Displaying post 1 to 50 of 145
What's the best way to protect yourself if you're caught in a stampede?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 10:05 AM on October 1, 2008
(23 comments)
2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge
"The
winners -- in categories including photography, illustration, informational graphics, and multimedia -- captured the crystalline beauty of diatoms, the expanse of the human circulatory system, a fairy tale tea party re-invented, and the dynamic life of a plant cell." (
previously)
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 11:01 AM on September 26, 2008
(5 comments)
A new whale anti-collision system
"A remarkable feature of Andre's system is its ability to single out and track an individual whale among all its “family” members in the same area – a breakthrough made with the help of a West African musician. In attempting to unravel the chaotic rhythms of the sperm whale clicks, he was struck by the similarity between his underwater recordings and African tribal music. A Senegalese griot (drummer) confirmed the likeness and – amazingly – was able to pick individual whales from André’s recordings through their distinctive rhythmic structures."
[via]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 9:43 AM on September 12, 2008
(11 comments)
Social dos and don'ts in Mexico?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 1:10 PM on September 8, 2008
(14 comments)
Genome Quilts
"The quilts are visually pleasing, with their strong colors and seemingly traditional design, but they hide and reveal an entirely other construct of information." [
via]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 8:08 AM on September 5, 2008
(8 comments)
Khaufpur
is a city of approaching a million souls situated at the absolute centre of India. The lakes around which our city is built were made a thousand years ago. Since that time the city was lost in jungles, rediscovered and
rebuilt. Again in the lifetime of those living, a terrible
calamity came upon this city, but again it has risen and continues toward a future filled with promise.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 11:28 PM on July 14, 2008
(13 comments)
Mexican Aerophones
are wind musical instruments or artifacts that can generate sounds or noise with air jets and one or several resonator chambers of globular, tubular and other shapes. Roberto Velasquez, a mechanical engineer, has
recreated some of these aerophones. Example sounds:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5 (.wav files)
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 1:28 AM on July 1, 2008
(6 comments)
State of decay
:"Over the years, Boston artist
Rosamond Purcell has photographed goliath beetles and translucent bats culled from the backrooms of natural history museums; a collection of teeth pulled by Peter the Great; moles flayed by naturalist Willem Cornelis van Heurn; and scores of worn and weathered objects, like termite-eaten books and fish skeletons."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 10:36 PM on May 28, 2008
(6 comments)
Keyboard calligraphy
"To produce such a typeface, Müteferrika knew he had to analyze Arabic script. Calligraphers might learn to make the correctly shaped letter combinations by practice, without conscious application of tens of thousands of rules, but for machine reproduction of the script, deciphering those rules was exactly what was essential."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 12:25 AM on May 1, 2008
(28 comments)
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
doesn't speak much, but when he takes up his guitar, he
sings, literally and figuratively. He sings of growing up in an Aboriginal community on a remote island off the north coast of Australia; he sings of coming to terms with being born blind; and he sings the creation stories of his
Yolngu people.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 4:34 PM on April 22, 2008
(19 comments)
Eviction Slip
:"In the spring of 2003 about 8,000 tribal people and low-caste farmers living in the Kuno area of Madhya Pradesh, India, were summarily uprooted from the rich farmlands they had cultivated for generations and moved to 24 villages on scrub land outside the borders of a sanctuary created for a pride of six imported Asiatic lions."[
via]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 5:46 PM on April 16, 2008
(4 comments)
Identity crisis in scientific publishing
:"Chinese authors are publishing more and more papers, but are they receiving due credit and recognition for their work? Not if their names get confused along the way."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 5:22 PM on April 13, 2008
(44 comments)
The Mexican kitchen's Islamic connection
:"When Mexico’s leading writer, Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz, arrived in New Delhi in 1962 to take up his post as ambassador to India, he quickly ran across a culinary puzzle. Although Mexico and India were on opposite sides of the globe, the brown, spicy, aromatic curries that he was offered in India sparked memories of Mexico’s national dish, mole (pronounced MO-lay). Is mole, he wondered, “an ingenious Mexican version of curry, or is curry a Hindu adaptation of a Mexican sauce ?” How could this seeming coincidence of “gastronomic geography” be explained ?"
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 11:18 PM on April 9, 2008
(53 comments)
Is it possible to buy Indian (from India) spices in Mexico?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 11:48 PM on April 8, 2008
(9 comments)
Help me get audio from a camcorder?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 8:25 PM on March 9, 2008
(11 comments)
Can scientists dance?
"No one quite knew what to expect as the lights came up on a pair of astrophysicists dressed as binary galaxies. The rowdy audience of scientists exploded with applause. The world's first Dance Your Ph.D. Contest was off to a good start."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 10:59 PM on March 8, 2008
(18 comments)
The Synchronicity Project
Since 2005, Japanese art director Jun Tsuzuki has been running a project he calls Synchronicity, where he asks people all over the world to take a picture of what they are doing at a pre-determined moment in time. [
via]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 5:19 PM on February 21, 2008
(9 comments)
A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems
"What happens in the vast stretches of the world's oceans - both wondrous and worrisome - has too often been out of sight, out of mind. The goal of the research presented here is to estimate and visualize, for the first time, the global impact humans are having on the ocean's ecosystems."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 5:15 PM on February 14, 2008
(20 comments)
Map Paintings
by
Paula Scher: “These are absolutely, one hundred percent inaccurate,” Paula Scher declares of her colossal map paintings. Then, after a pause: “But not on purpose.” Another pause: they’re actually “sort of right.” [
via]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 4:58 PM on November 12, 2007
(10 comments)
How to say "I love you"
"(42) Inappropriately, to a coworker who is already sleeping with another coworker. (43) With a heart filled with lies. (44) With a she puppet and a you puppet. (45) As she leaves for Spain with your much better-looking brother. (46) At Thanksgiving, to her twin sister, by accident."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 8:41 PM on November 8, 2007
(41 comments)
Brazilian Ethnomapping:
Inside a thatched-roof schoolhouse in a village deep in Brazil's Amazon rain forest, Surui Indians and former military cartographers huddle over the newest weapons in the tribe's fight for survival: laptop computers,
satellite maps and hand-held global positioning systems.
Some of the
resulting maps.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 1:10 AM on October 11, 2007
(6 comments)
Is the net good for writers?
"Now the web — and its democratizing impact — has spread for over a decade. Over a billion people can deliver their text to a very broad public. But what does it mean for writers and writing? What does it mean for those who specialize in writing well?"
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 9:10 PM on October 9, 2007
(39 comments)
What is it like to be a high school teacher in the U.S.?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 8:57 AM on July 17, 2007
(21 comments)
Felice Frankel's photography
"When people call
Felice Frankel an artist, she winces. In the first place, the
photographs she makes don't sell. In the second place, her images are not full of emotion or ideology or any other kind of message. As she says, "My stuff is about phenomena." [
via]
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 9:43 PM on June 12, 2007
(29 comments)
The Idol Thief
"Vaman Ghiya operated one of the most extensive and sophisticated clandestine antiquities rings in history, and he had grown rich in the past three decades by smuggling thousands of Indian antiques to auction houses and private collectors in the West."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 8:01 PM on May 14, 2007
(15 comments)
The Mathematical Lives of Plants
"Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?"
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 9:03 PM on May 7, 2007
(31 comments)
Clever Ravens:
"They have a long evolutionary process of espionage and counter-espionage to build on, in the course of which they became masters of deceit and problem-solving. They got better and better at guessing the intentions of others and concealing their own."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 8:54 PM on May 6, 2007
(37 comments)
Glass Art
: A site with thousands of images of glass art objects.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 12:31 AM on May 4, 2007
(8 comments)
How do I convert guitar tabulature to mandolin tabs?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 6:13 PM on April 3, 2007
(22 comments)
The Money Maker
:"On the 1000 guilder note, it became a “sport” for me to put things in the notes that nobody wanted there! I was very proud to have my fingerprint in this note – and it’s my middle finger!"
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 10:38 PM on February 26, 2007
(33 comments)
Is a mystical experience considered as a disorder by psychiatrists?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dhruva
at 11:11 PM on February 25, 2007
(20 comments)
The Design Disease
"People with the disease will always choose books by their covers."
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 8:30 PM on February 18, 2007
(91 comments)
Kulning:
"Kulning is an archaic style of
singing/cattle call, traditionally employed outdoors in the grazing pastures of Scandinavia from the Middle Ages to this day. It consists of shepherdess's tunes, calls and tones of enticement, mainly used to keep contact with, and to call the cattle, but also to communicate with other people over long distances". Examples:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7. (related
MeFi post)
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 10:06 PM on February 14, 2007
(17 comments)
