MetaFilter

In the World of Warcraft, Serenity Now - a hardcore Player-verus-Player (PvP) guild - attacked an in-game memorial service held by another guild for a guild member who passed away in real life. They made a video of the exploit, apparently for recruitment purposes. In their wake they left many questions...
posted by bigmusic at 11:12 PM PST - 121 comments

For those of you suddenly obsessed with Iran and the atom. I wonder how that happened...
posted by panoptican at 9:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Save the Internet is a coalition trying to preserve net neutrality and stop Congress from ruining the internet by giving it to the telecommunications industry this Wednesday. (More links, previous discussion, via.)
posted by homunculus at 7:24 PM PST - 57 comments

Making any jokes or statements during the screening process may be grounds for both criminal and civil penalties.
posted by quonsar at 6:13 PM PST - 73 comments

The Desert One Debacle
posted by Kwantsar at 5:07 PM PST - 19 comments

Abraham Lincoln, duelist? Hamilton and Burr were not the only prominent duelists in US history. In the early morning hours of September 22, 1842, a young Abraham Lincoln crossed the Mississippi River at Alton, IL on his way to a small island where he would engage in mortal combat with a political adversary. Lincoln had used his sarcastic wit to write anonymous letters to the editor lampooning a political rival, James Shields. Some of his friends joined in and perhaps went a little too far, including suggestions of Shields' inadequacies with the ladies. One of these friends included Lincoln's future wife, Mary Todd. Shields demanded a duel and Lincoln defined the parameters of the duel - broadswords in a pit.
posted by caddis at 4:16 PM PST - 46 comments

Del Mar Community College in Corpus Christi has blocked all access to MySpace because it was 40% of all Internet usage. (Don't those students know about downloading bootleg MP3s?)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:15 PM PST - 62 comments

Chinlone!
posted by Witty at 3:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Crash. Tiny SMART-1, ESA's first lunar probe (also a compact spacecraft technology test bed), has been in lunar orbit since November 2004. Following the success of its primary and secondary missions, ESA now plans to crash SMART-1 into the moon, with a hard landing on the near side which may be visible from Earth. More stuff on ESA's little lunar trooper: SMART-1 lunar imagery, SMART-1 NASA Master Catalog entry, Planetary Society's SMART-1 category, and SMART-1 on Wikipedia.
posted by brownpau at 3:39 PM PST - 4 comments

"This right here beats everything I have ever seen." Michael Mendez, Danny Reeves, and "Master Rick" Sciara were arrested a month ago for castrating at least six men in their sadomasochistic dungeon in Waynesville, NC. Inside the house were found a tin of used instruments, an electric shock paddle, a Physician's Desk Reference, an invoice for lidocaine, and a pair of frozen human testicles.
posted by stemlot at 2:46 PM PST - 61 comments

Air France: Apparently abandoning any pretence that traveling economy in the back of an A330 is an enticing experience, they've launched this site which looks back at the days when women wore fur, men smoked pipes and air travel was glamorous. Quite a few nice little movie vignettes of life chez Air France from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s.
posted by marvin at 2:46 PM PST - 22 comments

i'm not trying to be anyone that I'm not, i'm just a middle class white boy trying to express myself... i'm hoping to get my big record contract... It's just a demo. (mpeg)
posted by sucka_mc at 12:40 PM PST - 62 comments

Perform the painless procedure* Affordable In-Home LASIK Surgery You Can Do Yourself!™
*This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA.
posted by jba at 12:28 PM PST - 21 comments

"Killing the Buddha is about finding a way to be religious when we're all so self-conscious and self-absorbed. Knowing more than ever about ourselves and the way the world works, we gain nothing through nostalgia for a time when belief was simple, and even less from insisting that now is such a time. Killing the Buddha will ask, How can we be religious without leaving part of ourselves at the church or temple door? How can we love God when we know it doesn't matter if we do? Call it God for the godless. Call it the search for a God we can believe in: A God that will not be an embarrassment in twelve-thousand years. A God we can talk about without qualifications." I particularly enjoyed The Temptation of Belief, by a Buddhist exploring evangelical Christianity, and My Holy Ghost People, by an unbelieving daughter in a praying-in-tongues family.
posted by heatherann at 12:26 PM PST - 21 comments

Talk to The Hand. They say you should always sing from the heart, but no one ever said anything about what do to with the hands. Enter Robert A. Wilson, N6TV, manualist extraordinaire. If you thought the Human Beatbox from Spearhead was great, wait until you see Robert perform the Theme from Hawai'i Five-O or for Classical music lovers, there's The Toreador Song, from Carmen and The William Tell Overture (Lone Ranger Theme).

Robert is no stranger to talking with his hands. He's also a ham radio operator, a hobby and public service which is not only celebrating 100 years of wireless voice communication, but also makes excellent use of another mode of communicating with the hands: Morse Code. As old and seemingly antiquated as it seems at first glance, Morse Code has been used to allow those with physical challenges communicate with those around them.
posted by jackspace at 12:00 PM PST - 21 comments

Boycotts : politics and corportate power Hispanic News on a call to boycott Kimberley Clark (Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, etc...) as the corporate member behind Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner "author/sponsor of HR 4437 which would turn 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons, punish anyone guilty of providing them assistance" and more. What's the real story here? Boycotts, are they still effective? How much of a link (symbolic or otherwise) is there between this legislation and the company? None? A little? A lot?
posted by dorcas at 11:31 AM PST - 43 comments

AdAge reports that Apple is adding ads to iTunes. The ads will only appear if you're listening to a podcast and not while listening to your own music, according to the article. I suspect this will be greeted with the same enthusiasm as was the mini store that was included with iTunes 6.
posted by vannsant at 11:26 AM PST - 61 comments

The Chinese Military is evidently big enough that they can now afford to bar chronic snorers from enlisting. Uh oh.
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:53 AM PST - 21 comments

Cameratruck. What do you get when you cross a pinhole camera with a truck? You get the world's largest mobile camera, and perhaps the only camera that is its own darkroom (at least on wheels!). The cameratruck is currently travelling Spain in a trip that will culminate in an exhibit at PHotoEspaña.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:51 AM PST - 15 comments

When artist Matthew Moore found out part of the family farm was to become a suburban subdivision, he did what any farmer/artist would do, and recreated the subdivision in crops to show what it would look like in the surrounding landscape.
posted by mathowie at 8:38 AM PST - 56 comments

Dangerous Men (embedded video, sound) A film started in the 70's/80's, finished in the 90's and unleased in 2005. Variety said, "Dangerous Men by John S. Rad will strike horror in the hearts of anyone." trailer (nsfw, mpeg)
posted by phirleh at 7:37 AM PST - 32 comments

Kaavya Viswanathan is a 19-year-old Harvard student whose first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, just cracked the New York Times bestseller list. The problem? The Harvard Crimson and SF Gate assert that the author plagiarized much of it from two books by Megan McCafferty. Of course, it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before with young writers.
posted by mothershock at 6:59 AM PST - 222 comments

"Ça va faire une maudite poutine."
posted by docgonzo at 5:57 AM PST - 39 comments

It is estimated that due to an infected polio vaccine, 10 million to 30 million people in the United States from 1955 through early 1963 were inadvertently exposed to live Simian Virus #40, a pathogen linked to various cancers. If it happened before, maybe it happened again. Perhaps AIDS was just another accidental contamination originating in an American lab - this time a hepatitis vaccine gone wrong. Why assume conspiracy Dr Cantwell?
posted by missbossy at 1:32 AM PST - 75 comments

"If we start with the sheep then next it's the cows and horses."
posted by scblackman at 12:44 AM PST - 11 comments