Des Imagistes is an online version of Ezra Pound's influential 1914 anthology of Imagist poetry, which includes work by Pound, James Joyce, H. D., and William Carlos Williams.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 5:18 AM on December 16, 2008 (11 comments)

Antikythera mechanism update. Prev: here, and here. includes video.
posted to MetaFilter by Substrata at 3:06 PM on December 12, 2008 (27 comments)

The Agrippa Files presents a fairly expansive overview of the original and very rare 1992 art book Agrippa (a book of the dead), a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and award-winning journalist Kevin Begos, Jr. that presciently explored the ephemeral nature of and decay of memories and information.
posted to MetaFilter by Blazecock Pileon at 1:32 AM on December 13, 2008 (11 comments)

A homeless man on Queen Street, Toronto cuddling his dog, was photographed by Kirsten Starcher (née Kirsten Bole) and is also the subject of another iconic web photo by Liz Corkery. Kirsten Starcher's photo was even posted inadvisedly on Faildogs.com. After Kirsten Starcher's photo was used by the charity Feeding Pets of the Homeless, it was published in Pet Product News. There it was seen by the man's mother who had thought him dead.
posted to MetaFilter by Susurration at 10:24 AM on December 12, 2008 (50 comments)

An offhand comment by Pastabagel leads to the creation and explosive growth of an entirely new field of studies: Deskology, a song and a poem.
posted to MetaTalk by nooneyouknow at 10:59 PM on December 9, 2008 (77 comments)

How would my 6yo daughter with strabismus perceive a 3-D movie?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dancinglamb at 11:29 AM on December 6, 2008 (15 comments)

UnexpectedGapYearFilter: I've dropped out of my biochemistry course to go home and deal with my crippling depression. I've managed the going home bit... now what?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by teraspawn at 5:00 PM on December 3, 2008 (23 comments)

Phase — Mother Earth, a piece created by Mono-ha artist Nobuo Sekine in 1968, has been re-created:

Consisting of a hole dug into the ground, 2.7 metres deep and 2.2 metres in diameter, with the excavated earth compacted into a cylinder of exactly the same dimensions, Phase — Mother Earth was instrumental in the early development of work by the Mono-ha artist group, and has been considered a landmark work in Japanese postwar art history.

More about Mono-ha inside.
posted to MetaFilter by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:01 PM on December 3, 2008 (8 comments)

Beez skateboarding video. A portion on youtube (gross). It will be a cult classic.
posted to MetaFilter by spork at 10:23 AM on November 30, 2008 (33 comments)

A rare glimpse into a forgotten Hindu world.
Garden and Cosmos - The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. Virtually none of the 60 works on view in "Garden and Cosmos" have ever been published or seen by scholars since their creation centuries ago.
All paintings are from the Mehrangarh museum. ( whose links are also full of interest ).
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco at 12:55 PM on November 29, 2008 (5 comments)

This summer, I was vacationing in Mauritius when I got lost, near the town of Pamplemousses, North of the capital Port Louis. Trying to find my way among the sugar plantations I drove past an isolated house that was festooned with old-style Iraqi flags. The entrance was guarded by two guys in "Republican Guard"-style military fatigues, black berets and all. I prudently decided against stopping, never mind taking pictures, but the question has been bothering me ever since: WTF was that about?! A cult and/or weird political grouping? Or is maybe Saddam alive and well in a tropical paradise (one would think he'd be a bit more discreet about it)? Despite my Google-Fu, I haven't been able to find an answer, so I turn to you, dear MetaFilter friends: Does anybody know what that was about?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Skeptic at 4:25 AM on November 9, 2008 (15 comments)

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone (warning: long article; could make you cry)
posted to MetaFilter by Baldons at 5:03 AM on November 1, 2008 (70 comments)

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? "Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization."
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 3:30 PM on October 30, 2008 (28 comments)

John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time
Perhaps the sweetest discourse on the subject of aliens & earth that you will ever hear — from a 2008 TED talk. (via BoingBoing)
posted to MetaFilter by spock at 7:54 PM on October 26, 2008 (49 comments)

Running Like Wildfire — Imagine a national disaster that stopped 99% of American transportation in its tracks; shut down the country; halted shipping and trade; hobbled counter-insurgency operations, and helped Boston burn down. It spread from Canada southward to Cuba and westward to the Pacific, crippling all that Americans took for granted: their cities and towns; their supplies of food and consumer goods; their jobs, businesses, and the national economy. Such was the Great Epizootic of 1872.
posted to MetaFilter by cenoxo at 1:39 AM on October 18, 2008 (24 comments)

A few years ago at a restaurant in a small Southern town, I witnessed a strange event involving a group of serious-looking elderly men, a bunch of coins, and a mysterious contraption…
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Wroksie at 5:15 AM on October 29, 2008 (9 comments)

The Hardest Rapper Alive (SLYT; NSFW language)
posted to MetaFilter by educatedslacker at 12:38 PM on October 28, 2008 (35 comments)

The Neoclassical Gem Collection of Prince Poniatowski - Prince Stanislas Poniatowski was the vastly wealthy nephew of the last King of Poland. Living in Rome, he built up a stunning collection of gems depicting scenes like Hercules Bagging the Pygmies in the Skin of the Nemean Lion. The collection was sold by Christie's at auction in 1839 and that's when the questions started… [pdf]
posted to MetaFilter by tellurian at 2:19 PM on October 23, 2008 (15 comments)

Crystal Palace. "Cavers in Mexico confront extreme conditions and find extraordinary beauty." (Previously.)
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 12:21 PM on October 22, 2008 (34 comments)

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 3:03 PM on July 14, 1999 (115 comments)

Today, October 20, is my eighth MetaFilter anniversary!
posted to MetaTalk by briank at 9:05 AM on October 20, 2008 (72 comments)

China's Golden Age.
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 5:00 PM on October 18, 2008 (27 comments)

Why do publishers slap on "A Novel" to the titles and/or covers of, well, novels?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by CKmtl at 1:41 PM on October 16, 2008 (22 comments)

...As he pored over the mass of texts and thumbnail photos that the eBay search engine had pulled up on that day in 2005, one strangely worded listing caught Schein’s eye. It read, “Old Snapshot Blues Guitar B.B. King???” He clicked on the link, then took in the sepia-toned image that opened on his monitor. Two young black men stared back at Schein from what seemed to be another time. They stood against a plain backdrop wearing snazzy suits, hats, and self-conscious smiles. The man on the left held a guitar stiffly against his lean frame. Neither man looked like B. B. King, but as Schein studied the figure with the guitar, noticing in particular the extraordinary length of his fingers and the way his left eye seemed narrower and out of sync with his right, it occurred to him that he had stumbled across something significant and rare... the more convinced he became that it depicted one of the most mysterious and mythologized blues artists produced by the Delta: the guitarist, singer, and songwriter whom Eric Clapton once anointed “the most important blues musician who ever lived.” That’s not B. B. King, Schein said to himself. Because it’s Robert Johnson.

Searching for Robert Johnson reveals not only what may be the third picture of Robert Johnson but a Byzantine struggle over his legacy as well.
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 12:26 PM on October 9, 2008 (29 comments)

From Lorrie & Larry Collins - Mercy (1958)
HERSTORY is a YouTube playlist that details the history of women in Rock and Soul music over the course of 50 songs from 1958 to 1981.
To LiLiPUT - Eisiger (1981)
posted to MetaFilter by carsonb at 8:38 AM on September 25, 2007 (16 comments)

Boys and Girls: A Short Book about Choosing If and When to Have Sex. (Narrated by a sweet sounding lassie.)
posted to MetaFilter by snsranch at 7:54 PM on October 9, 2008 (33 comments)

"Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace. Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan." Carlotta Gall writes about promising developments in Bamian. (NY Times; print version.)
posted to MetaFilter by languagehat at 8:22 AM on October 7, 2008 (19 comments)

Hasil was kind of a mythic sort of figure, you know. And sometimes life is never that easy for a myth. -Dexter Romweber (the Flat Duo Jets on Hasil Atkins in the documentary MY BLUE STAR . Hubcap Hunch, No More Hotdogs.
posted to MetaFilter by nola at 6:29 PM on October 5, 2008 (12 comments)

A Hunter-killer stalks its prey in your bloodstream.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 5:08 AM on October 5, 2008 (30 comments)

Innocuous, yet predictable.
posted to MetaTalk by dhartung at 10:19 PM on September 6, 2008 (2012 comments)

What is the origin of the phrase "by the balls" as in: "He's really got you by the balls."?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by sciurus at 4:52 PM on October 2, 2008 (14 comments)

"Why don't you write me a poem that will prepare me for your death?" Hayden Carruth's wife, thirty years his junior, asked him. He did so, and it became one of his most popular poems. Carruth, who celebrated his 87th birthday last month died last night at his home in Munnsville New York. Carruth was the winner of the the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his poetry collection Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey. He edited Poetry magazine from 1949-1950 and was a poetry editor at Harpers.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 3:31 PM on September 30, 2008 (23 comments)

What can one learn from the design choices of past games? John Harris discusses different game aspects, 20 games at a time, at Game Design Essentials. You can read on 20 Open World Games (where generally the player is left to his own devices to explore a large world), see your destroyed controllers in a new light with 20 Difficult Games or check out 20 Mysterious Games (that rely on algorithmically-generated content or emphasize secret-hunting), 20 Unusual Control Schemes and 20 Atari Games. What about roguelikes, you say?
posted to MetaFilter by ersatz at 4:38 PM on September 30, 2008 (51 comments)

Video of the destructive reentry into the atmosphere of the Automated Transfer Vehicle back from its trip to the ISS.
posted to MetaFilter by Catfry at 3:51 AM on September 30, 2008 (53 comments)

Studs Terkel, lengendary historian and radio host pays a visit to Democracy Now! today. Audio and Video, as well as the transcript of this historic interview are here. Also, the WBAI pledge drive is this week too, please give what you can.
posted to MetaFilter by wheelieman at 1:57 PM on October 5, 2005 (16 comments)

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America (in Real audio).
posted to MetaFilter by nthdegx at 11:25 AM on May 9, 2004 (1 comment)

Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space. "As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon 'dark flow.' The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude."
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 2:28 PM on September 25, 2008 (73 comments)

Damon Albarn’s career reads like a roadmap to some musical no-man's land: start a pop band, turn into an indie/hip-hop/dub “virtual” group, followed by a supergroup featuring Tony Allen and Paul Simonon, and throw in an album of Malian guitar music for good measure.
posted to MetaFilter by mannequito at 12:21 PM on September 23, 2008 (24 comments)

The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people, of which many apparently converted to Judaism. Some believe they are the ancestors of many East European Jews. The Khazars were the subject of Arthur Koestler's controversial 1972 book, The Thirteenth Tribe, as well as anti-Semitic lore. Now a Russian archaeologist says he found a gold-mine of evidence about this once-great nation. No Jewish artifacts yet, however.
posted to MetaFilter by Yakuman at 8:07 PM on September 21, 2008 (34 comments)

"Free and Uneasy: The First Year Out." The story of wrongfully convicted Jeffrey Deskovic. And others.
posted to MetaFilter by Soup at 7:32 AM on November 30, 2007 (11 comments)

80's Christian band, Sonseed sing about Jesus (YT). A great find says Doug. Not so fast say others.
posted to MetaFilter by xmattxfx at 9:11 AM on September 12, 2008 (84 comments)

Our story begins with a flood and the theme continues throughout our literature. On this wet, wet planet of beings who depend on water for survival, deluge is an undeniably universal experience. With the help of a much-maligned organization, the literature grows...
posted to MetaFilter by mds35 at 11:16 AM on September 8, 2005 (4 comments)

Russian Book Jackets, 1917-1942, courtesy of the NYPLDG. [Via Growabrain]
posted to MetaFilter by Alvy Ampersand at 11:26 AM on May 16, 2007 (5 comments)

Kim Jong Ill.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:17 PM on September 9, 2008 (86 comments)

Matthew Rossi spins elaborate conspiracies out of obscure and esoteric history: explaining the disappearance of Jamestown with reference to ancient Persian cults and secret books of knowledge, or exploring the idea that Ben Franklin worked with Thomas Jefferson and François Fourier to perfect a method of living forever. Several more ornate pseudohistories are available at the Encyclopedia of Heresies. There is an interview with Rossi about his "New Weird" science fiction book Things that Never Were, though Rossi seems to have vanished since, his homepage with other tales available only in archive.
posted to MetaFilter by blahblahblah at 1:07 PM on May 3, 2007 (24 comments)

I love you because you play awesome songs on the jukebox. Who are you? Come here, we can talk. That's Number 165 from 300 Love Letters (but there are really 400 and here's why, and here's an explanation of the project itself). Asia Wong's other projects.
posted to MetaFilter by amyms at 1:51 AM on September 7, 2008 (26 comments)

How One Nearly Forgotten 1920s Publisher's “Little Blue Books” Created An Inexpensive Mail-Order Information Superhighway That Paved The Way For The Sexual Revolution, Influenced The Feminist And Civil Rights Movements, And Foreshadowed The Age Of Information.
posted to MetaFilter by amyms at 2:00 AM on September 4, 2008 (29 comments)

Virtual Vaudeville [shockwave] Watch a 3D simulation of legendary comedian Frank Bush in a vaudeville performance from a variety of perspectives. Switch between any of eight perspectives at any time and read the extensive hypermedia notes to gain a richer understanding of the performance in its historical context.
posted to MetaFilter by tellurian at 8:46 PM on September 4, 2008 (11 comments)

Before photoshop, there was Oscar Gustave Rejlander. He is hailed as the father of art photography and the pioneer of the combination print.
posted to MetaFilter by MaryDellamorte at 6:40 PM on January 24, 2008 (5 comments)

This is my take on a beautiful Daniel Johnston song that I learned from melissa may and sleepy pete.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:20 AM on August 15, 2008 (17 comments)