Edward Piou's personal website

This is the story of Lylah Clare. Overnight, she became a star. Over many nights, she became a legend.
Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5, Pt. 6, Pt. 7, Pt. 8, Pt. 9, Pt. 10, Pt. 11, Pt. 12, Pt. 13

HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore has died.
Maggiore, who tested HIV+ in 1992, was a prominent skeptic of the scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS. In 2005, she sparked a debate on parental medical obligations after her 3-year-old daughter was found to have died of AIDS-related pneumonia. Orac at Respectful Insolence mourns both the personal tragedy of the Maggiore family and the larger public health tragedy of HIV/AIDS denialism. Sympathetic journalist Celia Farber, who defended Maggiore in 2005, offers a personal recollection. (previously)

What if The Huffington Post isn't worth $200 million, but say $2 million? There's a lot to love in this article, including key Nick Denton quotes on the Huffington Post's valuation.

Baby Elephants Eat Christmas Trees : in Germany, baby Elephants are put to work eating five fir trees apiece each day.
You say you want MORE baby elephants?

Playing the harmonica.
On the beach.
Learning to walk.

A year and a half ago, a professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan University discovered a pattern of stones 40 feet below the waters of Lake Michigan. The story has been surprisingly under-reported, given that the Stonehenge-like structure is potentially estimated to be 10,000 years old. One of the stones even appears to have a mastodon carved on it.

Thriving in the Age of Collapse. (Via Bruce Sterling's State of the World 2009.)
Previously.

Live from the Pink Couch: Punks, Girls, Boys, Warriors, Witches, Kids, Comptrollers, and your new favorite band Best Friends Forever! (boyzone comment flamewar included)
If You Make It also has oodles of live concert footage (like more BFFs!) and a (well intentioned) series of 31 films in 31 days.

Similar to Daytrotter's Live Sessions or VPRO 3VOOR12's Elevator Sessions or Blogotheque's Concerts A Emporter but with no corporate sponsorship or fixed agenda, it's just a guy and a "crappy Ikea couch" documenting folks who like to Dream It Yourself.

99 actions that lead to positive change in contemporary urban societies Very interesting exhibit on urban intervention at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. It makes me think about what kind of small actions I could take that would change the way I interact with the urban environment that surrounds me.
Some of the actions are really genius I think, such as:

a seed-bomb rocket launcher for guerilla gardening


A system which allows pedestrians to take as much space as cars in the streets


or a dance floor that generates its own energy

Early on New Year's Day, Oscar Grant was involved in a scuffle with an older man he hadn't previously met. The fighting continued and when the train reached Fruitvale, BART police stopped the fight and took Grant and several others into custody. The officers were armed with stun guns as well as sidearms. Three BART officers then proceed to place Grant face down to handcuff him, then one of them stands up, draws his weapon and shoots him in the back. Graphic video of the incident.

"Church was not part of my family life, and I don't think I ever expected to find myself being a Christian or, as I used to think of it, a 'religious nut.'" Sara Miles grew up an atheist. One day she went into a church, took communion and had a moment with God. She's now a Christian that has made it her mission in life to feed the homeless. She's started a food pantry in the slums of San Francisco that feeds over 450 hungry families every week. She's also a lesbian who is outspoken for gay marriage and considers herself a liberal but doesn't really care for liberal guilt.

The New York Times' Joe Nocera on what went wrong.
(VaR: "relatively useless as a risk management tool and potentially catastrophic when its use creates a false sense of security. This is like an airbag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident.") [pdf] -David Einhorn [previously]
"The piece so badly misses the basics about VaR that it is hard to take it seriously, although many no doubt will."
"Like many [New York Times] Magazine articles, it is long on personalities and history, and somewhat light on substance"

The Great British Sandwich is a 'collaborative web project' to build the world's tallest sandwich, one ingredient at a time. It began picking up inedible layers early (20th from the bottom is Cat Hair, 38th is an iPhone 3G) and is now almostover 400 layers including the Higgs Boson, Child's Tears and All the Turtles. via the Ridiculant

Snarky indeed: An interesting review of New Yorker magazine writer David Denby's book, Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation, from New York Magazine. MeFites might feel right at home.

Story From North America. A boy learns to appreciate life in all its forms via song.

2008 Cliopatria Awards announced. These awards are given for the best History Blogs. Winners this year include: The Edge of the American West (best group blog), Wynken de Worde (best new blog), and Northwest History ( best individual blog) by mefi's own LarryC.
One winner I've enjoyed is Zunguzungu, this year's winner for best writer. I particularly like his essay on colonialism in Heart of Darkness, A Few Good Men, and The Searchers.

New Yorker fiction 2008. Annotated list of short fiction from the past year. "As perhaps the most high-profile venue for short fiction in the world, taking stock of the New Yorker's year in fiction is a worthwhile exercise for writers and readers alike."

An escaped beaver has been felling trees in Devon. The large (six-stone) male escaped an animal sanctuary along with two females when an electric fence was shorted by flooding. His owner thinks he went in search of a mate."We've got traps being made up at the moment," he said. "Using the scent from one of the female beavers, we'll be able to catch the male beaver fairly quickly."
The beaver became extinct in Great Britain in the sixteenth century: Giraldus Cambrensis reported in 1188 that it was to be found only in the Teifi in Wales and in one river in Scotland, though his observations are clearly second hand. In October 2005, six European beavers were reintroduced to Britain in Lower Mill Estate in Gloucestershire; in July 2007 a colony of four European beavers was established at Martin Mere in Lancashire, and there are plans for re-introductions in Scotland and Wales.

See also: Castoreum

Though you'd think it's as old as humanity itself, Murphy's Law is only just turning sixty this year. Happy 60th, Murph!

The Princeton Shahnama Project is an "archive of book paintings--commonly known as Persian Miniatures--that were created to illustrate scenes from the Persian national epic, the Shahnama (the Book of Kings). The Shahnama is a poem of some 50,000 couplets that was composed by Abu'l Qasim Firdausi over a period of several decades in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The core of this archive is a fund of 277 illustrations from five illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama that are housed in Princeton University's Firestone Library." The site also has the complete Shahnama in the Warner & Warner translation but here's another translation by Helen Zimmern
Many illustrated versions of the Shahnama exist. You can see a few images of The Great Mongol Shahnama with some information on two webpages on the Metropolitan Museum website and at The Legacy of Genghis Khan website, part of a 16th Century copy can be browsed on the Asia Society website and it's also been turned into a comic book. MeFite and all around gentleman & scholar tellurian posted about Cambridge University's massive Shahnama Project last Nov. 3rd which has even more images.

A British parody of an Americanized and kid-sanitized edit of an animated Japanese show based on a children's collectible card game: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series.
It started as a quick joke, a bit of self-mockery by Martin Billany (AKA LittleKuriboh), an admitted geek (so geeky, in fact, that he proposed with a YouTube video.) It rapidly grew in popularity, though not without controversy. Now at two years and 31 episodes, it's almost an institution in Internet Time.

Note: Actual knowledge of Yu-Gi-Oh, anime, or card games is absolutely not required. Give it a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.