What's up with Wynton Marsalis? And what's up with jazz? 20 years ago he was the genre's Boy Wonder, driving force behind a new Classical Jazz movement; today he's label-less and has gone years since his last new CD. Then, Jazz clubs across NYC and across the US still played bebop, now their numbers are dwindling. Is jazz doomed, permanently embalmed by those who tried to save it? (Has it been doomed since 1945?) Will it rise from its ashes nu jazz? Will it be subsumed into world music and lose its identity? How are any musicians and listeners out there finding the current scene?
posted to MetaFilter by Tlogmer at 9:19 PM on March 9, 2003 (47 comments)

What should I do alone in Chicago?
posted to Ask Metafilter by mustcatchmooseandsquirrel at 8:31 AM on July 1, 2008 (22 comments)

"Nothing in the history of the Rebellion has equaled in inhumanity and atrocity the horrid butchery at Fort Pillow, on the 13th of April, 1864. In no other school than slavery could human beings have been trained to such readiness for cruelties like these. Accustomed to brutality and bestiality all their lives, it was easy for them to perpetrate the atrocities which will startle the civilized foreign world, as they have awakened the indignation of our own people."
posted to MetaFilter by Mayor Curley at 8:53 AM on July 1, 2008 (38 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)

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)

Take the Funny and Run , a history of notorious joke-thieves from Milton Berle and Robin Williams to Denis Leary, Carlos Mencia (previously) and Dane Cook.
posted to MetaFilter by Navelgazer at 6:35 PM on June 10, 2008 (53 comments)

I'm a single guy living alone. I need to start cooking for myself because I spend too much money on food, and most of what I eat is kinda bad for me. However, I hate doing dishes and don't have much time to cook. What foods/recipes would you suggest?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Afroblanco at 12:03 PM on June 18, 2008 (39 comments)

Friday Flash Java Fun - 'Building Houses With Side Views' Entertaining Java game/exercise/doodad.
posted to MetaFilter by le morte de bea arthur at 7:19 AM on June 13, 2008 (30 comments)

In 1876, the US celebrated the centennial with an International Exposition. The centerpiece of Machinery Hall, and the source of power for all the machinery therein, was the world's largest steam engine. A beam engine (previously), it produced 1400 horsepower and was built in a mere 7 months when other bids to provide motive power proved inadequate.
posted to MetaFilter by DU at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2008 (19 comments)

30 years ago today, Frank Stanford, a young Arkansaw poet shot himself three times in the heart with a 22-caliber pistol. He was 29. By then he had become a powerful and unique voice in the American poetry landscape, dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He left behind a strong (though often hard to find and/or unrecognized) body of work, most notably his immense epic The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, a 15,280 line poem with no punctuation or stanzas.
posted to MetaFilter by troubles at 10:03 AM on June 3, 2008 (44 comments)

Europe has produced its share of outstanding jazz pianists. Here are five of them: Martial Solal (French/Algerian-born, born 1927); Tete Montoliu (Catalonian/Spanish, 1933-97); Enrico Pieranunzi (Italian, born 1949); Misha Mengelberg (Dutch/Ukrainian-born, born 1935); Marco di Marco (Italian, born 1940).
posted to MetaFilter by ornate insect at 10:26 AM on June 2, 2008 (7 comments)

How to draw a female in proportion. If you're a cartoonist. If you're a manga artist. If you're a traditional artist. Divine proportions (NSFW) Idealized Proportions (artistic nudity) Historic Proportions.
posted to MetaFilter by desjardins at 11:32 AM on November 30, 2007 (47 comments)

Please Vote for Me (official site) is a documentary about Chinese third-graders electing a class monitor.
posted to MetaFilter by generalist at 9:57 AM on June 1, 2008 (35 comments)

I'm a straight, white, upper middle class male. I'm aware that this automatically means I generally have an easier time than people with a different sexuality/race/class/gender. That said, I'm probably unaware of what these benefits are. What does this 'privileged' status do for me that I don't even notice?
posted to Ask Metafilter by twirlypen at 4:19 PM on May 29, 2008 (92 comments)

Planet Defender by MeFi's own justkevin.
posted to MetaFilter by WalterMitty at 12:00 AM on May 23, 2008 (36 comments)

Classic Investment Books... What Have I Missed?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Fuzzy Monster at 6:19 AM on July 19, 2006 (16 comments)

Ever wonder what the London Underground Map [105 KiB PDF] would look like if it were geographically accurate [255 KiB GIF]? If you could morph [13.7 KiB Flash] between those two versions and Harry Beck's 1933 map [112 KiB JPG]? What it will look like in 2016 [218 KiB PDF]? What if you replaced all the stations, even ones that are no longer used, with well-known personalities [46 KiB JPG inset]? If you knew exactly which carriage to get on so you'd already be at the Way Out (never "exit" [23 MiB PDF]) when your train stops (or doesn't stop)? If you had a similar schematic for buses [245 KiB PDF] or river boats [50 KiB PDF]?

Pass your Oyster card over the reader and go on a tour of interesting, imaginative, and subversive maps and diagrams of London public transport. And as you leave, remember to Mind the Gap, Stand on the Right [671 KiB JPG], and Always Touch Out.
posted to MetaFilter by grouse at 8:23 AM on March 7, 2005 (65 comments)

What does a man do during the last 20 years of his life? We learn what every day was like for this unnamed soul who lived through the death of John Lennon, was there for the biggest television experience ever and who saw many presidents inaugurated and witnessed some of them shot.
It might have been because of the holidays or just to fit in but sometime around the early 80's he began smoking. Throught the 90's his health declined and eventually the illness took over.
What must we think about the Star Trek fan with a surreal taste for art and who loved pasta? I'm not sure, but I am certainly thankful for the images.
posted to MetaFilter by MikeonTV at 4:23 PM on May 21, 2008 (68 comments)

Ways of Seeing, the BBC documentary written and hosted by novelist and art critic John Berger, is back up on YouTube. (scroll down for direct links to all four half-hour episodes) "I actually find it rather disturbing that -- despite our claims to be a culture that's increasing freedom of choice all the time -- we haven't come up with anything quite as astute, subversive or beautiful as Ways of Seeing since. Not on the BBC, and not even -- especially not -- on the internet. Download it while you still can."
posted to MetaFilter by vronsky at 2:06 PM on April 30, 2008 (32 comments)

Chinese Poems is a simple, no frills site with over 200 classical Chinese poems, mostly from the Tang period. The poems are presented in traditional and simplified chinese characters, pinyin and English translation, both literal and literary. Here's Du Mu's Drinking Alone:
Outside the window, wind and snow blow straight,
I clutch the stove and open a flask of wine.
Just like a fishing boat in the rain,
Sail down, asleep on the autumn river.
Among other poets featured are Li Bai (a.k.a. Li Po), Du Fu and Wang Wei. As a bonus, here's the entire text of Ezra Pound's Cathay, most of whom are from Li Bai originals.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:16 AM on May 19, 2008 (15 comments)

Three of the giants of Brazilian guitar were Laurindo Almeida (1917-1995; wiki here), Luiz Bonfa (1922-2001; wiki here), and Baden Powell (1937-2000; wiki here). Here is Laurindo Almeida w/the MJQ playing One Note Samba; here is Luiz Bonfa playing the theme from Black Orpheus (which he composed); and here is Baden Powell playing Samba Triste.
posted to MetaFilter by ornate insect at 10:54 AM on May 19, 2008 (17 comments)

Exercising your brain makes you smarter, and there is no better gym for it than the MentatWiki.
posted to MetaFilter by splice at 11:47 AM on May 17, 2008 (16 comments)

A woman walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a double entendre, so he gave it to her. Ba-dum dum. What's green and has wheels? Grass. I lied about the wheels. Ba-dum dum. A baby seal walks into a club. (pause) Ba-dum dum. How many kids with ADD does it take to change a lightbulb? LET'S GO RIDE BIKES! Ba-dum dum. A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?" Ba-dum dum. Instant Rimshot. For all those times you need a big red Flash button that'll give you a well-timed rimshot. (Jokes courtesy of Ask Mefi.)
posted to MetaFilter by WCityMike at 7:10 PM on May 12, 2008 (250 comments)

Very pleasing video of five metronomes syncing
posted to MetaFilter by TheDonF at 9:00 AM on May 3, 2008 (43 comments)

Owl Cam. Physics professor sees Great Horned Owl nesting outside window & sets up webcam.
posted to MetaFilter by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:11 AM on April 2, 2008 (116 comments)

In honor of the 5-year anniversary of the Iraq War, PBS' Frontline presented a fantastic 2- part special on the issue this past Monday and Tuesday. It is now available in it's entirety online along with interview transcripts from senior officials, a video timeline of the war, and battlefield stories from soldiers. Bush's War
posted to MetaFilter by auralcoral at 6:29 AM on March 26, 2008 (102 comments)

John Mark Harris provides a interactive graphical score synchronized to his realization of the architect-composer Iannis Xenakis's Evryali, a piano piece that is intentionally impossible to play as written. Harris's notes on the piece are behind the non-obvious "on Evryali" button on the score page. Things start getting really interesting around page 22.
posted to MetaFilter by dfan at 10:47 AM on March 23, 2008 (24 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)

An analysis of 376 recorded performances of Beethoven's Eroica (Symphony #3), broken down by such variables as the age of the conductor, length of the recording, and tempo variations.
posted to MetaFilter by pjern at 11:00 PM on March 14, 2008 (25 comments)

The connection between mathematics and music is often touted in awed, mysterious tones, but it is grounded in hard-headed science. For example, mathematical principles underlie the organization of Western music into 12-note scales. And even a beginning piano student encounters geometry in the "circle of fifths" when learning the fundamentals of music theory. ...according to Dmitri Tymoczko, a composer and music theorist at Princeton University, these well-known connections reveal only a few threads of the hefty rope that binds music and math.

The Geometry of Music
See also The Geometry of Musical Chords - Dmitri Tymoczko, Science 7 July 2006: Abstract
See also Dmitri Tymoczko, Composer and Music Theoristvia
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 12:49 PM on March 16, 2008 (30 comments)

Celemony are a bunch of crazy German software engineers known best for making Melodyne, a family of top of the line pitch correction tools. Apparently they've recently figured out how to do what they do with polyphonic audio. I can't begin to explain how cool this is. Just watch the video.
posted to MetaFilter by stenseng at 4:10 PM on March 13, 2008 (122 comments)

One of the most amazing user-led projects out there, CHDK firmware turns cheap Canon cameras into photography powerhouses. You can take take time-lapse movies as in this stunning sunset example; automatically photograph lightening; easily make pretty HDR images and stereograms; have unlimited depth-of-field; and, perhaps most impressively, take photographs with shutter speeds of 1/60,000 of a second!
posted to MetaFilter by blahblahblah at 8:18 AM on March 13, 2008 (69 comments)

Widely Ranging Interests is a weekly podcast where two guys discuss their favorite obscure and arcane topics, from sea kayak marlin fishing to the history of the balaclava. Addicting.
posted to MetaFilter by fungible at 12:49 PM on March 13, 2008 (14 comments)

The editor of the New York Times Book Review asks "do others have favorite signature passages in books they love — a sentence or two that seem to convey the essence of a complex, beautiful work?" after giving his own example from To The Finland Station. Hundreds respond, often with some wonderful passages (as well as some not so wonderful ones). Any examples from the hive mind?
posted to MetaFilter by blahblahblah at 9:18 PM on March 9, 2008 (160 comments)

To The Best Of Our Knowledge is one of the most wide-ranging and literate public radio shows in the US, a two-hour "radio salon" featuring leisurely exploration of weekly themes like No Smoking, Identity Crisis, Weekend, and The Mind, Music, and Math. Host Jim Fleming approaches these big ideas through the works of authors - journalists of all stripes, memoirists, poets, fiction writers, essayists. Five years' worth of shows are available on audio archives; you can also search the impressive list of authors by name, or subscribe to the podcast.
posted to MetaFilter by Miko at 9:13 AM on February 27, 2008 (17 comments)

The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section was comprised of four session musicians operating out of the tiny northern Alabama town of town Muscle Shoals. Just four unassuming crackers who happened to have provided the funky underpinning for a huge number of hit songs by, among others, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Paul Simon, Joe Cocker, The Staple Singers , Jimmy Cliff and many, many others. Hey, they were the house band to the greats. Big respect to the men from 3614 Jackson Highway! [note: see hoverovers for link descriptions]
posted to MetaFilter by flapjax at midnite at 6:18 AM on February 24, 2008 (27 comments)

Word Into Image: Writers on Screenwriting {youtube}
William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) (1 2 3)
Robert Towne (Chinatown) (1 2 3)
Carl Foreman (High Noon) (1 2 3)
Neil Simon (The Odd Couple) (1 2 3)
Paul Mazursky (An Unmarried Woman) (1 2 3)
Eleanor Perry (The Swimmer) (1 2 3)
posted to MetaFilter by dobbs at 7:48 AM on February 22, 2008 (9 comments)

You've probably never heard of him, but as an artist JSG Boggs has been making "money" for two decades. Boggs has been the subject of many articles, a film, and a book by Lawrence Welscher. He's bought lots of things with his art ("Hot dogs, watches, airplane tickets, rent, clothing, jewelry–-anything." (And he's done so in England, Germany, France, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, the USA, and Italy.) The largest collection of his works belongs to The Secret Service. [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by dobbs at 9:30 PM on September 21, 2003 (17 comments)

Desmond Doss dies at 87. Desmond Doss, first conscientious objector to win a Medal of Honor, was a Seventh Day Adventist who refused to carry a gun, eat meat, or work on Saturday. Under heavy Japanese fire, he lowered 75 wounded men to safety from the top of the Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa. That was only one of his acts of heroism.
posted to MetaFilter by forrest at 9:07 PM on March 26, 2006 (17 comments)

Name the darkest, most evil fiddle player out there. Atonal, discordant, scratchy, and furious are all big pluses.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Thin Lizzy at 3:54 PM on February 15, 2008 (34 comments)

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part I. Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers. [Via Orcinus.]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 11:11 AM on February 13, 2008 (227 comments)

You suck at Photoshop.
posted to MetaFilter by sveskemus at 6:24 AM on January 26, 2008 (90 comments)

Atlantic Magazine opens its archives. Atlantic Magazine announced today that they will drop subscriber-only access to the site, giving full access to every issue of the last 12 years. Where to start? Well, I particularly recommend David Foster Wallace's fascinating examination of right-wing talk radio (DFW trademark footnotes intact), Hitler's Forgotten Library, and Eric Schlosser's The Prison-Industrial Complex. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by Horace Rumpole at 12:36 PM on January 22, 2008 (51 comments)

Ubuntu has quickly become the number one Linux distro for the desktop. Not only is it free, but it has also made Linux easier to use than ever. Now, Wubi enables Windows users to install Ubuntu just like any other application, so you no longer have to mess around with partitions, burning CDs, etc.
posted to MetaFilter by Foci for Analysis at 8:09 AM on January 21, 2008 (82 comments)

Where can I learn about music history and music theory for free?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Chris4d at 10:00 PM on January 16, 2008 (26 comments)

A selection of eyeglasses for $8. (That's including your lens prescription.) Or if that's not to your liking, there's $39.
posted to MetaFilter by Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson at 8:24 PM on September 19, 2007 (81 comments)

Coltrane's Giant Steps, visually explained. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by shoepal at 7:57 AM on December 6, 2004 (37 comments)

How to pair foods, if you've ever wondered whether oysters go with chocolate but didn't want to end up with an expensive mess
posted to MetaFilter by sim.possible at 2:24 PM on December 2, 2007 (55 comments)

pronunciationguide - for aspiring classical radio announcers
posted to MetaFilter by Gyan at 5:34 AM on August 16, 2007 (9 comments)

Randy Taylor is not happy about Jimmy Dean's change from 16 oz to 12 oz of sausage in a package.
posted to MetaFilter by Pope Guilty at 1:06 AM on November 18, 2007 (146 comments)