Displaying post 1 to 50 of 456
Help me pick out a LCD HDTV and accoutrements wiithout falling prey to techno-hype! Budget is $2-3k for a ten-year techno-leap. Need to watch NHL hockey.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ebellicosa
at 10:07 PM on July 23, 2008
(16 comments)
I want to be fit, but I loathe "fitness." I want to lose weight, but I become so angry at the whole concept of being another woman on a diet. How can I reconcile my anger with my genuine need to be healthy?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Anonymous
at 6:12 PM on July 11, 2008
(42 comments)
Who are some great comedians I've probably never heard of that I can watch on youtube?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Christ, what an asshole
at 3:50 PM on July 14, 2008
(50 comments)
The Great Moon Hoax of 1835. During the last week of August 1835, the
New York Sun published a six-part article about the discovery - purportedly by renowned astronomer Sir John Herschel - of fantastical life on the moon, including herds of bison, blue unicorns, "a primitive tribe of hut-dwelling, fire-wielding biped beavers, and a race of winged humans living in pastoral harmony around a mysterious, golden-roofed temple." The public's reaction was a mix of credulity and skepticism. Read the full text of the serialized articles:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6.
posted to MetaFilter by amyms
at 11:12 PM on June 24, 2008
(37 comments)
Until recently,
earthquake lights were folklore. It wasn't until the phenomenon was captured in photographs, taken during the Matsushiro earthquake swarm in Japan between 1965 and 1967, that the
seismological community acknowledged their occurrence.
The precise mechanism is unknown. A stunning example was captured on
video thirty minutes prior to the Sichuan earthquake.
posted to MetaFilter by Pater Aletheias
at 11:02 AM on May 20, 2008
(66 comments)
Got any good short, silly one-liner jokes?
posted to Ask Metafilter by angryjellybean
at 9:51 AM on November 23, 2007
(97 comments)
Rutgers professor of philosophy Jerry Fodor
created a bit of a stir last October when he wrote an article for the London Review of Books arguing that natural selection may not be such a great theory after all, and that a "major revision of evolutionary theory... is in the offing." Not many fellow
philosophers and academics agree, it seems. Fodor responds to his critics
here and
here. Six months later, it's still not entirely clear whether his argument is, as Justin E.H. Smith
put it, "irresponsible and stupid or so subtle that none of his adversaries, defending a status quo interpretation of the theory of natural selection, have been able to get it yet."
posted to MetaFilter by decoherence
at 7:08 AM on May 6, 2008
(142 comments)
How can I find more about this secret to happiness (and is it really true)?
posted to Ask Metafilter by zenja72
at 1:34 PM on May 5, 2008
(48 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
(51 comments)
Suppose you take a test for a rare type of cancer that affects 0.01 percent of the population. The test is 98 percent reliable. You get a positive reading. What are the chances you have the cancer? I read this probability puzzle today and the writer said the statistical chances of you having the cancer in this scenario are less than half a percent. I don't get it. Isn't the rarity factor irrelevant compared with the test reliability? Please explain.
posted to Ask Metafilter by binturong
at 12:59 PM on April 12, 2008
(27 comments)
On May 22, 1969, the Babies of Biafra launched their first attack against Nigeria. The Babies were a fleet of 5 civilian single-engine SAAB
aircraft outfitted with unguided rocket launchers. They were going up against an air force composed of MIGs and Ilyushin bombers, flown by English, South African and Egyptian mercenaries. Their leader was
Carl Gustaf von Rosen, a Swede who was Herman Goering’s nephew-in-law. (More inside)
posted to MetaFilter by forrest
at 8:47 AM on May 22, 2007
(17 comments)
Moving an Excel spreadsheet schedule into MySQL/PHP
posted to Ask Metafilter by gov_moonbeam
at 11:12 AM on April 28, 2008
(4 comments)
What's it like to feel loved?
I don't mean what does it feel like to be in love with someone - that I know. I'm asking for what makes you feel loved by someone else?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Anonymous
at 7:04 PM on November 12, 2007
(70 comments)
Tohoku University's Kano Collection
is an unparalleled collection of japanese books from the Edo period. The beautiful and grizzly
Kaibou zonshinzu anatomical chart has been
making the blogrounds lately but that's only one of the countless treasures the Kano Collection has to offer. Stumbling around near-blindly, like a non-Japanese reader such as myself, with only minimal help from the site, I have come across an amazing variety of beautiful objects, such as
this picture book,
a scroll with images of animals,
city map,
map of Japan,
battle map,
another picture book,
the Kaitai shouzu anatomical chart and
this picture scroll which has
my favorite little scene I've come across in the collection. Whole days could be spent just surfing idly through the Kano Collection.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 4:06 AM on April 28, 2008
(9 comments)
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
doesn't speak much, but when he takes up his guitar, he
sings, literally and figuratively. He sings of growing up in an Aboriginal community on a remote island off the north coast of Australia; he sings of coming to terms with being born blind; and he sings the creation stories of his
Yolngu people.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva
at 4:34 PM on April 22, 2008
(19 comments)
Where can I found more music like this?
posted to Ask Metafilter by jjbb
at 4:07 PM on April 19, 2008
(24 comments)
- "Please don't beat me. I'm having my period." ~ Mama Wangari
- "It is being both black and gay [which is problematic]." ~ Zanele Muholi (Nehanda Nyakasikana) [NSFW]
- "Sisters at heart, these women are: from Kibera to Loresho." ~ WM
- "My vagina wants an Uzi" ~ Larissa Klazinga (Amanda Atwood)
- "You are from Kenya? So are you Kikuyu or Luo?" ~ Wangui
Blogs of women from Africa. That is all.
posted to MetaFilter by hadjiboy
at 6:29 AM on April 17, 2008
(29 comments)
Duke University has three image collections of old U.S. and Canadian advertisements.
Ad*Access a database of over 7000 print ads from 1911 to 1956.
Emergence of Advertising in America has 9000 images of ads from 1850-1920.
Medicine and Madison Avenue has 600 medical ads and documents from 1911 to 1958. You can browse the collections by product, company, subject, year and categories or you can use the search function. Here are some of my favorites:
Miss Clairol,
They're Both in the Swim Today,
Fancy Goods and Toy Bazaar,
Sky Blue Pink,
SAS Makes Airline History,
A Montgomery Ward Hat that Becomes Nearly Every Woman,
Radiant Peony and
Hitler's Death Warrant.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 7:57 PM on April 14, 2008
(11 comments)
Do you cook beans in the water they soaked in or do you use fresh water?
posted to Ask Metafilter by juva
at 1:43 AM on April 13, 2008
(12 comments)
Introduce me to some seriously awesome Brazilian music and/or Cuban and Argentinian music!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Sijeka
at 10:31 AM on April 13, 2008
(27 comments)
MITOpenCourseWare offers
an online high-school course on
Douglas Hofstadter's much-loved 1980 Pulitzer-winning exploration of maths, patterns, music, art, recursion, and computability,
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Previously, some here had indicated
an interest in such a course.
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality
at 3:00 AM on April 12, 2008
(28 comments)
Learn (or teach) fundamentals of computer science,
without a computer. Provided as hands-on exercises suitable for children, or even CS-illiterate adults. (If this is too basic for you,
go here.)
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality
at 12:12 AM on April 10, 2008
(13 comments)
Shareminer is a clownsuit engine that searches for files upped to Rapidshare, Megaupload, SendSpace, ZShare, and other similar one click hosts. A great tool for locating full, rare, and out of print albums.
posted to MetaFilter by item
at 10:16 AM on March 21, 2008
(47 comments)
How do geographers calculate the area of a landmass, given crinkly coastlines? Or to put it another way, if I have a map of a large island X, how do I calculate its area in square kilometres?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Hogshead
at 7:30 AM on April 8, 2008
(22 comments)
I'm going to college soon. (Age 24; been working a desk job in health care since I was 18.) I've got an inkling I want to study biology. Recommend me some books to help me get the lay of the land and get fired up about this.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Attackpanda
at 5:21 PM on April 4, 2008
(24 comments)
Guitarist and singer
José González's myspace page mentions [lots of youtube ahead]
Low and
Elliot Smith. And no review of the Swede whose parents left Argentina in the 1970s is complete without a reference to
Nick Drake. But what about the influence of styles from the hemisphere his parents left behind?
posted to MetaFilter by umbú
at 9:19 PM on March 22, 2008
(25 comments)
Hitler Speaks
Using advanced speech recognition technology, researchers and voice-over actors have been able to put a soundtrack to long-silent video relics of Adolf Hitler:
Eva Braun's infamous home movies filmed at the
Berghof, private filmed meetings between Hitler and various Reich cronies, as well as the last known footage of him taped before an awkward bunch of Hitler Youth at the Reichstag in the final days of the war made famous in
Downfall. Chilling stuff.
Via.
posted to MetaFilter by auralcoral
at 2:39 PM on March 22, 2008
(179 comments)
The University of South Carolina recently completed an
ambitious survey of all medieval texts in the state for an exhibit at the university library. All the works were scanned and archived electronically. However, not only can you
view the texts online, you can hear the university's chorus
sing (MP3) the musical manuscripts.
posted to MetaFilter by 1f2frfbf
at 11:54 AM on March 18, 2008
(8 comments)
