MetaFilter

In Bike-Friendly Copenhagen, Highways For Cyclists: 'Every day, one-third of the people of Copenhagen ride their bikes to work or school. Collectively, they cycle more than 750,000 miles daily, enough to make it to the moon and back. And city officials want even more people to commute, and over longer distances. So a network of 26 new bike routes, dubbed "the cycling superhighway," is being built to link the surrounding suburbs to Copenhagen.'
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:54 PM PST - 59 comments

The campaigns they chose to run, and the way they decided to run them, shaped the history of California, and of the country. - The history of Campaigns, Inc., the "first political-consulting firm in the history of the world" which morphed into the precursor for our modern lobbying firms (although they preferred the term "grassroots organizers").
posted by DynamiteToast at 9:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Three cute shorts from the Bellecour School of Art's 3D graphics program: Boringtown (3:38), about three youths who battle monsters; Monsterbox (7:38), about a little girl, her monsters, and a kind old garden shop keeper; and Destiny (5:26), about a fellow and his relationship with time. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 PM PST - 4 comments

The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History uses the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection as the starting point for a deeply informative, chronologically arranged exploration of world art history, with maps, timelines, art images, thematic essays, and more.
posted by Miko at 8:25 PM PST - 7 comments

A Conservative History of the United States - Jack Hitt for New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs, pieces together America's storied history from quotes by Rick Perry, Dick Armey, Mike Huckabee, Dan Quayle and more.
posted by The Whelk at 5:16 PM PST - 153 comments

Brian Eno and Rick Wakeman take you on a voyage around the synthesizer: Part 1, Part 2
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 4:38 PM PST - 22 comments

The Canine in Converstaion: Dogs in Metaphor and Idiom Illustrated. A Compendium of Words and Phrases Referring to Dogs
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Epic Gallery: 150 Years Of Lesbians And Other Lady-Loving-Ladies (Some pics slightly NSFW) "Honestly before tumblr it was difficult to find very much lesbian imagery at all online — it was always the same ten or twelve stock photos — let alone pictures of lesbians taken prior to 2000. I wanted to see an evolution of our community, how we'd grown and changed over the years — and not just in a montage of famous out actresses and models, but pictures of actual people, pictures of women who were active in the community — regular human beings, writers and social activists."
posted by ColdChef at 2:40 PM PST - 47 comments

Google makes great maps. But Apple and Google aren't getting along well. So in its new iOS 6, Apple dropped all Google mapping tech in favor of its own Maps app that it promised would "blow your head off". Some people like it. Others don't. But the numbers are that 63 countries with a combined population of 4.5 billion people will lose at least one of the traffic, transit, or street views they had before. And even arch-supporter John Gruber acknowledges " the maps experience in iOS 6 is a downgrade". Google may produce an official Google Maps app for iOS. Then again, they may not.
posted by Egg Shen at 1:10 PM PST - 589 comments

From 1967-1968, Dr. Bill Podlich took a leave of absence from Arizona State University to join UNESCO, teaching in the Higher Teachers College of Kabul, Afghanistan. He took many photographs.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:35 PM PST - 14 comments

In the 16 years since Into Thin Air, Mount Everest has become safer in many ways, with better storm forecasting and amazing high-altitude rescue helicopters. So why did 10 people die in 2012?
posted by Chrysostom at 12:35 PM PST - 70 comments

The unexpectedly fascinating story of pantyhose in wartime, via Smithsonian Magazine (part 1, part 2).
posted by mudpuppie at 12:33 PM PST - 4 comments

What are the most common and least common 4-digit PINs? Using data from recent password database leaks, an analysis of PINs. (via Schneier)
posted by fings at 12:11 PM PST - 91 comments

Levi van Veluw* has taken his self-portraiture to the next level by bringing his family into the picture. "Portrayed in this piece is a room with 5 persons sitting at a table.... The endless repetition of wooden blocks stands for van Veluw’s attempts to gain control of his own position within the familial structure."
posted by carsonb at 12:08 PM PST - 8 comments

A Hearing for Vavilov is an essay by Stephen Jay Gould excerpted from his 1983 book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, in which he describes the disastrous consequences of allowing ideology rather than evidence to dictate policy. The story concerns Russian geneticist Nikolai Vavilov (previously) and his nemesis, the pseudoscientist Trofim Lysenko whose work served as the foundation for Lysenkoism, a body of research and policy which set back biology in Russia by decades and caused agricultural disaster in the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century.
posted by Scientist at 11:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Proof that cats are better than dogs. Please do not allow your dog to watch this, it will depress the dog. Your cat, however, will just sit and nod it's head knowingly.
posted by HuronBob at 11:39 AM PST - 62 comments

Paul Thomas 'The Master' Anderson or Paul WS 'Resident Evil 5' Anderson... who's the best? There's only one way to find out... ask Armond White
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:19 AM PST - 56 comments

MUSLIM RAGE! in response to an alarmist Newsweek cover: 13 beautiful photos of Muslim "rage," a few round-ups of #MuslimRage and a brief history of hysterical Newsweek covers. [via Making Light]
posted by straight at 10:13 AM PST - 181 comments

Art history students at Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD University) are required to purchase a $180 textbook with no pictures. In place of images, the book has empty boxes with instructions to look up the images online. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 9:51 AM PST - 87 comments

Science of Eating Disorders is a blog is dedicated to making peer-reviewed eating disorder research more accessible to the public.
posted by hermitosis at 9:05 AM PST - 11 comments

Following on the heels of a bloody summer in Chicago, Vice Magazine has partnered with CeaseFire for a new documentary on violence interrupters. The purpose of this documentary? To help promote Bethseda software's new videogame, Eye for an Eye, based on revenge killing. Previous work on this subject includes The Interrupters, which did not have a videogame tie-in.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:41 AM PST - 23 comments

Trains in Switzerland's Ticino canton filmed with tilt-shift lenses: Gottardo Nord & Gottardo Sud.
posted by jontyjago at 8:35 AM PST - 12 comments

Gokicha, a four-panel manga about the troubled life of a cute cockroach girl, has received an anime adaptation. The first episode features newspapers, cats, and human kindness.
posted by 23 at 8:03 AM PST - 9 comments

Chick-fil-A (previously), after negotiations with The Civil Rights Agenda's Alderman Joe Moreno, has apparently confirmed that they will no longer give money to anti-gay organizations.
posted by Maaik at 8:03 AM PST - 105 comments

Tonight, two new fall shows premiere: Mob Doctor, which is about a doctor who works for the mob, and Revolution, which is about a devastating global power outage and — more than that — a revolution. Neither of these shows particularly requires your attention, but taken together, they emphasize that essentially, all you need to make a show is the right combination of title-friendly words. In fact, if you take the correct 25 words, you can combine them (often in either order!) to create all the television we will see in the next ten years.
posted by malapropist at 3:53 AM PST - 108 comments

Click and Drag. And if you've worn out your mouse / trackpad, then here's some Spoilers.
posted by zoo at 2:27 AM PST - 95 comments