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Plan B, also called the "morning after pill" is an emergency contraceptive. Some pharmacists have refused to stock and fill the prescription, citing ethical reservations, causing the AMA to affirmatively state its support for the contraceptive and urge pharmacists to sell it and for the FDA to allow over-the-counter distribution. A partial victory was achieved in 2006 to allow OTC dispensing without a doctor's note for those over 18 years of age. However, some pharmacists continued to refuse to fill the prescription, including the owners of Ralph's Thriftway pharmacy chain in Washington State in 2006, causing some to boycott the chain. Ralph's was later found by the Washington State Board of Pharmacy to have violated the state pharmacy code in so doing. Ralph's lawsuit to block the ruling reached the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which has now ruled against the pharmacy chain, saying ALL pharmacists must stock and dispense the contraceptive. [more inside]
posted by darkstar at 9:17 PM PST - 455 comments

Have you ever wondered what happens when a freight train drives through a tornado? Let me show you (2:01 SLYT)
posted by P.o.B. at 7:17 PM PST - 122 comments

A small selection of Postsecret's spinoffs, from the blah to the pathetic, plus making fun of some of the dumber ones.
posted by kldickson at 6:53 PM PST - 18 comments

Dr. Tae describes the way the US system of education is failing and how to fix it.
posted by peregrine81 at 5:44 PM PST - 40 comments

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall Released as Freeware. The download (Fileshack) requires DOSBox to run; the linked article includes instructions for running the game under DosBox. Also related are DaggerXL, a game engine being developed to update / enhance Daggerfall for modern systems, and The Daggerfall Workshop.
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:21 PM PST - 32 comments

Professors Ross W. Boulanger and Dr. James Duncan have put together a Geotechnical Engineering Photo Album, with details of the successes and disasters. The album includes compaction techniques for a highway off-ramp, deep excavation methods, an offshore tank structure, and earthquake hazards of many sorts (mountain landslides, liquefaction damage to ports in Kobe, Japan, surface rupture in Taiwan, and problems with shallow foundations and subsidence in Turkey). (via oi9)
posted by filthy light thief at 2:15 PM PST - 12 comments

Champions of Reversible Destiny, architects Arakawa + Gins believe that people die because they're too comfortable. Having lost their life savings through Bernie Madoff, their bewildering East Hampton Bioscleave house - and, presumably, immortality - can now be yours for only $4million. [via the always awesome It's lovely! I'll take it!]
posted by Beautiful Screaming Lady at 1:48 PM PST - 57 comments

“But it was clear to me that any time you deny one group of people the same right that other groups have that is a clear violation of civil rights and I have to speak up on that.” The Southern Christian Leadership Conference — the 50-year-old civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others — is seeking to remove the president of its Los Angeles chapter in response to his support of same-sex marriage in California. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 1:32 PM PST - 193 comments

Calving mothers are seeking out human contact. (SLNYT) “It’s extraordinary,” she said. “At precisely the time when you’d expect them to be the most defensive, they’re incredibly social." A lengthy article about the state of whale-human relations built around events at Baja.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 1:26 PM PST - 16 comments

Tim Hortons, the perennially popular Canadian donut chain, is coming to New York, taking over 13 Dunkin Donuts locations in what some are calling the Doughnut Wars. There seems to be some controversy over the precise reason for the change. Want to know where to get a Double Double in the Big Apple? There's a Google Map! And, Monday morning, FREE COFFEE.
posted by 235w103 at 1:21 PM PST - 131 comments

Iran: The Rooftop Project. "This is meant to be the most complete possible collection of recordings of nighttime protest in Iran since the beginning of the uprising. Its goal is to locate and profile at least one video for each night primarily focusing on the nightly chanting of Allah-o-Akbar from the rooftops, whenever that footage is available. Some of these videos have not been widely seen until now." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 11:36 AM PST - 24 comments

Flash Friday: Play Moneyseize. [more inside]
posted by boo_radley at 11:19 AM PST - 19 comments

Handcrafted praying mantis sculptures, in brass and silver.
posted by zamboni at 11:15 AM PST - 15 comments

Fried Gibson. I've always thought you were safe in a house from lightning storms as long as you were off the land-line or computer. A Mississippi man's Gibson Les Paul got positively roasted while sitting in his home, in its case, leaning against a wall. That's a powerful bolt. Lots of gory photos here and in the auction linked above including a nice shot of some of the parts that exploded off of the guitar, some shooting like bullets through the case. Awesome! And it still held quite a bit of its value. Via [more inside]
posted by JBennett at 10:16 AM PST - 49 comments

CIA Chief Panette ends "very serious" program hidden during Bush years from Congress CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday. Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation. "The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky told The Associated Press in an interview. "But now it's over."
posted by pallen123 at 10:15 AM PST - 180 comments

Recently, John Michael Greer has been exploring a little known idea of the deceased economist E.F. Schumacher (a student of the oft-discussed Keynes). "Schumacher drew a hard distinction between primary goods and secondary goods. The latter of these includes everything dealt with by conventional economics: the goods and services produced by human labor and exchanged among human beings. The former includes all those things necessary for human life and economic activity that are produced not by human beings, but by nature. Schumacher pointed out that primary goods, as the phrase implies, need to come first in any economic analysis because they supply the preconditions for the production of secondary goods. Renewable resources, he proposed, form the equivalent of income in the primary economy, while nonrenewable resources are the equivalent of capital; to insist that an economic system is sound when it is burning through nonrenewable resources at a rate that will lead to rapid depletion is thus as silly as claiming that a business is breaking even if it’s covering up huge losses by drawing down its bank accounts." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks at 10:15 AM PST - 14 comments

Flash Friday Funtime: Steamshovel Harry [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:08 AM PST - 93 comments

Is Your Soul Weighing You Down? Store It! Or, if you're tired of your own soul, try a new one on for size! Er... uh oh. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:14 AM PST - 37 comments

British mentalist Derren Brown has a hobby - painting some rather excellent caricatures.
Derren previously on Metafilter: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
posted by edd at 7:31 AM PST - 40 comments

Kindle is coming soon to a library near you. Amazon is sending mixed messages about the concept. Librarians are having an online conference to the discuss the issues.
posted by Xurando at 5:28 AM PST - 61 comments

When comic book heroes and villains grow old.
posted by jbickers at 4:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Tokyo Undressed - one excellent photo after another, and another, and another. WARNING: nipples! [more inside]
posted by mhjb at 3:37 AM PST - 47 comments

Ernest Hemingway outed as potentially useless KGB spy during the 1940s in a new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America.

Reviews: The New Republic, Telegraph.co.uk
posted by educatedslacker at 3:23 AM PST - 19 comments

1983: The Brink of Apocalypse -- In 1983 the NATO war exercise Able Archer almost started a nuclear war. Unknown to NATO, just a few months earlier a false alarm had already put the Soviet leadership on edge, and the exercise triggered preparations for a counter attack in the Soviet military. Only a few double agents on each side may have saved the world from nuclear armageddon. [more inside]
posted by empath at 1:22 AM PST - 32 comments

Scientists make artificial sperm. British researchers have made human sperm out of stem cells, technically making men unnecessary for the survival of the species. [more inside]
posted by idiopath at 12:40 AM PST - 106 comments