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NORTH POLE FULL METAL JACKET (lang. nsfw)
posted by vronsky at 9:31 PM PST - 26 comments

The Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay. What happens when you have more obsolete steamships than you can burn? You end up with one of the largest shipwreck fleets in the Western Hemisphere. [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 9:12 PM PST - 28 comments

The 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
posted by homunculus at 9:10 PM PST - 7 comments

Abandoned plane wrecks of the north. The Arctic North is a cruel environment for men and machine; for planes it is no different. The weather creates all sorts of hazards, the terrain offers its own variety of opportunities for disaster. (Warning: extreme comic sans.)
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 8:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Sexy Mormon Men -- "For the first time ever, twelve of the hottest and hunkiest former Mormon Missionaries have dared to pose bare-chested in the first-ever Mormons Exposed calendar." They're trying to "help get rid of stereotypes." Previously mentioned
posted by ericb at 6:56 PM PST - 81 comments

Step by Step How do you define private property? Apparently the city council of Belmont, CA has their own definition.
posted by brandz at 4:56 PM PST - 169 comments

December, 2007 marks the 10-year anniversary of my "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" format. Here's some random notes on the subject, in no particular order. Thoughts on cartooning from How to Be Creative author Hugh Macleod
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:49 PM PST - 8 comments

Israel not talking. Syria says little. US silent. Syria claimed it chased away the Israeli plane. But since then Syria has said nothing. Nor has Israel. And this news item from BBC says that the intrusion into Syrian airspace is a mystery. But why would N. Korea, Syria, Israel and the US be so reticent to comment? Perhaps because Israel took out a nuke site
posted by Postroad at 4:03 PM PST - 83 comments

One should speak only when one may not remain silent; and then speak only of that which one has overcome—everything else is chatter, "literature," lack of breeding. My writings speak only of my overcomings: "I" am in them, together with everything that was hostile to me.

On January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche walked into the Piazza Carlo Alberto in Turin and saw a horse, fallen, beaten brutally by its master. Nietzsche embraced it, and thereafter never regained his reason. The story might be mythical, or borrowed. If so, it is hardly alone; myths about Nietzsche--his Nazism, his syphilis--seem to confirm his dictum that "truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions." But separating the man from the myth is impossible: Nietzsche was Zarathustra, he was Heraclitus. Like his ancient antecedents, he spoke in aphorisms and hymns, in fragments; like a bird, he fled south for the winter. "Only a fool, only a poet..."
posted by nasreddin at 1:27 PM PST - 74 comments

Glacier surfing. Filming in Alaska in 1995, photographer and surfer Ryan Casey looked at the huge waves kicked up by calving glaciers – up to 30 feet high, breaking on an ice shelf 18 inches deep, surrounded by tumbling chunks of ice as big as buildings – and thought, I bet you could surf that. A month ago, Hawaiian big-wave surfers Garrett McNamara and Keali’i Mamala did it. (YT)
posted by gottabefunky at 1:23 PM PST - 32 comments

Developers plan to build The VTP 200 - a proposed "landmark tower / vertical theme park" - in Birmingham's city centre.
posted by chuckdarwin at 12:47 PM PST - 33 comments

"Everyone I've talked to knows the exact date when they've been hit."
"Yeah. It's burned into your memory."
James Gandolfini interviews 10 wounded Iraq war veterans in Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq [review]. The documentary is viewable online. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:14 PM PST - 27 comments

Google wants to send you to the moon.
posted by Roman Graves at 11:49 AM PST - 34 comments

Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif. Previous article by same author.
posted by agregoli at 10:40 AM PST - 268 comments

Babies are far more dangerous than previously believed
posted by nixerman at 10:20 AM PST - 54 comments

Marry Our Daughter
"Our 15 year old daughter Mary wasn’t very popular and did nothing but mope around the house bringing everybody down, so we decided to marry her off through your site. Now our house is a lot cheerier and we love our new swimming pool and Jaccuzi! We’ve told our youngest that when she turns 15 we’re going to marry her off too!"
posted by ozomatli at 10:09 AM PST - 75 comments

Some photo galleries (and youtube video) of Buran, the USSR's space shuttle program (previously) from the 1980's, long since abandoned. Bonus: A comparison between Buran and the US space shuttle. Double Bonus: More on Buran from russianspaceweb.com, which is awesome. Combo breaker: An official page with NASA's take on Buran, (and their photos), frozen in time a decade ago.
posted by dersins at 9:20 AM PST - 25 comments

Get Satisfaction has launched. It's crowd-sourced customer service -- or something like that. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 9:12 AM PST - 25 comments

Things you can print. From a pinhole camera to a wifi antenna to a Sudoku generator.
posted by OmieWise at 7:58 AM PST - 21 comments

Old Magazine Articles Neat little database of .pdf copies of vintage magazine articles like Gilbert Seldes' 1922 review of Krazy Kat in Vanity Fair, a 1910 look at "Horse Versus Automobile," early nose jobs, an interview with James Joyce and more. [via ResearchBuzz]
posted by mediareport at 7:44 AM PST - 14 comments

There's a whole lotta Mefiers interested in the upcoming Led Zeppelin reunion, and it got me to thinking, let's pay a little visit to the Poet Laureate of the blues, Mr. Willie Dixon. After all, without him, there wouldn't have been a Whole Lotta Love, or a Bring It On Home, or... hell, there might not have been any Zep at all... His music has been interpreted and reinterpreted by an astonishing number of musicians. The man wrote a whole lotta songs. Oh, and, he played a little bit of bass, too. He was a whole lotta great.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:19 AM PST - 28 comments

Who is taller, Bin Laden or Bigfoot? Bernard Heuvelmans says: “A creature covered with long hair always looks bigger than it really is...” For that matter how big is Rambo? Or Arnold Schwartzenegger? (Play the game!) How tall are you?
posted by CCBC at 2:27 AM PST - 38 comments

NASA Astronomers Find Bizarre Planet-Mass Object Orbiting Neutron Star [via]
posted by brundlefly at 1:18 AM PST - 45 comments

The website of the ridiculously awesome Newseum has been revamped and relaunched in anticipation of its October reopening. Check out the redesigned Today's Front Pages and Analysis sections - and go here for frequent, fascinating evaluations of current front page graphic design (archive). Browse the downloadable front pages of notable dates in recent history (e.g. Katrina, 2004 tsunami, 9/11). Watch discussions of some of the most recognizable Pulitzer Prize winning photographs, and check out the interactive archives of past exhibits. You can also pay your respects at the online version of the Newseum's Journalists Memorial. (previously)
posted by Anonymous at 12:50 AM PST - 6 comments