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The art of Joe Vaux. [Via Changethethought]
posted by homunculus at 9:55 PM PST - 6 comments

When you need to find your way through Taoist Hells, head over to the wand testing wing or navigate the blurry straits of east and west buttock, the hand drawn map association is there. Maybe you want to contribute your own hand drawn map. Even if you don't, thanks to the HDMA now you know how to get from bp to dobbies. Psst...there are also free buttons involved.
posted by cashman at 9:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Opening the Olympic Ceremony with a bow to ancient Chinese tradition, 2,008 Drummers on the traditional Fou drums. [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:29 PM PST - 118 comments

This year at the Indiana State Fair: Coco the Colossal Colon.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 9:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Two slimes. One circle. Infinite addiction. Welcome to the world of Slimeball. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 8:45 PM PST - 16 comments

“It’s amazing how many people are shooting. This is probably the heaviest shooting we’ve witnessed, and although it’s Memorial Day, you can’t just blame it on the United States. France, Denmark, Ireland, UK, Canada, so it’s not one place – almost global shooting.” [previously]
posted by oldleada at 6:29 PM PST - 2 comments

The Genius of Charles Darwin [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:08 PM PST - 68 comments

Scotty is spinning in his gr- the stratosphere: "Every Federation starship has a chief engineer, right? And the chief engineer's job is to keep everything running and solve problems, right? Right, but unfortunately, that's about the only thing they get right." An essay on how "Star Trek" ignored fundamental principles of engineering.
posted by orthogonality at 5:14 PM PST - 50 comments

Styrofoam dome homes
posted by vronsky at 3:47 PM PST - 50 comments

In 2006 Nell James was a teenage prog rocker, writing, playing and singing all instruments, and self-producing an album in her bedroom studio that paid homage to 1970s English art rock, a genre that arguably passed its zenith when her parent were in kindergarten. The result, Tempus, received positive reviews in the re-emging prog rock press. Also impressive was her cover/re-arrangement of Gentle Giant's On Reflection. [more inside]
posted by Herodios at 2:42 PM PST - 15 comments

May be NSFW, but mostly innocent fun, a crafty way to spend part of your weekend.
posted by agatha_magatha at 2:40 PM PST - 14 comments

John Edwards admits affair with campaign staffer. John Edwards did not father a love-child by Rielle Hunter, a 42 year-old campaign videographer. That was Andrew Young, a married Edwards campaign staffer. Edwards has not taken a paternity test, but he says that the timing of his own affair with Ms. Hunter rules out the possibility that he is the father. [more inside]
posted by Slap Factory at 2:31 PM PST - 220 comments

Some books you might want to read about the US and recent political developments in the world. [more inside]
posted by yoyo_nyc at 2:24 PM PST - 20 comments

The Tombs of Asciiroth : A puzzle/adventure game you can play in your browser
posted by boo_radley at 1:43 PM PST - 13 comments

Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting supports journalists covering dangerous areas and underreported issues on all continents except Antartica, as is shown by this handy Google map showing all 45 projects. Among the projects are Caucasus, focusing on the easternmost part of Europe where just today conflict broke out, Scars and Stripes: Liberian Youth After the War, The Soybean Wars, about the booming demand for soybeans in South America, Alaska, global warming and its effects on Alaskan glaciers, Understanding Iran looks at ordinary Iranians, and Iraq: Death of a Nation? (Revisited). Links to stories are generally in sidebars on the left and right. The Pulitzer Center also has a blog called Untold Stroies which is frequently updated and keeps tabs on all 45 projects as well as related events, such as the recent TED Talk by PRI CEO Alisa Miller on the paltry reporting of international issues in American media with arresting graphs and visuals, which serves to place the mission of the Pulitzer Center in context.
posted by Kattullus at 1:32 PM PST - 5 comments

We all know about pulp fiction. But how about some trash? [more inside]
posted by scrump at 12:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Aurora is a concept video exploring one possible future user experience for the Web.
posted by plexi at 12:30 PM PST - 37 comments

When the publicity hit that a South Korean cloning lab duplicated 5 copies of Californian Bernann McKinney's late pitbull Booger from a piece of the dog's ear tissue, people all over the UK said Bernann McKinney looks very similar [slightly NSFW] to the infamous fugitive Joyce McKinney who has been on the lam for 30 years for kidnapping and raping a Mormon.
posted by MythMaker at 12:13 PM PST - 71 comments

It seems that previous MeFi post heralding The Year of Net Neutrality may have been frighteningly accurate. Between the recent CRTC and the FCC filings on Bell's illegal throttling practices in Canada, and FCC ruling against Comcast to "Stop Blocking Internet Traffic" in the USA, it seems the issue is finally sparking action, and we may be seeing much more to come. For those interested, there is an open-source documentary called Human Lobotomy which discusses the way this issue weighs on freedom of press and freedom of speech, and also an activist blog, Save the Internet which promises to stay abreast of the issue.
posted by tybeet at 12:08 PM PST - 5 comments

In Utah, mob mentality rules. A gay man either kidnapped his next-door-neighbors' two children, or he took them in because they couldn't sleep during an all night party at their own house -- depending upon who you ask. The children were gone from their own home for only ten minutes. What is certain is that a retaliatory mob broke into drag queen David Bell's house and brutally attacked him and his lover. But no charges will be filed against the mob. [more inside]
posted by punkbitch at 12:03 PM PST - 40 comments

Richard Nixon had his nemisis and his name was Dick Tuck . Is Inventive, high quality campaign pranking a thing of the past? [more inside]
posted by salishsea at 10:33 AM PST - 26 comments

The UK's national risk register is made public. It is kept updated by the secret squirrels in the Cabinet Office, and was previously kept under wraps. Pandemic flu and flooding beat out terrorism as the major risks facing the UK at the moment. Both are seen as less likely than a terrorist attack, but more devastating. The full pdf has a chart on page 7 showing the main risks on a grid.
posted by athenian at 9:41 AM PST - 18 comments

Friday Flash Fun: Switch is a game where you are collecting black and white balls. The catch? If you are collecting the black balls, you can't touch the white balls and vice versa. You can, however, switch colors by clicking. In later levels there is an alien that enjoys trading. Enjoy!
posted by schyler523 at 9:32 AM PST - 11 comments

David Byrne writes three thoughtful essays on robots, song, and the uncanny valley on the occasion of the creation of a robot which sings in his voice at a Madrid museum: Visiting the robot factory in Texas, regarding the uncanny valley, on machines and souls.
posted by whir at 8:50 AM PST - 15 comments

Writer's Rooms, portraits of the spaces where authors create: Martin Amis. Simon Armitage. Diana Athill. Jane Austen. Berly Bainbridge. JG Ballard. John Banville. Nicola Barker. Ronan Bennett. Alain de Botton. William Boyd. Raymond Briggs. Charlotte Bronte. Carmen Callil. Jung Chang. Roald Dahl. Charles Darwin. Margaret Drabble. Geoff Dyer. Anne Enright. Joshua Ferris. Jonathan Safran Foer. Margaret Forster. Antonia Fraser. Michael Frayn. Esther Freud. Simon Gray. Mark Haddon. David Hare. David Harsent. Seamus Heaney. Russell Hoban. Eric Hobsbawm. Michael Holroyd. Siri Hustvedt. AL Kennedy. Judith Kerr. Rudyard Kipling. Hanif Kureishi. Penelope Lively. David Lodge. Michael Longley. Hilary Mantel. Eamonn McCabe. Charlotte Mendelson. John Mortimer. Kate Mosse. Andrew Motion. Julie Myerson. Edna O'Brien. Andrew O'Hagan. Adam Phillips. Caryl Phillips. Craig Raine. Ian Rankin. John Richardson. Michael Rosen. Will Self. George Bernard Shaw. Alan Sillitow. Posy Simmonds. Helen Simpson. Ahdaf Soueif. Graham Swift. Adam Thirlwell. Colm Toibin. Claire Tomalin. Sue Townsend. Barbara Trapido. Rose Tremain. Sarah Waters. Jacqueline Wilson. Virginia Woolf. (Step into the reading room for a wee bit more...) [more inside]
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:16 AM PST - 28 comments

The Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the United States Military Academy, West Point, has published another report in their analysis of captured al-Qa'ida documents: Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: al‐Qa`ida’s Road In and Out of Iraq [pdf] (note to UK readers). [more inside]
posted by acro at 8:10 AM PST - 1 comments

Reports are coming in of up to 150 armoured vehicles entering South Ossetia. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave at 7:52 AM PST - 375 comments

In the wake of The Scarlet Pimpernel, countless figures have flamboyantly stalked the night. Among them were the scofflaw Arsene Lupin and his more violent contemporary, Fantomas. So influential was the latter that imitators soon arose, plying their merciless wiles on others. Among them were Fu Manchu, the nefarious Dr. Mabuse, the hooded Diabolik, and Matt Wagoner's Grendel. Not even Donald Duck was immune from the seductive lure of crime. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Reset Generation : made by the makers of Trials 2, it's a web and mobile game that mixes advance wars and puzzle games. Rescue the Princess! Fire your Cannon! Beat your enemies! [more inside]
posted by darkripper at 7:42 AM PST - 5 comments

No option to see how many of these you can guess in five minutes, but that's the only thing missing from this list of 80 things that make men cry (includes a link back to the original list of the top 10). No mention of Field of Dreams, strangely.
posted by SportsFan at 7:19 AM PST - 105 comments

Misc-Olympics-Filter. Google's 2008 Olympics page (gadget can be added to your Google homepage). Former Sudanese refugee chosen as US flag bearer for opening ceremonies. And a scandal after BeijingTickets.com (now shut-down) fails to deliver tickets that they sold: BeijingTicketScam.com
posted by allkindsoftime at 5:44 AM PST - 33 comments

The Munich Olympics through Otl Aicher and his teams’ iconic designs. Amazing posters, cute mascot and even tickets that look great. Not to forget the medals.
posted by dabitch at 5:07 AM PST - 13 comments

In 1969, Italian animator Osvaldo Cavandoli and voice performer Carlo Bonomi created "Agostino Lagostina", an animated pitchman for the Lagostina line of cookware. This "sharp little man with a truly expressive nose" evolved into "La Linea", one of the most viewed animated characters in the world. In the jazzy series of 225 cartoons that bore his name, La Linea took on a role similar to that of Daffy Duck in Chuck Jones's famous "Duck Amuck" meta-animation, aware of his status as an animated character and asking Cavandoli to draw things into the frame for him. Those who grew up in the 1980s will remember these shorts from their frequent appearances on The Great Space Coaster...though La Linea's offshoots, "Eroslinea" and "Sexilinea" [those last two NSFW; boobies] did not see broadcast in that venue. [more inside]
posted by pxe2000 at 4:11 AM PST - 15 comments

808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808080808
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:28 AM PST - 51 comments

Manhattan's bodegas are struggling to survive, and Brooklyn's butcher shops are vanishing. But don't worry, New Yorkers are in no danger of running out of Dunkin' Donuts outlets. [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 1:03 AM PST - 36 comments

"The First Gaze" - Armed with a rudimentary portable movie camera, Robert Drew captured JFK's presidential campaign with unprecedented candor. The resulting film, 1960's Primary, helped introduce cinéma vérité to American journalism. [more inside]
posted by needsnoprosecutor at 1:00 AM PST - 1 comments