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The opening song from Jesus Christ Superstar has been sung by many people. Here are some of them. [more inside]
posted by Addlepated at 10:01 PM PST - 80 comments

Pop star Rihanna gives good Meet & Greet [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:44 PM PST - 132 comments

Cult books come and cult books go - that's part of what it means to be a cult book. A few keep reappearing, however. They get discovered over and over by successive waves of admirers. After the third or fourth reappearance, the suspicion begins to arise that this isn't a cult book, after all. It's a masterpiece with problems. Islandia is such a book. - Noel Perrin, "The Best of All Imaginary Islands" [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:40 PM PST - 15 comments

"I decided I had to do something to save this person’s life. That killing someone in Dallas is not an answer for what happened on Sept. 11." Rais Bhuiyan petitions the state of Texas to stay the execution of a white supremacist who shot him and murdered two others in a hate-motivated crime.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:04 PM PST - 87 comments

Jed Perl reviews "Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall"
posted by vidur at 7:00 PM PST - 67 comments

What with Borders going belly-up and no new books being written ever, avid readers fear that their chief means of edification and entertainment may no longer be viable. Fear not, and look backwards. Over at The Guardian, Chris Power has spent the last few years telling giving us A Brief Survey Of The Short Story. A lot of my favourites are there, and I am discovering others I am keen to try. What about you?
posted by tumid dahlia at 6:44 PM PST - 23 comments

144 sites for online education. Categories include science and health, business and money, history and culture, law, computer science, mathematics, and languages. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 5:53 PM PST - 19 comments

If you were a fan of shows like Night Flight, then The Cinefamily theatre blog is for you: Michael Jackson: Unauthorized! :: THOR: Bootleg Version :: Fassbinder soundtracks :: Sci-Fi Cover Art Hall of Fame :: The Last Unicorn :: Echoes From A Somber Empire :: Thrashin' ('80s skateboard) :: Mondo Wizard Battles :: Afterschool Specials :: Negativland :: Found Animation :: The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner + How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck :: Burt Reynolds Supercut :: Tex Avery vs. Jay Ward :: Dumb Names In Movies! :: North Korea-A-Rama (The Red Chapel) :: Mondo Logo 1 + 2 :: Chuck Norris
posted by puny human at 2:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Borders is liquidating as soon as this Friday, closing all 399 stores, ending 40 years of business, and 11,000 jobs. Brought down by e-books and Amazon. Scenes From A Borders Liquidation Sale. Map of (soon to be vacant) Borders stores.
posted by stbalbach at 2:21 PM PST - 311 comments

Matthew Sweet stays busy! Long before releasing the acclaimed album Girlfriend in 1991, he recorded a song with REM's Michael Stipe, joined one incarnation of Anton Fier’s alt-supergroup Golden Palominos, and appeared on Lloyd Cole’s eponymous solo debut. Later on he formed The Thorns with Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins, recorded two albums of covers with Susanna Hoffs, and got interviewed by Tears For Fears’ Curt Smith. He also makes ceramic cats.
posted by bassomatic at 2:19 PM PST - 47 comments

Marissa is an adorable toddler with a rare and terrible medical problem: West Syndrome, a.k.a. infantile spasms. Her father Mike has been active in the online Special Needs community, chronicling her story for years now at his blog Marissa's Bunny. Last year, his readers raised almost $30,000 through a ChipIn fundraiser to offset the costs of Marissa's neurosurgery. As a sort of 'thank you', and with the help of matching funds from his employers, Mike offered to give away and/or raffle 40 iPads to the special needs kids of his blogger friends, to be used as assistive technology devices for many of their non-verbal kids. This follows on the heels of several other iPad raffles he's held in the past year.

Guess what happened next. The Special Needs Parenting blog community is on the case: Ellen Seidman (and her commenters), Rob Rummel-Hudson, Sarah and Joyce Hely, Shannon Des Roches Rosa and others are putting together the pieces right now.
(previously on MetaFilter: the unravelings of Kaycee Nicole, JT LeRoy, Kodee Kennings, Alexa DiCarlo, and Amina Arraf)
posted by Asparagirl at 2:01 PM PST - 187 comments

"If there's one thing I've learned from working in an emergency room, it's that people are terrible liars. Maybe I only think that because the good liars don't get caught? [...] And a lie I hear almost every day in the emergency room is "I fell down the stairs. My partner loves me. They would never hurt me." [...] For a long time, I just couldn't understand this. We'd get the victim in a private room locked away from the abuser, and they'd sit there with bruises or wounds or even broken bones, in a safe place surrounded by people who wanted to help them, and they'd tell us, often through tears... "I fell down the stairs." It drove me nuts. It made me furious at the victims. Why did they do this? Did they like pain? Did they want to get murdered? Were they just unbelievably stupid? Why the HOLY LIVING FUCK would someone choose to protect and return to a partner who just broke their arm? [more inside]
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:59 PM PST - 88 comments

Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards for misdirection and whatever consensus defines as forgivable. And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for news design on a monitor or device screen these days. Suggestions for clarifying online news sites from Andy Rutledge. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 1:48 PM PST - 20 comments

"We certainly cannot follow the example of Odysseus and, going down to Hades, tempt with a bowl of blood a representative sample of native speakers to label particular areas of the standard Munsell color continuum ..."

David Wharton's Latin Color Bibliography collects quotations from ancient literature and modern research on how languages classify colors, and tries to work out the meanings of color words in classical Latin. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 1:00 PM PST - 15 comments

John Mayer visits Berklee to speak to students and offer insight on learning music theory, making music, listening to music, and the temptation to publish yourself. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 11:16 AM PST - 64 comments

A thread full of proofs without words at MathOverflow and quite a lot more of them courtesy of Google Books.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:59 AM PST - 22 comments

A possible new 'ethical' source for popular food-additive gelatin: humans. Vegan reaction not yet forthcoming. [more inside]
posted by malusmoriendumest at 9:50 AM PST - 103 comments

‘In 1912, Scotland Yard detectives bought their first camera, to covertly photograph suffragettes. The pictures were compiled into ID sheets for officers on the ground.’
posted by The Whelk at 9:33 AM PST - 50 comments

Notes on 124 underappreciated films. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:32 AM PST - 139 comments

Congratulations to Japan!!! All that screaming practice paid off. Spirits are lifted. [more inside]
posted by josher71 at 9:26 AM PST - 82 comments

The hoodoo lady and the hoodoo man had a voodoo child. Uh huh, yes, yes, voodoo voodoo.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:36 AM PST - 34 comments

The Last Circus, latest film by vastly under-exposed Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia, will see a limited U.S. theatrical release by Magnet on August 12th. The director's previous work includes surreal apocalypse fantasy (El Dia de la Bestia) and black humor (El Crimen Ferpecto). NSFW trailer here.
posted by mean cheez at 6:27 AM PST - 14 comments

In the U.K., sometimes the bookstore comes to you— on a barge. The Book Barge: a floating bookshop on a canal boat (57' Cruiser Stern) in Lichfield, Staffordshire. [The Guardian]
posted by Fizz at 4:35 AM PST - 23 comments

75 Yeas ago today 18 July was the start of the Spanish Civil War. In many cities the people went A Las Baricadas.
In Catalunya this produced the greatest experiment in worker self management the western world has seen and also gave rise to the movement Mujeres Libres whose work is still very much to the fore in present day Latin America.
The story of the Mujeres Libres is shown in the 3 part film Women of the Spanish Revolution I; II; III
For first person recollections here is Living Utopia. Anarchism in Spain which consists of 30 interviews with survivors of the 1936-1939 Spanish Revolution.
1936 when The people rise like a gale.
posted by adamvasco at 12:51 AM PST - 21 comments