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"Girls Will Be Girls", the hilariously tacky and tasteless story of a trio of women in Hollywood, earned Best Actress awards for its leads at both Outfest and the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in 2003. This was notable largely because the parts were played by three male performers. Now, thanks to the internet, you can watch the continuing adventures of Varla, Coco, and Evie in streaming hi-def. Oh, the gays and their wit.
comment posted at 10:39 AM on May-4-08

It's Boris. London has elected Boris Johnson as its new mayor.
comment posted at 4:59 PM on May-2-08

Photobombing n 1. The fine art of ruining other people's photographs. cf. n 2. The utterly pointless act of attaching printed photographs to public places, objects and buildings for random strangers to find.^{^} [Main link via, with cooler text commentary. This and first link NSFW.]
comment posted at 10:14 AM on May-2-08

Best Beatles cover ever.
comment posted at 1:19 PM on Apr-30-08

Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni - Colossal Squid (caught here in MetaFilter most recently....). Another one, caught about a year ago off Antarctica, was put on ice.... It is being thawed and scheduled to be examined along with a Squidcam!
comment posted at 7:10 PM on Apr-27-08

Many European cities have instituted bicycle sharing programs, with mixed success (Amsterdam, Lyon, Cambridge, Paris). Now that many of them have worked out the kinks (including vandalism and outright theft), cities in the US are taking notice. San Francisco (previously on MeFi), Portland, and New York are among the cities with plans in the works, but it looks like Washington D.C. will be the first when 120 red three-speed bicycles become available next month for members who pay an annual fee.
comment posted at 5:00 PM on Apr-27-08

Indian Superman sings and dances with Indian Spider-Woman. (SLYT) (Previously)
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Apr-27-08

50 best cult books from The Telegraph.
comment posted at 9:07 PM on Apr-26-08

Ancient Buddhist Paintings From Bamiyan Were Made Of Oil, Hundreds Of Years Before Technique Was 'Invented' In Europe. [Via MonkeyFilter.]
comment posted at 3:54 AM on Apr-25-08
comment posted at 10:13 AM on Apr-25-08

"As a great architect once said, 'Buildings should look like what they are'." John Jessop became so frustrated with the red tape required for his company to get permission to build a farm shed, he submitted a sarcastic application . Read his full "Planning Application for Erection of Agricultural Implement Shed" here [pdf, 3 pages]. No word yet on whether the shed was approved. Via.
comment posted at 3:59 AM on Apr-25-08

"The sort of artist who survives at the long tail is the sort who would be happy doing nothing else, who willingly sacrifices security and comfort for the chance to communicate something meaningful, hoping to catch the attention of those few in the world who seek what they also find meaningful." Musician Robert Rich on the new realities of making a living at art.
comment posted at 4:03 AM on Apr-25-08

@mateurdart is a French-language blog on erotic art in a wide variety of eras and styles. (NSFW)
comment posted at 4:06 AM on Apr-25-08

I recently posed the following statement to my fellow, walled-off employees:
"True or False: Cubicles reduce office sociability by 100%"
I received no answer.

comment posted at 11:16 AM on Apr-24-08

Talk about plastic accumulating in the North Pacific gyre has popped up on and off for quite a while now. Vice is running a series on the state of the gyre, as part of their "Toxic Series". Given the fact that most plastics are not biodegradable, we need to start looking more carefully at how much damage we are doing to ourselves through our use of plastic, and what we can do about it.
comment posted at 8:40 AM on Apr-22-08
comment posted at 8:40 AM on Apr-22-08

This story from NPR's morning edition discusses a program in a Georgia middle and high school that pays students $8 per day to go to after school study sessions twice a week. Jackie Cushman is the originator of the project. She is also Newt Gingrich's daughter.
comment posted at 8:42 AM on Apr-22-08

Mole Man to pay £300,000 for burrowing under home. A retired engineer nicknamed “Mole Man”, because of his fondness for burrowing tunnels under his home (video), has been ordered to pay almost £300,000 to the local council (he lives in London) after his hobby nearly caused his house to collapse (article with a few photos). William Lyttle, 77, spent 40 years excavating a maze of tunnels beneath his 20-room Victorian property in Hackney, East London, before the council intervened. "I often used to joke that I expect him to come tunnelling up through the kitchen floor," said Marc Beishon, who lives a few yards from William Lyttle's house, in 2006, when the Mole Man was first ordered to stop.
comment posted at 3:34 AM on Apr-19-08

"Baby Lali with two faces, two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes was born on March 11 in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said Tuesday."
comment posted at 3:31 AM on Apr-19-08

It's what's for breakfast. But, according to the Times, anyone with a college degree is too intelligent to eat a fry-up.
comment posted at 3:54 AM on Apr-18-08
comment posted at 3:55 AM on Apr-18-08
comment posted at 4:54 PM on Apr-18-08

Abortion as Art To quote: "she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process."
comment posted at 8:52 AM on Apr-17-08
comment posted at 8:53 AM on Apr-17-08
comment posted at 9:09 AM on Apr-17-08

Riffing on the 1970s as the "Me Generation," Esquire Magazine once referred to the 1980s as the "Re Generation," making the case that all of our popular music, fashion, etc was being recycled from previous decades. They had no idea. Since then, the flood of entertainment has deposited many more sedimentary layers of pop culture. Today, musicians and music videos mine these condensed strata of modern media as raw materials, producing works of hyper-compressed cultural references. Case in point: The Scissor Sisters' "Comfortably Numb", Justice's "DVNO", and The Darkness' "I Believe in a Thing Called Love."
comment posted at 10:30 AM on Apr-15-08

Is offshore wind power the renewable energy of the future?
comment posted at 5:00 AM on Apr-13-08
comment posted at 5:00 AM on Apr-13-08

The Congo Cookbook is a collection of recipes from Africa. (Easiest to view them all here.)
comment posted at 5:04 AM on Apr-13-08

Lies I've told my three year old recently.
comment posted at 11:45 AM on Apr-9-08

Helen Keller speaks. As an elementary school student of the 60's, I was schooled in Helen Keller's amazing accomplishments. I had no idea that there were video records and great stills. I am humbled. At least for today. Anne Sullivan rocks, she should have been the first woman president.
comment posted at 4:11 AM on Apr-9-08

Charlton Heston has died at age 84.
comment posted at 6:33 AM on Apr-6-08

For those of you who are celebrating Tartan Day on April 6, a little primer on tartans. Tartans began in Scotland as woven wool patterns used as district identifiers, created using locally popular patterns and, originally, different natural wool colors. The word tartan originally just meant the style of weaving -- take the yarn over two cross strands, then under two, then repeat. Eventually the meaning changed to what we now accept, the patterns of colors in the weave, also called the sett.
comment posted at 9:33 AM on Apr-6-08

Land turned to biofuels in the US alone in the last two years would have fed nearly 250 million people with average grain needs. Prices of all staple food has risen 80% in three years. 33 countries face unrest because of these price rises. Subsidiziation of Biofuel is driving the poor to starvation. In Bangladesh Biofuel production hits food security. Half of Pakistan population at the risk of food insecurity, warns WFP. Cost of food increases hunger in Nepal. wiki
comment posted at 2:57 PM on Apr-5-08

Hillary and Bill Clinton's tax returns 2000 - 2007
comment posted at 7:19 AM on Apr-5-08
comment posted at 8:51 AM on Apr-5-08

Dith Pran, the photojournalist whose story inspired the film The Killing Fields, has died.
comment posted at 9:44 AM on Mar-30-08

The Michigan Womyn’s Festival (“Michfest”) is an annual “womon-built” and run music festival. “Forty performances, a film festival, an artisan/craft show and a full roster of workshops, parties and dances are all slated for one glorious week in August on 650 lush green acres in Michigan.” The festival is open to WBW (women born women) only.
comment posted at 9:09 AM on Mar-30-08

Here's an interesting chart showing tertiary education attainment by age group, for OECD countries. Compare and contrast what Japan and Korea have been doing with education to the USA and Germany. (And my aren't those Canadians smart?) Here's the (.pdf) report it's drawn from (Kirkegaard 2007). C/- Clive Crook's blog.
comment posted at 4:11 AM on Mar-29-08

Bert Teunissen - Domestic Landscapes. Photographs of (mostly) senior citizens in their living rooms and kitchens.
comment posted at 10:37 AM on Mar-25-08

Every One That Hates Billy....” It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

Billy, busy building a miniature house, didn’t see it coming: the boy hit him so hard in the left cheek that he briefly lost consciousness. [His mother] remembers the family dentist sewing up the inside of Billy’s cheek, and a school official refusing to call the police, saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved.

comment posted at 4:02 AM on Mar-24-08

The locavore movement arose in recognition of the high environmental costs associated with imported food, particularly with respect to global warming (previously). This article from The Guardian (London) suggests that the carbon cost-benefit equation may be very hard to calculate, and that local (at least, without organic) may not always be better. As a planet we seem to be boxing ourselves into a very tight little environmental corner.
comment posted at 7:59 AM on Mar-23-08

Some interesting papers by Shamsiddin Kamoliddin:
To the Question of Origin of the Name Hashimgird
To the Question of the Origin of the Samanids
NEW DATA ON THE BAZRS OF MEDIEVAL SAMARQAND
On the Origin of the place-Name Buxārā I found these mostly on Transoxiana.org
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Mar-22-08

Beautiful anaglyphs of 70's derailleurs show the art and engineering at the forefront 3 decades back. BYO3DG
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Mar-22-08

Not content to rest on his laurels after creations like the portable kidney dialysis machine, the IBOT robotic wheelchair, the Segway, and the innovative cyborg replacement limbs, DEKA Research President Dean Kamen demonstrates his new vapor compression distiller on The Colbert Report.
comment posted at 8:54 AM on Mar-22-08

"A day to blow or get blown." The W. H. Auden poem that was too dirty for the New York Times Book Review. (Not safe for work or good taste)
comment posted at 3:10 AM on Mar-18-08

Dolphin rescues beached whales
comment posted at 8:35 AM on Mar-16-08

Hillary Clinton's senior thesis is available online. (pdf)
comment posted at 8:53 AM on Mar-16-08

Queens of Carnatic singing: Nithyasree Mahadevan: 1, 2 and 3. Sudha Ragunathan: 1, 2, 3 and 4. And the legend of the legends, M.S. Subbulakshmi, in her film appearances from decades past: 1, 2 and 3, and as an elder stateswoman of Carnatic vocal artistry: 1, 2, 3 and 4.
comment posted at 8:15 AM on Mar-15-08

If one can look past the Obama/Political filter, here is a fascinating series of debates between two masters of the ancient art of oratory. The setting: The 2004 Illinois senate race. The participants: Barak Obama and Alan Keyes, (who are about as different as politicians get in the US). The arguments: various subjects of national interest such as the war in Iraq, the 'axis of evil' and world diplomacy', gun control, legislative experience, and abortion, trade, poverty and globalism.
comment posted at 8:49 AM on Mar-15-08