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Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em / And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

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 clevererer.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 6:40 PM on August 6, 2008 (17 comments)

“The counter-argument to that, which I concurred with, was that this is a medical textbook that could save lives.”


I see wizardry

Attach syringes full of oil to the temples of a pair of double-lensed magic Harry Potter eyeglasses and let poor people see.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 9:53 AM on August 4, 2008 (57 comments)

"That kid at your door with a magazine order form will tell you a story -- part sad, part hopeful."

Winding their way down from California, they lost a few agents. Two were arrested in Albuquerque after they allegedly forced their way into the home of an elderly couple and beat them to death, raping the wife first.... Then, in West Texas, a van flipped, killing one agent and injuring three others. That's seven agents out of commission. That's about a $2,800 loss per day. After they turn in their cash and receipts, two agents, a pudgy girl and a lanky guy, hit the parking lot for a smoke.... It's a blast, they say. You lie all day to sell subscriptions, and you unwind afterward with some smoke. You tell the customers that you live a few streets over, that you go to the local school and play on the soccer team, that you just sold subscriptions to their neighbor, and the idiots buy it because by now you've got it down to a science. And on to the next town. And the next.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 5:12 AM on July 18, 2008 (68 comments)

Here he stands. He could not do otherwise. God help him.

"...aside from the Devil, you have no enemy more venomous, more desperate, more bitter, than a true Jew... What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming.... First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians.... Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.... Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.... Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb." -- From On the Jews and Their Lies, authored by the man voted by his countrymen the second greatest German of all time, the theologian whose break with Rome began the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 9:54 PM on July 7, 2008 (87 comments)

"In the long run, we are all dead" -- JM Keynes

oh shit (short-term?). oh shit (long-term!).
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 8:08 PM on July 6, 2008 (65 comments)

L’shloshet yamin: “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice”

Gabriel’s Revelation: “This should shake our basic view of Christianity... His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come... This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning.”
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 6:27 PM on July 5, 2008 (116 comments)

The head is not a percussion instrument

"Several songs on the instrumental album were voted Best in Genre, and then shortly after that I was flown out to Los Angeles and nominated Independent Artist of the Year by the Association of Independent Artists." Until age 40, he'd never played piano. Then he suffered a concussion.. Also, cavemen sang -- and maybe echo-located. Where? Where they painted their cave art.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 3:33 PM on July 4, 2008 (38 comments)

...if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.
Christopher Hitchens, Iraq War supporter, militant atheist, and now volunteer subject of waterboarding. With video.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 8:54 AM on July 2, 2008 (133 comments)

Nazigarten

Nazi German Bunker in my Garden: "[...] the previous owner told us that there was a tunnel built by the germans during WW2. He said it was big enough to drive into, [...] So I traced some WW2 reconnaisance photos of the property, which appeared to show the entrance road to my bunker. [...] And that's where the quest began....." (Original thread here, first link is to condensed but more readable blog.)
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 1:38 PM on June 29, 2008 (23 comments)

They see her rollin, they lovin'


Under the wide and starry sky / Dig the grave and let me lie: / Glad did I live and gladly die, / And I laid me down with a will.

Ugly [single link photobucket post]
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 9:31 AM on June 22, 2008 (146 comments)

Taking Affirmative Action Against Crime and For Economic Reconstruction

The black backs by and on which the fortunes of the New South were built:
On March 30, 1908, Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama, and charged with “vagrancy.”... Cottenham’s offense was blackness.... [After a brief trial] Cottenham... was sold. Under a standing arrangement between the county and a vast subsidiary of the industrial titan of the North — U.S. Steel Corporation — the sheriff turned the young man over to the company for the duration of his sentence.... he was chained inside a long wooden barrack at night and required to spend nearly every waking hour digging and loading coal. His required daily “task” was to remove eight tons of coal from the mine. Cottenham was subject to the whip for failure to dig the requisite amount, at risk of physical torture for disobedience, and vulnerable to the sexual predations of other miners.... Forty-five years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves, Green Cottenham and more than a thousand other black men toiled under the lash at Slope 12.
— from the Introduction to Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II. The book's website includes reviews of the book, an excerpt of the Introduction, and an extensive photo gallery that includes disturbing images of enslaved and tortured prisoners.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 1:12 AM on June 21, 2008 (99 comments)

...oh look everybody, a black lady voter....

"'Hello pig farmers!'... oh look everybody, a black lady voter... I am going left with the political thumb pointed down... I am now the center of attention...." Rosemary Watson's impersonation of Hillary Clinton in That Hillary Show is dead-on perfect. Listening to the clips with your eyes closed, it's nearly impossible to distinguish the actor from the politician. Right down to the trademark Hillary chuckle. Except that Rosemary Watson's Hillary is far funnier.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 4:06 PM on May 26, 2008 (34 comments)

"Four-Pronged Performance Review"

We The Robots, a web comic that hits where it hurts.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 1:00 AM on May 17, 2008 (56 comments)

"There really are no accidents"

Absolutely horrifying, not for the squeamish, you've been warned Canadian public service announcements. Also, the only slightly less gory German educational film "Forklift driver Klaus". An unaired and disturbingly violent Canadian PSA on domestic violence. Graphically violent Irish PSAs warning against speeding, terrorism and Harry Chapin. A French Canadian worker slowly and gruesomely loses his arm. An Australian PSA featuring a blood-covered baby. Finally, an essay (with linked video examples) by a marketing consultant on "Turn-off Tactics" in public service advertisements.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 2:05 AM on April 14, 2008 (66 comments)

Unfortunately, the films are not narrated by a talking tortoise

MITOpenCourseWare offers an online high-school course on Douglas Hofstadter's much-loved 1980 Pulitzer-winning exploration of maths, patterns, music, art, recursion, and computability, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Previously, some here had indicated an interest in such a course.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 3:00 AM on April 12, 2008 (28 comments)

Computer science doesn't require a computer

Learn (or teach) fundamentals of computer science, without a computer. Provided as hands-on exercises suitable for children, or even CS-illiterate adults. (If this is too basic for you, go here.)
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 12:12 AM on April 10, 2008 (13 comments)

"[P]ropaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...."

Need money? Have a blog? Well, your troubles may be over: "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." Of course, if you don't want to play along, there are other ways to make your blog useful:
Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience.... If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and... take down the site (and the blogger) themselves....
Who might you be interested in "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers"? Oh, the US military.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 2:19 AM on April 5, 2008 (20 comments)

Exiled from his Eden

[He] kept his one copy of this book safe,... under his sleeping area so that no one could destroy it. He would just look at pictures of his New York City family, and himself, over and over again.
Elizabeth Hess discusses Nim, the subject of her book Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. Also: the Great Ape Project's Declaration on Great Apes; Richard Dawkins's "Gaps in the Mind."
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 12:44 AM on March 31, 2008 (32 comments)

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures"

Possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims:
"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts,"... "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak."

posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 7:00 PM on March 29, 2008 (102 comments)

Blinking lights!

This is a cool game you can download. Here are some rule books for it.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 2:45 AM on March 28, 2008 (22 comments)

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause."

USA 1940-1950 USA 1939-1969. Color photographs. [Possible NSFW ads.]
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 12:12 AM on March 27, 2008 (22 comments)

"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?"

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.

posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 11:05 PM on March 23, 2008 (269 comments)

They say it doesn't constitute an extraordinary circumstance

Jayci is ten years old. She's about to die of an incurable brain cancer. Her dying wish is to see her daddy one last time. But daddy in prison on a drug charge, and won't be released until August. By which time Jayci will be dead. Federal prison rules allow for furloughs in "a family crisis." But only at the warden's discretion. "They say it doesn't constitute an extraordinary circumstance".
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 8:39 PM on March 19, 2008 (170 comments)

“An Efficient Representation for Sparse Sets”

An Efficient Representation for Sparse Sets. Or, Using Uninitialized Memory for Fun and Profit
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 8:09 PM on March 15, 2008 (82 comments)

Can $650 in dinner drinks buy a Neutral Point of View?

[Former Novell chief scientist] Jeff Merkey,... claims [Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy] Wales told him in 2006 that in exchange for a substantial donation from Merkey, he would edit his uncomplimentary Wikipedia entry to make it more favourable. Merkey made a $US5000 ([AU]$5455) donation in 2006... around the same time, Wales personally made changes to [Merkey's Wikipedia] entry after wiping it out completely and ordering editors to start over.
But it's all in a good cause, to keep Wikipedia ad-free, right? Well, no, according to Danny Wool, Wales's former "right-hand man" at Wikipedia: Wool says Wales used the contributions to pay for, among other things, Russian massages and as much as $650 on wine for a dinner for four, while Wales traveled at Wikipedia's expense. And though Wikipedia paid his expenses, Wool claims that Wales kept the proceeds: "At one point [Wales] owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit. Not a bad sum, considering that many of those trips had fat honoraria, which Jimbeau kept for himself."
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 1:51 AM on March 11, 2008 (93 comments)

Watch those feet!

Mocha has his first broccoli (single-link youtube post)
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 4:26 AM on March 3, 2008 (41 comments)

Demonstration over MetaFilter

An angry demonstration over MetaFilter
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 3:10 AM on January 27, 2008 (53 comments)

"Of course I don’t like Hitler but…"

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi.... Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities.... His code is not his own; it is that of his class–no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value–success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.... Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy.... Mr. G will never be a Nazi,... [h]e will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along.
"Who goes Nazi?" via sott.net, with added context.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 12:43 AM on January 24, 2008 (76 comments)

Lesbian couples should have a right to state-supported artificial insemination?

A year from yesterday, George W. Bush will no longer be President. So here's yet another online quiz to help you "Test your party preference". But the policy questions in contention in this quiz may seem surprising to many Americans.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 6:36 AM on January 21, 2008 (75 comments)

"To redeem the demand tickets they have written, the balancers must in turn sell dragonslayer tickets."

Nitroeconomics (if you want to sound more scientific you can call it synthetic economics) is different. It is set in the virtual world of Nitropia, which doesn't exist but easily could.... We can use nitroeconomics to understand real situations in the real world, such as the subprime crisis, with a simple three-step process.... The first cool thing about Nitropia is that it has no financial system at all. Unlike other, inferior virtual economies, it does not distinguish between "money" and other virtual objects. A monetary token in Nitropia is an object like any other - a magic sword, an inflatable penis, or whatever. A player in Nitropia who has a lot of money just owns a lot of these tokens. There is no special, separate "bank balance."
A[n Austrian-school] straightforward explanation of the present financial crisis (part 1)
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 12:30 AM on January 17, 2008 (28 comments)

Socially unacceptable addictions, government encouraged addictions.

When the working poor turn to addictive drugs to manage pain so they can keep working, that's "moral weakness, not a public health problem.":
Every morning before sunup, Trapp drives 120 miles.... "This methadone makes you feel like a human being again," Trapp says. With disability rates as high as 37 percent in coal-mining areas such as Buchanan County, the region has many people with long-term pain management needs. As is the case with lots of aging miners, Trapp's addiction to pills began in a doctor's office, not a back-alley drug deal.... The clinic's counseling staff members say that many patients need to be on some sort of drug to cope with severe, long-term pain and that methadone has made them functional. And for those who lack insurance or access to more personalized care, it is often the only affordable option.

posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 2:51 AM on January 15, 2008 (44 comments)

"the destinies of ... the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked"

Daniel Barenboim: pianist, conductor, Israeli, peacemaker, and now Palestinian. Predictably, some will add to that list, "traitor."
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 1:03 AM on January 14, 2008 (23 comments)

He's not, like, a garden item.

Potrait of an internet troll (with actual potrait of the internet troll). Includes one-bedroom apartment, dead-end and part-time jobs, and not-so-secret underground lair.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 7:25 AM on December 24, 2007 (93 comments)

The Bus reaches the Cross-road.

They were polite to us. They were more than happy for us to come to the rallies and stand in lines for hours to cheer on the candidates.... But when they got elected, behind closed doors, they would laugh at us and speak with scorn and derision that we were, as one article I think once said "the easily led." So there's been almost this sort of, it's okay if you guys get a seat on the bus, but don't ever think about telling us where the bus is going to go.

posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 10:32 AM on December 22, 2007 (115 comments)

Europa über alles?

Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
Von der Etsch bis an den Belt.
Deutschland, Deutschland Europa, Europa über alles, Über alles in der Welt!
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 5:55 AM on December 20, 2007 (39 comments)

Let the Eagle Soak

John Ashcroft stands up to prove waterboarding isn't torture, by offering to lie down for his own waterboarding. Well, that is, he offers he'd do it if it were necessary, and if he could survive the torture. Is that a brave offer, an admission that US has resulted in deaths, or both? Daniel Levin, one of Ashcroft's subordinates at the Department of Justice, went further, actually undergoing waterboarding himself. He survived it -- but his career didn't, after he he concluded torture was "abhorrent".
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 7:09 PM on November 28, 2007 (43 comments)

Generational politics

The times, they are a-changing? [pdf]: A Survey of Iowa State University Students' preferences in the presidential primaries. [spoilers inside]
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 4:09 PM on November 27, 2007 (48 comments)

"What dreams / Will be left / undreamed tonight?"


A fly in the ointment

MRSA eaten by maggots.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 12:31 AM on October 28, 2007 (35 comments)

Ihre Papieren, Bitte!

"How do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay quiet? I don't want to get on a list."
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 11:25 PM on October 26, 2007 (66 comments)

'Dilbert' gets really angry

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, tells Mahmoud Ahmadinejad where to get off. In response, Adams gets called a "Jew hater" who "may have just alienated a good fraction of [Dilbert's] readership." The next day, when Adams clarifies his position, he ends on a perhaps even more provocative hypothetical.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 2:39 PM on September 23, 2007 (145 comments)

Fishy miscegenation

More cuckoo than cuckoos: mate two salmon, get a... trout! Just give the parents a sperm transplant. And the sperm stem cells work in females too:
...Injecting the male cells into female salmon sometimes worked, too, prompting five female salmon to ovulate trout eggs.... The stem cells were still primitive enough to switch gears from sperm-producers to egg-producers when they wound up inside female organs....

posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 1:57 AM on September 15, 2007 (10 comments)

'...almost one-third of respondents appear to believe that the religious views of the majority should rule....'


The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit."

[Her] prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ,... The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.
Whose prayer group? Hillary Clinton's.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 9:07 PM on September 9, 2007 (124 comments)

"If you’re going to have plural marriage, you need fewer men"

"Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled or felt compelled to leave the polygamous settlement that straddles Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah..... 'So the parents kick him out because otherwise the father could have his wives and whole family taken away.'"
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 6:26 PM on September 8, 2007 (168 comments)

"...it's only when you have your code in your head that you really understand the problem."

Ever read a blog post, and think, "I wish I wrote that"? For all the Mefites with the many AskMe questions about "can I/should I/how should I learn to/ be a computer programmer", here's a pretty good explication of how good programing is done: Holding a Program in One's Head.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 2:55 AM on August 24, 2007 (43 comments)

"They gave me a uniform, a little gun and little pistol"

"Before you kill me, can you give me a bit of bread?" How a Jew, orphaned by Nazi atrocity, became a mascot -- to the Schutzstaffel.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 4:38 AM on August 22, 2007 (33 comments)

I have gut feeeling this is sweet.

I really enjoy discoveries that, in retrospect, should have been obvious (but weren't). It's not just your tongue that can taste sugar.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 3:50 AM on August 21, 2007 (53 comments)