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mefi
The evolution of Mars imaging from orbit:
Mariner 4 (1964),
Mariner 6 and
Mariner 7 (both 1969),
Mariner 9 (1971) (all NASA),
Mars 5 (1973) (USSR),
Viking 1 (1975),
Viking 2 (1976),
Mars Global Surveyor (1996),
Mars Odyssey (2001) (NASA),
Mars Express (2003) (ESA), up to this spy-quality shot of an
active avalanche taken by NASA's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005).
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 10:03 AM on March 5, 2008
(11 comments)
In the increasingly surreal battle between the RIAA and music listeners,
reality and
satire can be hard to discern.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 10:27 AM on December 20, 2007
(50 comments)
Real robot drama is happening on Mars today. Spirit,
racing for her life to find shelter before winter,
injured and
underpowered after four years of hard labor, may have made her most significant find yet. The broken foot she's dragged behind her for the past two years unexpectedly uncovered
evidence of a once-wet Mars with conditions theoretically hospitable for primitive life.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 11:08 AM on December 12, 2007
(89 comments)
That the first space race was
politically motivated shouldn't detract from your enjoyment of
Soviet propaganda space art. More
here and
here.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 2:50 PM on August 2, 2007
(21 comments)
E-motional breakdown: The state of e-mail misery. Is email finally at the
breaking point? My inbox is so oversaturated I need
professional advice to avoid
bankrupcy. Or maybe I'll just wait it out --
the kids might know best.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 5:09 PM on July 23, 2007
(32 comments)
Kerwin Mathews, 1926-2007. The
genre actor may be best remembered as the title character in one of my favorite movies, the classic
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 8:08 AM on July 18, 2007
(8 comments)
Boots Randolph has died. The Nashville saxophonist's signature was the hit
Yakety Sax, better known to some as the
Benny Hill Theme Song. Boots was one of the
A-Team studio musicians who defined the
Nashville Sound. He
played with Elvis, recorded hundreds of albums both as backup and headliner, and
never retired from performing.
Listen to his music.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 8:34 AM on July 10, 2007
(13 comments)
The Brain That Wouldn't Die is the best public domain movie I've seen all week.
Abe Baker's spooky original jazz score is a staple in sci-fi B movies. The monster is played by
Eddie Carmel, subject of
Diane Arbus'
A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970, in his first screen appearance. And I can't overlook the
feminist take on this postwar gorefest.
See for yourself.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 10:23 AM on June 28, 2007
(23 comments)
William Shatner hawked Commodores. IBM tried
the cast of M*A*S*H, but without
Alan Alda, who played Atari.
Bill Cosby was a Texas Instruments man. Compaq gave us some funny ones with
John Cleese.
Bill Bixby pushed Tandy with a straight face.
Buzz Aldrin, The Pointer Sisters, Tommy LaSorta, and Tip O'Neil pitched the Amiga. I guess I should include
George Plimpton's Intellivision spots. Apple's covered by
everyone else. Who did I miss?
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 3:35 PM on June 21, 2007
(41 comments)
The
cavity magnetron is the
secret weapon that saved Britain in World War II. In 1946,
Dr. Percy Spencer stood too close to a magneton and invented the
microwave oven.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 12:15 PM on June 19, 2007
(22 comments)
The Soviet Union’s answer to
Saturn V, the
massive, complex, and
top-secret N1 rocket, failed win the
moon race after four
disastrous launch explosions between 1969 and 1972. In 2004, Polecat Aerospace had much better luck launching their
1/16 N1 scale model.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 8:56 AM on June 13, 2007
(17 comments)
Wild coyotes roam San Francisco.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 9:39 AM on June 6, 2007
(60 comments)
The Western Tradition, an outstanding 52-part instructional video series about the history of western civilization, is available as free streaming video.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 3:13 PM on May 31, 2007
(13 comments)
I hope
STS-117 isn't
delayed by this train wreck like it was from that
hailstorm last March.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 9:06 AM on May 3, 2007
(24 comments)
Did John Chambers fake the Patterson Bigfoot Film? If it weren’t for
John Landis’ big mouth, maybe no one would have figured out that
John Chambers was the man behind
the monkey suit in the
Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. Of course
Chambers denied it (and we’re still
waiting to hear back from Landis).
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 1:45 PM on April 23, 2007
(23 comments)
America's forgotten war. Are we winning?
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 3:23 PM on April 11, 2007
(39 comments)
Where is
Kai Krause? If you were a web designer
back in the day, you probably used
Kai’s Power Tools (
my how web design has grown). A
user interface visionary, Kai bailed at the dot.com peak (
just in time) and retired to
Byteburg, a 1000 year old castle in Bonn, where he peacefully
lives and
works today.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 9:21 AM on April 6, 2007
(46 comments)
The currency of the New Economy won't be money, but attention -- A radical theory of value. It's with great hesitation that I post an article that refers to the Internet as "cyberspace", but I found this article revolutionary when I read it almost ten years ago. Does MetaFilter prove it right after all these years?
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 8:13 AM on April 3, 2007
(40 comments)
Flamboyant San Francisco attorney
Melvin Belli [warning: wants to be your favorite] was dubbed the "King of Torts" for
redefining consumer rights and winning huge personal injury settlements. The first attorney to take on
big tobacco, he represented victims of
Bhopal Union Carbide, the
Exxon Valdez, and
KAL 007. His clients included
Jack Ruby (pro bono),
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and
The Rolling Stones, and he was peripherally involved in the
Zodiac Killer mystery. He may be best known as
Gorgan from the Star Trek episode
"And the Children Shall Lead".
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 9:25 PM on April 1, 2007
(15 comments)
Gwen Shamblin's faith-based weight loss program,
The Weigh Down Workshop, has been so successful that in 1999 she spun off
her own Evangelical church, now found in over 100 cities worldwide. Her weight loss methods are
not without controversy, and her church has recently been in
the news.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 12:33 PM on March 27, 2007
(24 comments)
Philip Kives, the "K" in
K-Tel records, built his
pioneering record label by
cramming up to 24 songs on low-fi compilation LP’s (later cassettes, 8-tracks, and CDs) and aggressively marketing them with
TV ads.
What's your favorite K-Tel album?
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 9:48 AM on March 26, 2007
(33 comments)
Max Q, named after the
aeronautical engineering term, is the only
astronaut rock band (but not the only
musical astronauts). Not to be confused with the
barbershop quartet.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2007
(7 comments)
The dark ages of western Europe –
nasty,
brutish, and
short -- did nevertheless produce technical innovations in
metallurgy,
agriculture, and, as identified in the
Utrecht Psalter, a groundbreaking simple machine:
the crank.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 4:15 PM on March 8, 2007
(22 comments)
Lancelot the Living Unicorn (actually a white angora goat whose horn buds were
grafted onto the center of its skull by mystic
Oberon Zell-Ravenheart), a popular attraction of the Marin County
Renaissance Faire,
Marine World Africa USA and Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, continues to elicit
fond memories in spite of being exhibited by a
horrific murderer.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 12:29 PM on March 5, 2007
(28 comments)
Space volcano. The
New Horizons space probe, en route to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, captures an amazing image of the Tvashtar volcano on Jupiter's moon Io.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 9:21 AM on March 2, 2007
(9 comments)
Pioneering electronic artist Ben Laposky began creating his
“Oscillons” – abstract artworks created by photographing
Lissajous figures off a cathode-ray
oscilloscope – in the early 1950’s. Some consider him the
father of computer art, and the
beauty and
clarity of his work is astonishing.
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 4:49 PM on January 23, 2007
(12 comments)
Silphium was the wonder plant of the ancient world. Originally identified by
Greek colonists in North Africa, the plant - a species of Fennel (
Foeniculum vulgare) - grew only in a dimunitive area near the coast and could not be cultivated. Silphium was popular as a
spice for cooking, but its notoriety stems from its alleged
medicinal qualities, particularly its use as an
herbal contraceptive (the
"I love you" heart symbol may have originated from the shape of silphium's seed pods and its use in
sex). So valuable was Silphium that it became an
important component of the ancient world's economy and appears on
coins. It's also among the first species recorded (by
Pliny the Elder) as going extinct, probably by grazing sheep or uncontrolled harvesting.
Or is it?
posted to MetaFilter by Chinese Jet Pilot
at 5:09 PM on December 7, 2006
(21 comments)
