August 2, 2011

Go-Karting with Bowser

Okay, you're good, kid. You've got skills. But do you know how to wheelie, drift, and draft? Do you know how to make the most of your environment? Do you know how to get the sickest air and make the most of your tricks? Huh? Do you know how to make sure you get the best gear? Huh? DO ya? Don't even tell me you know how to dodge blue shells! [more inside]
posted by Navelgazer at 10:02 PM PST - 24 comments

A selective sweep.

Animals vis-à-vis windshield wipers: contra-, supra-* and despite. [more inside]
posted by Cold Lurkey at 8:38 PM PST - 34 comments

Yes .name exists!

Neil Fraser has an infrequently updated but interesting blog featuring such gems as the Lava Lamp Centrifuge, laptop storage advice, a Google vs. Multivac comparison, a synchronization algorithm improvement, a Godwin incident, and occasional holiday specials. He also bailed out Jeremy Marks, an LA kid arrested for video taping a police beating, who's now free btw, and helped death row inmates with their SEO optimization. (previously)
posted by jeffburdges at 8:22 PM PST - 12 comments

Birds! Bears! Bees! and all the Chimpanzees

You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them. (SYTL) [via] [more inside]
posted by the noob at 6:24 PM PST - 103 comments

"The idea that a car runs free - those days are about to close"

Chris Burden's kinetic sculpture Metropolis II: 1100 custom die-cast cars, 18 lanes, 4 years in the making. [more inside]
posted by ChuqD at 6:18 PM PST - 22 comments

Science Daily

Chemists transform acids to bases!, Invisible & Flexible Electronics!, Robots walk on water!, Light manipulated at will! New stories from BiMonSciFiCon ?(SYTL) Nope, just another day at Science Daily...
posted by onesidys at 5:59 PM PST - 18 comments

Minter's Ring

Smithsonian Magazine's new blog Past Imperfect has already told some interesting stories in its first weeks, but none more compelling than that of Lt. Commander Minter Dial's Annapolis class ring.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:52 PM PST - 10 comments

The Shoezeum

Eleven minutes of the most mindblowing personal collection of Nike shoes, themed rooms, backwards walking and decorations you'll ever see. Jordan Michael Geller's Shoezeum.
posted by cashman at 4:34 PM PST - 22 comments

Humble Indie Bundle 3 (or is it 4?)

There's a new Humble Indie Bundle out. (Previously, Previously, also Previously.) The popular pay-what-you-want game distribution offers up Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV, Hammerfight, and And Yet It Moves for all three major OS platforms, and works with Steam. You set the price; you decide what charity gets the money. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:16 PM PST - 48 comments

Smart girls who love some bad things.

Hey, Don't Judge Me by "smart girls who love some bad things". Hey, Don't Judge Me exists for one reason only: to be a place where we don’t have to hide our love of schlock anymore. . . Media recaps and reviews. Television. Movies. Comics. Srsly Good Music. Redemption Corner. Mefi's own elizardbits is a contributor. Twitter @hey_dontjudgeme
posted by mlis at 4:06 PM PST - 44 comments

This is what you get / This is what you get / This is what you get / When you mess with jazz

Jazz group The Bad Plus play an appropriately discordant Karma Police, a slow-burn We Are The Champions, an tearfulfeariffic Everybody Wants To Rule The World, and also sort of smell like teen spirit.
posted by cortex at 3:42 PM PST - 42 comments

This is the rhythm of the 90s

Danish singing group Local Vocal sings a capella medley of 90s dance hits.
posted by Phire at 3:12 PM PST - 11 comments

404: Page Not Found

The most exciting and ridiculous 404 page you'll ever see [via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:53 PM PST - 51 comments

SCIENCE!

At the beginning of last month, Scientific American unveiled a new network of 47 blogs with 55 bloggers. Their latest posts can be found here. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Pleasanton Cooks Up A New Bicycle Safety Method

The city of Pleasanton, California is the first in the nation to use a microwave motion and presence sensor system to protect bicyclists in intersections. The Intersector can tell when a bike is in the intersection and will tell the light to stay green longer to let the cyclist cross safely.
posted by agatha_magatha at 1:33 PM PST - 62 comments

Ooh, that smell. Can't you smell that smell?

Smell is our most primitive, least understood sense. Perfume manipulates that sense, reminding us of good times past, and speaking of glamour and sophistication to those who get close. --- "Perfume", Episode 1: Something Old, Something New [pt2/pt3/p4]. Guerlain are considered by many to be the essence of Frenchness in a scent. Ancienne école comme attendez! But the house whose founder/namesake wrote his first formulae in the 19th C. face the challenges of the 21st, including the first non-Family perfumer, updating a classic, and the fall of 4th generation family perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain after his openly racist comments on French TV. We also follow the corporate entity known as Tommy Hilfigger as it tries to bottle and market the scent of Rock & Roll to the Drum 'n Bass generation [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 12:46 PM PST - 34 comments

Does digital writing leave fingerprints?

"When legal teams need to prove or disprove the authorship of key texts, they call in the forensic linguists. Scholars in the field have tackled the disputed origins of some prestigious works, from Shakespearean sonnets to the Federalist Papers."
Decoding Your E-Mail Personality Ben Zimmer, of Language Log discusses the Facebook case and forensic linguistics in the NY Times. [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam at 11:38 AM PST - 13 comments

How to Get Kids to Read in One Easy Step

A Missouri school board has voted to remove Slaughter House Five and another book from the library for "teaching principles contrary to the Bible." [more inside]
posted by Leezie at 11:09 AM PST - 188 comments

If you shave off your eyebrows, they will never, ever grow back.

Jason van Gumster has been telling a lie a day since November 8, 2006.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:02 AM PST - 34 comments

Growing a hyperdodecahedron

This short computer graphics animation presents the regular 120-cell: a four dimensional polytope composed of 120 dodecahedra and also known as the hyperdodecahedron or hecatonicosachoron. [more inside]
posted by Wolfdog at 10:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Out there, in the stars / war passes like a sun / out there, iron runs wild

It's the late 1970s, you're in France, and you're not quite sure what this whole Star Wars hype is about. Let René Joly tell you about it. If your French isn't so good, someone was kind enough to overlay a translation in English, of course in the Star Wars Crawl style. If you can't find the original record from 1977, you can also hear the b-side: Enfant de l'univers (French lyrics). More French Star Wars? Behold: a dance spectacular on French TV (previously). If you like your cheese 100% American, check out the Donny and Marie Star Wars musical number, with very some special guests. For a little less cheese, and a bit more swing: Darth Vader and his jazz combo. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:58 AM PST - 9 comments

Dreams Are What We Wake Up From.

Raymond Carver died of lung cancer, August 2, 1988. A remembrance in 1,2,3,4,5 parts. Previously.
posted by timsteil at 9:51 AM PST - 12 comments

This happened.

Paul Williams in His "Planet of the Apes" Costume on "The Tonight Show" — 1973
posted by incomple at 9:50 AM PST - 29 comments

Zig Ziglar on Goals

Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar on goals (Youtube videos: part 1, part 2, part 3)
posted by shivohum at 9:38 AM PST - 33 comments

“People just weren’t meant to be that far underground.”

Venturing 9800 ft below the earth's surface at Kidd Creek mine
posted by exogenous at 9:26 AM PST - 36 comments

Library of America free content

Every Monday The Library of America features a free Story of the Week. It could be anything -- a short work of fiction, a character sketch, an essay, a journalist’s dispatch, a poem -- taken from from one of the hundreds of classic books in the LoA collection. Archive of 83 weeks so far.
posted by stbalbach at 9:10 AM PST - 5 comments

A song by a stupid cat

I'm a stupid cat!
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:49 AM PST - 36 comments

Eugene McDaniels, RIP

Somewhere along the line, you might've heard one of the biggest hits to ever come out of the world of jazz: it was a song originally made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris back in 1969, called Compared To What. If you were in the right place at the right time, you might've even caught them doing it live. Or, if you were born a little too late for all that, you might've heard the song performed by John Legend and the Roots. Well, the man who wrote the song, Gene McDaniels, has just left us at age 76. RIP Gene McDaniels.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:39 AM PST - 25 comments

Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playthings

Dimorio McDowell had a lot of time on his hands in prison. So, he decided to start up his own retail fraud and ID theft ring, defrauding his victims of almost $1 million before investigators caught up to him.
posted by reenum at 8:36 AM PST - 21 comments

Kirby's family loses key round

Jack Kirby's family has lost what may the key round of its legal battle to win ownership of all Marvel Comics' most important characters. A judge has ruled Kirby always drew on a work-for-hire basis, and therefore never owned characters like Iron Man, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Thor and The Avengers in the first place. Fans of Marvel's most important founding artist are angry, and one big name comics artist proposes a boycott of Marvel comics and movies alike.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:34 AM PST - 81 comments

Can you spare an hour and a half?

Want to learn about Nietzsche? Kierkegaard? Wittgenstein? How about Kafka or Virginia Woolf? [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 8:21 AM PST - 14 comments

Imaginary friends

Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is floundering despite his brag that "I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined." Maybe because 80% of them are fake. Or maybe they're not. [more inside]
posted by msalt at 8:18 AM PST - 53 comments

The Newport. Harry's. Fluties. Indochine. Nell's. Cornell Club. The New York Yacht Club. The regular places.

Patrick Bateman's New York
posted by shakespeherian at 6:59 AM PST - 43 comments

Armed and Pregnant

"Americans who carry a firearm are often viewed as rough, gruff, middle-aged men with over-developed trigger fingers. [more inside]
posted by dubold at 6:43 AM PST - 269 comments

Pam Grier Coffee

In the mid 1990s, comedian/actress Margaret Cho starred in All-American Girl, a short-lived sitcom based on her standup act. One episode, entitled "Pulp Sitcom", lampooned the film Pulp Fiction and revolved around a bootleg video seller named Desmond. Naturally, Desmond was played by Quentin Tarantino himself. You can watch the episode and read a detailed breakdown at Chronological Snobbery.
posted by griphus at 6:23 AM PST - 11 comments

Please, for all that is holy... STOP IT.

How to Ruin Your PC Port in 5 Easy Steps by Ben Kuchera explains the lengths video game publishers will go to to ensure that the PC version of their game is worse than the console version. Blizzard demonstrates how to follow these guidelines for Diablo III even if you don't have a console version.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:22 AM PST - 97 comments

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