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Classic 80's Games. Play Now! (flash - via interact)
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:33 PM PST - 14 comments

The top 10 IKONOS satellite images of 2003
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:10 PM PST - 10 comments

The Calvin & Hobbes Extensive Strip Search (C.H.E.S.S.) is a wonderfully obsessive database of every Watterson strip indexed by keyword & description, with each strip scanned, as well as a book & page # listing of which collection the stip appears in (and original newspaper publication date). It's wildly in violation of copywrite, but it's also very cool. and the geek in me wonders how they do the cool right-mousebutton trick when you click on the strips
posted by jonson at 8:31 PM PST - 36 comments

What do you get when you give university students 48 hours to complete a short film that must included a briefcase, the phrase "Where did I put that remote control" and has to be a musical? 'Detonate'. (Click the 'detonate' link in the features section, movie plays in a pop up)
posted by Be'lal at 7:47 PM PST - 6 comments

Hey Joe! Jimi Hendrix, right? Unless it's one of the 599 others. Do we have any idea of what the real standards are; i.e., the truly most-covered and most-coveted songs? [Via LinkFilter.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:23 PM PST - 25 comments

Buyer's Remorse? Mickey Kaus of Slate raises questions about Kerry as president, though as it looks like the Mass. senator has the nomination locked up. CNN reports that Edwards is dropping out tomorrow. And the polls aren't even closed yet in most states. CNN says the two men had a good talk by phone. Is this the Dems dream ticket? Meanwhile, Vermont screams for Dean.
posted by Slagman at 5:32 PM PST - 96 comments

Mining the Deep Web. Google indexes 4 billion pages, but there are hundreds of billions of documents out there in the Deep Web that are effectively unreachable by search engines because they are locked in databases or are unsearchable media. It looks like Yahoo is going to start giving us a peek by providing unified access to a wide variety of sites that are ordinarily only searchable by their own custom search engines.
posted by badstone at 4:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Ashoura Day
(warning, the image in the link is graphic and disturbing and is from Yahoo News, sorry about the lameness of the source) Ashoura Day is a Shiite Muslim holiday that commemorates the 7th century death of Saint Imam Hussein.
Its "celebrated" by cutting oneself or others with swords and knives and is primarily aimed at children though many adults get into it as well. I'm all for cultural tolerance but this strikes me as pretty blatant child abuse.
For an in depth examination of what the Ashoura commemoration means, check out The Connotations of Ashoura.
posted by fenriq at 4:12 PM PST - 69 comments

Ocean Power Technologies is one of the leading Ocean Wave Power alternative energy companies. The technology is simple to understand, easy to deploy and costs about the same as fossil fuel power 3 to 4 cents. OPT just signed a deal for a 1M farm off the coast of Spain with a 100M farm by 2006, a major step forward for wave power generation.
posted by stbalbach at 4:05 PM PST - 16 comments

Air Raid Sirens.
posted by hama7 at 2:16 PM PST - 23 comments

Local Kid Show Hosts. For many of us kids from the 70s, national shows like Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Zoom! were staples of our "boob tube" saturated lives. But what about the local kids shows? In Seattle, we had some amazing local kiddie shows, from the delightfully subversive JP Patches who lived in the city dump with his transvestite pal Gertrude, to the sugary sweet "Boomerang" hosted by Marni "The Voice of Hollywood" Nixon. Going even further back, we had Stan Boreson, "The King of Scandahoovian Humor" hosting the loopy "King's Klubhouse" in the 50s, the eerie "Wunda Wunda Show" hosted by Ruth Prins (not much out there about her), and Captain Puget with his sidekick Salty, played by local eccentric businessman Ivar Haglund. Who were your local kids show hosts and how whacked out were they?
posted by evilcupcakes at 1:57 PM PST - 44 comments

Gay sex -- so good, it just might destroy the planet. Family Research Council founder Paul Cameron is frequently cited as an authority on sexuality by the religious right. In his view, "lesbians are particularly good seducers" and the thrill of gay sex is like "pure heroin" -- which is why homosexuality must be stopped before we all suffer gay-orgasm death, apparently. (I don't know about you, but after reading Cameron, I could sure use a... something in my mouth.) [via TBogg.]
posted by digaman at 1:54 PM PST - 75 comments

Ever hear of a "tangible tax law"? Chances are, you haven't. Florida doesn't have an income tax, so it makes up for it by having something called a tangible tax. The state of Florida taxes businesses for property they ALREADY OWN that could be used to generate income...on top of a 5.5% corporate tax rate. Many Floridians own their own businesses, a percentage of which are sole proprietorships (like me doing freelance work) and so won't owe state or corporate income taxes, yet will have to pay because of this law. Many of you have experience with property taxes, which are the most common form of Ad Valorem tax, but if you own a business or do freelance work, I suggest you educate yourself.
posted by taumeson at 12:53 PM PST - 10 comments

How bad was the bombing of Dresden? It seems there is a veritable industry dedicated to debunking the various and sundry historical accounts different groups hold sacred. I was raised by pacifists and was made very familiar with the stories of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden, in particular. According to this man's new book, the firebombing of Dresden wasn't quite as bad as it has been made out to be. In fact, much of the evidence for the numbers of dead come from an historian who has since been discredited as a holocaust denier. Others would argue that a war crime is a war crime is a war crime. In the end, do the specific numbers really matter? How less evil is 25,000 dead than 135,000?
posted by piedrasyluz at 12:41 PM PST - 21 comments

god hates shrimp
posted by bluno at 12:26 PM PST - 79 comments

The paintings of James Rosenquist on a flashy flash site (via lauraholder.com).
posted by liam at 12:14 PM PST - 2 comments

The New York Times reports: The entertainment industry's pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report [pdf] being released today by the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has its roots in the business world. Finally, some corporate and economic policy recognition that big media's antiquated distribution models cannot and should not be protected with government regulations or government-mandated DRM. Read a summary of the report and its recommendations here [pdf].
posted by ajr at 11:48 AM PST - 1 comments

Culture War a-brewin'...git yer ammo here. As territory is staked out in this nascent national struggle, the Independent Gay Forum has a number of articles that provide a more-than-cursory glimpse of the manner in which one side hopes to frame the debate, and a likely response to the frames already in place. Especially notable is John Corvin's Homosexuality and Morality. It appears as if the newest round of the culture wars may be unique in that two sides will be fighting them.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:38 AM PST - 34 comments

Yep, it's true, a Simpsons movie is being worked on. Target release date is sometime in 2006, though there's nothing in IMDB about it yet.
posted by mathowie at 11:37 AM PST - 19 comments

The Kamagasaki Gallery. Background to and photographs of a Japanese slum.
posted by plep at 11:29 AM PST - 10 comments

The Russian cup of tea is a marvelous triumph of quality over schedule. It is also remarkably similar to the way the Turks make tea.
posted by leapfrog at 11:16 AM PST - 13 comments

"Urban Armor," or "kickass alternative menstrual gear." Project of a "fight the power" type activist-feminist movement against industrial distortions of menstrual culture. (No surprise, I suppose, that I saw links to this on flyers at an art college.) Previous MeFi discussion on "menstrual culture" here. And when the monthly flow has ceased, other forms of kickass alternative gear are available.
posted by brownpau at 9:16 AM PST - 78 comments

Is testosterone the root cause of autism?
posted by Irontom at 8:40 AM PST - 22 comments

The mathematician Anatoly Fomenko is one of a number of Russian academics advancing revisionist chronologies which portray a greatly foreshortened view of European history. He argues that mediaeval and classical histories as we know them today were fabricated in Renaissance times. In his book 'History: Fiction or Science', he 'proves' that Jesus Christ was born in 1053 and crucified in 1086, and that the Old Testament refers to mediaeval events... Fomenko's theories have been debunked, but his ideas have nevertheless gained some currency in Russia: among his supporters is the former chess champion Garry Kasparov. Of course, Fomenko is by no means the first mathematician to grapple with the subject of chronology: indeed, any history must be founded in part on a calculus of dates... Are there any parallels, I wonder, between the spread of theories like Fomenko's and the renewed prevalence of Biblical chronologies in the US, for example: is there some kind of psychological solace in perceiving history on a smaller scale than current academic orthodoxy allows? (more inside).
posted by misteraitch at 1:25 AM PST - 50 comments