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Anita Tedaldi shares her experience terminating an adoption at the NYTimes blog Motherlode. Her response to the support and criticism in comments is here; in a subsequent Motherlode post Lisa Belkin muses on the ethics of blogging about children.
posted by Anonymous at 10:43 PM PST - 59 comments

Representative Joe Wilson, R-SC, shouted "You lie" during President Obama's health care speech to Congress. While it is quite 'common' to heckle the Prime Minister in the British House of Commons (yt), heckling a sitting President of the United States during a speech to Congress is simply Not Done. Until tonight (yt).
posted by andreaazure at 10:05 PM PST - 500 comments

Welcome to the complete online Infocom adventures page
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posted by not_on_display at 9:32 PM PST - 100 comments

Knitting colourful and intricate wool mittens is a Latvian tradition. To welcome guests to a NATO summit in Riga in 2006, hundreds of knitters from around the country made 4500 pairs of mittens. The mittens were photographed individually before they were given away and arranged into galleries according to the region they came from. No two pairs are the same.
posted by bewilderbeast at 9:15 PM PST - 22 comments

Most insensitive sports column ever? Mark Whicker of the Orange County Register muses about the kidnapping, rape, brainwashing and 18-year imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard, wondering what she missed in the sports world. "She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. ... Mike Tyson now makes fun of himself in movies." [more inside]
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:38 PM PST - 50 comments

Les Fleurs Animées by JJ Grandville, 1847. Brought to you by the perennial mefite favorite BibliOdyssey (Previously)
posted by hermitosis at 8:23 PM PST - 10 comments

British composer and TV presenter Howard Goodall presents a documentary exploring the influences and theory behind the music of The Beatles, and the transformation of their sound over their recording career. Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 on Youtube. But that's not all... [more inside]
posted by Magnakai at 7:15 PM PST - 30 comments

Proof That Birds are Secretly Composers
posted by azarbayejani at 6:56 PM PST - 23 comments

A few months ago, The Cincinnati Zoo challenged Cheetah Outreach to a little race. At stake? The future of a species...and bragging rights as the world's fastest mammal.

Sarah, an eight-year-old cheetah from Cincinnati, made the first runs in this race. She set a record of 6.13 second over 100 meters. This shaved about 1/20 of a second off the old record (6.19 seconds). By way of comparison, Usain Bolt covers this distance in a leisurely 9.58 seconds.

South Africa's Cheetah Outreach's competitor, Zaza, will make her runs later this month or early next.
posted by MrGuilt at 6:17 PM PST - 24 comments

"I said, 'This is a dilemma, because if that was your 81-year-old grandmother sitting out there, you would be fit to be tied,' " Cook says. "And I said, 'I'm sure the news channels would love this story if I gave them a phone call.' " Being a chaplain at the Atlanta airport.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:00 PM PST - 65 comments

Bored kid on a Friday night in 1974 in the States? The Midnight Special. Bored kid on a Friday night in the UK? The Old Grey Whistle Test! Wha… huh? On a shoestring budget of just £500 an episode, for 16 years the BBC2s OGWT played host to live performances* from some of the most influential musicians of the time at their artistic peaks. Like who? Well, there's… [more inside]
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:22 PM PST - 56 comments

The Big Picture: Recent Hindu festivals and rituals. "Many Hindus throughout India recently celebrated Ganesha Chaturthi, a 10-day festival celebrating the birth of Ganesh, their supreme god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune. Hinduism, the predominant religion in India, is rich with traditional festivals and rituals, celebrated in many ways and locations around the world. Collected here are a few photographs from recent Hindu festivals and of Hindu devotees worshipping and practicing ritual ceremonies in India, England, Nepal and Indonesia."
posted by homunculus at 2:22 PM PST - 25 comments

Conservative Republican California State Assemblyman Michael Duvall (Orange County) didn't realize his mic was live, moments before the start of a legislative hearing this past July. So when the 54-year-old married father of two began describing his ongoing affairs with two different women in very graphic detail for the benefit of a colleague seated next to him, he had no idea that he was being recorded. The story was picked up by KCAL, who cited unnamed sources that said Duvall was describing affairs with two married lobbyists. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:35 PM PST - 216 comments

An ever-growing treasure trove of magazine cover and advertising art from the Golden Age of American illustration. Check out wonderful covers from Theatre Magazine, Adventure Magazine, the Argosy, Photoplay, and Black Mask. Here's a scary cover from Laughter magazine, a strange and beautiful Life cover from 1887, and a copy of The Liberator that I dearly wish I could flip through. See also collections of great old ads for soap, cigarettes and books, among others. The intro page is here.
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:30 PM PST - 9 comments

On Any Sunday is a 1971 film about motorcycling. Narrated by Bruce Brown (director of The Endless Summer, it features Mert Lawwill (who later developed a prosthetic for amputee riders), Malcolm Smith, and Steve McQueen, among others. It can be viewed in its entirety on Hulu. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature in 1971, and reviewed by Roger Ebert in the same year.
posted by entropic at 1:30 PM PST - 12 comments

Things To Be Found On The Moon
posted by yegga at 12:42 PM PST - 53 comments

How Charlie Sheen spent his 20 minutes with Barack Obama
posted by miss lynnster at 12:29 PM PST - 119 comments

Earlier today, NASA released the first photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope since it was refurbished last May - and the results are absolutely stunning.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:29 PM PST - 29 comments

The Ever So Strange Animal Almanac
posted by anastasiav at 12:23 PM PST - 9 comments

A road trip from San Francisco to Washington D.C. in time lapse.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 12:06 PM PST - 24 comments

The Becker Collection: Drawings of the American Civil War Era "..contains the hitherto unexhibited and undocumented drawings by Joseph Becker and his colleagues, nineteenth-century artists who worked as artist-reporters for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper observing, drawing, and sending back for publication images of the Civil War, the construction of the railroads, the laying of the trans-atlantic cable in Ireland, the Chinese in the West, the Indian wars, the Chicago fire, and numerous other aspects of nineteenth-century American culture." {artist biographies / subject browse} [via]
posted by peacay at 9:36 AM PST - 8 comments

The Self-Storage Self (NYT) [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 9:21 AM PST - 61 comments

"The One is a lie. Every long term relationship is a myth, and myths are built of lies. What's beautiful about a long term relationship is that I pretend that my boyfriend is the lie I met, when I first met him, and he does the same favor to me. You become The One because someone is willing to pretend you are." Dan Savage on The Price of Admission [SLYT]. [more inside]
posted by PercussivePaul at 8:47 AM PST - 144 comments

Oxfam, the 67-year-old Oxford-based confederation of multinational organizations, spends more than $600 million a year around the world fighting poverty, famine, climate change and discrimination. $32 million of that budget comes from book sales at its 130 second-hand bookshops in the UK, making them the second largest retailer of second-hand books in Europe. Now, independent booksellers are beginning to speak out about the competition. On the BBC, in the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the New York Times, some British booksellers are questioning the wisdom of charities using chain stores to raise funds. Are they “destroying lives here to save them elsewhere” as they’ve been accused of by one former UK bookseller, or is this the logical economic result of “the English town with the secondhand bookshop everybody loves but most people never actually go into.” as David McCullough, director of trading for Oxfam recently speculated?
posted by Toekneesan at 8:28 AM PST - 40 comments

Illustrator Glen Mullaly archives hundreds of vintage illustrations in his flickr stream. [more inside]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:18 AM PST - 12 comments

Adam Davidson, of Planet Money fame, was a reporter in Iraq. While there, Davidson decided to rent a house. To pay the rent, he decided to sublet rooms out to other journalists. You can read about his misadventures as a landlord in Baghdad here, and listen to the account on this episode of This American Life
posted by reenum at 7:07 AM PST - 14 comments

Woody the cat freshens up and has a sip while jazz is playing. [slyt]
posted by nickyskye at 6:34 AM PST - 65 comments

From the same wicked awesome site that brought you the totally unofficial Ren and Stimpy soundtrack, Kirk Demarais gets nostalgic, drawing family portraits of cult-famous families of the last three decades. Take a stroll down memory lane with the Torrances, the Lundegaardes, the Griswolds, and other infamous families. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:21 AM PST - 5 comments

Chinese news site dispense with user anonymity. Includes an updated list of sites China actively blocks, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (?!? - both links work only outside of China). prev
posted by allkindsoftime at 5:18 AM PST - 40 comments

Bass Strait is the stretch of water separating Tasmania from the Australian mainland. It's a treacherous stretch of water, about 240km wide. These two guys just kite-surfed across it in 12 hours. (Pre-crossing forum discussion.)
posted by awfurby at 2:55 AM PST - 8 comments

Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty is a blog featuring selected drawings by Isaac age 10; Grace, 9; and Lily, who is 6. They participate in Illustration Friday, and even do book reviews. Recently, to celebrate the 3rd year anniversary of the blog, their father asked readers to submit some 'fan art' using past CNLT drawings as inspiration. Here are the submitted art works, accompanied by the original drawings that inspired them. [more inside]
posted by thread_makimaki at 2:03 AM PST - 38 comments