On a random walk through the East Village in NYC last night, we came across a line of paint on the sidewalk. It went from Tompkins park down Ave B. to 4th St, over to 1st Ave, up to 10th or 11th street and then we lost it. This was not a line painted with a bush or a machine. It was random and wiggly - kind of like someone punched a hole in a paint can and let it drip as they walked around the neighborhood. The line is peach colored. Then we found that it continues at Astor Place and Stuyvesant Street. What does this line mean?? Why was it painted? Where does it go?
posted to Ask Metafilter by pithy comment at 8:40 PM on July 4, 2008 (6 comments)

Let's say you're putting together a mix of your favorite obscure 1990s pop/rock music. What are the top couple of tracks you'd be sure to include?
posted to Ask Metafilter by iamisaid at 1:31 PM on July 2, 2008 (71 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 (82 comments)

Today on the corner of 6th Avenue and 20th Street, right next to the Avalon (which used to be the Limelight), there was a burnt mattress and a pile of furniture. On a small dresser there was an unlabeled Memorex CD-R. I put it in my bag, out of curiosity. All that was on it was a single short audio track.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Stonestock Relentless at 4:43 PM on June 27, 2008 (8 comments)

CHDK question for Canon SD800 IS
posted to Ask Metafilter by laskagirl at 6:28 PM on June 19, 2008 (13 comments)

Accidental Astrophysicists: "They started with algebra and ended up learning about gravitational lensing (PDF)." [Via linkfilter]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 3:35 PM on June 17, 2008 (22 comments)

The Bicycle Tutor is a site with lots of video tutorials designed with a sole purpose; to teach you how to fix your own bicycle. [via mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by Effigy2000 at 2:46 PM on June 17, 2008 (29 comments)

How to nap, a cheat sheet from the Boston Globe. Via
posted to MetaFilter by jbickers at 12:25 PM on June 17, 2008 (30 comments)

Photostellar Geolocation - Assuming a 10X optical zoom camera, comprehensive star charts and a carpenter's level to determine "straight up", what global positioning accuracy could I achieve?
posted to Ask Metafilter by jayCampbell at 10:30 PM on June 16, 2008 (13 comments)

I am planning a Belgian beer road trip for the fall. Any tips?
posted to Ask Metafilter by srboisvert at 7:17 AM on June 14, 2008 (21 comments)

Why are corners cut on some rolling papers?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Black_Umbrella at 11:31 PM on June 10, 2008 (7 comments)

What is it to take umbrage or offense? Is it a biological response?
posted to Ask Metafilter by fcummins at 11:39 AM on June 9, 2008 (22 comments)

What are some mindblowing scientific concepts (proven or hypothetical)?
posted to Ask Metafilter by stvspl at 7:31 AM on June 4, 2008 (56 comments)

Can I use spoiled wine as vinegar? Cooking wine?
posted to Ask Metafilter by qvantamon at 12:50 AM on June 1, 2008 (12 comments)

How To Clean Stuff. From kitchen and bath, to flooring and carpets. Indoors, outdoors, your car, dog, colon and bong. More than 800 cleaning tips in all. Submit your best ideas. Each one that gets published, the site will contribute to the Clean Water Fund.
posted to MetaFilter by netbros at 12:50 PM on May 29, 2008 (5 comments)

What happens in 50 Perry Street in the West Village of NYC?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Anonymous at 4:27 PM on May 27, 2008 (6 comments)

Tools for Life: The last [blank] you'll ever need to buy.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sirion at 12:59 PM on May 23, 2008 (50 comments)

The Rise of the Rest. Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek article about a "post-American" world.
posted to MetaFilter by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:37 PM on May 5, 2008 (42 comments)

The Ergenekon Affair: - The Killer Elite that fuels unrest in Turkey. On 22 January, Turkish police arrested 33 individuals, some connected with the military, in the largest concerted action against the "deep state" , which is heavily involved in Corporate Crime. This might resonate with some US observers.
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco at 2:00 AM on May 5, 2008 (8 comments)

how do you throw a ball?
posted to Ask Metafilter by krautland at 9:15 AM on April 29, 2008 (23 comments)

How do I find the answer to "what does &&= do in Perl?" via Google?
posted to Ask Metafilter by arrhn at 5:56 PM on April 28, 2008 (10 comments)

ArsTechnica is reporting on the practice of altering and editing web-traffic enroute from the server to your client/browser. Is your ISP, work or connection path altering your requested documents? Find out here.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 1:44 PM on April 16, 2008 (18 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)

Taking acid, pros and cons?
posted to Ask Metafilter by JamesJD at 7:43 PM on April 9, 2008 (49 comments)

I just got a cease and desist letter from a company that claims the Hollywood sign is one of it's clients. They are demanding monetary damages for a tourist photo of the sign I have on my website. Help. WTF? Etc.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Ragma at 7:29 AM on April 9, 2008 (47 comments)

Chemical Salvation? The history of LSD as a Chick tract. [Via]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 10:55 AM on April 8, 2008 (41 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)

Has anyone read 'At the same time' by Susan Sontag yet? If so, would they recommend it? I've never read anything by her and I suppose I'm looking for a way in, as it were, to her work.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Claypole at 12:42 PM on March 16, 2008 (5 comments)

Help me pick a CMS, so I can GMOFB (among other things)
posted to Ask Metafilter by heeeraldo at 7:39 PM on March 13, 2008 (15 comments)

"You want to do WHAT?" said the British Army – or as their oh-so-polite upper crust officers probably put it: "Sorry, ol’ chap, but we don’t seem to have an urgent need for magicians right at this very moment." But Jasper Maskelyne proved to be very useful. Tales of his service are a mixture of fact and legend. First link via.
posted to MetaFilter by amyms at 7:35 PM on March 1, 2008 (15 comments)

"While we are generally horrified by monstrosities in the case of human beings, we love them in fruit" - Giovanni Battista Ferrari (naturalist, "discoverer" of the blood orange and the cure for scurvy). Illustrations in Ferrari's book Hesperides sive de Malorum Aureorum cultura (1646) are based on close collaboration with Cassiano dal Pozzo and his Paper Museum, called one man's project to "commission drawings of all known antiquities, and to attempt to systematically categorize this vast repertory of visual images."
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 2:53 PM on February 27, 2008 (12 comments)

Harvard's Faculty of Arts & Sciences voted unanimously last week to mandate "Open Access" to published articles - a first at a U.S. university, though the dean will apparently grant a waiver to anyone who wants to opt out. More to follow? Peter Suber's Open Access News is tracking reactions.
posted to MetaFilter by mediareport at 8:49 AM on February 17, 2008 (24 comments)

Please help this petty agnostic acquire faith in a higher power.
posted to Ask Metafilter by mr_book at 11:24 AM on February 10, 2008 (71 comments)

Questioning Consciousness. "To understand consciousness and its evolution, we need to ask the right questions." By Nicholas Humphrey, who was previously discussed here. [Via Disinformation.]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 10:00 AM on January 30, 2008 (51 comments)

The Fail Blog. New and Classic Fail pictures.
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 1:58 PM on January 29, 2008 (104 comments)

It seems that everyone wants to post their toplists for free game recommendations at the moment. First up is Gnomes' Lair with 100 excellent free games in bloom. Can't forget 1up with 101 Free Games 2008. And last but still well worth checking out is Indiegames' (formerly Indygamer) Best Freeware Arcade Games 2007 and Best Freeware Adventure Games 2007. If that isn't enough for you, also worth taking a gander at is Javet's Freeware Game of the Day thread on Tigsource.
posted to MetaFilter by pancreas at 1:42 AM on January 20, 2008 (19 comments)

Scientists: What's the best and simplest way to organize, annotate, and take notes from scientific journal articles on a PC? I'm starting a new project and ready for a new system that doesn't require four programs or being unable to find something when I can't remember the title or author. How do you organize your references, pdfs, and notes?
posted to Ask Metafilter by JustWandering at 3:21 PM on January 18, 2008 (18 comments)

Do we have glasses yet?
posted to MetaTalk by ardgedee at 6:55 AM on December 29, 2007 (29 comments)

Our Decrepit Food Factories. Michael Pollan on what sustainability is really about. [Via Gristmill.]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 3:46 PM on December 18, 2007 (27 comments)

A little over two months ago, I proposed a Metafilter Mix CD Swap: Best of 2007 Edition. Twenty-three people decided to participate and swapped CDs containing their favorite songs from 2007. In that thread it was suggested that after the swap concluded “yall make a thread with your final tracklists and commentary, or otherwise publish them where I and others could read and DL accordingly.” Of the twenty-three participants, seventeen decided to share their tracklists, which you will find inside. Rock on.
posted to MetaTalk by ND¢ at 8:37 AM on December 14, 2007 (103 comments)

Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know.
The piper's calling you to join him.
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know,
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind...
Led Zeppelin live - December 10, 2007
posted to MetaFilter by Pastabagel at 7:27 AM on December 11, 2007 (90 comments)

Why are CPUs not getting faster any more? This plot is some data I scraped from a few sources around the web. I know it's not exhaustive, but I'm looking to pick out long-term and general trends. It's clear to me that processor clock speed has plateau'ed around roughly 4 GHz. Why?
posted to Ask Metafilter by sergeant sandwich at 4:35 PM on December 9, 2007 (30 comments)

Links to the landlord-tenant law of every state in the US from Consumerist.
posted to MetaFilter by dersins at 9:40 AM on December 5, 2007 (21 comments)

Help me compile the ultimate stoner playlist.
posted to Ask Metafilter by koenie at 6:43 PM on November 25, 2007 (72 comments)

I'd like to learn about SVM, HMM and wavelet algorithms in their usage in bioinformatics. I have a somewhat rudimentary understanding of the underlying mathematics from Wikipedia and a couple other sources, but I find that a concrete demonstration of their application fleshes it out. Are there texts, software packages (preferably free) or papers you'd recommend that: 1) includes good starter problem sets, or; 2) demonstrates how these techniques are used in research applications (beyond "we used xyz here"). Thanks!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Blazecock Pileon at 8:49 AM on November 24, 2007 (7 comments)

Should I be worried about my boyfriend and his smokin' hot new female roommate? Who has a tendency to sleep with her roommates regardless of their relationship status?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Anonymous at 7:04 AM on November 20, 2007 (93 comments)

Owen Hatherley, has three blogs where he expounds on culture and architecture from an English Leftist perspective, sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy, The Measures Taken (which has longer essays than the previous blog) and the group film blog kino fist. To give you an idea of the range of subjects he covers, here's a sampling of his blogposts: Towards a Communist Couture? Sartorial Socialism from Huey P Newton to Honecker, Zuckendes Fleischer (on pre-WWII American cartoons), Industrial Island Machine - Vorticism and the absence of an English Avant-Garde, Hurrah for the Black Box Recorder (on songwriter Luke Haines and The Daily Mail), The Children’s Book as a Revolutionary Object (with a bunch of pictures from Soviet avant-garde children's books), Architectural Drawings of the 1960s, Art is a branch of Mathematics (Taylorism and Russian SF classic We), Brechtian Productivism in an age of Mechanical Stagnation and Notes towards an attempted refutation of the 'Associational Fallacy' (on architecture). All of the blogs are heavily adorned with pretty pictures, some not safe for work.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:38 PM on November 13, 2007 (9 comments)

When Ron Paul email spam started hitting inboxes in late October, UAB Computer Forensics Directory Gary Warner published findings on the spam's textual patterns and the illicit botnet used to spread it -- findings which were picked up by media outlets and tech websites like Salon, Ars Technica, and Wired Magazine's "Threat Level" blog, the latter in a set of followup posts by writer Sarah Stirland: 1, 2, 3.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 2:16 PM on November 5, 2007 (307 comments)

Antioch College has been slowly dying for decades, and last summer the trustees decided to close it at the end of this school year. Or maybe not; they just changed their minds.
posted to MetaFilter by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:55 PM on November 3, 2007 (18 comments)

I'm a student looking to earn a bit of money on the internet. I feel that i have enough spare time and that i could use it productively.
posted to Ask Metafilter by freddymetz at 3:27 AM on October 30, 2007 (20 comments)