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Tiled Background Designer
is just a small, useful tool to create patterns. Experiment with pictures, colors, textures and transparency to get best result.
posted to MetaFilter by Dave Faris
at 1:38 AM on July 17, 2008
(37 comments)
In Parentheses
is a collection of many ancient, medieval and classic texts from all over the world, many of whom are hard to find anywhere, let alone on the internet. There are translations from
Greek,
Old Norse,
Medieval Irish,
Japanese,
Incan,
Old French,
Medieval Latin and many more! As well as all that they have
papers in medieval studies and
vaguely decadent and
orientalism series. Adding to that there's a
linguistics section with wordlists and language flash cards in languages such as
Icelandic,
Quechua,
Basque,
Classical Armenian and a whole bunch more.
[flashcard links go to pdf files]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 12:19 PM on July 10, 2008
(18 comments)
"What we've invented is a way to induce charges on the wall using a power supply located on the robot....The robot carries with it positive and negative charges, and when the walls sees these charges it automatically generates the opposite charge. The robot can then clamp onto those charges." Scientists have
robots climbing the walls.
posted to MetaFilter by Kronos_to_Earth
at 4:43 AM on July 8, 2008
(29 comments)
In a 2001 University of Houston study of 153 survivors of nearly lethal attempts between the ages of 13 and 34, only 13 percent reported having contemplated their act for eight hours or longer. To the contrary, 70 percent set the interval between deciding to kill themselves and acting at less than an hour, including an astonishing 24 percent who pegged the interval at less than five minutes.
A surprising
article about the nature, methods, and deterrence of suicide.
posted to MetaFilter by Who_Am_I
at 11:41 AM on July 7, 2008
(68 comments)
I first encountered the concept of
forest gardening in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
Herland (1915)
[relevant part pages 79-80]; the fictional race of women in her book have completely remade the forests to contain only beneficial and food-bearing plants, which live harmoniously together and replenish the soil naturally. This is
actually being done, less than a hundred years later.
More;
similar,
similar.
posted to MetaFilter by fiercecupcake
at 9:32 AM on July 7, 2008
(25 comments)
Remember
John Burstein? Since 1975, he has been educating children (including many of us!) about the human body and the importance of health and nutrition in a rather unique way. Like many superheroes before him, he dons a form-fitting suit and transforms into a shocking alter ego... the living anatomical reference,
Slim Goodbody!
posted to MetaFilter by Mael Oui
at 1:48 AM on July 6, 2008
(30 comments)
Terence Gray was an English born aristocrat of an Irish family. He tried his hand at Egyptology, drama and theater, but gave it up to keep the family vineyards in the Monaco. He owned the
winner of the 1957 Ascot Gold cup.
He also became a mystic.
posted to MetaFilter by fcummins
at 12:58 PM on July 1, 2008
(9 comments)
Women's rights: What's in it for men?
- "Women in rich countries largely enjoy gender equality while those in poor countries suffer substantial discrimination. This column proposes an explanation for the relationship between economic development and female empowerment that emphasises changes in the incentives males face rather than shifts in moral sentiment. Technological change that raises demand for human capital may give men a stake in women's rights."
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless
at 7:48 AM on June 29, 2008
(29 comments)
In an intriguing blog entry
the mysterious jasminembla muses about the man in the moon, and his relationship with thorns, linking finally to a most remarkable collection of sourced and footnoted Victorian
Moon Lore authored by a Rev. Timothy Harley, 1885. In the "
Man in the Moon" section, we learn that, indeed, the man in the moon has been traditionally linked with thorns, variously being exiled to the moon for stealing a bundle of brambles, strewing brambles on the path to church to hinder the pious, or cutting wood on the Sabbath, among other infractions - and that this folktale has existed since at least 1157, when an English abbot asks, in Latin, "
Do you not know what the people call the rustic in the moon who carries the thorns? Whence one vulgarly speaking says,
"The Rustic in the moon /
Whose burden weighs him down /
This changeless truth reveals /
He profits not who steals."
Furthermore, no less a personage than Shakespeare has mentioned the thorny situation of the poor man in the moon... and most interesting, perhaps, the rather convincing theory that the bramble-burdened man in the moon may very well be an older "Jack" of Jack and Jill fame, who did not steal, but was stolen by the moon, along with his sister.
posted to MetaFilter by taz
at 5:46 AM on June 26, 2008
(19 comments)
Headed to Austin TX with teenage sister...Suggestions for fun that doesn't include booze and/or 18+ shows?
posted to Ask Metafilter by muxnaw
at 9:53 AM on June 18, 2008
(19 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)
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
(99 comments)
Here's your chance to bake bread like a master.
Cookingbread.com. The detailed step-by-step instructions include photos to help guide you through each bread recipe, from start to finish. You will find many different kinds of recipes for bread machines, or family classics such as
cheese bread and
banana bread. I just made some
cracked wheat this past weekend. Also includes
printable recipe cards. So get baking.
posted to MetaFilter by netbros
at 5:41 AM on June 4, 2008
(15 comments)
ESPN's Paul Jackson tells the tale of
10-Cent Beer Night and the ensuing riot in Cleveland on June 4, 1974.
posted to MetaFilter by togdon
at 12:25 PM on June 4, 2008
(28 comments)
By its own admission
the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001.
even 200 years ago, there was a general insistence that prisoners be charged with and convicted of a crime before they could be condemned to the lower decks of an aging naval ship.
(
prison hulks previously ).
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco
at 3:33 AM on June 4, 2008
(43 comments)
"This might be a weird request, but I just want to cuddle,"
Nevada Sagebrush columnist Jordan Butler decided to do something for his last column (before graduating college) that he hadn't done before. He decided to solicit a brothel. Here's the catch: he wasn't interested in paying for sex. He just wanted something to write about for his last column. The result is half after school special and half Twilight Zone episode, but it's all funny.
posted to MetaFilter by ZachsMind
at 8:52 PM on May 23, 2008
(55 comments)
I want to love
the Table of Gods, a list of "4862 gods, godesses,
deities, avatars, incarnations, angels, demons and various spirits, and 520 aliases, mispronounciations and
generally confusing name variations." There isn't much more than a list of names with short descriptions, but you
can search by
keyword (say,
chthonic), by
origin (e.g.,
Canaan), and by
name. The information and presentation are not in the same league as
Encyclopedia Mythica, or even
Godchecker, but it does list
Hanuman.
The listings invite you to add keywords and comments, but unfortunately the feature is broken. You can add either, but they are appended unmoderated to the record for "A", which is consequently
a mess. If I've been a good boy this year, this feature will work and be gleaning meaningful user contributions on Christmas morning, and I will get to love the Table of Gods.
posted to MetaFilter by owhydididoit
at 7:43 PM on December 20, 2006
(15 comments)
In a pilot project with Canada's National Film Board, Katerina Cizek is Filmmaker-in-Residence at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital
(Flash site with videos). She directed
The Interventionists: Chronicles of a Mental Health Crisis Team, a film about a unique crisis team in downtown Toronto. A mental health nurse and a police officer ride the streets of the inner city together in an unmarked police car, responding to 911 calls involving "emotionally disturbed persons." The team is a partnership between St. Michael's Hospital and two downtown police divisions. Their mandate is to de-escalate crises and avoid unnecessary arrests and emergency room visits by providing referrals, services and resources within a patient's own community.
posted to MetaFilter by heatherann
at 1:35 PM on May 9, 2008
(12 comments)
Take my arm, my love. Don't write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being "friends." A thoughtful post on "self-editing," homophobia, and the day-to-day experience of many LGBT folks, at
Shakesville (aka Shakespeare's Sister), by
Teh Portly Dyke.
posted to MetaFilter by fiercecupcake
at 7:40 AM on May 6, 2008
(179 comments)
The other day I happened to come upon a music video that is just so grooving, so human and so
real, that, well, it
moved me, darling.
Just check it out. After watching the clip, I learned that these guys are mostly disabled by polio (that's why several of them are in those rather unusual wheelchairs) and that they were living on the grounds of the Kinshasa zoo, which is where the clip was filmed. Then I learned that last year they were seeking to bring
a lawsuit against the UN. Then I found
some other clips. And now I am a
major fan of
Staff Benda Bilili.
posted to MetaFilter by flapjax at midnite
at 3:30 AM on April 26, 2008
(47 comments)
On Having A Black Name
"I am a white woman, a blond, blue-eyed white woman, and I have a first name strongly associated with black women. My mother, a southerner by birth, never stopped telling me she made the name up. The fact that she truly could not remember ever hearing the name before, is a testament to the strength of southern segregation. It is likely she heard it once or twice, and simply forgot it until later. And so, even at 50 years old, I have a name that makes people do a double-take. "You're _____?" is something I have heard all my life. "Yes, that would be me," is what I say, as they look confused. I have upset the social order. Names, I have learned, are a big, big part of it."
posted to MetaFilter by nooneyouknow
at 9:06 AM on April 24, 2008
(260 comments)
