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Butch Cassidy wanted to call his gang The Train Robber's Syndicate, but the name never stuck. The gang's core members - most notable among them The Sundance Kid - and a revolving cast of supporting outlaws were most commonly called The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and The Wild Bunch, and their goal was to be the most successful train robbers in history. The Butch and Sundance site is a comprehensive collection of "the hundreds, if not thousands, of theories, legends and folk tales" surrounding the gang, including an exhaustive list of biographies of the members, their associates, the lawmen who pursued them and the women who loved them, an archive of transcribed news articles dating from the 1880s (including a letter to the editor from Sundance himself), a picture gallery and more. [more inside]
posted by amyms at 11:39 PM PST - 26 comments

In January of 2004, Disney shut down their Florida animation studio, part of their decision to move away from 2D, or cell-shaded, animation for good. Two years later, as part of the new deal with Pixar, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull were brought in as heads of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, and promptly declared that 2-D Animation would thrive again on their watch. For their first new project, the team wanted to show support for the still-struggling New Orleans, and simultaneously introduce Disney's first Black Princess in "The Frog Princess" (Or The Princess and the Frog, as it is now known), a fairy tale set in 1920's Jazz-era Louisiana, with Randy Newman providing a period-specific score. Much response to the project has been quite positive, but as with all things, the devil is in the details.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:46 PM PST - 113 comments

For years, Wired magazine has tapped a bevy of designers and artists in the tech field to craft detailed visions of futuristic objects for a monthly showcase at the close of each issue. Now, after hinting as much in the July edition, it is clear that that the tradition of FOUND has been brought to an end. What better way to say goodbye to this whimsical feature than by taking a look back at the full archived run of the series? [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:42 PM PST - 29 comments

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) is probably best known as one of the principal architects of the 20th century children’s fairy tale, with such sly, savage and addictive masterpieces as The Enormous Crocodile, The Witches, The BFG, and personal favourite The Twits. [more inside]
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:36 PM PST - 71 comments

Fivedollarcomparison.org is a collaborative photo project designed by a number of Nokia researchers to understand the buying power of 5 dollars across the world. The goal of this project is vague: to understand how culture, context and communication might change the world. Post your own example here. Sample photo.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 5:07 PM PST - 19 comments

The Historic American Sheet Music archive at the Duke University Library has over 3000 pieces published in the United States available online, from the 1850s up to 1920. Composers represented include well-known names such as Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, and John Philip Sousa. All the music is now in the public domain, and may be printed and performed freely. [Note: Language or stereotypes may occasionally be NSFW.]
posted by Upton O'Good at 4:59 PM PST - 7 comments

Cake Wrecks. "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong." [via]
posted by kolophon at 4:57 PM PST - 69 comments

Continuing the miniaturization of earlier designs, researchers at the Technical University of Delft have created a very tiny ornithopter which carries a one half gram video camera. The DelFly micro. [more inside]
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 2:37 PM PST - 17 comments

Now Viacom will STEAL your movie Viacom has claimed ownership of an independent filmmaker's film and now she has to fight them for it. They allow her to leave it on YouTube but they claim ownership and they get to collect data on who's watching.
posted by njohnson23 at 2:30 PM PST - 47 comments

The future of classical music lies in China. Chinese enthusiasm for Western classical music is deep, says New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, but traditional Chinese music is older and more classical than anything in the West.
posted by plexi at 2:14 PM PST - 30 comments

What's the second most popular sport in the world after soccer? Badminton. (According to some sources - volleyball and cricket are also contenders.) When played competitively, badminton looks more like this and less like this. The Chinese are poised to win Gold in Beijing, while the American team, featuring star player Howard Bach gets no love.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:16 PM PST - 31 comments

The Mercury Prize shortlist for 2008 is: Adele - 19 | British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music? | Burial - Untrue | Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid | Estelle - Shine | Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim | Neon Neon - Stainless Style | Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep in the North Sea | Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns | Radiohead - In Rainbows | Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand | The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 12:46 PM PST - 45 comments

Emmy Award-winning actress Estelle Getty has died. [more inside]
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 12:19 PM PST - 92 comments

In the summer of 1897, the Devil transported a minor Decadent poet named Enoch Soames one hundred years into the future to see what posterity would make of his work. The only witness to the affair was the parodist Max Beerbohm, whose account of Soames and his journey ensured that at 2:10 P.M. on June 7, 1997, some dozen pilgrims waited in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum to see the poet appear...
posted by Iridic at 10:58 AM PST - 26 comments

See Nemo fetch. Want to train your comet to join the Comets? Your Shubunkin to do some dunkin'?

Goldfish training.

A school of fish or a school for fish? You be the judge.
posted by OhPuhLeez at 10:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Font Conference. A video from CollegeHumor which made me laugh more than a video from CollegeHumor really should.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:19 AM PST - 58 comments

Reaching: Joshua Heineman animates old photos from the NY Public Library collections. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher at 9:30 AM PST - 35 comments

The Coffee Junkie’s Guide to Caffeine Addiction. Caffeine's a hell of a drug. In fact, it's the world's most popular psychoactive drug. And more and more of us are getting hooked on the stuff. [more inside]
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:21 AM PST - 144 comments

Mygazines is for sharing magazines online.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:19 AM PST - 48 comments

Art Deco was the dominant style of the interwar era, coming out of Paris in the 1920's and ruling the roost until World War II broke out. Randy Juster's Decopix - The Art Deco Resource has enough pictures of Art Deco architecture to send one hurtling into The Gernsback Continuum. If that's not enough then there's always the 11000+ images of the Flickr Art Deco Pool. But Art Deco wasn't just about architecture. On the Victoria and Albert Musem's Art Deco site one can view Art Deco objects in great detail, rotating them and listening to audio lectures on each object. But before Art Deco was a design aesthetic it was an art-style. Illustrations for the Art Deco Book in France has more than 170 images from the proponents of that then-new style (some images are not safe for work, especially in the George Barbier section).
posted by Kattullus at 6:59 AM PST - 23 comments

The latest issue of Yellowstone Science quarterly is devoted to 5 articles chronicling the history of the management of grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, from the 1950s era "garbage dump bears," to listing as an endangered species, to de-listing as endangered, to current management. Many excellent photos, maps, charts and graphs make this a great resource for people interested in the fate of grizzlies in the lower 48 states. Part 1 of the issue. Part 2. [links to PDF files] (via)
posted by paulsc at 6:33 AM PST - 5 comments

Baby's first internet comes amidst other, less illustrated, concerns about the all-consuming 'blogosphere' and increasingly online life. The problems, it seems, are somewhat novel and (one assumes) almost endless.
posted by oxford blue at 6:26 AM PST - 32 comments