February 20, 2010

Chatty Jerk Aims To Please

An eloquently spoken and helpful jerk has been appearing on Chatroulette. His interactions with strangers must be seen.
posted by Arthur Phillips Jones Jr at 11:30 PM PST - 87 comments

Asaekkiga

Asaekkiga a comic by Yang Young Soon
posted by MetaMonkey at 10:44 PM PST - 26 comments

Cruise Elroy

Chasing Ghosts is a terrific documentary that follows the fates of the winners of the 1982 arcade world championships and the short lived era when coin operated Video Arcades boomed and then busted coming to a crashing end shortly after 1984. It focuses primarily on the first player to play a perfect game of Pac Man, meaning going 256 levels, on one man and eating four ghosts on every powerpellet (in the first 19 screens after that the ghosts don't turn) and ending up on the kill screen and finding all the hidden dots there. (Warning lots of Youtube.)
posted by ExitPursuedByBear at 6:44 PM PST - 50 comments

Phil Collins Remembers the Alamo

Musician and actor Phil Collins has a passion for the Alamo.
posted by theperfectcrime at 6:36 PM PST - 77 comments

“A cobra among garter snakes”

He was... "...the meanest, toughest, most ambitious S.O.B. I ever knew but he'll be a hell of a secretary of state." -- Richard Nixon
Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr.,, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, who served US Presidents Nixon (as a military adviser, deputy assistant for national-security affairs, and chief of staff), Ford (chief of staff), and Reagan (secretary of state), has died at the age of 85. Haig commanded a batallion during the Vietnam War (where he was seriously wounded), managed the White House during the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, and was himself a former Presidential candidate. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 6:34 PM PST - 40 comments

Luna Commons

Luna Commons is a database of sixteen free digital image collections built using Luna Imaging's Insight software. And there's a lot of cool stuff, well over a hundred thousand images all available for download in good resolution. Here are some of the collections featured: Pratt Institute Fashion Plate Collection, The Farber Gravestones Collection, Maps of Africa, Cornell Political Americana Collection and the The Estate Collection of art by HIV+ artists. The advanced search allows you to search across all collection, for example seeing everything across all collections about animals or New York or your birthyear. Whatever you look for, it's gonna bring up a boatload of interesting images.
posted by Kattullus at 5:57 PM PST - 4 comments

Apocalypse Wow

Steve McGhee is destroying the world as we know it. And it's a beautiful thing to see.
posted by stinkycheese at 4:37 PM PST - 34 comments

Tanks for the memories...

His bank was threatening forclosure on his $350,000 home, so one Iowa man takes the next logical step: he bulldozes it to a pile of rubble. [embedded local news video]
posted by zardoz at 4:31 PM PST - 99 comments

The Art of Choosing a Title

The Land of Underwater Birds - a novelist looks at the art of choosing a title for your novel.
posted by empath at 4:07 PM PST - 34 comments

Raw Material for Puns

When Alan Cooper was in the second grade, his teacher introduced him to "homonyms," those words, like "caret" and "carrot" that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently, and that have different meanings. The concept intrigued him, and over the years he has maintained an ever-growing list. Alan Cooper's Homonyms. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 3:59 PM PST - 54 comments

Eighty-six the Excelsior

Feel like having some Uncanny X-Pasta (PDF) or an Incredible Hulk Burger for dinner tonight? Sadly, you'll have to time-travel back to 1998 to visit Marvel Mania, the short-lived Marvel Comics theme restaurant (PDFs) that briefly graced Universal Studios.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:55 PM PST - 14 comments

Pat Graham Photography

Pat Graham takes photographs, mostly of Modest Mouse and other musicians but also of other stuff.
posted by mygothlaundry at 3:52 PM PST - 2 comments

Have One On Joanna

"My brother had an MC Hammer album that was riddled with silent patches because my mom had erased the dirty bits from the cassette. I really don’t know how she did it — that might be a lost art — but she had it mastered." Harpist Joanna Newsom talks to The Times Online about her lackadaisical approach to paying the cable bill, last year's experience with vocal cord nodes and her new triple LP Have One On Me.
posted by porn in the woods at 3:21 PM PST - 34 comments

A Demon's Portion

Prose and Motion is an anagram game with built in physics. [more inside]
posted by krakedhalo at 2:51 PM PST - 14 comments

this is only a coincidence

You have reached 1-800-I Feel OK.(mp3) To leave your own OK Soda Related Coincidence, Press 1. To listen to Coincidences, press 2. To respond to the OK Soda Personality Inventory, Press 3. To hear other fascinating options press [more inside]. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:47 PM PST - 25 comments

Amerithrax case closed

The investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks (dubbed "Amerithrax" by the FBI) is now closed. Yesterday, the Department of Justice released a 92-page summary [pdf] of their investigation. Their conclusion -- that USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins was the culprit -- was backed by an impressive amount of evidence, including microbiological detective work (p. 23 ff). But some of the investigation was downright bizarre.... [more inside]
posted by cgs06 at 1:00 PM PST - 46 comments

The master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan's drug-trafficking border police

The master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan's drug-trafficking border police.
posted by chunking express at 12:23 PM PST - 1 comments

Drinks are on the house!

Sick of the Tea Party? Then try The Cocktail Party! (no, not that Cocktail Party). With a platform that includes nationalizing the banks, abolishing marriage, establishing national healthcare, and opening national borders, the Cocktail Party is for "left wing urban homosexuals and the people who love us." Is America ready for this self-proclaimed "motley crew of miscegenated sex crazed lushes who read Marx and Fanon, seeking to support our lifestyles by taking resources from the rich and powerful and redistributing them with abandon"? Or perhaps a more important question: will they make a difference?
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:04 AM PST - 89 comments

Seize on, Emily.

Speculations have been made about Van Gogh, Julius Caesar, Dostoyevsky, Napoleon, and many others. A case has been made to add Emily Dickinson to their ranks.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:21 AM PST - 59 comments

Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, other authors give their own lists of personal dos and don'ts (Part 1, Part 2).
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:10 AM PST - 139 comments

Mapping in Crises

“We are not moving concrete or water but we are delivering situational awareness.” Mobilizing immediately after earthquake, professional (fb) and volunteer emergency mappers (aided by instantly released satellite imagery and the structure of the OpenStreetMap project); came together in impromptu “Crisis Camps” rushed to meet the need for information on missing persons, roads, emergencies calls, existing infrastructure, damage, and now internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps. [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 1:35 AM PST - 17 comments

Kit Williams' Masquerade: The Full Story

In 1979, British artist Kit Williams buried a golden hare in the UK countryside and published a book of painted clues detailing, for those clever enough to solve the riddle, the hare's whereabouts. Mefi's own Paul Slade shares the entire intriguing saga on his website, PlanetSlade. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by maxwelton at 1:22 AM PST - 35 comments

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