Things they don't tell you.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 11:59 PM Aug 6 2008 - 60 comments [25 favorites]

Calvin and Jobs.
via Dark Roasted Blend, by way of Gizmodo.
posted by JHarris at 2:07 AM Aug 7 2008 - 32 comments [21 favorites]

Will Lee was born on this date in 1908, and died December 7, 1982. Nearly a year later, Big Bird was informed of his death.
posted by Knappster at 6:40 PM Aug 6 2008 - 42 comments [21 favorites]

India is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Fortunately, somebody has rendered the whole sub-continent down to a series of maps. Want to know who speaks what, where, or maybe the AIDS prevalence by state? Or how about the history of India (Flash). Or (if you're on vacation) a map of the average rainfall and some travel maps might help. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Indian political, climate, historical, and cultural maps to check out.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:52 PM Aug 6 2008 - 13 comments [20 favorites]

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:39 PM Aug 6 2008 - 25 comments [19 favorites]

Handy Internet Meme Timeline
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:27 AM Aug 7 2008 - 46 comments [17 favorites]

Al-Jazari is the best-known Islamic inventor of the Middle Ages, famous for his waterclocks and automata. The wonderful History of Science and Technology in Islam has articles on him as well as other subjects. A medieval manuscript of Al-Jazari's masterwork, a book generally known in English as either Book of Knowledge of Mechanical Devices, can be perused in its entirety in flash form. It includes 174 illustrations. If you want to see working copies of his most famous automaton, the Elephant Clock, you can go either to the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai (Flickr pictures), the Musée d'Horlogerie du Locle in Switzerland (Cabinet of Wonders post about visiting the museum) or Institute for the History of Arab-Islamic Science in Frankfurt (article about the institute from a feature in Saudi Aramco World magazine called Rediscovering Arabic Science).
posted by Kattullus at 10:14 AM Aug 6 2008 - 13 comments [32 favorites]

England's Rock Art. "Amongst the outcrops and boulders of northern England keen eyes may spot an array of mysterious symbols carved into the rock surfaces. These curious marks vary from simple, circular hollows known as 'cups' to more complex patterns with cups, rings, and intertwining grooves. Many are in spectacular, elevated locations with extensive views but some are also found on monuments such as standing stones and stone circles, or within burial mounds. The carvings were made by Neolithic and Early Bronze Age people between 3500 and 6000 years ago." [Via Life in the Fast Lane]
posted by homunculus at 9:45 PM Aug 6 2008 - 16 comments [13 favorites]

Hamlet as a Facebook News Feed
posted by blue_beetle at 9:36 AM Aug 6 2008 - 41 comments [20 favorites]

Science Hack is a unique search engine for science videos focusing on Physics, Chemistry, and Space. For example, things to do with sulfur hexafluoride. Still growing, the editors are presently indexing other scientific fields of study including Geology, Psychology, Robotics and Computers. Ever wonder why things go bang?
posted by netbros at 8:11 AM Aug 7 2008 - 6 comments [12 favorites]

In the First Person "is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. It lets you keyword search more than 700,000 pages of full-text by more than 18,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 4,300 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records." (Description from website.) You can also browse by repository, collection, subject and several other ways.
posted by cog_nate at 9:01 AM Aug 7 2008 - 7 comments [12 favorites]

If you've ever wondered which guns were used in a movie, which movies a gun has appeared in, or even which guns an actor has ever used, then the Internet Movie Firearms Database (probably) has you covered.
posted by jedicus at 7:13 AM Aug 7 2008 - 23 comments [11 favorites]

The first little pig built his house out of straw [previously]. The second little pig built his house out of sticks. The third little pig built his house out of bricks; but the relatively unknown fourth little pig built several structures of all sizes out of mud (and straw), and he wasn't a hippy.
posted by 5MeoCMP at 7:07 PM Aug 6 2008 - 23 comments [9 favorites]

Like Philip K. Dick said, "It's not just 'what if?', it's 'my god, what if?'." By all major accounts, the Zombie War (was | will be) a real bitch. And Fitzpatrick didn't do much better. If some writers have anything to say about it, the future probably wont look too good. Some hit a little close to home. On the other hand, some other writers think our future might be a little brighter. Who knows? It's just a guess. So is looking backwards and wondering "what if?". And if that's not enough, maybe you wonder what it's like to be someone else...
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:05 AM Aug 7 2008 - 23 comments [8 favorites]

Men in Women-in-Prison [Films]
"This dynamic — of eroticized male exclusion from, and investment in, female relationships — was the defining feature of a handful of women-in-prison films from the 1970s. In these movies, female sisterhood, generally in the face of oppression, is itself fetishized — feminism is turned into a kind of masochistic male wet dream. How this unlikely cathexis occurred, and how it functioned, is the subject of this essay."
posted by carsonb at 12:08 AM Aug 7 2008 - 17 comments [7 favorites]

For the last five years, the whereabouts and sudden disappearance in 2003 of former MIT graduate, Pakistani national, and alleged terrorist Aafia Siddiqui (wiki) have remained mysterious. Accused by the U.S. of terrorist ties, earlier today she appeared (having been recently wounded) in a NY courtroom to face trial for attempted murder of American officers and FBI agents while being held in Afghanistan. But the facts behind the case are conflicted. For years she was rumored to have been held in the U.S. prison at Bagram base in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, her disappearance has proved to be a lightning-rod on the issue of the hundreds of others who have been rounded up as terrorist suspects--only to disappear without any trace, let alone any due process or criminal trial. A preliminary hearing for Siddiqui is set for Aug. 19.
posted by ornate insect at 3:44 PM Aug 6 2008 - 21 comments [7 favorites]

The music of the People's Temple. Five years before Jim Jones coerced 900 of his church members to commit suicide in Guyana, the People's Temple cut an album.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:36 AM Aug 7 2008 - 14 comments [7 favorites]

The 100 Most Common Words In The English Language

see how many you can guess in 5 minutes
posted by clearly at 1:42 AM Aug 6 2008 - 123 comments [16 favorites]

All cancers are parasitical, but most cancers aren't contagious. But some evolve to be. Most viruses parasite cells, but some then make their own "cells", and othr viruses evolve to parasite those. Evolution is stupidly clever^erer.
posted by orthogonality at 6:40 PM Aug 6 2008 - 17 comments [6 favorites]

Paris Responds John thought he would be clever and use Paris in his campaign ad... Paris one-ups him with an even BETTER ad..(slyt) maybe NSFW if females in bathing suits are frowned upon..
posted by HuronBob at 6:42 AM Aug 6 2008 - 177 comments [11 favorites]