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She's been (among other things) Maria Callas, Norma Desmond, and---(of course)---Eva Peron; she's done Sondheim, Mamet, and Porter; she's worked with DeNiro and Spike Lee; and she has a new cd out. Impressed? There's more: Patti Lupone sells stuff on e-bay!
posted by adrober at 11:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Online Poker Player turns $40 into $3.2 million with his entry into the World Series of Poker. He decided to give poker a try after seeing the Matt Damon film Rounders. Turned out to be a good career choice.
posted by IndigoSkye at 8:04 PM PST - 6 comments

BlogTalk blogs itself: A Malkovich meme? No! A smorgasbord of variegated blogthought from "Why are there so many bloggers in Poland and Iran?" and "Why are there so few bloggers in the Hispanosphere?" to "Phil Wolff adds the missing bullshit." And now, for extra "blogging the bloggers blogging blogs" pleasure, death by PowerPoint!
posted by hairyeyeball at 5:25 PM PST - 3 comments

And solitaire's the only game in town.... A topical twist on a typical office timewaster.
posted by konolia at 5:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Painting with Marxism. A gallery of socialist realism and the Mexican muralists, with a nice links section (such as the Chisholm Gallery's Russian, Spanish Civil War and Cuban posters. More at the Art of Marxism. (The children's literature page is quite intriguing).
posted by plep at 3:54 PM PST - 10 comments

2003 Reith Lectures. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, talks about a number of fascinating neurological disorders and the insights they provide into mental functioning.
posted by srboisvert at 2:35 PM PST - 10 comments

Old Firm dialectics It's going down the thinnest wire tomorrow in the Scottish Premier League (football/soccer/fitba that is) as Celtic and Rangers, with one game left to play in perhaps the most absurd league in Europe, stand equal on points and goal difference after 37 games thus far.
posted by skellum at 2:17 PM PST - 7 comments

Panoramic view from top of Everest (requires QuickTime) [via kottke.org]
posted by kirkaracha at 2:02 PM PST - 16 comments

You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat together with a family. "It has changed just for a moment". [ "it being very dear" or ] You will pass pleasant one time. Costumes for your cat + some great Engrish. (via Boing Boing.)
posted by Vidiot at 1:50 PM PST - 9 comments

The Directory of Open Access Journals, launched this month by Lund University Libraries in Sweden, links to peer-reviewed online scholarly journals whose entire content is freely available. (More inside.)
posted by mcwetboy at 12:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Conservative acts like conservative Columnist William Safire (in the NYT, though mirrored in the link for your convenience) takes on corporate consolidation of media and culture: The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many. Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of power - political, corporate, media, cultural - should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy. (search for info. about your hometown media). Safire, in fighting against deregulation alongside "the left", has some strange bedfellows. Obviously, terms like "left" and "right" are less than perfectly useful, but is this the beginning a larger shift? 20 years from now, will libertarians and gun-owners still be de facto Republicans, and if not, will they simply cease to be a block, or find comfort elsewhere on the political spectrum?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:02 AM PST - 26 comments

The Tragic Mulatto wore Doc Martens. In this NYT Magazine piece, Paul Tough explores the uneasy case of white supremacist Leo Felton - a would-be racial holy warrior who happens to be biracial, the child of a white woman and a black man.

While "passing" has always, always been fraught with risks and contradictions, this is one of the more charged, vivid, and frankly depressing examples in recent memory. But is there some hope bound up in it? With "race" increasingly being understood as a social construct, some seven million Americans identifying themselves as "multiracial," and an interracial community replete with its own voices, was Leo Felton the prophet of something entirely other than what he thought?
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:47 AM PST - 72 comments