April 24, 2012
1. Who cleans up all the mess? A) Always me
HowToBasic is a YouTube channel that gives you basic instruction on how to do simple things. The most popular videos involve food preparation, such as How to Correctly Add Milk to Your Coffee, How To Make Delicious Soup, and How To Make an Egg Salad Sandwich. However, there are a variety of others, including How To Wash a Car, How To Apply Toothpaste to a Toothbrush Correctly, How To Fold a Sock, How To Perform a Coke Prank.
My breast has fallen off. Can you reattach it?
Since she is not truly an emergency patient, she is triaged to the back of the line, and other folks, those in immediate distress, get in for treatment ahead of her. She waits on a gurney in a cavernous green hallway.
The “chief complaint” on her chart at Grady Memorial Hospital, in Downtown Atlanta, might have set off a wave of nausea in a hospital at a white suburb or almost any place in the civilized world. It reads, “My breast has fallen off. Can you reattach it?” (via Boing Boing) [more inside]
You got to hoooooooooooooold on
..and my water and my book and my cousin and my food
No, You Can't Take Them (youtube)(mp3)by The Clouds a music and art project composed and curated by M12 member Stuart Hyatt in York, Alabama featuring performers from the Union Chapel Male Chorus.
Gulf return
Emirati history would be incomplete without acknowledging the contribution of the country’s imported labour. Without them, the Emirates would not exist the way it does, nor possess the opulence or infrastructure it flouts. [more inside]
...this symmetric aperture is called the "fenetre de breeze", roughly translated meaning the "zephyr window".
The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946 [mp3 at bottom] lingers on in the memories of record collectors, radio historians, and a generation of post-war vulgarians from Dr. Demento to Howard Stern. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's vivid recording of the contest (conceived at a company stag party) inspired legions of LP cover artists: an early public airing was encased in a sleeve designed by one of the earliest proponents of the illustrated album cover. Later editions were adorned with shockingly detailed renditions of the Great Contest, created by a variety of anonymous geniuses. (Speaking of art, it was also a rumored favorite of Salvador Dali). Though it has inspired various lurid myths, we've learned a little bit about the deepest roots of the contest right here on Metafilter. [more inside]
Welcome to the Storyverse
Small Demons is a website that tracks the connections between people, places, and things in books. [more inside]
We are the tiny house people
In many parts of the world, the dream of owning a large house is being turned on its head #occupythesmallestpossiblespace
"If you have your checkbook in your car I will be happy to wait for you."
Hospitals in Minnesota have hired a collections company that plants its employees in the ER, squeezing money out of patients before they can get further care.
Father tapes teachers berating autistic son
New Jersey father wires autistic son to capture teachers bullying him When his 10-year-old son, Akian, started getting into trouble at school, Stuart Chaifetz was stunned. The notes from Horace Mann Elementary School in Cherry Hill, N.J., said that Akian, who has autism, was having violent outbursts and hitting his teacher and his aide -- behavior that the boy had never exhibited before.
Jacqueline Rose on Marilyn Monroe
We write to communicate an untenable situation...
Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.
Harvard's Faculty Advisory Council asks Harvard's faculty to change how they publish. [more inside]
This is Oregon
Dark things in the closet, literal and figurative
The Vulture ranks all of Stephen King's books from worst to best.
Victor Victoria...Victorious?
"[T]he Commission hereby clarifies that claims of discrimination based on transgender status, also referred to as claims of discrimination based on gender identity, are cognizable under Title VII's sex discrimination prohibition"On April 20, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a unanimous ruling for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought up by the Transgender Law Center on behalf of Mia Macy, who claimed she was denied a job as at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after she announced she was transitioning from male to female. The decision allows for people who have been fired or prohibited from applying for a job based on their gender identity to bring federal lawsuits against their employers under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [more inside]
The Return of the "A"
Brian de Palma!
At the end of your Bollywood comedy you have an item song that's supposed to be a tribal song with gibberish lyrics, so why not just list film directors' names? Cue, The Akira Kurosawa song
Free at Last
Tor/Forge, the Science Fiction and Fantasy subsidiary of Macmillan, has announced that it is going DRM free on all of its ebooks. Mefi's own Charles Stross shares a presentation he recently made to executives at Macmillan that may have partially influenced this decision. Stross had previously predicted that publishers would need to go DRM free to prevent Amazon from gaining too much power in the ebook market.
Before we go on, someone in this room is not who they say they are....
The Lap of Luxury was a Big Brother-style reality tv show filmed for Spike TV in 2003. The format is familiar: 9 contestants living in a house together, all trying to win immunity, prevent themselves from being voted out and vying to win a $100,000 prize while facing down a smarmy host. Except... only one of them, a guy named Matt Kennedy Gould, was really a contestant. The rest were actors, playing stereotypical reality show roles. The series was scripted, heavily improvised and entirely created around Matt -- his very own Truman Show. Welcome to Joe Schmo. [more inside]
Competitive Ecology
Because of President Obama's desire to remake the community college system into a vanguard of job retraining and the general willingness of community colleges to take up that mantle, there is currently some soul searching about the role of the community college system. The American Association of Community Colleges, in a report titled, "Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation's Future", lays out a plan for a future community college system much different than what exists today:
"Now, there's a focus on accountability," says Walter Bumphus, president of the AACC. "We were founded on the premise of being open-access institutions, but recently there's been a pivot to focus more on student success. There's a focus not just on having them transfer [to four-year schools, but on getting them into the workforce."(US News and World Report) [more inside]
"Characters with Unusual Pets and their Unusual Circumstances"
"The Secret Pet Society" is an fantastical series of paintings with descriptions by artist Travis Louie which features Victorian-era styled people posing alongside their mythical creatures. [more inside]
Watchmen, new comic books and Tony ****ing Stark
28 pages from DC's upcoming "New 52: 2nd Wave" Stretching the definition of "leaked" to the screaming limit, Buzzfeed shares photographs it was invited to take of 28 pages from DC's upcoming "New 52: 2nd Wave" - the six series being brought in to replace its six cancelled comic books. [more inside]
Marvel Fashionista
Looking MARVELous is a tumblr that provides comic book-inspired fashion based on Marvel comic book characters. You'll find not only popular characters, like Spider-man or Iron Man. Some of the inspired outfits come from lesser-known characters such as Squirrel Girl (who?) and Molly Hayes (umm?). Here is the full page version.
Wanna see some dirty books?
A researcher at St. Andrews University is using a tool called a densitometer to measure which pages in medieval manuscripts are the dirtiest, and therefore the most frequently read. The complete (and well-illustrated) study is available online from the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art. [more inside]
The world doesn't need another $150 Algebra One book
The University of Minnesota recently announced that its College of Education and Human Development has created a searchable online catalog of "open textbooks" that are reviewed by U of M faculty. The books must be Openly Licensed, complete (not a draft version of the text, or a collection of lecture notes), suitable for use outside of the author's institution, and available in print for a reasonable price, generally less than $40 USD. [more inside]
TBT
Trampled By Turtles, (TBT) a modern Bluegrass band fronted by Dave Simonett
from Duluth MN.
Starting as a side project for the original members,
"...But as time went on, all those bands split and this band was all that was left. I was dead broke and left with just my acoustic guitar, after someone stole my electric guitar and my amp while loading out gear after the last show with my previous band. And like I said, the other bands were gone, and all my gear was gone, so this just naturally happened.”[more inside]
These devices teach me humility
Engadget's Distro talks to UI guru, Xerox PARC alumni, gadget collector (previously) and Microsoft Research Principal Researcher Bill Buxton about the future of natural interfaces.
Mechanical evidence of the orbital angular momentum to energy ratio of vortex beams
"We measure, in a single experiment, both the radiation pressure and the torque due to a wide variety of propagating acoustic vortex beams. The results validate, for the first time directly, the theoretically predicted ratio of the orbital angular momentum to linear momentum in a propagating beam. We experimentally determine this ratio using simultaneous measurements of both the levitation force and the torque on an acoustic absorber exerted by a broad range of helical ultrasonic beams produced by a 1000-element matrix transducer array." In other words, science has created the sonic screwdriver, and it could mean new advances in non-invasive surgery. [more inside]
Tiny Games
A Super Mario Summary is Johan Peitz's entry to the 23rd installment of the Ludum Dare competition, in which contestants work by themselves to create a themed game in 48 hours. "I tried to recreate every level in the original Super Mario Brothers game, but on a single screen each. The result is a puzzle platformer where you need to combine reflexes, timing, and clever thinking to succeed."
All 1401 entries can be viewed here.
"the ability to breathe"
Between 40 and 50 percent of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands, boyfriends, and exes. And, for about half of these victims, police had been alerted to previous incidents of abuse. There is, however, one exception to this grim trend: Maryland. Since 2007, domestic violence homicides in the state have fallen by a stunning 40 percent. What is Maryland doing that other states are not? The answer appears to lie with a former high school nurse, an ex-Washington, D.C., police lieutenant, and their ground-breaking efforts to protect the most vulnerable victims of abuse.—Fighting Back is an article by Tim Stelloh about new method to identify and protect abused women, developed by a group of law enforcement officers and academics (Note: The article features graphic descriptions of domestic violence and murder). The article focuses especially on the work of Prof. Jacquelyn Campbell. You can watch an interview with her here.
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Again
Lessons in the Art of Pillow Fort Construction "Tether your sheets and blankets securely, but try not to get too attached yourself." [more inside]
Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.
It is well known that the US military and their allies use unmanned aerial drones overseas in wars and other operations. But there are also hundreds in operation here in the U.S., according to records the Federal Aviation Administration has recently released. Local police departments already have used them in SWAT situations, and the Department of Homeland Security has given the green light for them to deploy a drone helicopter that can supposedly taze suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchersas well as providing surveillance. Congress has paved the way for as many as 30,000 drones in the skies over the US by 2020, which has privacy advocates alarmed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a map with all of the organizations that have permits to use drones within the confines of the US. [more inside]
irkafirka illustrates tweets.
@irkafirka illustrates tweets. Illustrator Nick Hilditch (@Pockless) makes cute little cartoons out of selected twitter posts. Also available on twitter, of course.
Evening the Odds
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.
Multiple analysts warned of vulnerabilities, but instead of being heeded they were severely punished
After a lengthy DDOS attack, some determined hacking, and repeated attempts to penetrate its hardened security layer, the host was finally rooted by a cunningly designed piece of social and mechanical engineering. When the malware released its payload, not only was the system completely wiped, but the culture that created it as well.
This day in tech: the original Trojan.
Time-filling links
Aldo Cortesi blogs about the interface between computer science and visualisation. He has found some interesting applications for space-filling curves: making colour maps of images and of executable binary files.
A bit more work and one can visualise entropy in binary files. The cryptographic material sticks out like a sore thumb. [more inside]
Red-Tailed Hawk and Great Blue Heron Webcams
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has set up web cams next to red-tailed hawk and great blue heron nests near campus, with around-the-clock live streaming video. Greatest hits so far include a newly-hatched hawk being fed, and an evening owl attack on the female heron. More exciting than Cornell's recent stinky corpse flower cam. (Note: the gristly thing in the hawk nest is a pigeon killed yesterday that they've been feeding to the hatchling, so trigger warning if dead things upset you.)
What's good for the goose...
Posing like a man: after doing his back in imitating the cover poses fantasy heroines find themselves in (previously), Jim Hines is now trying out the male equivalent. Will these be any more dignified? The answer might surprise you! [more inside]
Judit Polgár
Judit Polgár is the greatest female chess player in history. The product of an educational experiment by her father, she was the first to break Bobby Fischer's record as the youngest-ever grandmaster - by which time she had already stopped competing in women-only tournaments. In 2002, she avenged an earlier controversial loss to Garry Kasparov - the first time in any sport that the No. 1 ranked female player has beaten the No. 1 ranked male player. At her peak, ranked 8th in the world, she became the first woman to compete for the World Championship. After several years of reduced activity spent raising her two children, Polgár returned to full-time competition - making it to the quarter-finals of the 2011 FIDE World Cup. [more inside]
Rambo. John Rambo. Like you've never seen him before.
RAMBO: LAST BLOOD. Flash game. But not really a game. I think.
it rocks
If you want to hear the rock solidest, rock steadiest, rock of Gibralterist rock drumming that's ever been rocked in the history of rock, then you want to hear this.
Facts has died.
The Siege of Savile Row
Chap Magazine (manifesto here) has staged a protest outside the proposed location of an Abercrombie & Fitch store on Savile Row in London. [more inside]
The Great White Whale
The first sighting of an all-white male orca (YouTube 1, 2) is reported by Eric Hoyt, Senior Fellow with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, UK.
A Coordinated Assault on Women?
In the wake of so many recent controversies over women and their right to safe, affordable health care and the supposed desire of working women to be "put in their place" by aggressive men in the bedroom, Penny Red suggests that "Right now, we are in the middle of a sexual counter-revolution." [more inside]
Walt Disney unavailable for comment
Sciencefilter: Cerebral Vascular Blood Flow Changes During 'Brain Freeze.' Also known as Ice Cream Headache, brain freeze has affected many, even medical professionals. Baylor College of Medicine offers additional insight into the mechanism behind it.
The End of a Wave
"Net migration from Mexico to the United States has come to a statistical standstill, stalling one of the most significant demographic trends of the last four decades." The full report from Pew Research Center. This interactive map [NY Times] puts America's many historical immigration trends in perspective. (previously).
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