Why Yankee Stadium sucks: "Its design is profoundly un-American. Baseball has traditionally played a unifying role. The ballpark is where people of different classes and races and religions actually mingled. The box seats, where the swells sat, weren't physically separated from the proles. The new stadium is like an architectural system of class apartheid."
posted to MetaFilter by bardic at 11:56 PM on October 30, 2009 (89 comments)

Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was a British painter.
posted to MetaFilter by fire&wings at 8:09 AM on October 30, 2009 (12 comments)

Luigi Russolo was a futurist painter, experimental composer, and instrument builder. In his 1913 manifesto "The Art of Noises" he declaimed the death of traditional Western music and foresaw the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, screeching, moaning, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments. He and his assistant Ugo Piatti built the Intonarumori to bring these new sounds - "the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags" - to life. Listen to them, then and now.
posted to MetaFilter by fire&wings at 11:32 AM on October 28, 2009 (10 comments)

Prison food is bad but it is getting better in some places, at least nutritionally. Other places, it is just getting cheaper. Who serves this stuff? Recently, Slate took a look at the Association of Correctional Food Service Affiliates Annual Conference. But there is food beyond 'prison food bad': Nutraloaf. It is so bad it is almost unconstitutionally bad.
posted to MetaFilter by wcfields at 10:48 AM on October 20, 2009 (130 comments)

Chartporn is a blog devoted to good graphics. Here are a few that stand out to me: environmental indicators, a beautiful graph of the time takes people to get to a good sized town, 2010 ski resort guide, who owns the US national debt, how to crack a master lock and - of course - a poster to hang in your time machine.
posted to MetaFilter by shothotbot at 3:31 PM on October 21, 2009 (13 comments)

A free website that helps you learn to diagnose and work through negative though patterns. Having seen so many posts on AskMeFi about depression, anxiety and related topics, it seemed almost a duty to share this. It's a free website (well, you have to register but it's anonymous and no cash changes hands) that's run by the health service here in the UK.
posted to MetaFilter by KMH at 7:53 AM on October 20, 2009 (27 comments)

Never Mind the Pity: How Killian Mansfield's Dying Dream Turned into the Making of a Miraculous Album.

While still hospitalized, Killian puts together a dream list of musicians he’d like to work with, focusing on those who spend time in the Catskills. E-mails are sent, calls made, favors asked. He wants to make the record a love letter to the idyllic, eclectic swath of America where he’s lived the past few years. As the responses come in, however, the project shapes up to be far more ambitious than anyone first imagined. Among those who sign on are Dr. John, the legendary New Orleans songwriter; Levon Helm, the drummer for the Band; Kate Pierson of the B-52s; the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian; and Todd Rundgren. Ralph agrees to put off all other work in the studio. Killian, meanwhile, compiles a list of songs that, in some way or another, are connected in his mind to integrative therapy. He sees “Scratch My Back,” by renowned bluesman Slim Harpo, as a reference to massage; “Express Yourself,” the funk classic, is chosen to give props to the Cancer Dancers, a group that reaches out to sick children through dance. “Kiss” he deems “one of the greatest love songs ever written,” love being perhaps the best integrative therapy around. Topping his “dream list” of collaborators is David Bowie, with whom Killian imagines recording a uke version of “Starman.”

posted to MetaFilter by ocherdraco at 8:19 PM on October 19, 2009 (34 comments)

Machinarium: a new game from the creators of Samorost 1 & 2.
posted to MetaFilter by brundlefly at 4:32 PM on October 17, 2009 (33 comments)

Long a mainstay prop of thrillers, the silencer (more correctly called a suppressor or moderator) presents a unique engineering challenge to the gunsmith: lower the audibility of a shot without adversely affecting performance or ballistics. Many variations have been attempted over the years, ranging from gas-seal revolvers used in NKVD assassinations (as well as more modern interpretations) to shotgun suppressors (memorably used in No Country For Old Men). Suppressors are legal in some countries that allow private firearm ownership, as well as a majority of US states, and range in size from the small to the impressive to the absolutely ridiculous.
posted to MetaFilter by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 4:02 PM on October 17, 2009 (40 comments)

How People Count Cash (via)
posted to MetaFilter by nam3d at 2:11 PM on October 14, 2009 (35 comments)

Kitchen Sink is a creepy short film made by Alison Maclean.
posted to MetaFilter by sciurus at 3:06 PM on October 13, 2009 (30 comments)

Poet Robert Pinsky presents an appreciation (and reading) of the most famous section of Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno" (1759-1763) -- the (epic) fragment devoted to the spiritual consideration of the institutionalized Smart's sole constant companion for the years of his confinement: Jeoffry (his cat).
posted to MetaFilter by kittens for breakfast at 4:11 PM on October 8, 2009 (19 comments)

The Doers Club
posted to MetaFilter by ryoshu at 5:05 PM on September 30, 2009 (14 comments)

Nearly one million people who seek help for civil legal problems, such as foreclosures and domestic violence, will be turned away this year. A new report by the Legal Services Corporation, a non-profit established by Congress in 1974 to ensure equal access to justice, finds that legal aid programs turn away one person for every client served. The full report, "Documenting the Justice Gap in America" is available here (pdf). The 2009 report is an update and expansion on a 2005 report (available here) finding that 80% of the poor lacked access to legal aid.
posted to MetaFilter by lunit at 2:16 PM on September 30, 2009 (8 comments)

A stick figure guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard. [via Bruce Schneier]
posted to MetaFilter by Electric Dragon at 9:29 AM on September 26, 2009 (21 comments)

Illustrating the cause of, and solution to, too much debt:
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 3:33 AM on September 25, 2009 (52 comments)

I'm looking for healthy, inexpensive, and convenient lunches that won't need refrigeration or microwaving during the day, but can be prepared the night before (overnight refrigeration is fine).
posted to Ask Metafilter by 6550 at 8:21 PM on September 15, 2009 (24 comments)

Brenda Kenneally documents the effects of illegal drugs in her Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. Money Power Respect and Big Trigg. NSFW [previous comment]
posted to MetaFilter by tellurian at 5:37 PM on September 15, 2009 (29 comments)

"I will not read your fucking script."
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 7:46 AM on September 11, 2009 (416 comments)

August Wind is a top-down 'free-roaming shooter' about mining valuable metals off the backs of cloudeels. It's the Bachelor Thesis project for Jeremy Spillmann at the Zürich School of the Arts. It features charming 2D graphics and a gypsy soundtrack.
posted to MetaFilter by juv3nal at 11:01 AM on August 28, 2009 (7 comments)

American Heart Association: American men should not consume more than 150 calories of sugar a day[pdf], American women 100 calories. paper[pdf]
posted to MetaFilter by bigmusic at 7:33 PM on August 25, 2009 (88 comments)

Ahmet Ertegun was profiled by George W. S. Trow in The New Yorker in a classic piece back in 1978. Ertegun was the son of the Turkish ambassador to the US and he remained behind in D.C. studying medieval philosophy at Georgetown. Instead of devoting himself to his studies he founded Atlantic Records with his friend Herb Abramson. Trow charted how Ertegun moved from tramping through muddy, Louisiana fields in search of hot new sounds to the whirl of Studio 54. Below the cut are links to the songs mentioned in the article, as best as I could find, in the order in which they appear.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 6:42 PM on August 17, 2009 (25 comments)

On August 16, 2008, a small plane carrying a young married couple and their flight instructor crashed in the Arizona desert. Doug Kinneard, the instructor, was killed in the crash; Stephanie and Christian Nielson survived, both severely burned. Prior to the crash, Stephanie's weblog, the NieNie Dialogues, "had attracted a small but ardent following, thanks to its upbeat dispatches about marriage, home décor, entertaining and the art of raising four children ages 6 and younger." After the crash, with burns on over 80% of her body, she spent two months in a medically induced coma. One month later, she was released from the hospital (link to Stephanie's sister's blog); one month after that, she began blogging again. Stephanie's posts since then have chronicled her gradual recovery, her re-integration into her family, her love and gratitude for her husband, and, finally, on the one-year anniversary of the plane crash, herself.
posted to MetaFilter by granted at 7:16 PM on August 16, 2009 (61 comments)

There are few things a man needs in life: a sense of purpose and ambition, a clean bill of health, and a fully detailed hand-sewn puppet of himself. Puppet Artists, Marnie & Bill Winn, create soft sculpted puppets that range from real people (from their photographs), to celebrities, to storybook and fantasy characters. PA also makes similarly detailed sets of 4-inch-tall finger puppets. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by netbros at 10:38 AM on August 11, 2009 (19 comments)

"Humanity craves but dreads autonomy." – Without Guilt & Justice by Walter Kaufmann argues that decidophobes employ ten strategies in order to avoid indecisive dizziness. He cites Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as an individual who demonstrated autonomy through "the most awesome courage".
posted to MetaFilter by ageispolis at 11:33 AM on August 11, 2009 (30 comments)

"This is the lock you got from your parents when you were 8." "I could chew through this lock." Hal Grades Your Bike Locking (2003). Hal (and Kerri) Grade Your Bike Locking (2008). Hal Grades Your Bike Locking 3: The Final Warning! (2009) Skip to the last one unless if you're not truly dedicated to locking minutiae. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by maudlin at 10:41 AM on July 17, 2009 (59 comments)

Build your own strandbeest (laser-cutter required) [via]
posted to MetaFilter by mhjb at 9:24 PM on July 17, 2009 (9 comments)

Social Skydiving. An introverted programmer and student decides to overcome his social inhibitions by attempting a conversation with a stranger everyday for thirty days and (obligatorily) blogging the results.
posted to MetaFilter by norabarnacl3 at 8:43 PM on July 17, 2009 (29 comments)

On 200 mg a day of baclofen, in an important meeting with several associate deans of my college and three new department chairs (I was made chair of my philosophy department just a few weeks before I tried to commit suicide), I fell asleep with my head on the conference room table and, for 40 minutes, everyone was too embarrassed to wake me. Somnolence is the most obvious and inconvenient side effect of baclofen. I reduced my dosage to 100 mg a day, and started taking it only at bedtime. A few days later, a colleague asked if I had changed my medicine. ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘Why do you ask?’ She is German, an analytic philosopher, and therefore very direct: ‘You are drooling less than you were.’

My Life as a Drunk is a searingly honest essay by novelist and philosophy professor Clancy Martin about his experiences with alcoholism, AA, valium and baclofen.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:33 AM on July 1, 2009 (46 comments)

Crabcore!
posted to MetaFilter by fungible at 9:08 PM on July 1, 2009 (60 comments)

The Guardian's How to Believe series summarizes some great philosophical works in the reversed-date format we all know and love. Giles Frasier evaluates the lasting value of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, Julian Baggini tells us what to believe about Hume's critique of religion, Mary Midgeley begrudgingly accepts the majestic contributions of Hobbes' Leviathan, and Simon Critchley throws himself into the hermeneutic circle of Heidegger's Being and Time.
posted to MetaFilter by anotherpanacea at 5:05 AM on July 1, 2009 (63 comments)

Melody Gardot was a New York fashion student, until a hit-and-run driver left her disabled and in need of therapy—musical therapy.
posted to MetaFilter by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 11:34 AM on June 29, 2009 (32 comments)

Iran's debate over theocracy took an interesting turn when Ayatollah Sistani the preeminent Shi'a cleric in Iraq made a recent visit. Sistani has stated that in order to be legitimate a ruler should win acceptance from a majority of believers. Threats Watch has analysis on this as the so called Battle for Iran shifts from the streets to the heart of power. How Iran is ruled is both different and complicated. The crisis is far from over; we are now probably at the end of the beginning. Here is a round up of analysis from dianaswednesday.
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco at 11:29 AM on June 28, 2009 (35 comments)

Shogi (将棋), or "Japanese chess," has been described here before, but it's such a fascinating game that a little more exposure can't hurt. Specifically, shogi has spawned a lot of variants, many of them astonishingly large.
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 12:30 PM on June 28, 2009 (18 comments)

Giovanni Arrighi, the renowned authority in the fields of world systems analysis and historical sociology, died earlier this month. A retrospective interview on his intellectual trajectory was published in the March/April 2009 issue of New Left Review. A major international conference was held in his honour in late May in Madrid, featuring several top scholars in an exploration of the insights of Arrighi’s work.
posted to MetaFilter by Abiezer at 1:08 AM on June 27, 2009 (6 comments)

Renowned blacksmith, Phillip Simmons, of Charleston, SC has died at age 98.
posted to MetaFilter by 1f2frfbf at 12:20 PM on June 24, 2009 (16 comments)

A truly amazing optical illusion -- despite what you first think, there are only three colors in that picture.
posted to MetaFilter by Chocolate Pickle at 4:51 PM on June 24, 2009 (111 comments)

"Exactly one hundred years ago a Russian photographer, began a remarkable project. With the blessing - and funding - of the Tsar, Nicholas II, he embarked on an extraordinary journey to capture the essence of Russia in full color photographs."
posted to MetaFilter by mudpuppie at 2:53 PM on June 18, 2009 (47 comments)

Dying of vascular cancer, all this girl wanted to do was to see Up!
posted to MetaFilter by Heliochrome85 at 6:10 PM on June 18, 2009 (132 comments)

Asian Poses - The Definitive Guide You may already know about the victory sign's popularity amongst Asians, but how about Nyan Nyan, Giant Heart, or Pigtails? Warning: cute overload.
posted to MetaFilter by so much modern time at 6:45 AM on June 11, 2009 (106 comments)

Ed Whelan, a lawyer and conservative law pundit at National Review has been making the rounds criticizing Sopreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, largely for her statements regarding judges making policy. publius, a pseudonymous legal blogger, wrote a harshly critical post of Whelan's behavior, accusing him of being a willing stooge of the right-wing - a "legal hitman"

In response Whelan outed publius, publishing his identity on the National Review website. publius added his side of the story. It's also worth reading Volokh's take on the original policy debate, which publius and Whelan each use in defense of their position
posted to MetaFilter by crayz at 8:16 AM on June 7, 2009 (117 comments)

I'm trying to MeFize my life, but I need some help. I've found color codes for the backgrounds of each subsite, but I cannot find the color code for the lovely gold-esque color that denotes a link. Help?
posted to MetaTalk by Night_owl at 11:21 AM on June 3, 2009 (56 comments)

Isaac Asimov on how to be a dirty old man.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 10:12 AM on June 3, 2009 (67 comments)

We declare the man Paul of Tarsus [non-ebonite link], the false teacher against the mark of Covenant and God's Torah, to be outside of the Way taught by Yeshua, the anointed, son of Maria and Yosef.
posted to MetaFilter by bigmusic at 12:42 AM on June 2, 2009 (183 comments)

Alan Vega live... It's not Billy Idol, Elvis, or Springsteen, its just Alan Vega and "Its called Wipeout...why don't you shut up"
posted to MetaFilter by celerystick at 10:22 PM on June 1, 2009 (34 comments)

Damien Walters combines fantastic gymnastic ability with innovative parkour techniques. His ShowReel 2009 impressed me. He and the Derby City Gym Lads just "messing around" amazed me. But he and his incredibly talented kids horsing around made me a fan and made my day.
posted to MetaFilter by lazaruslong at 1:03 PM on May 25, 2009 (48 comments)

Why Thought Suppression is Counter-Productive: How pushing a thought out of consciousness can bring it back with a vengeance. [Via]
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 8:21 PM on May 22, 2009 (39 comments)

Jeff Macke Jeff Macke clears up any confusion you may have had about the markets.
posted to MetaFilter by kingzog at 11:41 PM on May 21, 2009 (43 comments)

Man saves ducklings from ledge (video begins after short ad)
posted to MetaFilter by Anything at 2:58 PM on May 19, 2009 (60 comments)

Wolfram Alpha is about to go live. Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine which may just change the way we think about search results.
posted to MetaFilter by rollbiz at 5:49 PM on May 15, 2009 (133 comments)