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A "no-return, solo mission" to Mars? The comments - 179 of them as of the time of this post - are even more interesting than the article.
posted by amyms at 10:44 PM PST - 92 comments

Well respected as a player, instructor and scholar, Adam Gussow teaches blues harmonica online at Modern Blues Harmonica. For a fee.
On YouTube, as KudzuRunner, he also gives lessons. For free. He's put up around 145 videos now--145 videos with like about a million hits in return...
via Tom Muck's Blog
posted by y2karl at 10:29 PM PST - 12 comments

Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis. Psychology Professor Benny Shannon speculates that Moses may have been tripping when he saw God on Mount Sinai. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted by homunculus at 7:45 PM PST - 69 comments

Each of the following MySpace Music pages features bios and/or photos and/or videos and/or miscellaneous related materials and/or up to six songs by each of the following old school Jamaican Reggae and/or dub artists: Alton Ellis, Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, The Wailing Wailers, Big Youth, Dennis Brown, Mikey Dread, The Meditations, Leroy Brown, Mad Professor, Augustus Pablo, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, King Tubby, The Abyssinians, Everton Blender, Bunny Wailer, Prince Alla, Israel Vibration, Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, Shinehead, Jah Ruby, Carlton Livingston, King Jammy, Duckie Simpson, I Threes, Judy Mowatt, Sly and Robbie, Barrington Levi, Yellowman, Delroy Williams, Wailing Souls, Earl "Chinna" Smith, Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace, Burning Spear, Max Romeo, Black Uhuru, Leroy Sibbles, Ijahman Levi and Earl Cunningham. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:10 PM PST - 25 comments

This year's winners of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival's annual haiku contest were recently announced.
posted by blue shadows at 6:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Dustin Carter persevered and became a wrestler after he contracted a rare blood disorder which took all his limbs. His training is impressive.
posted by gman at 6:43 PM PST - 17 comments

"Hendon's library's opening hours have been cut, a cafe has taken the place of part of the fiction section, and a computer learning zone has replaced the periodicals room. When I complained, a local councillor wrote back to say that he did not feel that the cut in opening hours was a great hardship for anyone."

The Guardian writes on the long slow death of libraries.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:04 PM PST - 86 comments

Gravitation. A new game from the creator of passage. (via rockpapershotgun)
posted by juv3nal at 1:36 PM PST - 15 comments

Hannah Poling is a nine year old girl with mild to moderate symptoms of autism, which developed three months after she received vaccinations. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that her family will receive a settlement from the vaccine compensation fund. Autism activists are encouraged, but the DHHS officials insist they are not admitting a link between autism and vaccines and maintain that for most, vaccines are safe. Rather, they say, the series of vaccines Hannah received exacerbated an underlying mitochondrial condition, causing the symptoms of autism. [more inside]
posted by arnicae at 10:59 AM PST - 127 comments

Would you like a latte while I print that up for you? The Espresso Book Machine (previously) that was in the New York Public Library has just moved to the Northshire Bookstore in Vermont. The beta versions of this portable book-making machine are pumping out paperbacks around a book a minute at the Open Content Alliance, The Library of Alexandria, The New Orleans Public Library, and the University of Alberta. The mass produced commercial version of the machine is scheduled to roll off the assembly line within the year and will be priced between $50,000 and $20,000. Combined with one of these, publishing as we know it may never be the same. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 10:16 AM PST - 36 comments

Buster Martin is an old man. This 101 year old Brit intends to run the London Marathon. He is, as you may guess, the sprightliest centenarian you've ever seen. Last year, after leaving a pub, he was jumped by some hoodlums, but managed to beat them off when he "pushed one and kung fu kicked the other." [more inside]
posted by whimsicalnymph at 10:13 AM PST - 42 comments

Harvard Professor Samantha Power's book A Problem from Hell is on syllabi across the country, and is the bible of humanitarian hawks who decry our failure to intervene in the Rwandan or Sudanese genocides. As one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors, she's getting a lot of press for her positions: pro-intervention, obviously, critical of Israel, pro-UN, pro-internationalism, and, perhaps unsurprisingly given her husband's role in ignoring the Rwandan genocide, anti-Clinton.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:52 AM PST - 85 comments

Oil Tops Inflation-Adjusted Record Set in 1980. Normally this would slow economies and thus slow demand for oil, forcing OPEC to loosen supplies, but things seem different this time: "we now have an oil world in which the impact of high oil prices is only really felt in the OECD countries" - high demand from China, India are keeping prices high, even as OECD economies slow. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 8:12 AM PST - 75 comments

Gram Parsons fans take note - there's a recent new biography and a release of 90 minutes of vintage Flying Burrito Brothers. Some rare footage has also recently surfaced online: performing with FBB and duets with Emmylou Harris 1, 2, 3. Other items of note: Emmylou talks about Gram in 2000; British biographical sketch; Keith Richards on Gram in Rolling Stone; an interview with Manuel, the designer of the famous Nudie suit. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 7:56 AM PST - 38 comments

How women have fought, and succeeded, and celebrated their victories. [previously here, and here]
posted by hadjiboy at 7:36 AM PST - 8 comments

A nifty one minute "personality video game" shows the unique approach to gaming taken by Cecropia, whose first effort, the highly-praised "The Act" was an interactive sitcom of sorts that was controlled with a single knob. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, Cecropia never could find a market for an intelligent coin-op game with a single control in 2007, so The Act was canceled.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:38 AM PST - 20 comments

POSSESSED is a short documentary film that 'enters the complicated worlds of four hoarders; people whose lives are dominated by their relationship to possessions'.
posted by jack_mo at 6:22 AM PST - 45 comments

Who says women aren't funny? [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 2:47 AM PST - 145 comments

If you who hear a symphony each time you open a beer, here's a little Friday fun.

(Check out the 'Behind the Scenes' video too.)

NB: Flash and music.
posted by essexjan at 1:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Extensible applications such as Firefox appear to be banned by Apple's iPhone SDK license agreement: No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)… An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. An Application may write data on a device only to the Application's designated container area, except as otherwise specified by Apple. Applications may only use Published APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any unpublished or private APIs.
posted by finite at 12:39 AM PST - 143 comments

Geek Pop '08. Online science music festival at the Null Hypothesis science blog, with mp3 downloads. Featuring the immense Dark Matter by Johnny Berliner. [more inside]
posted by algreer at 12:36 AM PST - 3 comments