MetaFilter

Massive Biometric Project Gives Crores of Indians an ID: Aadhaar faces titanic physical and technical challenges: reaching millions of illiterate Indians who have never seen a computer, persuading them to have their irises scanned, ensuring that their information is accurate, and safeguarding the resulting ocean of data. This is India, after all—a country notorious for corruption and for failing to complete major public projects. And the whole idea horrifies civil libertarians. But if Aadhaar’s organizers pull it off, the initiative could boost the fortunes of India’s poorest citizens and turbocharge the already booming national economy. [more inside]
posted by infini at 9:52 PM PST - 30 comments

Why caterpillars molt. The lifecycle of the lepidopteran, from egg to caterpillar to winged butterfly or moth has long been a basic lesson plan of "hands on" biology in grade school classes. If one focuses on a single lifestage of this grand cycle, however, one sees that the caterpillar, after emerging from embryogenesis quite small, goes through several stages, or instars, becoming more grand at each shedding of the skin, until at last the massive beast pupates. So what triggers these transitions within the caterpillar? Recent research suggests a process triggered by suffocation by bulk. [more inside]
posted by Cold Lurkey at 8:53 PM PST - 21 comments

Seismic waves propagating across the US --- "Phil Plait showed the spectacular animation of seismic waves propagating across the US from the 5.8 Virginia earthquake last week, but left out part of the story. A commenter, davenquinn, picked up some details." [more inside]
posted by hank at 8:37 PM PST - 20 comments

Hidden away in vaults and out of distribution for over forty years, Herostratus was in its own time largely misunderstood. After only a handful of initial screenings it virtually disappeared from public view altogether, remaining all but forgotten to this day. Yet while admittedly flawed, the film does offer a compelling critique of the failure of 1960s postwar idealism in Britain, an ideal portrayed as having degenerated into neurotic self-gratification. It is also of note as Dame Commander Helen Mirren's first credited screen role. (not safe for those sexually aroused by Helen Mirren) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:27 PM PST - 18 comments

SLYT The Brandt, Braur, Frick ensemble and Emika performing her song "Pretend". [more inside]
posted by titus-g at 6:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Compressed "I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism. " (via)
posted by dhruva at 6:07 PM PST - 21 comments

A video was posted of Adam Savage's talk on inspiration at the May 2011 San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire featuring readings from Emerson, Pirsig, and Chandler. [more inside]
posted by morganw at 6:05 PM PST - 24 comments

Who was the worst defender in the history of baseball? A commenter in a baseball-fever thread compiles a list of the bottom 100 career dWAR figures of all time -- in other words, the 100 players who cost their teams the most wins with the glove. (Joe Posnanski on the WAR metric, for those unfamiliar with it.) The list is an interesting mix of players whose bats allowed them to stay in the game for years despite terrible glovework (Bernie Williams, Manny Ramirez, Dave Winfield) and players who were so bad in the field that they managed to rack up a lot of negative dWAR in shorter careers (Chris Gomez, Dean Palmer.) Toby "Stone Fingers" Harrah is #14 with a -10.9 dWAR. Dick "Dr. Strangeglove" Stuart just misses at -6.1. Some active players have a chance to finish high on the list: Ty Wigginton is only 33 and has already bumbled away enough balls in 2011 to "improve" his ranking from 24th to 15th. Worst of all time? No, it's not the Captain -- Derek Jeter is #2 on the all time list with -13.4 dWAR. Can you guess the "winner"?
posted by escabeche at 5:53 PM PST - 85 comments

Hey Oscar Wilde! — A spot to archive nerd images of interest from out of print/hard to find art books, magazines, comics and other assorted ephemera laying about as well as detours into other things found about the web. Some of the pieces from the 'Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!!!' literary art collection (previously on MeFi) may make it on here from time to time as well.
posted by netbros at 5:40 PM PST - 2 comments

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is working to make many of their digital archives accessible online: These include everything from the distress call of a young howler monkey to courting poison dart frogs, to the sound of morning amongst the mangroves - not to mention more than 40,000 photographs and 1500 documents all related to STRI's work in Panama and across the tropics.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:36 PM PST - 3 comments

Hey, remember the ISS, that space station the Space Shuttle helped build before the shuttle was retired? Turns out humans might have to vacate that nifty space station for a bit. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:00 PM PST - 95 comments

His vows: "We come here today in defiance of biological reality. We know that mammals are not monogamous (except for a few species of meadow vole with abnormally high levels of endogenous oxytocin) ..."
Her vows: "Your vows make it clear why I love you: your intellectual rigour, and your honesty, and your eloquence, and the way you leaven these with profanity – they’re the very things that I fell for, even before you made an x-rated cephalopod reference on a rooftop patio ..." [more inside]
posted by memebake at 4:57 PM PST - 14 comments

"Attention, industrial farmers. Willie Nelson wants you to stop drugging your pigs and smashing them into compact, easily shippable pork cubes. So does Chipotle." Farm Aid organizer Willie Nelson covers Coldplay's "The Scientist" for a pseudo PSA for burrito chain Chipotle's foundation to support sustainable agriculture, family farming, and culinary education.
posted by Frank Grimes at 4:08 PM PST - 58 comments

Enclyclopedia Brown is a children's fiction series written by Donald J. Sobol since 1963 and still very popular today. These are the 10 most ridiculously difficult mysteries in the series and baffling as to how a child is supposed to be able to solve them.
posted by rozomon at 3:44 PM PST - 137 comments

These Americans is a diverse collection of public archive photographs: 1980s Wrestling, Warhol Polaroids, 1970s NYC gangs, Jayne Mansfield, polygamists, Al Capone, the KKK, FSA photographer Russell Lee, civil rights photographer Jim Peppler, early 20th century Mexican border town photographer, Gertrude Fitzgerald, &tc. It is a project from American Suburb X. Many links are NSFW.
posted by xod at 3:36 PM PST - 5 comments

Scottish Comedian, Limmy, tries to lose 1,000 of 11,000 Followers in 24 hours. Hilarity, Inanity, Profanity ensues. (Via the always great cookdandbombd). Nsfw text, about as nsfw as you can get for work without getting into some seriously illegal prose.
posted by Gratishades at 3:19 PM PST - 25 comments

Two days ago a user asked Google about a strange warning he was getting when trying to access Gmail from Iran. Turns out he was getting a fraudulent SSL certificate that was issued incorrectly for *.google.com by DigiNotar, a Dutch certificate authority. It seems likely this was a deliberate man-in-the-middle attack to snoop email in Iran. This attack is the second SSL certificate compromise in a year (previously), pointing to a fundamental design flaw in Internet security. [more inside]
posted by Nelson at 3:14 PM PST - 45 comments

Carrying on the tradition of Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily and Steve Oedekerk's Kung Pow, Dub of the North St*r takes a well-known, and frequently violent, anime and turns into a comical parody of itself.
posted by lemuring at 3:00 PM PST - 15 comments

The Shrine of Apple--a (sill in progress) archive of photos and specs for Apple's complete product history.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:04 PM PST - 65 comments

The Fleishhacker Pool, formerly located in San Francisco, California, was once the United States' largest swimming pool, as well as the world' largest heated saltwater pool. The pool closed in 1971 and was eventually acquired by the adjacent SF Zoo, which filled in the giant pool to make its present parking lot. The Pool's Bath House, however, is still standing, albeit derelict.
posted by MattMangels at 1:41 PM PST - 45 comments

William Brown was a man who recorded a handful of blues on Sadie Beck's Plantation on July 16, 1942 for Alan Lomax. Once thought to be the same man as the Willie Brown who played with Son House and Charley Patton--and was immortalized in Robert Johnson's Crossroad Blues--the consensus now is that William Brown was a different man, about whom we know next to nothing. Certainly, the handful of recordings we have that feature him supports this. The Willie Brown who recorded Future Blues and M & O Blues was an archetypal Delta bluesman, with both songs being stripped down versions of Charley Patton's Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, among others, and Pony Blues, respectively. The William Brown who recorded Mississippi Blues, Ragged and Dirty and Make Me a Pallet on the Floor plays and sings nothing like that Willie Brown. That we know nothing about him and never heard any more of his music is one of the many tragedies of recorded blues. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:56 PM PST - 15 comments

The Parable of the Tribes. A classic essay by Andrew Schmookler on the Hobbesian struggle for power, and its inevitability. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 12:33 PM PST - 24 comments

Location and pictures of the NC 12 breaks, in Google Maps Hurricane Irene did less damage than expected -- unless you experienced any of that damage yourself. NC 12, the lone road connecting the towns on Hatteras Island and the rest of the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, or OBX, in eastern North Carolina, was cut in two places and overwashed in another spot. Ocracoke Island, accessible only by ferry, was overwashed, as well. The state vows to repair, even if it's inevitable that it will happen again.
posted by legweak at 12:26 PM PST - 31 comments

100 years of fashion (SLYT). [via]
posted by Phire at 11:56 AM PST - 25 comments

When Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was released from government custody it was with several conditions. Ai was slapped with a travel ban, was not to speak to the media about his detention and was banned from using social media. Since his release he has returned to Twitter, joined Google+, given an interview to a Party-run newspaper and on August 28 he published a piece in Newsweek that calls Beijing "a constant nightmare". [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 11:50 AM PST - 17 comments

National Guard troops in Manville, NJ, discover their Light Medium Tactical Vehicles can't drive underwater.
posted by Fister Roboto at 10:48 AM PST - 98 comments

Are you a constituent of Paul Ryan and want to tell him what you think? Better pay up. Or maybe not.
posted by griphus at 9:41 AM PST - 85 comments

The Williams Institute at UCLA has recently completed an analysis of same-sex couples' distribution, as reported by the U.S. Census. The Big Find: over 900,000 self-identified couples, 22% of whom are raising children. Profiles for individual states, plus D.C. (72% male) and Puerto Rico (70% female). via MetroWeekly. Previously, Queering the Census.
posted by psoas at 8:04 AM PST - 59 comments

A (Video) Letter to the Aliens
posted by litnerd at 7:02 AM PST - 29 comments

If the News Media was a Person You Were Dating, a comic by Winston Rowntree of VirusComix. Also recently author of the Rock Timeline.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:40 AM PST - 37 comments

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the Western world? Whose monopolistic practices makes WalMart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers. Theirs might sound like a fusty and insignificant sector. It is anything but. Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities.
posted by veedubya at 5:00 AM PST - 134 comments

O Sister, What Art Thou - Kathryn Lofton on the Religion of Oprah.
posted by joannemullen at 3:43 AM PST - 21 comments

How language affects our perception of colour...(SYTL) more on the 'linguistic relativity hypothesis' here and here
posted by Rufus T. Firefly at 3:31 AM PST - 52 comments

I'm so sorry, Metafilter, really I am. I don't know what's come over me, but I am posting one of the dopiest, most embarrassing celebrity novelty tunes ever recorded. It's by the fellow who played Batman in the 60s TV series, Adam West, in a breathtakingly stupid recording of an utterly ridiculous song called Miranda. I pray that you'll forgive me for my indiscretion, and I promise I will post some inspiring and worthwhile music next time around.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:50 AM PST - 41 comments

Pretty Colors This is a tumblr to which people can submit colors they find pretty. Why do they find them pretty? Who picks them? Is there some deeper sociological/anthropological message behind which colors get picked and which don't? I can't say. I don't even know if my computer screen is properly calibrated, maybe I'm not even seeing the same colors. Still, the presentation is good and it does do what it says on the tin. Which is commendable.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:36 AM PST - 41 comments