December 7, 2014

Why Poor People Stay Poor

Saving money costs money. Period.
posted by beukeboom at 6:41 PM PST - 183 comments

The Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, whose end is still unknown

If you find yourself (virtually) touring along Interstate 40 in the US, you might think it odd to find Santa Rosa, New Mexico calls itself "the City of Natural Lakes." Look around the town and you'll see a number of small lakes in a dry desert landscape (Google maps). Look more closely, and you'll see a rather small dark spot labeled "Blue Hole" (Google maps).The name or term may sound familiar, as it's a general name for an inland cave or underwater sinkhole, with other blue holes of varying scale and renown. This particular blue hole is one of three diving sites in New Mexico, which is a mere 60 feet across but 81 feet deep. What's on the bottom? The short answer is: a grate. The long answer: we're still not really sure, because the passageway beyond the grate is full of debris and large rocks.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:29 PM PST - 46 comments

Relentless Rabbit

Bunny really, really wants to be petted.
posted by The Whelk at 2:36 PM PST - 57 comments

Being out of the mainstream financial system not easy even for utopias

Communes still thrive decades after the '60s, but economy is a bummer, man Communes or intentional communities, as their proponents prefer are still going strong but even utopias are struggling to face dystopian economies previous post about international communities in general
posted by 2manyusernames at 2:07 PM PST - 35 comments

"Trash has given us an appetite for art."

Pauline Kael (1919-2001) was a remarkable movie critic, the best ever (and certainly the most perceptive and exciting).
Trash, Art and the Movies
Marlon Brando: An American Hero
Raising Kane
Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of “Heaven’s Gate” [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:48 PM PST - 20 comments

For Lack of a Better World

Have you ever felt avenoir, the desire that memory could flow backwards? Or maybe you've worried that everything has already been done, every photograph has already been taken, every poem you can think to write already written. The word vemödalen is here for you. Or maybe you're frustrated at being stuck in one body, in one place, unable to explore more of the world. John Koenig has a word for that too: onism. [more inside]
posted by yasaman at 12:30 PM PST - 20 comments

"because stories breathe here"

Science fiction is still very new in Nigeria, but while we could barely find 10 people to contribute to the anthology in 2010, there are now hundreds of writers who will readily try their hand at the genre. Just as I did, more writers are recognising that we have a copious amount of material for speculative fiction here in Nigeria. That means we need platforms where these stories can be anchored. To help this along, Chinelo Onwualu and I present Omenana, a bimonthly speculative fiction e-publication.
The new, Nigerian speculative fiction magazine Omenana launched this month. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 12:16 PM PST - 7 comments

What if we could just *draw* the code?

Over the years, there have been many visual programming languages, where code is represented in images. Perhaps the most successful, with estimates of over 200,000 licenses, is the engineering and scientific language LabVIEW (an acronym for Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench). Originally released by National Instruments in 1986 for the Macintosh, LabVIEW features dataflow programming, real-time, embedded, FPGA, multi-platform and even LEGO targets, an LLVM compiler, automated multithreading, and the extensive ecosystem one expects from a nearly 30 year old language.

One of LabVIEW's most distinguishing features, though, is how much people hate it. [more inside]
posted by underflow at 11:39 AM PST - 74 comments

Wes Anderson at 79°S

Welcome to Union Glacier, Antarctica. "There is no great achievement or record broken, nor any real challenge to overcome. Instead [this documentary] concerns minor details; the everyday tasks of the staff that were made more special by the environment surrounding them. And in fact, I think that's what attracted me to make this film — the delightful trivialities of an average life, working in Antarctica." [Vimeo; 53 minutes; you can dip in and out of it]
posted by matthewr at 10:29 AM PST - 28 comments

"With gratitude."

M. tells her friends. Marlo, aka gendermom, over a series of blog posts, talks about her first grade daughter's decision to tell her friends that she is transgender. (Trans Youth 101)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:29 AM PST - 43 comments

Eugene V. Debts

Columbia University may become the second private university in the country with unionized graduate students. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:56 AM PST - 49 comments

Genius and Sacrifice in Early 20th Century Chemistry

"Although radiation’s connection to cancer was known and the lab’s own employees had clearly suffered, the Curies made few adjustments to protocol." The descendent of a chemist in the Curies' lab recounts her great-great aunt's discovery of francium, followed shortly thereafter by a long, painful battle with cancer due to radiation exposure. In learning more about Marguerite Perey's life and untimely death a dark question emerges that complicates the cheery family folklore about a scientific hero: why did the Curies' take so few precautions for the health and safety of those who worked in their lab?
posted by thelaze at 7:46 AM PST - 20 comments

Give me a data plate and I'll build you an airplane.

The Supermarine Spitfire is probably the most iconic of all fighter planes. Watch the re-creation of a crashed Spit left on a French beach after the battle of Dunkirk in 1940 in Guy Martin Builds a Spitfire. [1 hr 12 min YouTube]
posted by pjern at 7:29 AM PST - 24 comments

"I cannot even remember a day when I didn't want to be Peter Pan."

"One day early in 1954, Mary Martin and her husband, Richard Halliday, were driving on the Merritt Parkway, near their home in Norwalk, Connecticut. On the car radio came Frank Sinatra’s new hit, “Young at Heart.” It was perfect! That is, the song had the exact sentiment and feel they wanted for the pet project they’d long been planning, a musical version of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan (original subtitle: “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”). Right on the spot, they decided they’d hire whoever had written the song to compose the score for their production." [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:10 AM PST - 10 comments

Face Control - A Moscow Travelogue

Face Control - A Moscow Travelogue [via mefi projects] Krish Raghav wrote this beautiful minicomic about his observations on a trip to Moscow: the people, the city, the history. [more inside]
posted by daisyk at 6:19 AM PST - 17 comments

OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

What happened to the “beautiful dream”? While the Internet’s triumphant story has been well documented by its designers and the historians they have worked with, OSI has been forgotten by all but a handful of veterans of the Internet-OSI standards wars. To understand why, we need to dive into the early history of computer networking, a time when the vexing problems of digital convergence and global interconnection were very much on the minds of computer scientists, telecom engineers, policymakers, and industry executives. And to appreciate that history, you’ll have to set aside for a few minutes what you already know about the Internet. Try to imagine, if you can, that the Internet never existed.
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:12 AM PST - 59 comments

America's Worst College... Or Is It?

Jon Ronson (previously) visits Shimer College, recently named by the Washington Monthly's Ben Miller, to the chagrin of students, faculty, and even Miller himself, as the worst college in America (previously).
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:11 AM PST - 74 comments

Good restrooms, merry gentlemen!

"It all began with an idea to do something other than an old, tired, traditional card to wish our customers a happy holiday. It seemed rather fitting to do something more light-heartened and entertaining...an idea that revolved around music and holiday lighting...oh, and porta potties of course." [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:58 AM PST - 9 comments

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