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from
mefi
You know
Dasher and
Dancer and
Prancer and
Vixen,
Comet and
Cupid and
Donner and
Blitzen. But do you recall
the most famous animated GIF reindeer of all?
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 3:50 PM on December 18, 2011
(22 comments)
LHC Webcams. There's been a lot of LHC news lately but a less-publicized series of
Compact Muon Solenoid proton collision tests is scheduled for today, and CERN has been kind enough to set up a
live streaming webcam to watch the CMS in action. (There's also a view of the parking lot but I think that's more so underground-bunkered LHC staff can see the weather.) It's fairly dull viewing but if you're interested in the science of it all, it's great nerdy fun. Maybe you'll even see a black hole or two. ;)
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 11:44 AM on September 11, 2008
(22 comments)
Coal. Cheap, Abundant, Clean.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 3:51 PM on July 25, 2008
(44 comments)
He wanted his espresso iced, but the coffee shop wouldn't let him. "Hey man. What you're about to do … that’s really, really Not Okay."
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 11:47 AM on July 14, 2008
(339 comments)
Giant Twittering Typewriter in Second Life. Type
here (SLURL) and press the carriage return and it posts to
here. Yay.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:36 PM on May 1, 2008
(42 comments)
The Daily [
Batman /
Superman /
Wolverine]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 11:23 AM on April 11, 2008
(34 comments)
Spock (nsfw) -- titled "Planet New Hampshire," part of
Superhero Lonely, a 2005 exhibition of paintings by
John Jacobsmeyer.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 8:28 AM on March 31, 2008
(19 comments)
Light Reflection: a brilliant fan of cryogenics venting from a relief valve on STS-122 Atlantis' ET (external tank) post-separation. Also see
this handheld video of the ET, with money shots at 2:15 and 3:55.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 8:42 AM on February 21, 2008
(13 comments)
Calculated to amaze.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 5:25 AM on February 8, 2008
(88 comments)
THX for the eyes.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:06 PM on January 29, 2008
(53 comments)
Railway TV. Live video from the front of a train in Japan.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 1:28 PM on December 10, 2007
(14 comments)
When
Ron Paul email spam started hitting inboxes in late October,
UAB Computer Forensics Directory Gary Warner published findings on the
spam's textual patterns and the
illicit botnet used to spread it -- findings which were picked up by media outlets and tech websites like
Salon,
Ars Technica, and
Wired Magazine's "Threat Level" blog, the latter in a set of followup posts by writer Sarah Stirland:
1,
2,
3.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 2:16 PM on November 5, 2007
(306 comments)
A tour around Discovery STS-120 and the International Space Station with
Paolo Nespoli and
Dr. Scott Parazynski. Tomorrow, Parazynski will be perched at the end of a
robot arm and sensor boom assembly, stitching up a damaged solar array in what might be one of the
riskiest EVAs since
Skylab 2.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 8:15 PM on November 2, 2007
(29 comments)
Dipnote. Official weblog of the
U.S. State Department.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 11:33 AM on September 26, 2007
(24 comments)
Playboy. Cowboy. Mandom. The late Charles Bronson and his perfect chest, in one of his finest early pre-Death-Wish roles. And look out for Percy Helton.
Here's a shorter version with more horse. Via
here.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 1:58 PM on September 20, 2007
(63 comments)
"He's a human. And all you Democrats want to do is knock him down
."
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:09 PM on September 14, 2007
(41 comments)
onoes! teenz on teh pr0n webs! It's been a year since I posted about
Stickam, and in that time, one would be naïve to think that a community of unmoderated videos broadcast live from the private and semi-anonymous bedrooms of the world would not result in
epic lulz (nsfw). To no one's surprise, disgruntled Stickam ex-VP Alex Becker says
Stickam shares office space, staff, and equipment with live pornographic video providers -- this via
NYT tech writer Brad Stone. Cue the
"think of the CHILDRUNZ!" moral
panic. But popular websites being related to or backed up by prurient interest are nothing new: Wikipeda predecessor
Bomis was once accused of having
"softore porn" in its "Babes" section, and of course everyone knows
porn drives technology. What do you think the internet is
for? But if you use Stickam and this bothers you, the burgeoning field of live embeddable Flash-based webcam video streaming is rife with alternatives:
uStream.tv,
Justin.tv,
BlogTV,
Mogulus, and
Operator11, just to name some -- but there'll be naked girls on those too. I guarantee it.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 7:18 AM on August 6, 2007
(41 comments)
It's All Because. Have you ever had those days where you're wondering just why everything about your life is feeling like it's going down the toilet bowl?
Oded Gross knows, and he will tell you all about it. In a
song.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 6:54 PM on July 26, 2007
(17 comments)
Dachshund in Kiddie Pool. Also see
Rusty.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 11:49 AM on June 12, 2007
(72 comments)
Tvashtar in Motion. Awesome five-frame GIF of fountaining sulfuric lava on Io courtesy
New Horizons as it swung by Jupiter
earlier this year. Found via
Planetary Society Blog (Thank you, Emily).
More on Tvashtar.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 2:12 PM on May 15, 2007
(19 comments)
RIP Wally Schirra, 1923-2007. One of the original Mercury Seven "Right Stuff" astronauts (just
two left now), Schirra flew on
Sigma 7,
Gemini 7, and
Apollo 7.
From there on, it's stationkeeping.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 3:23 PM on May 3, 2007
(50 comments)
ESA's
Rosetta probe just flew by Mars en route to a deep space rendezvous with
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. During the 200 km close flyby, the Rosetta's Philae Lander camera got
this lovely view of the craft's solar panel backdropped by the Martian arc, plus an
animation of the moon Phobos' shadow on the Martian surface, and
more lovely Mars imagery.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 1:03 PM on February 27, 2007
(14 comments)
Jonson takes pictures of The Salton Sea, which is a
strange place, like some kind of huge, perpetual,
Burning Man, but by a
huge, salty, polluted, manmade lake with
distant shores,
dying fish,
has-been resort towns,
Salvation Mountain,
fundie dinos,
fountains of youth, and
nice churches.
[via mefi projects] [previously] [howdy]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 10:13 AM on January 30, 2007
(36 comments)
Vader Dad. "I learned it by watching you
!"
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 5:16 PM on December 13, 2006
(21 comments)
Hundreds of hand-drawn turkeys. Teaching assistant for a Psych class is on copier duty: multiple-page midterm for a class of over 700. Appends "Draw a turkey" to the last page of the test.
Here are the results. Gobble.
[via mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:46 AM on November 22, 2006
(61 comments)
Galactus is Coming! Galactus is coming to eat your planet, and nothing can be done to stop him! There is only one way to be saved!
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 8:42 AM on November 20, 2006
(28 comments)
A hoop, to draw the Earth's shadow: illustrating yesterday's
partial lunar eclipse with a hoop and some creative camera positioning.
Start here and work your way towards the
painter. Via
Spaceweather. More photos of the eclipse on
Flickr.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:22 AM on September 8, 2006
(4 comments)
Stickam One might be tempted to dismiss it at first glance as just a video-enabled Myspace clone for
emo teens with webcams; but looking past that you'll find a
fairly robust and platform-independent Flash-based webcam broadcast and videoconferencing app. There's a profile page with an embedabble Flash viewer, a full screen personal conference popup with privacy options,
group video chat rooms, and hosted galleries for
photo,
video and audio content. Is this the advent of Cam
Whoring 2.0? (Oh, and see if you can catch the
Pissed-Off Caveman online. It's a webcam pointed at a decked-out
Robot Chimpanzee Head.)
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 10:46 AM on August 8, 2006
(16 comments)
Pull out
a US $20 bill. Take a look at the picture of the White House. See that tree peeking in from the right, the 140 year old elm that's been there since Andrew Johnson? Well,
it's gone. Yup.
Fallen over, thanks to the
soaker summer storms which have been hammering the Mid-Atlantic in recent days.
Cleanup has started, but no word on whether the $20 bill will be needing another update.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:27 PM on June 26, 2006
(38 comments)
Do a Barrel Roll! [emvedded WMV, or view it on YouTube here] Test pilot
Tex Johnston shows off the capabilities of Boeing's new
367-80 "Dash 80" prototype -- which would later become the
Boeing 707 -- at a 1955 air show. The
barrel roll (or aileron roll to others), done twice, was a no-hazard 1G maneuver for the Dash 80, but thoroughly impressed the crowd. Following the roll, it's said that
William Allen turned to an elderly attender to ask for heart attack pills. You can still view the
Dash-80 today at its final resting place, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's
Udvar-Hazy Center.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 8:31 AM on June 21, 2006
(36 comments)
Bunny versus Airbus A380. The bunny was on the runway as the A380 came in for a landing, but managed to avoid getting pancaked by bolting as the behemoth decelerated. We salute you, Runway Bunny.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 10:20 AM on June 19, 2006
(146 comments)
I just heard
some sad news on talk radio.
Net Neutrality was found dead in Congress this morning. There weren't any
more details. I'm sure everyone in the community
will miss it. Even if
you didn't enjoy its work, there's no denying its
contributions to popular culture.
Truly an American icon.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 10:03 AM on June 9, 2006
(96 comments)
An unwelcome guest of spam. As thanks for his efforts against
link spam, a guestbook spammer uses infotech writer
Michael Pollitt's name in its autosubmissions, flooding his inbox with confirmation emails and soiling
Google's search results for his name. A special word of gratitude goes out to
Ev1Servers for his troubles.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 6:56 AM on April 27, 2006
(18 comments)
Crash. Tiny
SMART-1, ESA's first lunar probe (also a compact spacecraft technology test bed), has been in lunar orbit since
November 2004. Following the success of its
primary and
secondary missions, ESA now plans to
crash SMART-1 into the moon, with a hard landing on the near side which may be visible from Earth. More stuff on ESA's little lunar trooper:
SMART-1 lunar imagery,
SMART-1 NASA Master Catalog entry,
Planetary Society's SMART-1 category, and
SMART-1 on Wikipedia.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 3:39 PM on April 24, 2006
(4 comments)
Gnostic Gospel of Judas, they say! Hot on the heels of
Christ On Ice and the, er,
"newly discovered" Gospel fragment, the news outlets are currently
drooling all over
National Geographic's recent conclusive dating and translation of surviving fragments of the
Apocryphal Gospel of Judas, now dated to about 300 CE. The text is classically
Gnostic, emphasizing a
duality splitting Christ's "spiritual" and "fleshly" natures, as opposed to Christian orthodoxy's belief in the
Incarnation. Looking beyond the wide-eyed "OMG THIS WILL REVOLUTIONIZE CHRISTIANITY AS WE KNOW IT" sensationalism, Internet Monk asks if a
300 year-old apocryphal biography of George Washington would be regarded as authentic were it discovered in 1970.
James F. Robinson, an expert on ancient Egyptian texts,
regards the Judas Gospel as mostly a dud, produced by Cainite Gnostics who took it upon themselves to "rehabilitate" villians of Bible mythos. Even if you don't believe in the
account of Judas, there's no denying his
contributions to the Christian narrative.
Truly a historical icon.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 3:08 PM on April 6, 2006
(42 comments)
There was a lovely total
solar eclipse over parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia yesterday. See the photo galleries from
Spaceweather,
BBC,
various Flickr users, and the
International Space Station.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 3:26 PM on March 29, 2006
(12 comments)
Ah, remember the olden days when Blogger had to
beg for money from users to get
new hardware? These days, the hardware is
begging Blogger -- FOR MERCY.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 2:20 PM on March 17, 2006
(9 comments)
Mention nude art, get suspended. 25-year veteran art teacher Pete Panse recommended several ways for his ninth grade advanced art students to improve their skills, one of which included nude life figure drawing sessions at other art schools. For this, the Middletown, NY School District Board of Education suspended him, pending hearings in which he may be fired. They'll be after our bathroom mirrors next.
[via DC Art News]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 6:55 AM on March 9, 2006
(78 comments)
Buy an ad, and Aric posts a funny photo of himself and your product. Another entry in the "million dollar homepage" series of viral-advertising-as-content sites. [via
mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 7:15 PM on February 18, 2006
(21 comments)
CSS Trappist Monastery. Like the
Zen Garden, but without any images (other than the "chosen twelve").
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:07 AM on February 13, 2006
(29 comments)
RIP Baruchito. The flagship hamster of
Baruchito's homeCage has passed away after struggling with the stress of
a flea infection and the medication applied to it. Baru was just a couple of months shy of three years -- which is
a venerable old hamster age. While he may not have been as notorious as certain
late pancake-stacked pets, Baru still lived a full life of fuzzy cuteness and
aaaawww-inspiring photos. Those of you with hamsters, won't you arrange them now in
missing-man formation?
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 10:38 PM on February 7, 2006
(17 comments)
Interpreting Revelation's "Millenium." Outside of the all-too-virulent
rapture-crazy pre-tribulational dispensationalist premillenialism permeating JesusLand, some Christians hold to other, more nuanced eschatological alternatives. You've got
historic post-tribulational premillenialism, which places the transformation of the faithful at the final judgment rather than before it;
amillenialism, which regards Christ's "millenial" reign as a symbolic spiritual reign culminating in the last judgment; and
postmillenialism, which sees the millenium as a gradual progression towards goodness and light. Overlapping those, you have the "it's all been fulfilled"
preterists, and their prophecy-party-pooping compatriots, the
hyper-preterists. It's a debate just slightly more fun than
the end of the universe. Meanwhile, the
noncanonical apocalypses sit in a corner, sadly ignored, and
sunny Megiddo is still waiting for some end times
action.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 4:36 PM on February 1, 2006
(76 comments)
"Who's afraid of evolutionary biology?" (I've linked Bede before, but this piece bears a much more important message to Christians who feel it their biblical duty to get hot and bothered over evolution and origin-of-life issues.) Also see a
Christian response to "Young Earth" apologetics, and the
Young Earth Argument Index, both from "Old Earth" Creationists who disagree with 6-Day biblical literalism. (Note that Old Earthers may still be Intelligent Design advocates. Heaping spoonsful of
salt all around.) If that's still too "Christian" for you
, Talk.Origins has a summary of other Genesis interpretations.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 6:59 PM on January 29, 2006
(49 comments)
From Skepticism to Worship. "I made a resolution to read the entire Bible again, only this time I was going to read it as I would poetry or fiction, and not as a proposal of fact." An
ex-atheist's story.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 9:53 AM on January 27, 2006
(111 comments)
Breaking the Science-Atheism Bond. "When I was growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1960s, I came to the view that God was an infantile illusion, suitable for the elderly, the intellectually feeble, and the fraudulently religious."
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 2:39 PM on January 24, 2006
(160 comments)
Reconstructing Aunt Sally's Secret Recipe. Addressing the Retranslations Fallacy, a common misconception about how the Bible we read has been handed down to us.
[via]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 12:38 PM on January 23, 2006
(64 comments)
The Girl of Your Dreams. "Jesus had a dream girl. Jesus had a girl that He wanted to marry for several thousand years. But she treated him like shit."
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 10:54 AM on January 19, 2006
(29 comments)
Doug TenNapel reviews
"The God Who Wasn't There" in three parts: [
1,
2,
3]. (Religion not your thing? He also does
comics. And
video games.)
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 5:09 PM on January 15, 2006
(36 comments)
Can God make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it?
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau
at 2:46 PM on January 13, 2006
(161 comments)
