I like how the illustration of happy little mushrooms makes it seem as though there's fun little toadstools all over Chernobyl, when what they are really talking about is mold. Allergenic mold that happens to be found all over the world, actually. This particular Cladosporium species likes to grow on rotting building materials.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:30 AM on July 25, 2008

Segregation may actually help Asians. San Francisco is the most segregated city in the US for Asians.

I'm not really understanding the implications of this map. I'm very familiar with the neighborhoods of San Francisco, and while the marked areas do show neighborhoods with significant Asian populations, many other cultures live there as well. So what exactly does the phrase "segregated" mean in this case, and how is the map showing that?
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 1:11 PM on July 24, 2008

The dead don't get any vote. I suspect if you could ask them, however, they would prefer that the war not have been fought, and people rather had waited to see what would happen. Whatever it would have been, I suspect, wouldn't have involved the premature deaths of 40-60 million people.

It's not hard to make the argument that WWII was a bad thing and lots of people died. I just don't see how you can be so certain that if America hadn't entered the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:02 AM on July 13, 2008

Who's freaking out? The assumption that anyone thinks that maybe there's a case to be made for the US does not mean that person is all RAH RAH RAH WE WON WAR IS GRATE!!!1! You're making a lot of assumptions about people's points of view on a very complicated subject.

yath thinks Faze is implying "the U.S. entry into WWII did no good."

yath:

Likewise, I'm struggling to discover... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 12:37 PM on July 13, 2008

I don't disagree, but I just took the title from the post itself.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:03 AM on July 12, 2008

Alex404, I'm not from Toronto, but Dubslingers has been throwing a weekly dubstep night at Thymeless for several years.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:30 PM on July 11, 2008

I also came here from memepool.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:19 AM on July 10, 2008

Leisure Town! That site helped get me through some very unhappy times. I heart Leisure Town.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 1:27 PM on July 11, 2008

Wow. I just watched some Lazy Town on youtube. You were right to be confused.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 5:15 PM on July 11, 2008

I've been looking at a lot of house listings lately, and it's pretty surprising what realtors choose to post (never mind the fact that so many people who make their living at this take cruddy lo res pictures on their cell phones and blow them up real big for their postings). My favorite picture was one of an OK house that need some cosmetic work, and the final picture was a street view including some wretched, ragged bum propped up out front on the concrete retaining wall. OK, I think most... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 4:55 PM on July 11, 2008

of democrats controlling congress.

But they don't, by any stretch of the imagination. There are 49 repubs and 49 dems in the senate, and 2 independents, Bernie Sanders, who is liberal, and Joe Lieberman, who is a shifty repub in disguise. The tie breaker is Dick Cheney. That does not sound like any sort of "control" of the Senate to me, and if they don't control the Senate, they don't control Congress.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 7:09 PM on July 9, 2008

If he were Bush, we'd all be yelling to high heaven, rightly so. No better if Obama does it.

And yet McCain entirely skipped the vote to campaign. Yet no one seems outraged about that.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 7:11 PM on July 9, 2008

The fact is that the alternative to Congress passing this bill is Congress enacting far worse legislation that the Senate had already passed by a filibuster-proof margin, and which a majority of House members were on record as supporting.

Anyone know just what legislation Morton Halperin is talking about here? He's awfully coy about it.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 7:52 PM on July 9, 2008

A vote for Obama may as well be a vote McCain, if Obama votes for the same laws, and would sign the same laws into effect as a McCain presidency.

Except that he won't, as anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to John McCain's voting records and multiple personality stump speeches knows.

We're beyond the Gore v. Bush comparison that motivated Nader voters, when we now have a clear, transparent demonstration... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:28 AM on July 10, 2008

Interesting article, effwerd. Thanks for posting it.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 1:39 PM on July 11, 2008

Another advantage is that Amtrak often goes to exactly where you are headed to instead of going to a big regional airport and then having to call for transportation/take a taxi/ride a bus to your final destination.

My boyfriend and I discussed this very point while drinking at one of the bars in Grand Central Station. It also means that train stations make excellent places for people to hang out or meet up, because there you are in the middle of town.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:59 PM on July 10, 2008

Amtrak is not the rail system. And I don't think the U.S.'s expansion really relied on passenger railroads quite as much as freight.

Actually, in California it did, but not in the way most people expect. The Big Four (Stanford, Huntington, Crocker, and Hopkins), made vast amounts of money of railroads, not only making San Francisco the biggest financial center West of the Rockies (this is the reason it was, and is still called, "The City"),... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 12:48 PM on July 11, 2008

(I should have made clear in the first paragraph that the local rail lines that were part of the big boom in suburban real estate were passenger lines.)
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 12:57 PM on July 11, 2008

I believe that studies have shown that many 8th graders have difficulty conceptualizing geometry. Their brains are still developing and what not and it is often thought best to wait until high school

I had geometry in 8th grade, and had a much easier time than I did in 7th grade algebra. We got to draw and build polygons, and that bit made everything make a lot more sense to me. However, there were only about 15 kids in that class, and we were the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 2:14 PM on July 10, 2008

Anyways, can anyone who couldn't understand elementary algebra and later got it explain what it was that troubled them so? Lack of proficiency with fractions/negative numbers? Not understanding what it meant to solve an equation? Not understanding what a function was?

I actually did OK in math in middle school (all A's and B's), because I had the same teacher in a small prep school that was not only very good at making math interesting, she leaned on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 4:31 PM on July 10, 2008

I am left wondering how they got to the point of pretty much finishing their park before they were stopped. Didn't the neighbors notice the land being cleared? That's not something you can do sneakily. And yeah, it sucks that this has escalated to lawyer level already. In my town, some kids built a skatepark on CalTrans property under a freeway. When CalTrans declared that they would tear it down, neighbors, police, politicians, and even our Senator Barbara Boxer worked to keep... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:01 AM on July 10, 2008

Also, a ditch works great for handling drainage problems, and is a lot less area-intensive than an overgrown lot of poison ivy.

Actually, no, it doesn't. Ditches and culverted creaks mean more pollution runs directly into watersheds, rather than being cleaned as it percolates through the soil. It also means that water flows much faster in times of flood, quickly causing flooding in other areas. Concrete allows no penetration of water, no softening... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:05 AM on July 10, 2008

It's a storm drain buffer area, designed to allow the existing storm drain to gently overflow. The purpose of buffer areas is to manage the existing storm drain, so it's already "engineered" to provide for overflow conditions; slowing down the water and allowing it to percolate through the soil. A ditch speed water up, and won't hold nearly as much water as, well, a field.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:32 AM on July 10, 2008

So why did they need to build the wiffle park again?

Because building your own whiffle ball park is fun?
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:06 AM on July 10, 2008

For anyone looking for teff, Bob's Red Mill also has an online store.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 12:16 AM on July 10, 2008

Why do people talk about gentrification like it is a bad thing?

Because the definition of gentrification includes displacement of lower income people. The idea that people move into a neighborhood and have some energy and some money to revitalize it is actually a good one.
I lived in West Oakland, in a warehouse, with other mostly white people who were definitely not rich but had some money to spend. I walked a half mile to ride the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 3:19 PM on July 9, 2008

What detractors of gentrification fail to realize is that people are free to choose and support whatever type of culture they want to live in.

The reason gentrification happens is that the nice, middle and upper class neighborhoods are not only expensive, they have no room for more housing. The only place left to expand is where the poor people live. Not only do poor people often rent, they often don't have cars, or money for deposits, and sometimes... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 3:48 PM on July 9, 2008

Regardless, apparently it was a realllly exhaustive search if they didn't check, you know, the ravine less than 60 seconds from his house.


I've been on the trails in Redwood and Huckleberry. They can be steep, dark, and heavily wooded, thick with blackberries and poison oak. It doesn't surprise me that they missed her the first time.
" Less than half a mile" from his house as the crow flies is also not necessarily... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:16 AM on July 8, 2008

Apparently Reiser had been offered a plea deal before the trial, in which he was given the opportunity to plead guilty to manslaughter and go to jail for three years. So perhaps this deal isn't so bad.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 1:01 PM on July 9, 2008

They basically gave the subway passengers permission to stare at the twins because OMG WTF they look just like each other, which you can't do under normal circumstances without being rude.

"They" being the twins taking part in the prank.

OMG! Rudeness on the 6 train! What is the subway coming to?
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 6:47 PM on July 8, 2008

There are some little QT movies of Tanker 910 dropping fire retardant along ridgetops at the bottom of this page. Amazing.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 7:24 PM on July 7, 2008

If someone tried to go into an Obama "town hall meeting" carrying a sign that said "BARRY IS A COMMIE!", don't you think they'd have done the same thing?

Well, many of the invitation to Obama public events ask that you not bring any signs. I imagine if someone brought a sign to one of those events and subsequently refused to give it up, they wouldn't be allowed to the event. It's hard to imagine that Obama is not savvy enough to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 6:32 PM on July 7, 2008

I've had that Mother Earth article forwarded to me a number of times, and I have to say that it really bothers me that the author advocates planting non-native species such as wineberry in woodlands (maybe his own woodlands are not native, but that is not made clear in the article). Black locust and acacia trees are suggested as layers in the forest garden; both are highly invasive in many parts of the country. Here in California, the nitrogen fixing properties of invasive acacia are changing... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 10:35 AM on July 7, 2008

It's not an orchard as much as a re-imagined, anthropocentric forest. Biodiversity is the key here.

I'm not trying to knock every single article here; lots of good ideas are included, though these ideas are not really anything new. The link from actually is good, with a strong push toward taking the time to research before planting. However, there are also a number of ideas in some of the other links that I think are actually harmful, the blithe... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 1:24 PM on July 7, 2008

Well, are there any more images of the alleged monstrosity? It's hard to get an idea of how terrible it is from just the one partial photo, but it doesn't seem all that cringe inducing to me.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:45 AM on July 7, 2008

Thanks, chuckdarwin. It really doesn't seem that bad, but I'm curious about it's layout and usability as a library.

If a building is so universally reviled that nobody except those with advanced training in architecture can look at it without thinking "jesus christ kill it with fire," then it's a crappy building.

You're setting up a false dichotomy with the assumption that the only people who enjoy or appreciate... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:14 AM on July 7, 2008

Interesting; I hadn't heard of Milton Keynes. Top-down large scale urban planning is rarely successful where I live, but they have done some smart things, like flood plain management. Though the Central Square in front of the train station looks like a pretty uncomfortable place. So, what's it like?
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:57 AM on July 7, 2008

What Shusha said. I'm not really getting why prostitutes can't be compassionate, or saintly. The argument that Catherine is genuinely trying to help people, therefore not a prostitute, is kind of senseless. There may be non-compassionate surrogates in the world, and there may well be caring and thoughtful escorts, call girls, "masseuses", gigolos. I'm sure if you equate prostitution with "bad", it's hard to get beyond that, but I'm sort of baffled by the tendency of several... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:13 AM on July 4, 2008

Awesome. Thanks for posting this. My favorite part:

The A train pulled in, and Gustav (who had been hoping for the C) started throwing a fit. However, the other passengers in the car gave me warm smiles. I guess they hadn’t seen that many 3-year-olds sobbing, “Local…I want the local.”
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 10:56 AM on July 2, 2008

Thanks for the post, Serazin. The Berkeley Ecology Center site has all kinds of great info, and Terrain often has wonderful articles.

I've recently began thinking about this exact problem, thanks to this article in [paid subscription req] Harpers: The Many Uses of the Daniel Boone National Forest. It talks about "assault, murder, rape, turkey-baiting, timber theft, drug trafficking, body-dumping, ginseng poaching , looting... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 2:15 PM on July 1, 2008

I have won many a weird face contest by making a gookie.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 7:05 PM on June 28, 2008

I see from Wikipedia that Devo come from Ohio. No wonder they are devo. However, there is a problem. I don't believe they have standing in court. You see:
"We are not people, we are Devo"

Unfortunately my esteemed colleague has completely misunderstood the argument: the correct phrase is "Are we not men? We are DEVO" which, in answering the question, "Are we not men?", with the response... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:56 AM on June 26, 2008

*flings poop*
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:57 AM on June 26, 2008

or perhaps it was just growing up in a secular household-- but I didn't get the Christian side of the Narnia books at all when I was a child.

Me neither; my family life was completely irreligious. That's why I always find shouts of "manipulation! propaganda!" in regard to the Narnia books very odd. I certainly didn't become interested in being a Christian after reading them, and no way was I likely to confuse childhood dreams of riding... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 8:55 PM on June 23, 2008

I didn't miss any, in spite of the nearly unbearable tedium of taking all five tests.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 11:34 PM on June 20, 2008

The U.S. government publishes a manual for METRIC signs to this day? (with metric speeds inside a circle)? Is anyone USING these?

That country to the north of us does. I may be 800 miles (1300km) away, but I've driven there, and having a general idea of how fast or how far is something I find useful. YKMV.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 12:18 PM on June 23, 2008

Save yourself time and money by infusing your cooking oil with garlic. It's easy and delicious.

I'm not sure that it saves that much time and money, especially since you are supposed to throw it out after a month in the fridge, in order to avoid botulism poisoning.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 2:57 PM on June 17, 2008

I still don't trust aluminum

People are exposed to aluminum on a daily basis: it's the third most abundant element in nature: it's in the soil, air, and water. People take in signficant amounts of aluminum over their lifetimes, because it's naturally occurring everywhere. Additionally, if you use anti-perspirants or antacids, you are using aluminum. Considering that no one has yet proved a link between aluminum storage and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 9:28 AM on June 18, 2008

it's the third most abundant element in nature
actually in all of nature, it doesn't even make the top ten, but it is the second most abundant in the earths crust (second to oxygen, which it is mostly combined with)

"In the Earth's crust, aluminium is the most abundant (8.13%) metallic element, and the third most abundant of all elements (after oxygen and silicon)."

We live on the earth's crust, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 2:04 PM on June 18, 2008

Oh wait, I see what's up now. home prices/rent ratio.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia at 5:12 PM on June 16, 2008