Scared of Santa (via)
posted to MetaFilter by gottabefunky at 8:52 AM on December 5, 2006 (20 comments)

What you have purchased for less than the price of a cup of coffee is arguably one of the most important "lost" music recordings out there. Record collector Warren Hill paid 75 cents at a yard sale in Chelsea, New York for an acetate in a plain cardboard sleeve. After some research, Hill's friends confirmed that the acetate disc, recorded by sound engineer Norman Dolph (who also wrote Reunion's "Life Is A Rock But The Radio Rolled Me"), was the third recording ever made by the Velvet Underground and the first album they ever did. A demo rejected by Columbia Records, the acetate is now up for auction on EBay, where the high bid is $124,640.50 and climbing, already breaking records as the most expensive LP ever sold at auction. (Bonus: see a post from a teenage eyewitness to the VU's 1966 session that produced this acetate.)
posted to MetaFilter by jonp72 at 9:17 AM on December 5, 2006 (32 comments)

NASA Plans Permanent Moonbase. The base, a potential stepping stone for further Mars exploration, will likely be situated near one of the poles. The advantages of a polar site (pdf) include a relatively moderate climate, possible hydrogen and oxygen resources, unexplored terrain and abundant solar power. They have apparently abandoned plans to use nuclear reactors, which is probably for the best.
posted to MetaFilter by justkevin at 8:13 PM on December 4, 2006 (130 comments)

The Pororoca is an Amazonian tidal bore that generates waves up to 12 feet high which can last for over half an hour. Surfers from all around the world have visited Brazil in order to ride this mega-wave. Here are some videos:

The Pororoca Phenomenon (4:28)
Pororoca 1 of 2 (3:11)
Pororoca 2 of 2 (3:21)
Pororoca (26 minutes long)

posted to MetaFilter by jason's_planet at 8:55 AM on December 4, 2006 (15 comments)

OzzyFilter: Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" done as a tango. Heard it on WPKN, I think. It was absolutely brilliant, but my Google foo fails me. Anyone know where I can find it?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ZenMasterThis at 9:12 AM on November 22, 2006 (20 comments)

A blog dedicated to American sports uniforms may not sound that enthralling but when you discover it was conceived and written by Paul Lukas of Inconspicious Consumption fame it suddenly becomes a hell of a lot more attractive. For easy access into this world of minutiae try starting here.
posted to MetaFilter by meech at 8:45 PM on November 21, 2006 (12 comments)

The Secret To Great Bread, according to Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery, is time. If you have 20 hours to spare, you can make a spectacular, no-knead loaf with the simplest of ingredients. Here's his recipe, and here's another. Of course, there are those who would decry the Staff of Life anyway you slice it, but even they can enjoy some hot gluten on yeast bread porn. via the monkies
posted to MetaFilter by maryh at 9:57 PM on November 12, 2006 (47 comments)

A self portrait by Lasse Gjertsen. Maybe you've also seen Hyperactive or the impressive Amateur, just some of many YouTube videos that play creatively with editing and animation. via VideoSift.
posted to MetaFilter by dog food sugar at 10:54 AM on November 12, 2006 (11 comments)

Medianera is the spanish word for the wall that separates two buildings. When one of those buildings is knocked down, the remaining wall often carries impressions left behind by the now-demolished living space. Flickr pools: [1] [2].
posted to MetaFilter by monju_bosatsu at 2:30 PM on November 12, 2006 (28 comments)

A yacht crew witnessed the birth of a new island and other strange consequences of volcanic activity in Tonga, and here are pictures they took.
posted to MetaFilter by thirteenkiller at 9:52 PM on November 9, 2006 (44 comments)

Physics for Future Presidents is a class taught at UC Berkeley by Physics professor Richard Muller. It's a class specifically for non-physics majors and teaches the real world results of the sometimes impenetrable math involved in university physics. After every lecture, you should come away with the feeling that what was just covered is important for every world leader to know. I just sat through the entire hour and 13 minute nukes lecture and was riveted.
posted to MetaFilter by quite unimportant at 6:06 PM on November 7, 2006 (25 comments)

Su Blackwell, Thomas Allen & Abelardo Morell are artists who cut up books and then photograph the interesting, whimsical & gorgeous results.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson at 11:58 PM on November 6, 2006 (19 comments)

Bag Of Prayer Letters Plucked From N.J. Surf. One man wrote from prison, saying he was innocent and wanted to be back home with his family. A woman wrote that her boyfriend was now closing the door to her daughter's bedroom each night when it used to stay open, and wondered why. One unwed mother wrote that her baby was due in four weeks, and asked God to make the father fall in love with her and marry her so the child would have a father. The minister died two years ago at 79. How the letters, some dating to 1973, wound up bobbing in the surf is a mystery.
posted to MetaFilter by 445supermag at 11:43 AM on November 3, 2006 (27 comments)

First official goatse payment card. In which a guy gets a goatse image put on his credit/debit/payment card. Yes, it links to an image of the card, no it's not as bad as you think, yes it's PSFW (probably safe for work).
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 8:54 AM on November 2, 2006 (71 comments)

By searching for the phrase "mic in track" in your favorite p2p file sharing program, you can find audio tracks people recorded on their own computers and probably never intended for public broadcast. Lots of them are empty or otherwise pretty dull, but sometimes you can find some really interesting stuff. Metafilter's starkeffect turns the cool ones into even cooler music.
posted to MetaFilter by thirteenkiller at 1:54 PM on October 30, 2006 (30 comments)

NATS is an online personal nutritional analysis tool. It has a database of common foods, and an interface for entering nutritional data about foods that aren't listed. You can also calculate how much energy you burn in a day, and search for foods by nutrient. Registration is required to if you want to save your diet information.
posted to MetaFilter by owhydididoit at 9:39 AM on October 28, 2006 (15 comments)

Henry Smolinski and Hal Blake had a great idea: bolt the wings and engine of a Cessna to the body of 1971 Ford Pinto. Fly the Pinto to an airport near your destination, unlatch it from the wings, and drive it where you want to go. No need for rental cars...

It worked. Until the day it failed. Sometime late in 1973, Smolinski and Blake climbed aboard the "Mitzar" and rolled down the runway. During takeoff, the peculiar marriage of wheels and wings divorced, and the Advanced Vehicle Engineers found themselves sailing through the California sky in a very un-advanced vehicle, a wingless Pinto.

Pics here: 1, 2, 3
posted to MetaFilter by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 9:27 PM on October 27, 2006 (36 comments)

Magnificent? Obsessions: Mystery Science Theatre Edition. A labour of love: annotated epidoses of MST3000. Inspired? A Distributed MST annotation project.
posted to MetaFilter by Rumple at 1:32 PM on October 26, 2006 (70 comments)

"In a close-knit Chesapeake Bay community, the world’s fastest muskrat skinners face off in a truly cutthroat competition at the National Outdoor Show. One lucky young lady gets to be their queen." [Warning: Fiddle tunes!] Muskrat Lovely, a documentary about the conflation of the world muskrat-skinning championships with the Miss Outdoors beauty competition. The film will air soon on the PBS program Independent Lens. Catch some of the brackish flavor of the Chesapeake Bay's traditional regional culture, including some muskrat recipes and skinning tips.. And don't miss the link to Everything Muskrat.
posted to MetaFilter by Miko at 9:05 AM on October 26, 2006 (21 comments)

Michael Crest, a carpenter, beat supermarket deli worker Wayne Yorra 830-490 at the Lexington Scrabble Club in a record-setting game on Oct 12' 2006. The game set records for highest score for (i) most points in a game by one player - 830, beating the previous highest 770 set in 1993, (ii) the most total points in a game - 1320 (iii) and the most points on a single turn - 365, for Cresta's play of QUIXOTRY. Stefan Fatsis, author of "Word Freak", has a nice write-up of the game (lots of misc. links in that article) If all this leaves your hands twitching for those tiles, start Quackling (both, MAC and Win versions available).
posted to MetaFilter by forwebsites at 11:05 PM on October 26, 2006 (33 comments)

Help me build an awesome PC-based media center for $2k
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Popular Ethics at 10:03 PM on October 26, 2006 (9 comments)

Daddy-daughter advice, or what can you tell me that you've learned?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fijiwriter at 7:54 AM on October 19, 2006 (73 comments)

How do I write Terms and Conditions for a website, without spending too much on a lawyer?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jesirose at 5:13 PM on October 25, 2006 (14 comments)

Imagine a massively multiplayer music studio, connected worldwide over the Internet. Log in, and everyone sees a set of synths, effects, sequencers, or other custom patches. Everyone’s looking at essentially the same screen, and can add beats, trip out effects, slide the bpm up and down, and reprogram synths — all at once. That’s the basic idea of netpd.
posted to MetaFilter by bigmusic at 3:41 PM on October 25, 2006 (19 comments)

On 14 April 1988, the missile frigate Samuel B. Roberts was damaged by a mine in the Persian Gulf. Some 45 years before, Coxswain Samuel B. Roberts was killed when he guided his boat in front of Japanese lines on Guadalcanal in an effort to distract their fire from a rescue party evacuating wounded marines. In between was the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, which on 25 October 1944 sailed into history in the Battle off Samar. (Long post inside for history buffs.)
posted to MetaFilter by forrest at 8:25 AM on October 25, 2006 (21 comments)

Fan jumps Jeff Tweedy. Jeff Tweedy jumps fan. Incident. Apology. Pitchfork. WILCO (scroll down to "Springfield Masacree)
posted to MetaFilter by c:\awesome at 10:45 AM on October 22, 2006 (96 comments)

CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) is starting to become a real issue for many web forums. While the vulnerability has been around for a while, recently it has become more interesting. Luckily the policy against against self linking and some recent fixes should protect readers here.
posted to MetaFilter by mock at 2:09 AM on October 22, 2006 (68 comments)

When is an aircraft carrier no longer an aircraft carrier? When its flight decks have been decertified by the Navy for the unsafe condition of arresting gear and other equipment, and it can no longer conduct flight operations. One of the two remaining conventionally powered carriers on "active duty" in the U.S. Navy, "Big John" (CV-67) aka The John F. Kennedy sits ignobly at dock in Mayport, Florida, unfit for anything more than basic seamanship training, and waiting for decommissioning. August 2006 decommissioning recommendation to Congress. 24 page PDF file [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by paulsc at 2:35 AM on October 22, 2006 (57 comments)

Is MeFi protected against CSRF? I know the logout link isn't (should be a form button anyway) and could be triggered by displaying an image to a MeFi user, but if the forms are vulnerable things could get nasty (imagine someone posting a link that changes your prefs, or makes you create a post, etc.). Just askin'...
posted to MetaTalk by malevolent at 3:12 AM on October 22, 2006 (97 comments)

John Fahey in concert: Beverly (aka Indian Pacific Railroad Blues) Poor Boy (Which is a variation on Booker White's Poor Boy Long Way from Home)
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 8:10 AM on October 22, 2006 (19 comments)

The Festival of Lights, Good vs. Evil Diwali is the Hindu Festival of Lights that falls each year in October or November. This year, Diwali is on the 21st of October 2006. Legends about Diwali are many, from the story of Prince Prahlad, immortal in his faith in the universe to the story of Ram and Sita returning from exile to Ayodhya. My favourite is not a story so much as a snippet of what is actually said to happen tonight, not the mythology behind it. Lakshmi walks tonight, she is the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity, and lamps [diya or deep] are lit and placed at hearths and entrances so as to help her find her way. Accompanying her is the elephant headed one, Ganesh, the remover of obstacles and giver of knowledge. Just welcome them into your home.
posted to MetaFilter by infini at 9:55 PM on October 21, 2006 (22 comments)

Clockwork steampunk rideable tiger. (via YouTube.) Flickr photos here. Artist's site here.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 8:13 AM on October 21, 2006 (23 comments)

TravelFilter? A Modest Proposal.
posted to MetaTalk by TunnelArmr at 1:44 PM on January 30, 2006 (46 comments)

Testicular protection for the 21st century... (via Deadspin) (embedded video) Seen previously here, but marketed with much more enthusiasm this time around.
posted to MetaFilter by lovejones at 4:00 PM on October 18, 2006 (38 comments)

Porn in the woods. Did you, as a kid, find porn in the woods? I did, and I have noticed this is a worldwide phenomena. Why the porn in the woods? Where does the porn in the woods come from?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by mr.marx at 1:01 PM on August 3, 2005 (115 comments)

A while back I found a site that allowed you to search Google for products, and it would automatically add negative keywords to your search that filtered out pretty much all of those price comparison sites that seem to be all you get on Google now when you search for a product. Only now I can't find it. Anyone?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Mwongozi at 1:05 PM on October 15, 2006 (5 comments)

What's life like in New York City for families?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by scrump at 2:44 PM on October 11, 2006 (35 comments)

Kitty litter was invented in 1946. Birds were the first pets to have their own full lines of products. Canned dog food first appeared in the 1910s. Lots of interesting stuff [wav] at the University of South Carolina's Pets in America site.
posted to MetaFilter by mediareport at 9:20 AM on October 9, 2006 (17 comments)

Today I find myself in a precarious situation. I am a college student who happens to live in a four bedroom apartment with two other guys; however, I have discoverd that one of my roommates is flying his internet girlfriend in from Alaska on Saturday morning so that they can live together (The story gets better/worse - they developed their relationship through playing Warcraft).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by j-urb at 12:39 PM on September 29, 2006 (92 comments)

complete lark! fueled by a bottle of chianti and deep sympathy for a friend smitten with that pesky grad-school-student-loan-debt, i seem to have concocted an acoustic lament on the subject. in an attic, (ok, horrible acoustics, i admit).
posted to MeFi Music by garfy3 at 5:14 PM on September 26, 2006 (3 comments)

Name that typeface: used on the Michelin road signs in France. I've tried all the usual Gothic suspects.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by avocet at 5:54 PM on September 24, 2006 (10 comments)

Recommendation for a nice Portland Oregon restaurant? (Both an immediate need and future wish list)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by donovan at 8:13 PM on September 21, 2006 (14 comments)

'Pavarotti of the Plains' In 1957, Don Walser stopped recording country music and became a National Guardsman, just as rock 'n' roll took over the airwaves. He stayed with the Guard for 39 years, but around 1990, his performances at Henry's in Austin, Texas developed a following. By the end of the decade, he would sign to Sire Records, open for Ministry and the Butthole Surfers, collaborate with Kronos Quartet and be honored with a National Heritage Award. Walser retired from his music career in 2001 because of ill health. He passed away on Wednesday at age 72.
posted to MetaFilter by NemesisVex at 10:05 AM on September 21, 2006 (17 comments)

I'm toying with the idea of taking my friend who has Asperger's to a brothel before he returns to Canada. Good idea or am I insane?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Silentgoldfish at 2:51 PM on September 20, 2006 (32 comments)

The Brine Pool, at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, is a salt pond more than 50 meters in length, whose water has such a high concentration of methane gas, that it supports surrounding mussel beds resembling a beach shoreline, around its entire perimeter. Called by some "one of the strangest places on earth", The Brine Pool also provides habitat for hag fish and other creatures who dive into and out of its salty water for cover and camoflage, as well as some weirdo worms that live on the strange frozen methane hydrates that can form in, or adjacent to such pools. In some photos, "waves" can be seen on the "surface" of The Brine Pool, as its heavy salt water remains distinct from the seawater of the Gulf above.
posted to MetaFilter by paulsc at 6:56 PM on September 19, 2006 (38 comments)

"hampster dance" just got deleted. it did look (after 17 comments) as though it was about to spiral seriously out of control, but matt could have at least waited an hour or two.. ok, fine, i'll go read about the military coup in thailand.
posted to MetaTalk by dminor at 1:44 PM on September 19, 2006 (15 comments)

UCLA's Awaken A Capella does some strange, beautiful things with the power of combined human voices. From Ave Maria to Mr Roboto, their oeuvre spans the spectrum. More clips, including Like a Prayer and Walk Like an Egyptian, available on their MySpace page. Their version of Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek," available through KCRW's daily podcast, is sublime.
posted to MetaFilter by gottabefunky at 11:17 AM on September 14, 2006 (42 comments)

This song is called mathowie's community blog, and it's about mathowie, and the community blog, but mathowie's community blog is not the name of the community blog, that's just the name of the song. - lyrical brilliance by It's Raining Florence Henderson, with extra bits of artistic license taken in the studio. - Arlo-esque lead vocals by French Fry, aka my brother Alex.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:40 PM on September 3, 2006 (142 comments)

In 1996 Frenchman Michel Guyot set out to build a XIII century castle the medieval way¹ -- using hammers and chisels to carve the stones, horses to cart the rock and no power tools. Ten years later it is one third completed and if all goes well will be finished by 2023, after which the plan is to build an abbey, then a village.²

1. Guyot, Michael (1996). "Guedelon: Chantier Medieval". Online project home page. Multi-lingual.
2. Doland, Angela (August 31, 2006). " Stone by stone, craftsmen build medieval-style castle". Associated Press, via CNN.
posted to MetaFilter by stbalbach at 8:46 AM on September 3, 2006 (19 comments)

Schrödinger, a technology leader specializing in software solutions for life science research and development, has an outstanding opportunity for a position in software QA in our Portland office. * Design, develop, and implement system test plans and procedures * Provide clear and detailed bug tracking status to development teams, and summary reports to management * Maintain personal QA test environment and supporting test data * Review product documentation * BS/BA or Masters in Chemistry, Biochemistry, or Physics * Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal * Familiarity with various flavors of UNIX (Linux, IRIX, AIX, etc.), and MS Office tools * Ability to work independently * Finely tuned problem-solving skills * Ability to execute repetitive tasks without loss of thoroughness * Ability to thrive in a teamwork-rich environment
posted to MetaFilter Jobs by Jikido at 8:01 AM on September 2, 2006