Displaying post 1 to 50 of 246
On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble
You’re probably guessing that because it involves “do no evil” Google, Fortune magazine’s “Best Company to Work For” the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision. If only.
posted to MetaFilter by ThePinkSuperhero
at 9:49 AM on July 5, 2008
(136 comments)
The Book of Accidents: Designed for Young Children
(1831). "In presenting to his little readers
The Book of Accidents, the Author conceives he cannot render a more important service to the rising generation and to parents, than by furnishing them with an account of the accidents to which Children, from their inexperience or carelessness, are liable. If generally studied it will save the lives of thousands, and relieve many families from the long and unavailing misery attendant on such occurrences."
[Via]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus
at 6:37 PM on July 3, 2008
(34 comments)
After 80 years, a complete version of Fritz Lang's
Metropolis has
been discovered in Buenos Aires.
posted to MetaFilter by Nathaniel W
at 2:27 PM on July 2, 2008
(81 comments)
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)
To all the NYC Mefites I loved before, it's been too long. Let's meet-up. Above 14th street. On the West Side. You can all discuss how uncool that is inside this thread.
posted to MetaTalk by Lola_G
at 12:44 PM on July 1, 2008
(40 comments)
Did a 'dream team' of biblical scholars mislead millions?
[Chronicle of Higher Education] You may recall the curfuffle over the gnostic "Gospel of Judas"
(previously). The National Geographic's documentary premiere "attracted four million viewers, making it the second-highest-rated program in the channel's history, behind only a documentary on September 11. . . . However, it's a perfect example, critics argue, of what can happen when commercial considerations are allowed to ride roughshod over careful research. What's more, the controversy has strained friendships in this small community of religion scholars — causing some on both sides of the argument to feel, in a word, betrayed."
posted to MetaFilter by spock
at 7:48 AM on June 30, 2008
(142 comments)
Why are there so few living and loving mothers in Disney films?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dinty_moore
at 5:24 AM on March 12, 2008
(38 comments)
Science and Metaphysics from the inside of virtual worlds?
posted to Ask Metafilter by empath
at 7:20 AM on November 20, 2006
(13 comments)
A few days ago a
post appeared on the Something Awful forums noting a curious website called
Notes to Mary. The notes are a series of threatening letters from a high schooler named Robert to his crush, Mary. The goons figured out pretty quickly that they had an
ARG on their hands and went to work on solving the puzzle.
Several other forums picked up on the game. Robert began interacting with players, sending them strange messages and several series of numbers that appeared to be some sort of code. A
Flickr pool was started. Players even created an IRC channel to swap clues and information in real time. The Notes to Mary site offered a link to a login. All effort was made to crack the user/pass combo. Finally, several days after the game began, users were finally able to log in. The game was solved. The players would be rewarded for their hard work. Where did the login lead?
Here.
posted to MetaFilter by lysistrata
at 4:07 PM on June 25, 2008
(36 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)
Did you happen to see those "
making-popcorn-pop-with-a-cellphone" clips that showed up at the end of last month on the toobs? Well,
WIRED wrote about it, and a kajillion copycat clips showed up in about the time it'd take to, you know, make some popcorn. Turns out it was a viral, natch, as a cursory search will reveal. But just today a clip appeared that
explains how the actual stunt was pulled off. Well, anyway, as you've probably guessed by now, this is all just an excuse to link to
Popcorn. Yep,
Popcorn.
posted to MetaFilter by flapjax at midnite
at 6:01 PM on June 20, 2008
(42 comments)
Project Dalek:
Alan has deliberately 'beefed up' the dome. From a child's eye view it looks like half an inch thick battle armour but the dome is really only four millimetres in thickness. This looks more substantial when viewed from underneath - an angle from which children often see Daleks.
posted to MetaFilter by cowbellemoo
at 8:37 AM on June 20, 2008
(26 comments)
The Milgram Experiment Today?
"Students commonly assume that, even if
Milgram’s famous experiment sheds important light on the power of situation today, were his experiment precisely reproduced today, it would not generate comparable results. To oversimplify the argument behind that claim: The power of white lab coats just ain’t what it used to be. Of course, that assertion has been difficult to challenge given that the option of replicating the Milgram experiment has been presumptively unavailable — indeed, it has been the paradigmatic example of why psychology experiments must be reviewed by institutional review boards ('IRBs'). Who would even attempt to challenge that presumption? The answer:
Jerry Burger, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University. With some slight modifications, Burger manage to obtain permission to replicate Milgram’s experiment — and the results may surprise you."
[Via MindHacks]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus
at 4:35 PM on June 19, 2008
(60 comments)
"I've switched from building my own installations to painting ones I've found".
NewArt Tv interviews artist
Cindy Tower at one of her many makeshift studios in the industrial ruins of East St. Louis, where she's covertly creating paintings as part of her
Workplace Series. "We need to find a way to
sell more paintings so I can hire you full time", she tells her bodyguard, Edgar. Until then, most days she makes do with a dummy.
posted to MetaFilter by stagewhisper
at 3:41 PM on June 19, 2008
(9 comments)
R.I.P., Arizona Parking Solutions.
Guy parks car without displaying his pass.
APS boots car. Guy dollies car
into his garage and invites APS to reclaim their boots. Or not; their choice: either way, they can't tow, he won't pay the fine, and he really doesn't need to be driving the car. This catch-22 upsets the owner. And eventually
APS goes off the deep end, booting nearly everyone's car in the community. The media becomes involved. And we become witness to a business owner suiciding his own business.
posted to MetaFilter by five fresh fish
at 7:55 PM on June 18, 2008
(131 comments)
Edith Macefield is stubborn. Man, is she stubborn. That's what her mother told her when she was a little girl back in the 1920s. It's a characteristic that has followed her all her life. Now that unrelenting stubbornness has won the 86-year-old woman admirers throughout Ballard. Macefield refused to sell her little old house where she has lived since 1966 to developers, forcing them to build an entire five-story project, which includes a grocery store, fitness club and parking garage, around her. She was offered $1 million to leave. She turned it down flat.
Old Ballard's new heroNewsfilter, local interest filter, too, but, oh, man, it lifts the spirits. Her's is the last house on the block, the one in which she grew up, the one her mother died in. She is going to be surrounded by five storys of shopping mall but she isn't moving. It's like
The Little House come to life. And bonus points:
Mike's Chili Parlor, the other hold out on the same block, is the bomb. So you get two Old Lost Seattle treasures in one post.
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl
at 5:29 AM on October 15, 2007
(81 comments)
Death were a
proto-punk trio of black Jehovah's Witnesses based out of Detroit back in 1974. They were almost signed to Columbia, but bailed on the label when Columbia wanted them to change their name. Instead, they self-released a 7" which is now
quite a collector's item, influenced as it was by,
“Iggy and Stooges, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and The Who”.
But the story doesn't end there. Recently, Bobby Hackney, whose father played in Death along with two of his uncles, learned of the band and, lo and behold, his dad found the master tapes for their unreleased full-length in his attic. Is a new chapter in
punk rock history about to be written?
posted to MetaFilter by stinkycheese
at 7:52 AM on June 11, 2008
(35 comments)
What is a Munchy Box?
In the west of Scotland, in the towns and villages surrounding Glasgow, there is a delicacy available in some of the more discerning fast-food outlets. It’s called the Munchy Box (sometimes just Munch Box) and it’s a sight to behold.
posted to MetaFilter by armoured-ant
at 3:12 AM on June 11, 2008
(90 comments)
Until 400 years ago, the Ainu controlled Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. Today they are a small minority group of Japan. They are a hunting and fishing people whose origins remain in dispute.
Long before the people who would come to be known as "the Japanese" completed their migrations from the Asia mainland, the islands of Japan were already inhabited by a race of people known as the Ainu ("human").
On this northernmost island, (Hokkaido), in the "snow
country," there still may be found remnants of this once proud and vigorous people who roamed the Japan islands long before the Japanese themselves arrived.
More links inside
posted to MetaFilter by dawson
at 8:15 PM on June 6, 2008
(35 comments)
For Those Who Tried To Rock is a blog about the bands that never went anywhere, for example.
Urbicide,
The Tribulations and
Only One. The band photos are usually accompanied by mp3s and short testimonies, such as this one about
Soft Option: "Flock of Seagulls owned Liverpool when we came together but we were really Depeche Mode fans. Trouble was, we only had one Synth – the Roland pictured above – so on the more complicated songs we covered like Everything Counts (see cassette below) I had to play parts on a Melodica – the small keyboard you blow into. It was my Mother's idea. We went to an all boys school, so the gigs were boys only, which meant we did not get laid but the nights we played were some of the greatest of my adolescence."
[via Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 1:49 PM on June 5, 2008
(50 comments)
Hey, command-line nerds! You shell geeks over there! Switch over to your browser and go to
goosh.org right now.
posted to MetaFilter by sdodd
at 4:52 PM on June 2, 2008
(51 comments)
Rufus Harley is generally best known for being a
Jazz Bagpipe player. He promoted peace and an appreciation of the United States. A native of Philadelphia, he gave out replicas of the
liberty bell to famous celebrities including Bill Cosby. A documentary of his life, which includes an extended interview of Rufus in his home, was recently released:
Pipes of Peace [
Trailer].
posted to MetaFilter by Deathalicious
at 8:14 PM on May 31, 2008
(12 comments)
Leave the planet to travel into the largest structures of the universe, then plunge into the tiniest. Forty two orders of magnitude in thirty six minutes....
Cosmic Voyage. (single link Google video
via)
posted to MetaFilter by Kronos_to_Earth
at 7:07 PM on May 30, 2008
(11 comments)
Life Lock CEO's Identify Stolen
Remember all those commercials recently tell us to steal Life Lock's CEO Todd Davis' Identity? Well seems as though someone did.
posted to MetaFilter by DJWeezy
at 1:19 PM on May 28, 2008
(43 comments)
"In the summer of 1954, twenty-two fifth-grade boys were taken out to a campground at Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. [...] Ostensibly it was an unremarkable summer camp. [...] what they had really done for two and a half weeks was unwittingly take part in an elaborate and fascinating
psychological experiment."
posted to MetaFilter by desjardins
at 2:53 PM on October 23, 2007
(44 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)
High-Tech Noon.
What makes a classic Western even more classic? Blasters and force-fields, that's what. (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by fearfulsymmetry
at 4:17 AM on April 21, 2008
(25 comments)
It hasn't been updated in a few months, but the
Cocteau Twins Podcast is a treasure trove of rare and never-before-heard recordings.
posted to MetaFilter by jbickers
at 4:17 AM on April 21, 2008
(17 comments)
