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mefi
"To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the
DARPA Network Challenge.... The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways." Teams must register by December 1st and have two weeks to submit balloon locations.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn
at 2:25 PM on November 2, 2009
(108 comments)
Peter Goldmark, developer of
early color tv technology, is lesser known for a cooler invention, the
Highway Hifi – the first recorded-music player for an automobile. The under-dash system played
records provided by Columbia Records which played at 16 ⅔ rpm even when the vehicle was in motion. It was first released with Chrysler models in 1956 but lackluster promotion of the option by both Columbia and Chrysler led to the option being
discontinued before the 60s.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn
at 6:41 PM on October 12, 2009
(36 comments)
"The
What Cheer House catered to men only, permitted no liquor on the premises, and housed San Francisco's first free library and first museum." Opened in 1852 by
Robert B. Woodward it became immensely popular. "[S]ailors enjoyed staying there... [he] was such a well-liked man that they would often bring him trinkets from around the world when they’d come to town. For Woodward, these gifts were the beginning of what would become a life-long obsession with collecting." He moved the collection and opened
Woodward's Gardens in 1866 between Mission and Valencia at 13th-15th streets. Called the
Central Park of the West, it was San Francisco's most famous public resort.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn
at 10:25 AM on October 4, 2009
(23 comments)
While many quirky news buffs may be aware of the story of
Phineas Gage -- the Vermont railroad foreman who had a three foot iron rod penetrate his skull as the result of an explosion and lived to tell about it -- fewer know that
the only known photograph of him was recently discovered. Fewer still know that the identification of that photograph happened
via a Flickr comment.
(no thanks to you LA Times, previously)
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn
at 9:43 PM on July 29, 2009
(77 comments)
"
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)
"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)
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)
"
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)
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)
"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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
