Displaying post 1 to 50 of 66
2 July 1863, second day of
Gettysburg. Sickles has pulled his III Corps -- without orders -- off of Cemetery Ridge and positioned it a half mile in front of the rest of the Union lines. Longstreet smashes the hapless III Corps and its men are in full flight. Hancock rides back and forth inside the gaping hole left by Sickles. Below him, almost 2000 men of Wilcox's brigade are charging up the slope. They will gain a foothold on the ridge and be reinforced by Lee. As Longstreet pins down the Union left, Lee will roll up the center and right of the Northern army and chase them from the field. He will then march on and take Washington before turning north along the eastern seaboard. Lee will capture and burn Philadelphia and Boston in his March Along the Sea, chasing the Northern government from city to city until Lincoln finally sues for peace and the union is no more.
Suddenly, a line of blue-coated soldiers comes into Hancock's view. "My God, is this all the men here? Who are you?" "
1st Minnesota, sir." "See those colors?", says Hancock, pointing at the flags of the oncoming Confederates, "Take them."
posted to MetaFilter by forrest
at 5:45 AM on July 2, 2008
(81 comments)
Today is
June 28th, June 15th on the Julian Calendar, and it holds a great historical significance to Serbia.
posted to MetaFilter by adricv
at 9:20 AM on June 28, 2008
(27 comments)
Do you enjoy classic 2D platformers? Then boy, are you in luck! The
indie game community is thriving, and a good majority of its games are exactly that. I've spent many hours playing these unique, beautiful, and often exceptional projects, and there's quite a few - more than I can count on my fingers! - that could stand toe-to-toe with the finest contemporary games. Inside is a list of some of the greatest indie platformers, based on community recommendations and my own experience. Enjoy!
posted to MetaFilter by archagon
at 3:28 AM on June 24, 2008
(48 comments)
MagCloud
enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and they take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.
posted to MetaFilter by FunkyHelix
at 9:13 AM on June 23, 2008
(43 comments)
The black backs by and on which the fortunes of the New South were built:
On March 30, 1908, Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama, and charged with “vagrancy.”... Cottenham’s offense was blackness.... [After a brief trial] Cottenham... was sold. Under a standing arrangement between the county and a vast subsidiary of the industrial titan of the North — U.S. Steel Corporation — the sheriff turned the young man over to the company for the duration of his sentence.... he was chained inside a long wooden barrack at night and required to spend nearly every waking hour digging and loading coal. His required daily “task” was to remove eight tons of coal from the mine. Cottenham was subject to the whip for failure to dig the requisite amount, at risk of physical torture for disobedience, and vulnerable to the sexual predations of other miners.... Forty-five years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves, Green Cottenham and more than a thousand other black men toiled under the lash at Slope 12.
— from the Introduction to
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II. The
book's website includes
reviews of the book, an
excerpt of the Introduction, and an extensive photo gallery that includes
disturbing images of enslaved and tortured prisoners.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality
at 1:12 AM on June 21, 2008
(97 comments)
Why, when I drag the fleshy (i.e., not furry) part of my cat's paw across the trackpad on my MacBook, does the cursor not respond?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Dr. Wu
at 8:50 PM on May 15, 2008
(45 comments)
Any lists of super simple meals?
posted to Ask Metafilter by jesirose
at 12:24 AM on June 7, 2008
(44 comments)
You may have heard that reading is in a slow decline (
previously). We now know that such reports were either exaggerated, or at least
statistically questionable. On the flip-side of all this is the fact that reading as an activity has never been
more accessible (or thrifty!) considering the number of reputable
book swap programs available on the internet. There's no excuse now!
posted to MetaFilter by tybeet
at 5:44 AM on May 30, 2008
(48 comments)
"Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away. The apparent aggression shown by these people is quite understandable, for they are members of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes."
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi
at 5:18 PM on May 29, 2008
(88 comments)
A poem that builds upon itself and grows as the world wide web grows.
The Apostrophe Engine is a website operated by Bill Kenney and Darren Wershler-Henry. It is the source of the poems in
apostrophe, a book published by ECW Press in 2006.
The home page of the Apostrophe Engine site presents the full text of a poem called "apostrophe", written by Bill in 1993. In this digital version of the poem, each line is now a hyperlink.
How it works.
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz
at 9:29 PM on May 28, 2008
(29 comments)
What are some of your absolute favourite online essays, articles and other pieces of non-fiction writing?
posted to Ask Metafilter by turgid dahlia
at 4:21 PM on May 1, 2008
(49 comments)
Smooth Jazz,
also sometimes referred to as new adult contemporary music or instrumental pop, is generally described as a genre that utilizes instruments and improvisation traditionally associated with jazz and stylistic influences drawn from mostly R&B, but also funk and pop. Since the late 1980s and into the 1990s, it has become successful as a
radio format. [source
wikipedia]
posted to MetaFilter by netbros
at 1:35 PM on April 20, 2008
(251 comments)
Dyeing with Kool-Aid basic how-to.
The best thing is the
color chart. A good idea for
a party, maybe? As usual, the folks at Flickr have got the goods: Kool-Aid dyed yarns in the Hand-dyed pool [
1], [
2], and the Yarn Porn pool, [
1], [
2]. And if you're one of those people who just hates to do things the easy way? Multi-colored custom yarn with Kool-Aid tutorial
part 1 and
part 2.
posted to MetaFilter by taz
at 10:27 AM on May 2, 2008
(29 comments)
The other day I happened to come upon a music video that is just so grooving, so human and so
real, that, well, it
moved me, darling.
Just check it out. After watching the clip, I learned that these guys are mostly disabled by polio (that's why several of them are in those rather unusual wheelchairs) and that they were living on the grounds of the Kinshasa zoo, which is where the clip was filmed. Then I learned that last year they were seeking to bring
a lawsuit against the UN. Then I found
some other clips. And now I am a
major fan of
Staff Benda Bilili.
posted to MetaFilter by flapjax at midnite
at 3:30 AM on April 26, 2008
(47 comments)
An extraordinary piece of magazine writing by Chris Jones.
Jones tells the story of how the body of Sergeant Joe Montgomery makes its way from a Baghdad suburb to its final resting place in a grave in Indiana. It's one of the finest pieces of journalism that I've read in years. It’s extremely moving without being saccharine or twee. It’s a military story, but utterly without jingoism or indictment. And it’s wonderfully observed. If I taught a first-year creative writing course, I'd make this required reading.
posted to MetaFilter by dbarefoot
at 9:57 PM on April 30, 2008
(87 comments)
Dear Monster Lawyers,
Let me begin by stating, without equivocation, that I have no interest whatsoever in infringing upon any intellectual property belonging to Monster Cable. Indeed, the less my customers think my products resemble Monster's, in form or in function, the better.
posted to MetaFilter by veedubya
at 12:49 PM on April 15, 2008
(87 comments)
303, 909, FX, MIXER
=
ACID VARSITY. In other words, two virtual 303s, a 909, effects and a mixer running for free right in your browser.
posted to MetaFilter by 6am
at 9:16 AM on April 4, 2008
(41 comments)
Iwase Yoshiyuki
"In the late 1920s, young Yoshiyuki received an early Kodak camera as a gift. Since the main livelihood of the town came from the sea, he gravitated there, and soon found a passion for "the simple, even primitive beauty" of
ama – girls and women who harvested seaweed, turban shells and abalone from beneath the coastal waters." "By the late 1960s, they had disappeared. This body of work stands as the final, most comprehensive visual document of the life and work of these divers."
[NSFW]
posted to MetaFilter by tellurian
at 10:45 PM on March 27, 2008
(48 comments)
Lennon and McCartney's Studio Reunion. On March 28, 1974, John Lennon was in a Burbank studio producing Harry Nilsson's "Pussy Cats" album when Paul McCartney dropped in. The room froze and remained silent until John said, "Valiant Paul McCartney, I presume?" Paul responded: "Sir Jasper Lennon, I presume?" The tension broken, a
jam session [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] ensued featuring Lennon on guitar and vocals, McCartney on drums and vocals, Stevie Wonder on electric piano and vocals, Harry Nilsson on vocals, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar and Bobby Keys on saxophone. A
bootleg of the session has circulated under the title
"A Toot and a Snore in '74".
posted to MetaFilter by New Frontier
at 8:19 PM on March 30, 2008
(25 comments)
Obama's Gettysburg Address.
Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (
text)
posted to MetaFilter by caddis
at 9:31 PM on March 18, 2008
(1141 comments)
If you had HBO in the 80's, you saw
this every night at 8pm. HBO put together a brief behind-the-scenes
featurette showing everything from the construction of the models to the composition of the music.
posted to MetaFilter by dr_dank
at 12:05 PM on March 15, 2008
(63 comments)
What are some heavy guitar focused trip-hop albums similar to Massive Attack's Mezzanine?
posted to Ask Metafilter by herbiehancock00
at 9:47 PM on February 26, 2008
(15 comments)
Syd Barrett, the iconic, ephemeral, sadly recently-deceased founder and original frontman of Pink Floyd, recorded several singles and an LP (plus at least one song on their second LP) with the band before his genius was amputated by mental illness and they became an arena rock dinosaur. He also recorded two solo albums, the
making of which was almost as interesting as the gentle, crystalline, almost fractal-like music contained on them. However, as Barrett aficionados have long known, the solo sessions produced many more recordings than were eventually released. Now, though, all known Barrett material that wasn't commercially released has been assembled in a fan-made collection: Have You Got It Yet?,
version 2.0 of which has just been released to the world. More download links inside.
posted to MetaFilter by DecemberBoy
at 12:31 PM on March 1, 2008
(39 comments)
I love reading sites like kottke.org and Neatorama (and, of course, Metafilter). It's exciting - I never know what I'll come across next. What are some other sites that have lots of interesting stuff, preferably on a daily basis (but less often is fine as long as the content is high quality)?
posted to Ask Metafilter by jasminerain
at 1:14 PM on February 21, 2008
(40 comments)
What is the most useful book you own?
posted to Ask Metafilter by shotgunbooty
at 10:01 AM on February 16, 2008
(103 comments)
Haruki Murakami doesn't do many interviews. However, he granted one to a University of Hawaii journalism student and it was published in the January 2007 issue of GQ Korea. The text has been translated by the blog owner.
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4
posted to MetaFilter by spec80
at 8:44 AM on February 1, 2008
(25 comments)
