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FEMA to reimburse churches.
Washington Post story: "After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita."
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 7:22 AM on September 27, 2005
(77 comments)
Internal Amazon.com Conference - Liveblogged
Interesting approach to sharing the wealth - Amazon.com has rounded up an interesting roster of tech speakers for a private conference - and decided to allow an internal blogging team to liveblog the speeches. Links to their talks (from yesterday and today) are
here. (Speakers include Rick Dalzell, Joel Spolsky, George Dyson, James Gosling, Eric Neustadter, Rael Dornfest, Gregor Kiczales, Craig McClanahan, Brian Aker, Gavin King, Bela Ban, Michael Tiemann, Margo Seltzer and Arlene Capismalis, Chris Hofmann, Bjorn Freeman-Benson and Guido van Rossum)
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 7:08 AM on January 20, 2005
(6 comments)
Speaking of Transit Watching. I found it really interesting to see the collection of AP photos about the transit of Venus today. Apparently the compelling story is not so much the science (planets orbit the sun, got it), but the global spectacle. It's a bit of an anomaly of late, but Venus watching seems to be something the whole world peacefully agrees is a good thing. [
View the viewers in
Abu Dhabi,
Azraq,
Bangkok,
Beijing,
Cairo,
Hamburg,
Hong Kong,
Jakarta,
Kuala Lumpur,
Kuwait,
La Linea,
Lebanon,
London,
Madras,
Minsk,
Nairobi,
New Delhi,
New York,
Pakistan
Paris,
Potsdam,
Pretoria,
Rome,
St. Petersburg,
Sydney,
Tehran, and
Yokohama
]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 7:56 AM on June 8, 2004
(7 comments)
Amazon's A9 Launches
- Amazon.com's Entry into the Search Engine World launches today (in Beta). [via BoingBoing]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 11:57 AM on April 14, 2004
(34 comments)
Do not install software from "GAIN" - and never ask me again
Microsoft's Internet Explorer team is actually churning out some improvements - the authenticode dialog "Do you want to install this?" in their latest SP Preview Release now functions like it should have from the start, a more usable (understandable) set of choices, and the option to say "No, never ask again". Also,
pop-up-blocker apparently quite functional, is set to 'on' by default. Glad to see at least a little progress being made (still no word on PNG or CSS support changes, nor plans for a 7.x version, afaik).
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 9:51 AM on March 24, 2004
(19 comments)
US and Big Sugar challenge WHO Obesity Plan
William Steiger, of the US Department of Health and Human Services sent a 28-page letter to the World Health Organization on January 5th. On behalf of the Bush Administration, he writes "rigorous scientific studies do not clearly show that marketing fast foods or high calorie foods to consumers increases their risk of becoming obese. Nor do scientific studies definitively link particular foods, such as soft drinks or juices, or foods high in fat or sugar, to a higher risk of obesity." Attacking the science, protecting the status quo, it's a familiar tactic.
The WHO's efforts to combat worldwide obesity, and the reactions of US Sugar and Food Manufacturers were already discussed
here last year. Now that the plan is outlined, after 3 years of work, it recommends "advising people to limit sugar and refined foods, restricting junk food marketing, improving food labeling and raising prices on unhealthy foods". The US, however, is demanding strong changes before it signs off.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 5:14 PM on January 21, 2004
(62 comments)
Unmarried America
According to stats [
1,
2] gathered in
this BusinessWeek story, Marriage in America truly is a fading institution. Married Couple Households "have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today. That means that the U.S.'s 86 million single adults could soon define the new majority. Already, unmarrieds make up 42% of the workforce, 40% of home buyers, and 35% of voters..."
As a percentage, Never-marrieds, Late-marrieds, Widow(er)s, Single-sex Relationships and Unmarried Cohabitation all have grown significantly, while traditional marriage (and remarriage) has faded. I had no idea that there had been such a downturn. BusinessWeek's angle is that this is an emerging dominant demographic, and will be targeted as a whole, like Gen-X or the Baby Boomers. I Guess that means more flavors of Single-Serving Hot Pockets are on the way.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:41 AM on October 14, 2003
(229 comments)
Want to buy the Web? The whole thing?
(scroll to bottom of page). Alexa now offers - for sale - the entire web, collected from their crawler, in a portable form: "For organizations capable of hosting or mining an entire crawl index that exceeds
60 Terabytes in size, Alexa can ship the contents of the crawl to your location. Current customers include the Internet Archive and the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The web-wide crawl takes approximately 2 months to complete. It is over 60 Terabytes in size, spanning over 3.5 billion unique URLs."
No price listed, but "If you have to ask..."
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 3:03 PM on October 2, 2003
(16 comments)
Ugh - and Ooqa Ooqa
The company that brought us "shoshkeles" (flash ads plastered over your webstite of choice),
United Virtualities - has now launched a newer, more annoying ad banner/tool/,
ooqa-ooqa, which basically takes over your browser, removes your toolbar, and inserts ads. (They call it a "Branded Browser", and say it's fully "opt-in", which it wasn't for me)
I saw it in action
here, at Forbes.com (to be a victim, I believe you need IE5+ on a PC, maybe not). Wasn't the idea of taking over the end-users browser squashed, chalked up as
never a welcome or good idea years ago, when the ability to do it first arose?
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 11:47 AM on September 24, 2003
(47 comments)
Diaphanous Fog Screen Projection
Demonstrated at
Siggraph, a thin sheet of dry fog is silently generated and used as a projection screen floating in the air, so you can literally step through it. Levels of opacity can be dialed up and down. Beautiful, but the possibilities seem to be appealing immediately to marketers (imagine a walkthough ad in your local shopping mall), and possibly some
military folks. There are a couple videos
here, you can see it looks like a video waterfall.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:20 AM on August 1, 2003
(15 comments)
English Sans without French.
Imagine Think of a world of English without any French
influence impact, including linguistic. Some beautiful folks at the Christian
Science Studies Monitor have done just that.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 12:55 PM on March 14, 2003
(36 comments)
Powell's address to the UN.
In a direct, long and rich presentation, Colin Powell has laid the cards on the table, and presented what's likely to be our most explicit case for war. While it's difficult to separate the larger issue of War on Iraq from just this presentation, I'm interested in other takes on Powell's speech. Anything substantially new? Truly irrefutable? Strong enough to justify immediate action? Does this have more heft coming from Powell (considering
he's more trusted than Bush on this issue), or is he acting as a mouthpiece? Or, to be succinct, did Colin change anyone's mind? At the very least, he satisfied my need to know more about why our administration is acting so urgently.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:44 AM on February 5, 2003
(227 comments)
2002: The Year in Pictures - as collected by
Reuters,
UPI,
Yahoo [Flash],
MSNBC [Flash],
CBS,
Newsweek,
Time Asia,
BET [Flash],
BBC UK,
BBC World,
Guardian UK,
Corbis News,
Corbis Features,
Corbis Entertainment, and
Corbis sports. You didn't have anything else to do today, now did you?
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 12:48 PM on December 23, 2002
(7 comments)
Froogle
- Google launches a new beta site for Shopping. Apparently their spiders have been storing results they think contain items for sale, and now they're gathered and searchable/browsable via Froogle. No paid placements, but Text Ads still seem to be fair game.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 9:59 AM on December 12, 2002
(42 comments)
Alexa's Top 500 Websites
- Accurate or not, here is Alexa.com's list of their top 500 ranked websites - globally. This has been touched on both earlier
today and back in
April.
Today's top ten sites iclude two korean sites, one japanese, one chinese, and six us-based sites. Also a more-clear
definition of Alexa's Ranking system is here, complete with biases listed (such as IE users only, Alexa Users only, etc).
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 4:12 PM on August 29, 2002
(24 comments)
The 2002 5k competition entries posted.
By my count, 366 entries in this year's 5k competition, up from last year. Looks like anyone can still view and rate them like last year, but final judging has changed (list of judges
here).
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 4:35 PM on June 24, 2002
(5 comments)
Swimming the Columbia River - lengthwise.
What have you been up to for the past week? How about the next 6 months? If you're Christopher Swain, the answer is "swimming - and lots of it". Swain plans swim the 1,243 miles of the
Columbia River from headwaters to the Pacific over about 180 days. The further downriver he goes, the riskier it gets - aside from the rapids and ocean freighters that await him, he'll be in waters contaminated by atomic waste, PCBs and other toxins - which is the point of the swim, to raise awareness and support for river protection. "I learned that tasting every mile of a river is a great way to build the credibility to speak on its behalf"
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 1:02 PM on June 11, 2002
(15 comments)
Cosmic Log - on msnbc.com
Alan Boyle, the science editor for msnbc.com (and former coworker who I respect) has ventured into the land of the blogs, his being primarily science-news based. MSNBC and Alan both seem to be viewing it as an experiment, and are soliciting feedback. If you think a journalist-as-blogger is a good thing (and like the quality of the content of course), you can send feedback, or anonymously rate the page (at bottom of page).
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 2:08 PM on May 14, 2002
(15 comments)
Robot Guard Dogs
- two new types of robo-dog on their way to market (in Japan) next year from Sanyo (the T7S
Type 1 and
Type 2) About 3 feet long, 80 pounds of Aibo-style security for $750. Cool factor - their onboard CCD cameras and cell phones can watch for intruders and beam images to your own 3G phone.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 1:29 PM on March 26, 2002
(17 comments)
9/11 - the CBS documentary.
Okay, so we've heard of, and
discussed the footage of the attacks before, and many of us know that this will be airing on CBS (in the U.S.) this Sunday (interestingly from 9-11 pm). I wonder if anyone (or everyone) will watch? Some people have tried to
halt or delay the showing, but CBS is going ahead, and promising not to show 'graphic footage'. I'm really torn between curiosity and a fear of "too much too soon", and really don't know whether I'm going to watch or not.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 2:46 PM on March 5, 2002
(49 comments)
WA Lawmakers try to remove "repugnant" Theory of Evolution from schools
. Yes, this is the 21st century, and yes - we in Washington State now have two bills, (
Senate and
House) before our congress that propose "All textbooks and curriculum that teach the theory of evolution shall be removed from the public schools forthwith and replaced with textbooks and curriculum that teach the self-evident truth of creation".
I don't know whether this is a legitimate effort to change the law, or a (hopefully) doomed effort to curry favor with conservative voters.
[originally via fark]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 11:22 AM on January 25, 2002
(46 comments)
A new definition of 'Gun Nut'
Alaska state appeals court says a judge "erred" when she removed a gun permit from a man who "claimed someone had implanted a computer chip in his head and injected him with deadly chemicals". Apparently "general concerns about mental illness" are not allowed to be considered in such cases.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 2:00 PM on January 11, 2002
(25 comments)
Bizarre new species of deep sea squid
- Yes, you may have read about it earlier, but this link is a photo of one of the
strangest new species to be discovered in a long time. Seventeen feet of weirdness 10,000 feet below the surface. It's cool that we can still find new alien life forms without yet venturing into space.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 11:47 PM on December 20, 2001
(34 comments)
NBC to begin broadcasting hard liquor ads
- so it seems that in a depressed advertising environment, priorities begin to shift. Smirnoff vodka is set to go first. The rules: Ads are to be broadcast only after 9 pm, only after the advertiser spends four months broadcasting a "responsible drinking" campaign, and "no consumption of alcohol can be depicted in the ads and that no active professional athletes may used in the ads either". Also "85% of the audience for any show must be at least 21-years old and the actors in the ads must be at least 30 years old."
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:51 AM on December 14, 2001
(15 comments)
Leonid Meteor Shower
- Hot or Not? Was it a once-in-a-lifetime event, as was billed, or did you just find yourself standing out in the cold and looking straight up? I'm on my way outside right now to shiver & stare.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 1:33 AM on November 18, 2001
(58 comments)
Escapism, Star Wars style
- The new Star Wars Ep II trailer, "Mystery" is out there - not the 'breathing' teaser, but a longer one. It's supposed to be unlocked by EP I DVD owners only, but of course there are mirrors. Post others inside if you find them. Star Wars haters can just move along, there's plenty other news today.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 12:03 PM on November 12, 2001
(37 comments)
Pentagon asks for help - from Hollywood screenwriters and directors
. Hilarious, yet true. Some of the makers of MacGyver, Die Hard, Death Wish II, and Grease, among others were invited to "brainstorm possible terrorist events and solutions" and return this information to Army Brigadier General Kenneth Bergquist. Everyone's doing their part (including Spike Jonze).
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 5:17 PM on October 8, 2001
(26 comments)
Open Season on Pipelines
Some dumbass with a rifle shot the trans-Alaska pipeline with a rifle on Thursday (
photo here). The results of his single shot? 70,000 gallons of crude oil spilled on the ground. The authorites, as is requisite these days, assure us it has "nothing to do with terrorism".
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:28 AM on October 5, 2001
(23 comments)
How life changed from the view of several photographers.
The first link, about the injured David Handschuh is the most powerful story. The experiences of fellow photographers
Richard Drew and
Shannon Stapleton are made evident just by the giant shift in their subject matter (seen sequentially via Yahoo News) from Sep. 10th to Sep. 11th. Drew was covering the US Open on one day, falling people the next. Shannon went quickly from Spring Fashion 2002 to ground zero.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 4:47 PM on September 19, 2001
(10 comments)
The Global Toll
A nicely done graphic from the Times outlining just how widespread the losses are. This really lends more perspective to the arguments that this was "an attack on humanity" rather than solely the U.S.
[Found on Nixlog]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:43 AM on September 18, 2001
(15 comments)
3D Cell Phones
- Japanese cell phone manufacturer
J-Phone will be selling cell phones with 3D display capability by mid 2001 (
press release). Just seems like everyones scratching hard to be the next big thing - but it surprises me, given the lukewarm to non-existent success of 3D on the Web, that a cell phone maker would go this route, let alone call it the "next logical step". As if the UI on small cell phone screens wasn't bad enough.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:31 AM on June 7, 2001
(4 comments)
Shaggies
- No, it's not a "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters" costume, it only looks that way. Just the thing for the Dad or Grad on your list who wants to look like a shambling mound of leaves for that special occasion. Be sure to check their
home page for a great group shot. (Even available for pets)
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 11:00 PM on May 29, 2001
(4 comments)
Tomorrow night - Sopranos Finale
- Will Jackie Jr. get a pass? Will Paulie or Christopher get whacked? Where the Hell did that Russian go? Will we ever see Gloria again? I don't often get wrapped up in a TV series, but damn, I am hooked into this one.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:22 PM on May 19, 2001
(15 comments)
Nanotech Machines overrun by (relatively) giant bugs.
Electron Microscope imagery has such a great look to it. Here's a series of images from the folks at Sandia Labs, who - while imaging their micro-machines - placed some interesting creatures in the frame for scale.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 2:44 PM on May 7, 2001
(12 comments)
Vector Park
Fun, rewarding, nice way to spend some time. "Levers" (lower left image) is a challenge, "Park" (lower right image) has plenty of nice surprises. [
Flash reqired. Seen on usr\bin\girl & k10k]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:30 AM on May 3, 2001
(22 comments)
Anti-bullying vote blocked by Christian Conservatives
The Washington State bill would have required school districts to set up policies against harassment, bullying and intimidation. Christian conservatives that blocked the vote claim "it amounted to censorship of their right to condemn homosexuality." There is no mention of homosexuality in the bill at all. So this leads me to the conclusion that these Christians condone "harassment, bullying and intimidation." How far from the Golden Rule can you stray and keep a straight face?
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 9:58 AM on May 1, 2001
(26 comments)
Generation X washed up?
Okay, so it became a marketing term for a demographic I'm part of, and I usually cringe when seeing something described as 'Gen-X', but I still saw some truths while reading this. Was that it? Was the 90's Internet revolution and crash our time in the sun, and now we're "so over"? (And do Gen-Xers really range from 20-38 years old now?) [via obscurestore]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:32 AM on April 25, 2001
(56 comments)
Shockwave 3D Beta
- Yet another re-entry into the world of Web 3D, this one long-heralded. It definitely looks a lot nicer than the
last one we discussed here, but details on authoring are sketchy. Though it's pretty, it still doesn't really answer the question - is there a need/demand for Web3D?
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 2:52 PM on April 6, 2001
(18 comments)
Neil Gaiman's Journal
- powered by Blogger no less. Most well known for his Sandman series, and as screenwriter for the english release of
Princess Mononoke, Gaiman is now finishing a novel titled
American Gods. It's an interesting, candid look into his daily life. Now I feel the urge to re-read some of those old Sandman books I have tucked away in my closet.
via [cold][wet][durham]
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 3:04 PM on March 9, 2001
(42 comments)
Bozo Matic.
No, it's not a toy, or appliance, or a poorly thought out website, it's a real given name - and yes, he's a real person. It just so happens he's Croatian, and is now the new chairman of Bosnia's government.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 9:48 PM on February 23, 2001
(3 comments)
http://microsoft.sucks.my.metafilter.com
I know it's self-referential, but I thought it was funny - I stumbled on this URL while doing a google search. Go on Matt, tell us how you really feel ;) - Also listed was "http://kottke-is-my-hero.metafilter.com" - sentiment as URL.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:29 PM on February 21, 2001
(17 comments)
How things work.
Yes I know there's a plethora of physics-related 'how things work' websites out there, but I got absorbed in this one for a long time (run by physics prof Louis Bloomfield). Started with my wondering: "Why do colors fade in sunlight?" The first page though has an interesting bit (with video) about
explosive superheated water. Don't try this at home.
posted to MetaFilter by kokogiak
at 10:40 AM on February 9, 2001
(4 comments)
