December 9, 2013

It's coming just that much closer to reality

Curious as to what various legal and intelligence agencies can do with the data they are now currently collecting? They are collecting cell phone locations, there are currently license plate scanning vehicles in many larger cities, and Google Maps will gladly integrate with your location mapping systems to show you what type of business is at your coordinates. All state criminal databases are now nationally available. So the ACLU would like you to know what is going to happen in the possible near future.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 8:53 PM PST - 72 comments

"appointed to his spot by every single president since Nixon."

In 1973, a small think-tank with the mandate of anticipating and preparing for future threats was formed inside the DoD, called the Office of Net Assessment. A RAND corp strategist named Andrew Marshall was placed at its head. Forty years later, he's still at it and has survived the latest round of budget cuts - for now. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:55 PM PST - 19 comments

Replacing a trampoline with a see-saw...

David and Steph Teeterboard training.
posted by dobbs at 7:35 PM PST - 7 comments

The Vine Orchestra

Last month, the Vine Orchestra held a call for orchestral scores with durations of less than 6 seconds. Over 150 compositions were entered, and 52 compositions were performed and recorded on December 1st. You can find all 52 on their youtube playlist. [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 6:26 PM PST - 23 comments

Margaret Mead's passion

"Always I love you and realize what a desert life might have been without you." —Margaret Mead to anthropologist and folklorist Ruth Benedict, who remained her companion and arguably her soul-mate despite both women having husbands.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:25 PM PST - 9 comments

Oregon Christmas Tree Harvest With Helicopter

Oregon Christmas Tree Harvest With Helicopter. [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:57 PM PST - 46 comments

Movie Posters from a Hollywood where Values Are...Different.

Red Jalopy creates posters for 10 fake films from The Simpsons. Fake promotional materials for fictional movies have become a popular form of amateur and professional graphic design on the web and in real life. The latest entry, Red Jalopy's posters for ten fictional films featured on The Simpsons, plays with fantasy casting and period design elements. It follows the recent appearance of posters for Seinfeld's fake foreign movie, Rochelle, Rochelle around New York City and the circulation online of a Wonder Twins movie. [more inside]
posted by kewb at 4:20 PM PST - 47 comments

The 'grotesque beauty' of medieval Britons' diseased bones

Digitised Diseases is an open access resource featuring human bones which have been digitised using 3D laser scanning, CT and radiography. The resource focuses on a wide range of pathological type specimens from archaeological and historical medical collections, specifically examples of chronic diseases which affect the human skeleton for which many of the physical changes are often not directly observable within clinical practice. Of major interest to many will be high fidelity photo-realistic digital representations of 3D bones that can be viewed, downloaded and manipulated on their computer, tablet or smartphone. [more inside]
posted by shoesfullofdust at 3:56 PM PST - 7 comments

A Hundred Bucks Says You Won't Read This Story

Esquire's Chris Jones looks at the old techniques used to make the new US $100 bill.
posted by reenum at 1:24 PM PST - 52 comments

"I feel bad for that kid if he got Cart Life for Christmas.”

The Making Of Cart Life, the 2013 IGF award winning video game. [more inside]
posted by Diskeater at 1:01 PM PST - 12 comments

“People don’t go nowhere in Brooklyn”

The number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters has risen by more than 69 percent since 2002, when Mayor Bloomberg took office. Each night as many as 60,000 people -- including more than 22,000 children, the highest number since the Great Depression, -- experience homelessness in NYC, and during the course of each year, more than 111,000 different homeless New Yorkers, including more than 40,000 children, will sleep in the city's municipal shelter system. Meet Dasani, one of the city's 'invisible children.' [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:34 PM PST - 117 comments

*peep peep* What does it take to kill this monster?

Let's mod Skyrim so that the dragon is Thomas the Tank Engine! (SLYT)
posted by Zarkonnen at 12:25 PM PST - 26 comments

This is the Way I Love

Ellie Castellanos is a severely autistic thirteen year old artist whose prolific drawn art, animation, films, photographs and clay sculptures all share a distinctly colorful, vibrant and upbeat style. Her mother maintains an online gallery of her work, as well as sharing her story as it develops on the site and in a blog. She has also notably used Rickrolling as inspiration to create beautiful art. [more inside]
posted by byanyothername at 12:17 PM PST - 5 comments

"You can't afford it? You can leave!"

Protesters blocked a private Google shuttle in the Mission District of San Francisco today. "In the video, a Google employee who hopped off the bus shouts down Erin McElroy, a protester who also heads the eviction mapping project. 'How long have you lived in this city?' McElroy asked him. He shouted back 'Why don't you go to a city that can afford it? This is a city for the right people who can afford it. You can't afford it? You can leave. I'm sorry, get a better job.'" Concern over increases in cost of living in San Francisco are becoming more of a focal point for discussion, as seen in a recent NYT blog post, Dystopia by the Bay.
posted by FuturisticDragon at 12:04 PM PST - 585 comments

But who needs bears when you can see a platypus?

Do not return after an encounter. Australian magpies have an incredible memory (as with all members of the Corvid family, they are very intelligent) and will attack the same people again and again. It is also too bad if you happen to look like someone they attacked before. -- Thoughts on Australia fauna
posted by Chrysostom at 11:59 AM PST - 45 comments

Getting Shit Done

A new iteration of the august tradition of fictional Amazon.com product reviews has arrived: The 2-in-1iPotty Activity Seat for iPad. (scroll down for reviews)
posted by The Whelk at 11:40 AM PST - 36 comments

A well needed refresh for the Santa brand

*Santa* is the industry standard for child-centric gift-delivery solutions
posted by rolo at 10:04 AM PST - 54 comments

I Remember It Well

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s is very nearly literal in its title—its author, Harper's editor Frederick Lewis Allen, published it in 1931. Writing before popular memory of the decade had solidified, Allen chronicles the Scopes Trial and the Harding scandals, radio and the Red Scare; but he ignores jazz for the mahjong craze and devotes an entire chapter to the real estate boom in Florida. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:16 AM PST - 33 comments

Is the Affordable Care Act a 'Republican' Health Plan?

The conventional wisdom about the origins of the Affordable Care Act is that it is a reformulated plan from the Clinton era, one that right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation created. How true is it? [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:02 AM PST - 141 comments

A Sonic Time Machine

The Roaring Twenties: An Interactive Exploration of the Historical Soundscape of New York City (sound autoplays). via i09, which says The map uses a combination of noise complaints and old reel footage to plot everything from what must have been an exceptionally noisy subway turnstile (complete with notes from the police report) all the way to a carnival barkers in Coney Island, and is a great way to listen in on the everyday life of a New York City gone-by.
posted by davidjmcgee at 8:15 AM PST - 3 comments

Tech rivals unite against surveillance

Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, LinkedIn and Aol have all teamed up to oppose widespread government surveillance. In an open letter to the US president and members of congress, the companies urge the government to reform its digital spy apparatus. Live reactions at the Guardian.
posted by brina at 8:04 AM PST - 127 comments

Just vent your spleen, vent it now

SLMSV (single link med school video) NSFS not safe for (the very) squeamish [more inside]
posted by sammyo at 7:30 AM PST - 10 comments

Twenty Years of Ultra-Violence

Twenty years ago tonight, id Software uploaded Doom to an FTP server at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completely changed the video gaming industry. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:16 AM PST - 92 comments

The Voice of Russia

Via decree, Russian president Vladimir Putin has abolished the country's state-owned news agency RIA Novosti, as well as the state-owned Voice of Russia radio station, effective immediately. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:54 AM PST - 47 comments

Monday Morning Robocoach

Watching one of the exciting snow-bound football games yesterday, the thought may have occurred to you: If I was a coach, would I go for it on this 4th down? This bot from the New York Times will tell you, and maybe even add a little attitude to the answer, which is usually much more aggressive than NFL coaches.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:20 AM PST - 74 comments

What Young Gay Men DO Know About AIDS

[Eleven] days ago, The New Yorker’s Daily Comment blog published an essay by Michael Specter titled “What Young Gay Men Don’t Know About Aids,” in which Specter points to the increase of “unprotected anal intercourse among gay men,” claims that “the rates of HIV infection will surely follow,” and then identifies the cause of this shift as the ignorance of my generation, who weren’t around to see the AIDS epidemic for themselves. The piece is a call to arms of sort, stating the need for increased public funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, and concludes by quoting Larry Kramer’s famous 1983 warning, “1,112 and Counting.” It’s a familiar argument—one that, in my lifetime, I have heard repeated ad nauseam and, I fear, largely misses what AIDS means to me and many other young gay men.
posted by Blasdelb at 5:53 AM PST - 71 comments

Games are an opportunity!

CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies have infiltrated online games including World of Warcraft, Second Life and Xbox Live games.
posted by xowie at 5:49 AM PST - 67 comments

The UK's first social supermarket

The UK has opened its first social supermarket as a means of combatting food poverty.* [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan at 5:34 AM PST - 7 comments

I can't believe it! Nintendo!!!

Super Mario on Ice, with Jason Bateman and Alyssa Milano
posted by timshel at 3:42 AM PST - 12 comments

There are two Americas

"That we've gotten to this point is astonishing to me, because basically in winning its victory, in seeing that Wall come down and seeing the former Stalinist state's journey towards our way of thinking in terms of markets or being vulnerable, you would have thought that we would have learned what works. Instead we've descended into what can only be described as greed" -- David Simon
posted by Acey at 3:38 AM PST - 54 comments

Boards of Italia

A musical interlude. [SLYT]
posted by panaceanot at 3:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Discrepancies in sentencing.

Men receive longer sentences for equivalent crimes. Abstract: This paper assesses gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large gender gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution (averaging over 60%), conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Female arrestees are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted. Prior studies have reported much smaller sentence gaps because they have ignored the role of charging, plea-bargaining, and sentencing fact-finding in producing sentences. Most studies control for endogenous severity measures that result from these earlier discretionary processes and use samples that have been winnowed by them. I avoid these problems by using a linked dataset tracing cases from arrest through sentencing. Using decomposition methods, I show that most sentence disparity arises from decisions at the earlier stages, and use the rich data to investigate causal theories for these gender gaps. [more inside]
posted by vapidave at 2:56 AM PST - 55 comments

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