Displaying post 1 to 50 of 70 from mefi

To isolated dwellers in such a community, possessed of higher tastes and feelings, our Society may be made a priceless boon

"The design of the Society is specially to afford, to dwellers in remote parts of the country, by means of postal facilities, the advantages derivable from interchange of thought on such subjects of common interest as may be elucidated by the microscope." from the Journal of the Postal Microscopical Society c. 1882. It might interest you to know that the Postal Microscopical Society is still in existence and that there are other microscopical societies around the world. Now you can look at slides from the Victorian Era or present day without waiting for the mailman. [previously]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 4:24 PM on June 21, 2009 (5 comments)

Google's got nothing on the asperatus

The Cloud Appreciation Society is trying to get the Royal Meteorological Society to recognize a new form of cloud (pix). More about how cloud naming got started and more cloud photos. [previous clouds, via]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 9:13 AM on June 3, 2009 (56 comments)

"It wasn't as bad as the movie makes it seem"

"We used to find teeth in the yard. We used to find wigs, glasses, guns. Everything we found in the yard…nobody came back for them, though." May Timpano describes her life in the house under the rollercoaster where she and her boyfriend, rollercoaster operator Fred Moran, lived for 36 years in the former Kensington Hotel which had the Thunderbolt rollercoaster built around it in 1925. The house -- the model for Alvy Singer's childhood home in Annie Hall -- burned in 1991 and the roller coaster was razed in 2000.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:48 AM on April 17, 2009 (15 comments)

skybike: the machine can not raise his voice

The Skycycle (google translated) at Washuzan Highland Park (warning: noisy) in Okayama, Japan is (not) a pedal-powered roller coaster. Video, photos. Other things called a skybike: skybike, sky-bike, skybike, skybike, skybike.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 9:01 PM on February 16, 2009 (18 comments)

A hellish cacophony, as if a herd of dinosaurs were roaring between bursts of artillery fire

Pyrophones are organs where the notes are sounded via explosions or other forms of combustion. Often beautiful just to look at, they also make otherwordly noises (open up all these links at once for a real wake-up). Unlike other fire-based instruments, they can even play recognizeable melodies. Here's how to make one. They've become quite popular at events (7 MB video, more videos) like Burning Man, but they've been around since the 17-1800's. If you're new to experimental instruments, a read/listen through Gravikords, Whirlies and Pyrophones should be your next stop. Related: chemical harmonica, burning harmonica, singing tubes. [via & prev.]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:55 AM on January 4, 2009 (29 comments)

This is a thing that's happening very fast, in apple terms.

How the Honeycrisp apple went from being nearly discarded to one of the tastiest best-named apples of all time -- NYTimes says "the iPod of apples" -- and more about the patenting and branding of apples.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:21 PM on December 1, 2008 (110 comments)

I said BOWLing at the White House...

Long discussed, searched for and even relocated, the White House Bowling Alley has been closed to league members since 9/11. The most avid (p)residential bowlers? Lady Bird Johnson and Richard Nixon. (his ball, previously)
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 3:47 PM on October 20, 2008 (37 comments)

When I see three oranges, I juggle. When I see two towers, I walk.

When Man on Wire won a Grand Jury Prize: at Sundance this year, many could hazily remember Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the World Trade Center Towers in New York in 1974 (previously) but few knew the extent to which the entire endeavor was a wacky multinational caper.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:55 PM on October 11, 2008 (32 comments)

YT comment: Sounds like Ween. Ha ha.

Public television viewers from the seventies may remember being hectored and freaked out by anti-pollution animations. Three of the more catchy and memorable Willie Wimple cartoons (don't kill trees, don't litter, don't pollute the water, lyrics) that scared us away from a lifetime of casual littering were actually directed by Academy Award winning animator Abe Levitow -- also co-director of The Phantom Tollbooth (intro, time song) and director of Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (full movie, songs: we're despicable, all alone in the world) -- as one of his final projects.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 4:02 PM on October 6, 2008 (22 comments)

RIP Hayden Carruth 1921-2008

"Why don't you write me a poem that will prepare me for your death?" Hayden Carruth's wife, thirty years his junior, asked him. He did so, and it became one of his most popular poems. Carruth, who celebrated his 87th birthday last month died last night at his home in Munnsville New York. Carruth was the winner of the the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his poetry collection Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey. He edited Poetry magazine from 1949-1950 and was a poetry editor at Harpers.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 3:31 PM on September 30, 2008 (23 comments)

RIP Steve Cisler, the man who turned the Dummy's Guide to the Internet into a hypercard stack

Steve Cisler - first Internet librarian died on May 15th. "Steve was a unique intellectual populist. I believe his driving force was to put the power of computing resources, and the ability to communicate with same, into the hands of all who could benefit" Librarians, techies, activists and the unconnected alike will miss him terribly. This tribute from Ted Byfield went out to the nettime mailing list. A more official obit from the Mercury News "Steve Knew A Lot About A Lot". If you knew Steve you can post memories of him here or here. [cite for thread title]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 4:26 PM on May 29, 2008 (5 comments)

going forward with the "true eye of a lynx" to study the very anatomy of nature

"While we are generally horrified by monstrosities in the case of human beings, we love them in fruit" - Giovanni Battista Ferrari (naturalist, "discoverer" of the blood orange and the cure for scurvy). Illustrations in Ferrari's book Hesperides sive de Malorum Aureorum cultura (1646) are based on close collaboration with Cassiano dal Pozzo and his Paper Museum, called one man's project to "commission drawings of all known antiquities, and to attempt to systematically categorize this vast repertory of visual images."
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 2:53 PM on February 27, 2008 (12 comments)

Roxanne Shanté: Who Needs a Royalty Check

Roxanne Shanté may be the only person whose Wikipedia entry lists her occupation, truthfully, as "rapper, psychologist." In the credits for the Beef 3 DVD she explains how her record contract's throwaway education clause paid for her to get her PhD. She also shares the backstory of Roxanne's Revenge. Some more classic Shanté: with a skinny Biz Markie in 1986, BDP vs. Juice Crew, an old Wack It video. [via]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 9:04 PM on October 22, 2007 (33 comments)

everything big is small again

World's Largest Things including the world's largest collection of the world's smallest versions of the world's largest things, in a mobile museum. Seen previously, but much expanded -- now on Flickr, blogspot, lomohome, and friendable on MySpace. I found it while trying to look up this ball of postage stamps.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:51 PM on October 16, 2007 (9 comments)

The land was ours before we were the land's

Witness trees teach us about presettlement landscapes, surveying methods and Native American art forms. Witness trees inspire us, hide in plain sight, have free parking, become forgotten and sometimes become tables. Witness trees are protected by law and sometimes by signs, but not protected from stupidity. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:10 AM on September 3, 2007 (19 comments)

Black Sunday: I think my mother thought it was the end of the world, really.

"The storm carried twice as much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal. The canal took seven years to dig; the storm lasted a single afternoon. More than 300,000 tons of Great Plains topsoil was airborne on that day."
Black Sunday. April 14, 1935. Timeline, Oral Histories (Kansas, Nebraska), Dust Bowl Movie (part I, part II), Black Sunday photos (1, 2, 3, 4). [previous dust on mefi: iraq, texas, africa, china]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:56 PM on August 26, 2007 (17 comments)

Old lives and memories lie silent beneath the blue water.

When the Quabbin Reservoir is low, they say a church steeple rises from the water, a ghostly reminder of the towns submerged by the flooding of the Swift River Valley in 1939.

Enfield: "The residents of Enfield held a farewell ball in the town hall for their lost community."
Prescott: "The youngest of the four towns and the first to give up its identity in 1928"
Greenwich: "Where eastern Massachusetts saw four luckless, shabby towns, the residents saw a home."
Dana: "The Rabbit Run was used by school children. It was the only means of getting to daily classes at Athol High School"

'I had one guy in here who swore he remembered being a little kid on a boat with his dad, paddling around the steeple,"... He tries to set such visitors straight, but 'you can't just tell people they're crazy."
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:02 AM on August 20, 2007 (46 comments)

there's gold in them there barns!

The A.K. Miller Auction "This is one of those stories that begins at the end. This was the end of A.K. Miller’s Stutz collection." Miller was a reclusive eccentric living on a ramshackle farm in Vermont. When he and his wife died, his estate was prepared for a tax sale. Sheriffs found a treasure trove of old cars, some wrapped in burlap to avoid prying eyes, stashed in a collection of dilapidated outbuildings. The auction (pdf) was eventually handled by Christie's and netted over two million dollars. [via]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 3:56 AM on August 11, 2007 (13 comments)

I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.

Julia Margaret Cameron did not begin her photography career until she was 48. She lived on the Isle of Wight in two adjacent cottages linked with a gothic tower that she called Dimbola Lodge. Many of her captivating photographs are of The Freshwater Circle, a group of artists and intellectuals centered around Alfred Tennyson, whose poems Idylls of the King, she illustrated with her photographs. Cameron's portraits of contemporaries -- Charles Darwin, George Frederic Watts, Edward Eyre, Thomas Carlyle, Julia Jackson (mother of Viginia Woolf) -- became significant because they were sometimes the only existing photographs of her subjects.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:11 PM on August 9, 2007 (16 comments)

Where it says snow read teeth-marks of a virgin

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

Surrealist poet Charles Simic was named the Poet Laureate of the US this week. He also won the Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery" of the art of poetry. [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 6:51 PM on August 2, 2007 (90 comments)

deliciously vertiginous and grand

The Grand Canyon Skywalk, supposedly the highest man made structure in the world, opens this week. While the official website has been up and down, the skywalk has already made it into Snopes and drummed up its share of controversy. Former astronauts John Herrington and Buzz Aldrin joined members of the Hualapai tribe today in the first walk across the structure designed by Mark Johnson of MRJ Architects (slideshow, youtube). For more about all things Grand Canyonesque, you might like Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History of Grand Canyon National Park. [previously]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 10:39 PM on March 20, 2007 (80 comments)

singing/signing - a different sort of cover song

Popular: It's Like That, Humble Neighborhood, Son of a Preacher Man, Beautiful, Barbi Girl, Truly Madly Deeply, I'm Alive
Indie: Blister in the Sun, Across the Sea, Tom's Diner, Zombie; Classics: The Rose (more, also without lyrics), Revolution, Hotel California
Rap/Hip Hop (some comedic): Baby Got Back, Ice Ice Baby, Music (more), Paul Revere, Grillz, White and Nerdy, Where'd You Go
Non-English songs: Film Dust, Comme Elle Vient; Pseudosign: Torn (again), Sweet Home Alabama
Instructions: general tips, religious songs, and how to sign "rock & roll"
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 9:58 PM on March 14, 2007 (27 comments)

oh bondage, up yours! xo, wonder woman.

"The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for stable, peaceful human society." William Moulton Marston, the quirky psychologist who created Wonder Woman, had a bondage thing. He also had a PhD from Harvard, lived in an openly polyamorous relationship -- with one wife, one mistress, and four kids -- and invented the precursor to the lie detector (more at /. and of course, youtube).
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:52 PM on January 3, 2007 (13 comments)

hurf durf book eater

"Learn me to read, book lady.... Please if you learn me, I won't be lonesome any more. I broke my back last year. It wan't mended yet." A look at WPA Travelling Libraries. See also: Free traveling libraries (Wisconsin), Lighthouse libraries (Coastal U.S.), Blue Trunk Medical Libraries (Africa), Bus Libraries (China), a few miscellaneous mobile libraries, and this one from the 16th Century. And yes, there's some YouTube.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:07 PM on December 16, 2006 (10 comments)

clouds without dust!

The cloud chamber may no longer the particle detector of choice (that would be the bubble chamber) but easy to build yourself (in modern or vintage style) and watch cosmic rays in the comfort of your own home.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:06 PM on October 1, 2006 (12 comments)

7 mph would be the equivalent of driving at the speed of light

At forty miles (64.4 km) from Pluto to Sun, the Maine Solar System Model is the largest complete three-dimensional scale model of the solar system in the world. What, you didn't know there was more than one? And yes, Pluto is staying put.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:23 AM on September 4, 2006 (29 comments)

mandering

Mandership is mostly concerned with graphic and industrial design, interface engineering, typography, semiotics, and visualization, but it's more. Learn about how the Declaration of Independence wound up in the Ukraine (did it?) a short history of telephone numbers, book spines, and of course simplicity of design. From the same folks who brought you the Optimus keyboard. (previously)
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:35 PM on August 30, 2006 (7 comments)

a woman alone on the appalachian trail

"It’s a cliché among hikers that there are as many ways to hike the trail as there are people who hike it. Most start at Springer Mountain in Georgia and end at Katahdin in Maine; a few start in Maine and head south. Purists walk every 2,167.1 miles of the trail marked by white rectangular blazes painted on the trees. Blue blazers take short cuts on side trails marked with blue. Yellow blazers hitchhike ahead along roads. And then there are the pink blazers. Pink blazers pursue women."
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 6:14 AM on August 28, 2006 (155 comments)

toy art toy art toy art

Yury Gitman and his students make electronic toys: Pululus; Mr. Spoon Man; even a Katamari! Learn how they make them, inside and out. More about Yury at we make money not art and his own website.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 10:40 AM on August 13, 2006 (3 comments)

Night Ice

"The Bible describes how to make ice on the desert. Please describe the procedure and explain how it fits your knowledge of heat transfer."

Your assignment: make ice in the desert. Without electricity. Without extra chemicals. Without extra gadgetry or imports. Oh, and the temperature is about 55 degrees (13C). It can be done, there is science behind it. And yet we seem to have forgotten something that everyone used to know.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 3:04 PM on August 1, 2006 (43 comments)

this is a small post about a long story

"In the reign of Harad IV there lived at court a maker of miniatures, who was celebrated for the uncanny perfection of his work. Not only were the objects of his strenuous art pleasing to look at but the pleasure and astonishment increased as the observer, bending closer, saw that a passionate care had been lavished on the smallest and least visible details. It was said that no matter how closely you examined one of the Master’s little pieces you always discovered some further wonder." [via]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:14 PM on July 13, 2006 (17 comments)

what a bunch of dicks

Swine penis. Swine Penis. Swine penis. Penis whine. Penis wine. [a little nsfw]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 9:06 PM on April 15, 2006 (49 comments)

William Sloan Coffin 1924-2006

"William Sloan Coffin, who died yesterday at 81, was among the foremost pacifists of his generation, and set the mold for the liberal activist preacher."

Coffin, the model for Doonesbury's Reverend Sloan, was a Freedom Rider, Yale chaplain, champion for social justice and one of the most respected leaders of the anti-Vietnam war movement.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 11:12 PM on April 12, 2006 (30 comments)

global romantic blogger pain

The Dumpster is "an interactive online visualization that attempts to depict a slice through the romantic lives of American teenagers. Using real postings extracted from millions of online blogs, visitors to the project can surf through tens of thousands of specific romantic relationships in which one person has "dumped" another." Launched yesterday at the Whitney. Frenetic social data browser with voyeuristic blog-sniffer available here
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 4:41 PM on February 15, 2006 (14 comments)

Kerouac's The Road Online Musicircus

The Road Online is part of a collaborative project to gather ambient sounds from locations mentioned in Kerouac's "On the Road" in order to create a sonic portrait of the big cities, small towns, backwoods, deserts and mountains that Kerouac visited and wrote about. Feel free to record and contribute your own and become part of the musicircus. [via mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 1:35 PM on December 4, 2005 (14 comments)

World AIDS Day: more people are living with AIDS than ever before

"[S]ave more lives" is what George Bush pledged to do in a speech today about the AIDS epidemic. With more people living with AIDS in the world than ever before, is the US's problematic stance of promoting an ABC policy and other controversial policies working? Or is it an appropriate response to a culturally touchy topic that some oddball health officials in African nations are still coming to grips with?
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 1:30 PM on December 1, 2005 (18 comments)

I've always wondered how to make a fart machine....

Instructables for showing what you make and how to make it. Not just any DIY site, the creator Saul Griffith has an impressive pedigree. The site comes with all the things you'd expect from a new collaborative widget including Creative Commons licensing options and of course tags. From the about page: "We like to think about the physical world as something that is programmable. We like to think of objects or stuff you make as 'code'. In other words, we are approaching the physical world as something that is describable and replicable." Dive in and learn how to make a pimped out megaphone helmet, Hungarian bookshelves or canned applesauce. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:34 AM on November 18, 2005 (14 comments)

Warning: Contains Nuts

"To protect baby’s eyes offending by dazzling light..." Technical Standards runs a yearly contest for the Worst Manual, offering a $100USD prize. If you enjoy cringing at bad interfaces at This Is Broken, clicking your tongue at typos in library databases or rolling your eyes at the corrections at Regret the Error, you'll thrill to such gems as "Do not iron clothes on body." Note: not all bad manual contest winners are just bad translations. [via plainlanguage]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:58 AM on November 27, 2004 (14 comments)

once in a red moon...?

Go outside and watch the eclipse [if it's night where you are]. Tonight's lunar eclipse -- visible on all continents except Australia -- marks the first time there has been an eclipse during a World Series game. If Fox is feeling generous, it could be the widest TV audience a total eclipse of a "Blood Moon" has ever had. If you're in the US, click on this time zone map to get a quicktime movie of what the moon will look like overhead in your state.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:09 PM on October 27, 2004 (27 comments)

tell me about your drugs

New York retail prescription drug prices. New York [USA] has a state law requiring pharmacies to keep and provide a Drug Retail Price List for the 150 most commonly prescribed drugs. The NY State Attorney General's Office collects that information monthly and makes it searchable by zipcode, city or county. The stark comparisons show that even within one region, retail drug prices can vary by as much as $120, or 50%. With five million New Yorkers uninsured and having to buy their medications at retail prices, this is a handy new tool.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 12:26 PM on August 18, 2004 (6 comments)

no talent AZ clowns in 11th place!!

Young But Legal, Shays Lounge and the Swinging Johnsons, and Pete Sessions and the Wicked Kitten Militia. This year's battle of the bands losers? No, it's just a small selection from the roster of the Congressional Softball League. Some of the teams even have their own blogs.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:53 AM on June 17, 2004 (4 comments)

who is watching the watchers of the watchers?

Docusearch settles claim for 75K with family whose daughter was killed by a stalker who purchased her personal information from them -- a killer whose intentions were described on a Googleable website. The NH Supreme Court determined last year that Docusearch, the company who sold Amy Boyer's work address and SSN to her killer could be held liable for her death, even though some of that information was publicly available. An "Amy Boyer's Law" intended to increase privacy by restricting the display, sale or use of SSNs received negative reviews by privacy organizations and ultimately was removed from an appropriations bill. In a statement, Amy's parents encourage others to use the Internet to keep track of who may be keeping track of their kids. "If only we had typed our daughter's name into any search engine, the Amy Boyer Web site that was posted by her killer would have come up, and we could have called the police...This may never have happened."
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:55 AM on March 11, 2004 (6 comments)

is that a dead cat you are concealing in your pocket, or....?

Deliberately concealed garments footwear and other items have been found tucked away in buildings, sometimes even wrapped around mummified cats. This project of the University of Southampton's Textile Conservation Centre is developing an online archive of the finds they have made in an effort to raise awareness of this folk custom.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:46 PM on February 29, 2004 (8 comments)

colorless green sunflowers confuse furiously

Voynich manuscript detemined to be a hoax ... maybe? Discussed here previously, this cryptic document has been intriguing researchers worldwide. In December scientists determined that the text could have been produced using a Cardan Grille and look to known prankster and alchemist Edward Kelley as the likely agent of this deception. But the question still remains, is it encoded gibberish, or encoded something else?
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 6:20 PM on February 16, 2004 (11 comments)

it's a Dell dude!

A Dell with a 2GHz Pentium processor owned by a Michigan State University student has found the world's largest prime number -- containing more than 6.3 million digits. The student was loaning his extra computer cycles to the GIMPS project [sort of like SETI and other monster farms]. Here's a web page he created about palindromic prime numbers before he became Mr. Biggest Prime Number Guy.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:07 PM on December 2, 2003 (27 comments)

"Almost anything that was wood is gone"

One of the many casualties of the California fires was the unique and lovely studio and residence of artist and architect James Hubbell. Hubbell is a proponent of Architecture of Jubilation and his living and working quarters reflected many of his ideas about organic designs and sustainable building. The artist and his family and co-workers are fine but his one-of-a-kind house is not.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 4:55 PM on November 2, 2003 (12 comments)

continuous partial meta

Quicksilver Metaweb is the companion wiki to Neal Stephenson's much anticipated new book. If you've found his home page a bit on the off-putting side, but you still had things you wanted to know, or maybe chitchat about, this is the place for you.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:20 AM on September 25, 2003 (11 comments)

NOW where am I going to get back issues of Juggs?

Buy your porn now! In a little over two weeks, you will no longer be able to purchase anything in Ebay's mature categories, or many other forms of online adult amusement, using PayPal. New rules being implemented and enforced by PayPal follow [with a bit of coercion, some claim ] new rules laid down by Visa late last year making it significantly more difficult to sell porn online if you want to accept Visa cards. While it's unclear why exactly PayPal and Ebay are doing this, PayPal and Visa's corner on the online payment market is going to lead to some sort of change in the business of online porn. [all links except "exactly" SFW]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:56 AM on May 28, 2003 (17 comments)

Oh ... Oh Sheela!

Sheela Na Gigs are stone grotesques found decorating old churches in Europe. They are characterized by "[a] huge head, staring eyes and hands reaching down between [her] wide open legs to spread [her] swollen and oversized womanhood." While the posture implies prostitution, the Sheelas are said to be representations of the Great Mother, and they are said to keep evil away. There are even some male Sheelas, like this one at Lower Swell.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 1:45 PM on March 30, 2003 (24 comments)

segway on my sidewalk

I saw the meter reader riding a Segway today. Apparently Seattle has been using them in trials for city employees. While San Francisco has been working to try to ban Segways from the sidewalks, other legislation has already been passed that may affect your ability to make use of America's favorite alternative to walking. Probably a good thing to know before you plunk down some serious dough for one.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 3:54 PM on January 9, 2003 (35 comments)

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