightmare. Since then, however, things have been much better: Star Gazer (originally called Star Hustler, then changed in 1997 due to internet search engines leading people to Hustler Magazine's website) has been nationally syndicated since 1985 (and internationally since 1989), chalking up over 1500 episodes. A book of his monthly cartoons has been published. The Astronomical League sponsors The Jack Horkheimer Award for Exceptional Service by a Young Astronomer. (2008's winner.) So whether you find Jack avuncular or creepy, Jack Horkheimer is, to many, the face of popular backyard astronomy. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 11:36 AM PST - 37 comments

Classic hip-hop albums, recreated in Lego
posted by mathowie at 10:31 AM PST - 48 comments

The Fed Who Blew the Whistle: Is he a hero or a criminal? Three years after the New York Times first revealed the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, whistleblower Thomas Tamm has acknowledged his role in making it public. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:21 AM PST - 51 comments

Martian maps and a few others in good quality PDF.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:20 AM PST - 9 comments

Police Officer Seen on Tape Shoving a Bicyclist Is Indicted - Update to the widely viewed video of a NYC police officer shoving a critical mass rider off of his bicycle, reported on MeFi here.
posted by caddis at 8:01 AM PST - 234 comments

One hundred years ago today (12/16/08), Maria de los Remedios Varo Uranga, (aka Remedios Varo) was born the Catalan region of north-east Spain. She attended the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, where she was a classmate of Dali, Buñuel, and Lorca. She joined the Surrealist movement in France, but WWII forced her into exile in Mexico where she fully developed her artistic style. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:56 AM PST - 13 comments

The Hobbit Name Generator: You have a secret name. Discover it. [more inside]
posted by chillmost at 7:46 AM PST - 86 comments

After forty years, the BBC has suspended coverage of next year's Crufts, the UK's premier dog show. The event's major sponsor had already pulled out. This is in reaction to a documentary - Pedigree Dogs Exposed (1hr, possibly NSFW surgery) - showing how years of inbreeding of pedigree show dogs has resulted in many suffering from genetic diseases and disabilities. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:48 AM PST - 76 comments

Des Imagistes is an online version of Ezra Pound's influential 1914 anthology of Imagist poetry, which includes work by Pound, James Joyce, H. D., and William Carlos Williams. [more inside]
posted by whir at 5:18 AM PST - 11 comments

The Australian National Library is digitising newspapers.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:22 AM PST - 13 comments

On Dec 14, the often-linked Clay Shirky (most recently) ended his guestblogging stint at boingboing with a question for the commenters: What's going to happen in the next five years or so that will catch most of the rest of us by surprise, but not you? [more inside]
posted by finnb at 4:14 AM PST - 88 comments

BBC: Users of the world's most common web browser (good old IE!) have been advised to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed. Microsoft Security Advisory 961051. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:33 AM PST - 116 comments

Christmas is turning out to be good for lovers of weird animal games: Hot on the heels of Minotaur China Shop comes the PC release of Space Giraffe (video), updated from its previous XBox-360-only incarnation (briefly mentioned here) with new levels & upgraded graphics.
posted by slater at 12:58 AM PST - 16 comments