Gabriel’s Revelation: “This should shake our basic view of Christianity... His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come... This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning.”
posted to MetaFilter by orthogonality at 6:27 PM on July 5, 2008 (113 comments)

“Gödel put logic on the mathematical map.”
An excellent interview with Rebecca Goldstein, biographer of Kurt Godel
posted to MetaFilter by thatwhichfalls at 1:12 PM on March 19, 2005 (23 comments)

Apparently, no clothing is more exciting or controversial than an ankle-length skirt and puffed sleeves. The FLDS has launched an online store where members of the general public can purchase the dresses, long underwear, and other ranch-wear "as seen on TV."
posted to MetaFilter by cereselle at 7:51 PM on July 1, 2008 (73 comments)

[Math filter] What fascinatingly cool mathematical topics do you wish you knew about in high school?
posted to Ask Metafilter by tomcochrane at 7:33 AM on March 27, 2008 (102 comments)

My heartfelt thanks to loving MeFites: Brandon Blatcher, hadjiboy, Grammar Moses, madamjujujive, vronsky, hortense, It's Raining Florence Henderson, rtha and Hildegarde.
posted to MetaTalk by nickyskye at 5:13 PM on February 19, 2008 (133 comments)

Hervé This, dubbed the "Father of Molecular Gastronomy", is also known as the man who unboiled an egg.
posted to MetaFilter by Lush at 2:44 AM on February 16, 2008 (19 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)

Reviving an ancient practice, churches are exposing sinners and shunning those who won't repent. Unfortunately, some of the worshipers are expelled not because of willful or unrepentant sins, but for criticizing the pastor on matters of church polity. "A lot of times, flocks aren't willing to submit or be obedient to God. If somebody is not willing to be helped, they forfeit their membership."
posted to MetaFilter by mrducts at 5:19 PM on January 18, 2008 (130 comments)

A Magistrate Judge in the U.S. District Court in Vermont has ruled that a man allegedly caught with child pornography on his laptop need not reveal his PGP password (yes, authorities shut down the laptop and now can't get at the alleged porn) pursuant to the Fifth Amendment's protections against self incrimination. The decision is here[PDF]. A decent write-up (from CNET of all places) is here. This appears to be the first decision ever to directly address this issue, and many commentators had thought it would come out differently. The major question is whether revealing one's PGP key is "testimonial" or not. According to the Supreme Court, giving up fingerprints or blood samples isn't, nor is standing for a lineup, nor is handing over the key to a safe, but if it's combination safe, well maybe that's different. Never let it be said that your Fifth Amendment rights are easy.
posted to MetaFilter by The Bellman at 3:18 PM on December 15, 2007 (57 comments)

A tour around Discovery STS-120 and the International Space Station with Paolo Nespoli and Dr. Scott Parazynski. Tomorrow, Parazynski will be perched at the end of a robot arm and sensor boom assembly, stitching up a damaged solar array in what might be one of the riskiest EVAs since Skylab 2.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 8:15 PM on November 2, 2007 (29 comments)

Stereolab origins parts 1 , 2, 3, and 4
posted to MetaFilter by sleepy pete at 1:53 PM on November 2, 2007 (26 comments)

What the World Eats A photo slide show of images taken of families around the world, and the food they consume in one week. The commentary also provides the amount of money they have to spend, and what their favorite meals are.
posted to MetaFilter by Dave Faris at 11:03 AM on June 5, 2007 (117 comments)

The Marquis de Condorcet and Admiral Jean-Charles de Borda were two men of the French Enlightenment who struggled with how to design voting systems that accurately reflected voters' preferences. Condorcet favored a method that required the winner in a multiparty election to win a series of head-to-head contests, but he also discovered that his method easily led to a paradoxes that produced no clear winners. The Borda method avoids the Condorcet paradox by requiring voters to rank choices numerically in order of preference, but this method is flawed because the withdrawal of a last-place candidate can reverse the election results. Mathematicians in the 19th century attempted to design better voting systems, including Lewis Carroll, who favored an early form of proportional representation. Economist Kenneth Arrow argued that designing a perfect voting system was futile, because his "impossibility theorem" proved that it's impossible to design a non-dictatorial voting system that fulfills five basic criteria of fairness. (more inside)
posted to MetaFilter by jonp72 at 12:11 PM on August 27, 2007 (43 comments)

Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Interesting article on the work of psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. [Via Disinformation.]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 4:45 PM on August 29, 2007 (68 comments)

Rethink. The. Shark. [YouTube] The Save Our Seas Foundation [small Flash], a Swiss-based non-profit, joins the growing ranks of a world-wide movement to undo the damage caused by popular reports and gross misrepresentation by Hollywood of sharks as human-savoring sea monsters/killing machines. The fact of the matter is that the opposite is true: Current estimates give between 65 million to 165 million sharks being killed worldwide annually via unregulated catch - including 38 million to 70 million [PDF] for their fin alone, with untold numbers of butchered and bleeding-to-death sharks being cast back into the oceans to die slow and gruesome deaths. [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by humannaire at 10:33 PM on July 31, 2007 (38 comments)

American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
posted to MetaFilter by alms at 7:11 PM on July 25, 2007 (17 comments)

Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media. On this year's list : Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran, Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger, High-Tech Genocide in Congo, and many more.
posted to MetaFilter by Afroblanco at 11:29 AM on May 27, 2007 (26 comments)

So MeFi user Brian B. has chosen to use the recent Scientology thread to spread a bit of good old-fashioned antisemitism, selective quotes from the Talmud styley, explaining why, apparently, Jews believe is it ok to murder non-Jews, something my own rabbi omitted to mention at any point, starting here and continuing through the thread. As I am relatively new to posting here, I would like to ask what is the MeFi etiquette for dealing with a fellow MeFite who wants to use the site to spread racist propaganda of this sort. Because right now I am breathing very slowly and deeply and still seeing everything through an extremely red mist and I would appreciate some suggestions.
posted to MetaTalk by motty at 3:18 PM on May 13, 2007 (1723 comments)

Images of Iran. Includes pictures of art, landscapes, and architecture.
posted to MetaFilter by BuddhaInABucket at 7:22 AM on March 10, 2007 (17 comments)

A fight breaks out in this thread on the evolution of blood salinity because two people agree on the meaning of a word. Meet in here for post-post analysis, connotative denotating, preventative etiquette, homeopathic semiotics, other bullshit, brandy and cigars.
posted to MetaTalk by wobh at 2:12 AM on February 11, 2007 (171 comments)

Is there a site for people to post their screenplays and other people can comment on them?
posted to Ask Metafilter by philosophistry at 9:23 AM on February 3, 2007 (6 comments)

Dr. James B. Calvert, professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Denver, has an incredibly rich and deep personal webpage, which includes such gems as Latin for mountain men, the correct corn-hog ratio, travel by brachistochrone, anomalous sound propagation and the guns of Barisal, and about a billion other awesomely nerdy topics.
posted to MetaFilter by sergeant sandwich at 6:51 AM on January 28, 2007 (16 comments)

Lobby Card Invasion. A searchable collection of a wide variety of lobby cards for all kinds of interesting films. [via PCL LinkDump]
posted to MetaFilter by mediareport at 5:45 PM on January 27, 2007 (13 comments)

The Bohlen-Pierce scale is a musical scale which has thirteen notes spread evenly across one and a half octaves, so that the highest note is three times the frequency of the lowest. Compare with the western twelve-tone scale, which has twelve notes spread evenly across one octave, where the highest note is twice the frequency of the lowest. Both are tempered scales, and both have close approximations to 'just intonations', meaning you could play the scales by plucking a string clamped at certain ratios like 1/2, 1/4, 5/3, etc. One of the independant co-inventors of the scale, John Pierce, was also a famous electrical engineer best known for inventing the communications satellite. You can listen to Pachelbel's Canon(midi link) rewritten in this scale.
posted to MetaFilter by PercussivePaul at 12:46 PM on November 11, 2006 (46 comments)