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The Daily Kitten No matter how jaded and cynical you are, it is well nigh impossible to visit this site and resist clicking thru at least a few weeks' worth of pictures.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:09 PM PST - 42 comments

What the Democrats have to do to win back the American middle class. (PDF file recommended by Democrat Martin Frost, who served in the US House of Representatives from 1979 to 2005.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:46 PM PST - 145 comments

We Feel Fine is an art project that finds sentences from blogs and stitches together a real-time picture of how the web community is feeling. The default visualization uses a particle system to show the most recent thousand feelings. You can also build your own set based on criteria, such as gender, age, or location. Click the heart menu and go to Mobs to watch the particles organize in impressive ways. The gestalt of the visualization is compelling, but the details are the best part. Some sample montages. Also see a related project, Love Lines, which uses the same API.
posted by spigoat at 8:16 PM PST - 13 comments

Penis panic, is a type of body dysmorphia, among other strange afflictions. Also known as koro, it may be induced by cannabis, superstition or fear.
posted by nickyskye at 8:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Leonardo3, a design team in Milan, was given unprecedented access to the Codex Atlanticus [PDF], Leonardo da Vinci's closely guarded notebooks, in which he designed hundreds of machines he had hoped to build. The team transformed more than 100 drawings into 3-D graphic representations of his inventions. From these they built working models which are now displayed for the first time in the U.S., at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
posted by ericb at 5:26 PM PST - 29 comments

The Linux Open Source Sound Project. Music made with open source software, published under a Creative Commons Sampling License, to download (or if you've created some yourself, upload). Each track lists the software used in it's creation. Download are mostly Ogg Vorbis (naturally). Mostly electronic music (in case you were wondering).
posted by drill_here_fore_seismics at 3:11 PM PST - 7 comments

"One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night" An example of nonsense?
posted by ozomatli at 2:50 PM PST - 56 comments

Always Help a Bird (1965); Sleeping Beauty (1959); Rooty Toot Toot (1952); and even more modern design cartoon and animation treasures from author Amid Amidi's blog Cartoon Modern. Look for the book to be out in August.
posted by soiled cowboy at 2:33 PM PST - 11 comments

The world's largest scientific instrument is under construction beneath the polar ice. Encompassing a square kilometer of the Antarctic icecap, the IceCube array of photodetectors is designed to spot neutrinos, those most elusive of particles. You can see pictures of IceCube being built at the South Pole, or a video (quicktime) of what the detector network looks like. Other massive neutrino detectors are also photogenic, like the Super Kamiokande (other pictures), located in a mine a kilometer underground, or BooNe at Fermilab, filled with 800 tons of mineral oil.
posted by blahblahblah at 1:42 PM PST - 31 comments

A good rant about "delusional advertising" but if you have 10 minutes to TOTALLY waste, click on the "PLAY" button for Pirelli's amazing(ly silly) short film featuring The Malkovich as a priest using four tires and a cross to fight a demonic Naomi Campbell over the soul of a sports car.
posted by wendell at 12:03 PM PST - 55 comments

Reflections on Psychoanalysis: 150 Years.
posted by trinarian at 11:51 AM PST - 23 comments

We have about 4 billion years left until our planet is going to be destroyed. If a meteor doesn't smash us in first, over the next 250 million years the continents will continue drifting to form another pangea. If we're all still friends having survived the climate change and each other, we'll be roasted by the expanding red giant after our sun exhausts its interior hydrogen supply. In about 5.5 billion years time the helium left in the core will get hot and dense enough to burn, flaring up in a massive helium flash engulfing what remains of the solar system. When the helium core is gone, hydrogen in the outermost layers will drift off to form a ring nebula, leaving in the middle a bright white dwarf star that will slowly cool down into a cold, dense black dwarf: a silent and forgotten fossil, floating through infinite space. In other news: cats are funny! hahahahaha!
posted by 6am at 11:39 AM PST - 69 comments

Ancient observatories from space Satellite images of Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Chaco Canyon, Stonehenge, Teotihuacan, and others. The observers, observed. High res images available.
posted by carter at 10:28 AM PST - 23 comments

Newsfilter: Chavez announces he may call a referendum asking voters to allow him to rule without further elections until 2031, well past the 2012 limit currently imposed by the Venezuelan constitution. Bluff? Naked power grab? Fatal mistake? Either way, watch what you say about it if you're in Caracas.
posted by loquax at 10:26 AM PST - 248 comments

15 days ago, there was a relatively small earthquake near Beaconsfield, Tasmania, which left 3 miners trapped in a gold mine. The situation looked grim after the body of one of the miners was recovered. But after 5 days, there was elation as the other two were found, still alive, buried one kilometer underground in a small cage. Australia's major commercial networks immediately sent their top news celebrities to the small mining town, assuming there would be a quick and easy rescue. In hindsight, they were perhaps a bit over enthusiastic. Accusations of a media circus, and chequebook journalism soon followed. After a couple of days of nothing happening, the media even started turning on their own. The story took an unexpectedly sad twist this weekend when one of Australia's most well known journalists died at the site from an apparent heart attack. But tonight, after 15 days underground, it seems the rescuers are finally breaking through the rock to reach the unfortunate trapped miners.
posted by Diag at 9:01 AM PST - 20 comments

Baltimore House is the New Dylan? Probably not, but Baltimore Club is an interesting sub-genre of dance music, anyway-- taking influences from Hip-Hop, House, Go-Go, Miami Bass, Detroit Ghettotech, Rave and TV theme songs(!) and merging them into a sound that's unique to Charm City's underground dance clubs. You can sample (and buy) some of the classics here. (warning, horrible web design, IE only) or listen to a whole mix CD here here. (lyrics NSFW)
posted by empath at 8:48 AM PST - 19 comments

Maohair, Chinese "peasant with a camera": China's Weegee? (Weegee links: The Getty, Int'l Center of Photography, Eastman Collection, 1945 radio interview and weegee.org); (Maohair links: His MSN Spaces page (in Chinese w/pics), more pics.) Warning: Not for the faint of heart.
posted by docgonzo at 8:45 AM PST - 15 comments

Grant McLennan, of the Australian group The Go-Betweens, has died in his sleep at the age of 48. I just discovered this wonderful band, through the pop masterpiece 16 Lovers Lane. If you haven't discovered them, many mp3 blogs are paying tribute. (Some discussion in this Metatalk thread, but I thought this needed an FPP.)
posted by barjo at 8:28 AM PST - 23 comments

The German town of Hesel bore witness a few weeks ago to the International German Beard World Championship. Photos here and here. [more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:59 AM PST - 16 comments

The Laurence Hutton Collection Of Life & Death Masks is one of the more fascinating collections of historical artifacts out there, consisting of more than 100 plaster casts of the live and dead faces of the great, near great, and famous figures stretching from the 19th Century all the way back to the 15th. Laurence Hutton, an author born in New York in 1843, collected these masks all his life, hunting them down in thrift shops, curio shops, private collections and even garbage dumps, and after his death the collection was inherited by Princeton University. For years the masks sat collecting dust in cardboard boxes, and were available for viewing by appointment only. However, someone recently had the obvious idea to make digital photos of the masks and put them on line, making these riveting portraits available for all to see. This is a subject that has always fascinated me, for a life mask is the truest portrait we have of many historical personages. I have my own small collection of such masks; a life mask of Beethoven and Chopin, and even Paul McCartney (I am, surprise, a musician.)
posted by Nicholas West at 7:50 AM PST - 29 comments

evolution of cooperation apparently the evolution of cooperative behavior has been something of a rough spot for evolution researchers. Some guys (Mikhail Burtsev & Peter Turchin) developed a computer simulation that helps to explain how the essential selfishness of survival is not mutually exclusive to altruism and cooperation as well as how these behaviors can arise naturally. (further reading from google: ###)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 12:43 AM PST - 27 comments

In a new afterword to "The End of History and the Last Man", Fukuyama reflects on how his ideas have survived the tides of criticism and political change.
posted by semmi at 12:11 AM PST - 33 comments

The Quentin Crisp Archives. Includes a selection of letters , and memories of his early career as a life model.
posted by Rumple at 12:06 AM PST - 6 comments