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Artisanal sriracha
Want preservative-free sriracha but don't have time to make your own? Jolene Collins makes (and sells) her own high-end artisanal sriracha. Would you like to watch?
“Our history is all fabricated.”
Mubei, or Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng, was published in 2008 and is considered to be the definitive account of the Chinese Great Famine. The book is banned in China, but has been available in Hong Kong. Counterfeit and electronic copies have allowed many Chinese to access the book. Before this November, Tombstone was available only in Chinese; however, the English translation has now been released.
"This is is not assault. These two guys squared up on each other"
On the heels of last year's pepper spray incident, Phoenix Jones has once again been filmed in an altercation on the streets of Seattle. Only this time, it occurred under the auspices of the municipal "mutual combat law," and it got violent.
The strange case of The Pigeon-hole Principle
It's Saturday; why not think about the pigeonhole principle? Here are problems and more problems and what you might call a problem with the principle itself as it is often stated.
Where do tacos come from? It's complicated.
"Unwrapping the history of Mexico's real national snack uncovers classism, dynamite, and shifting definitions of culture."
The history of tacos, the linguistic history of the word "taco", and the tenuous notion of an "authentic taco" have a whole complex of intersecting stories behind them. "The Messy Business of Tacos" is an excerpt from food historian Jeffrey Pilcher's Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food.
Scram! It’s the Fuzz!
Yesterday on AskReddit: Where/how could an aspiring pot smoker such as myself buy weed on campus/near campus? Marked as best answer: *Cough*
Graham's Number
"If you actually tried to picture Graham's number in your head, then your head would collapse into a black hole." SLYT discussion of a number beyond "stupidly, stupidly big." Previously.
The generation game
"the most embarrassing verse in the Bible" - C.S. Lewis
"this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" - 2000 years of arguments over the central verse in all prophecy. The meaning of Christianity, and hence much of our culture, hangs on the disputed meaning of a single word, "genea" or "generation."
My own personal bird alarm clock-- isn't nature beautiful?
How can I stop this stupid cardinal from repeatedly throwing himself at my bedroom window?
How large a hadron would a large hadron collider collide, if a large hadron collider could collide hadrons?
Does the Large Hadron Collider collide large hadrons, or is it a large machine that collides regular hadrons?
Significand of the figure
From the somewhat arbitrary and dimensionful to the timeless classic, one man's subjective list of notable properties of specific numbers.
Influential manifestos?
The Communist Manifesto. The 95 Theses. The Cluetrain Manifesto. Dogme 95. What are some other influential manifestos, political, religious, sociological, artistic, or otherwise, either past or present?
Bach is back
Election Day Divertimento: Mischa Maisky plays Bach Cello Suite No.1 in G (SLYT)
a challenge of squee!
Can you make it through this post without squealing?
Plus hedgehog bath time! & other moments of squee, within
In the mood for shove
The Grandmaster (Chinese language trailer)
- Wong Kar Wai returns with a martial arts film based on the life of Ip Man.
A Slower Speed of Light
A Slower Speed of Light
is a first-person game prototype, built by the MIT Game Lab, that emulates the visual effects of special relativity.
Flash Anzan
The world record for Flash Anzan was broken this year at the 2012 All Japan Soroban [abacus] Championship. Competitors in Flash Anzan sum up 15 3-digit numbers that are displayed in turn within a set time. The record is now 1.70 seconds, which means that each number is displayed for just over 0.1s. Here is a video of a "slow" 1.85 seconds seconds where the numbers are barely readable.
Vicious Old Queens
Here's a sitcom with an unusually high pedigree: Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi to play an old married couple in a new british sitcom from Itv, airing in april 2013!
Factor Conga
Animation of prime factorization of the integers based on Brent Yorgey's factorization diagrams, described here. [via Data Pointed, previously.]
Where to buy shade-grown organic coffee?
Coffee drinkers! Can you help me source shade-grown organic coffee (I'm not interested in certification, but rather in those principles) from a US roaster that will roast and ship to me within 24 hours? Your personal recommendations only, please.
My brain is resistant to learning circuit analysis. Get it? Resistant? Like a resistor? Ahhh hahaha! Help.
I'm struggling in Electric Circuits 1 - particularly with analyzing series-parallel circuits, thevenizing and superposition. Before I look for a tutor, can anyone suggest some resources to learn it myself?
"I am Jacob." "Und I am Wilhelm." "Und ve just vant to pump... (clap) ...YOU UP!"
Some are strong, and some are weak. The weak, as is well known, are easily mastered—completely regular and, frankly, pathetic. But it doesn't have to be that way! The Society for the Strengthening of Verbs labors at its noble cause of strengthening verbs and nouns (in English too, though with less Sprachgefühl), increasing the stock of causatives, and generally messing around with German (excuse me, with Neutsch).
who will design me a t-shirt?
I want to buy a shirt with a slogan on it, but no shirt with that slogan exists. Thus, I wish to cause its existence. Because my skills of an artist are meager, I don't want to do this myself on cafepress/spreadshirt/etc. Thus, I wish to ask YOU, metafilter, these questions: (a) where can I go or whom can I ask for my t-shirt-slogan-designing needs? (b) how much is this sort of thing likely to cost? (If too much, I'll just pass.)
What kind of matress do I want?
Please help me figure out what mattress I might want. I really know nothing about mattresses except I think I prefer a minimal set-up. Oh, and I'm on a budget.
The Flattest Sound
Help me decide between several studio monitors for home studio use.
Good resources for nutrition information
I feel awful. Please share your resources for reasonable, safe and sane information about nutrition.
in search of lost time book
What was this book I read? Published in last 10 years, it had something like an explanation in layman's terms of the physics of
time & why time is perceived by our consciousness as a flow.
Can't recall much more than that I'm afraid.
Long term memory loss, not sure what to do and need help
For a while now, maybe several months or so (this only proves further how terrible my memory is) I have been experiencing long term memory loss. I have great trouble remembering my childhood, places I've been to, anything at all that i learned in school a year or two ago. I always forget what I say to people even a few weeks ago. They will talk about something I said or something I did and I won't remember. When I go to bed, the hours just before become unknown to me. When I try to remember what happened in the last hours of the night it is all foggy and fragmented. This is not something I normally experience, especially all the things I've done with family and friends, I can barely remember anything and it makes me very sad.
Gross!
In the spirit of Halloween and scary movies: a remix of Mr. Sandman set to a supercut of some of the spookiest scenes from horror cinema: Full-On Lovemaking. Warning, NSFW. Further warnings for the squeamish below the jump.
Just Etchin' To Share My Work
Hailed as the Github of printed circuit board (PCB) design, circuit.io allows hobbyists and electrical engineers alike to share their designs, providing a full featured schematic & PCB editor in the browser. [via (sorry, I couldn't resist, hyuk hyuk hyuk)]
Art Book Bonanza
A few days ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art published online 368 full text titles also downloadable as pdfs. They range from major exhibition catalogues such as the 1983 Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings from the Royal Library or the 1992 Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, exhaustive lists of holdings (European Post-Medieval Tapestries and Related Hangings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volumes I and II), art books like Degas: The Artist's Mind or The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints, facsimile editions such as The Cloisters Apocalypse: An Early Fourteenth-Century Manuscript, social history titles covering subjects such as fashion or dance, technical manuals for those wanting to know how The Care and Handling of Art Objects works and much, much more.
Please help me identify where I might purchase this teapot for serving chai.
Tea detectives: I need your help. On a recent trip to India I was served chai in this magnificent tea pot (or chai pot) or perhaps it has some unknown name . . . I should have looked for identifying manufacturer marks while there, but alas too late. My google-fu has failed me so far, please help me identify a source where I might purchase said item. (Image inside).
"Don't think it hasn't been fun, because it hasn't": Scott Walker's Bish Bosch out Dec. 4
Scott Walker (not the politician) has a new record on 4AD, Bish Bosch, available December 4. The album trailer promises more of the visionary, challenging avant-rock that Walker has been creating since the first four tracks on 1978's Nite Flights, 1983's baffling Climate of Hunter, the scorched earth upsidedowntown of Tilt [nsfw, nudity] (1995) and the devastating The Drift (2006).
Recommending involuntary commitment is going too far here
I ibeg people to think twice, then think again, then think a fourth time before suggesting that an AskMe questioner get someone involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
I want to learn
"Learning to draw primarily comes from practice. Spend ten to twenty minutes every day sketching something new. Don't feel demotivated if you start off as a not-very-good artist."
Want proof? Check out the dates of this conceptart.org thread: Over the next sixty pages and seven years of drawing, you'll see how Jonathan Hardesty was working a little bit every day and developing from a beginning hobby artist to an accomplished art teacher.
Seeking awesome notepad
I'm looking for a notepad to use with a fountain pen with binding and paper similar to moleskine large (5x8) pads, but at 8x11 size. Moleskine does sell 8x11 pads but they have a less smooth paper that does not work well with fountain pens. Clairefontaine is pretty good but it has thicker, smoother paper.
Sorry I took your job.
I recently joined a company as a specialist in my field. My role is part of a new specialist team internal to the organization. My team has been tasked with creating new products as well as improved versions of old products that have been poorly received. And now the generalist I am "replacing" is acting out towards me.
Mitigating Mutational Meltdown in Mammalian Mitochondria
Mitigating Mutational Meltdown in Mammalian Mitochondria PLoS Biol 6(2): e35. [The PDF, where you can read the paper in its much prettier intended format.]
Mitochondria are remarkable microorganisms. About two billion years ago, their distant free-living ancestors hooked up with a truly foreign lineage of archaebacteria and started a genomic merger that led to the most successful coevolved mutualism on the planet: the eukaryotic cell. Along the way, evolving mitochondria lost a lot of genomic baggage, entrusted their emerging hosts with their own replication, sorted out genomic conflicts by following maternal inheritance, and have mostly abstained from sex and recombination. What mitochondria did retain was a subset of genes that encode critical components of the electron transport chain and ATP synthesis enzymes that carry out oxidative phosphorylation. Because mitochondria house the biochemical machinery that requires us to breathe oxygen, it was first assumed that mitochondrial genes would show very slow rates of molecular evolution. So it was big news almost 30 years ago when mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evolution was observed to be quite rapid [1]. How could the genes for a highly conserved and critical function sustain the consequences of high mutation pressure and permit rapid rates of nucleotide substitution between species? Without the benefits of recombination, where offspring can carry fewer mutations than either parent, mutations should accumulate in mitochondrial genomes through the random loss of less-mutated genomes, a process referred to as Muller's ratchet [2,3]. How have mitochondria avoided a mutational meltdown, or at least significant declines in fitness?Here is a jaw droppingly beautiful 3D animation of what Mitochindria look like in action.
Tsugaru sounds
You might find this an agreeable way to spend six minutes and twelve seconds: a two part introduction to the traditional music of Tsugaru, Aomori prefecture, in the far north of the main Japanese island of Honshu. The first piece is a starkly beautiful song, just voice and flute, and the second a solo piece performed on the shamisen, by the late Takahashi Chikuzan, a master of the Tsugaru style. And here you can see Chikuzan in action, rocking the three strings.
Adieu Emmanuelle
Adieu Emmanuelle
Sylvia Kristel (NSFW) has died aged 60 from Cancer.
In one Parisian theater, Emmanuelle played non-stop for over a decade.
Roger Ebert Kristel actually seems to be present in the film, and as absorbed in its revelations as we are. It's a relief, during a time of cynicism in which sex is supposed to sell anything, to find a skin flick that's a lot better than it probably had to be.
Some Pictures
Sylvia Kristel (NSFW) has died aged 60 from Cancer.
In one Parisian theater, Emmanuelle played non-stop for over a decade.
Roger Ebert Kristel actually seems to be present in the film, and as absorbed in its revelations as we are. It's a relief, during a time of cynicism in which sex is supposed to sell anything, to find a skin flick that's a lot better than it probably had to be.
Some Pictures
"A very spoilt little ele"
A blog about raising (and co-sleeping with) a baby elephant named Moses:
Rangers at Vwaza Wildlife Reserve noticed a baby elephant on his own running around frantically trying to find his mother. Moses is now living at Jumbo Foundation founder Jenny Webb's house, alongside her children and pets.
Behold, she is Grace Kelly.
Omaha schoolgirl dresses as a different historical figure every day.
"The Dundee Elementary School third-grader comes to school dressed as a different historical figure or character — Every. Single. Day. And she's done that since the second day of second grade, when this all started."
"i miss you." "UGH, really?"
How to deal with feelings of revulsion when others are expressing their need for your time and care?
Broken Ballots
Computer scientist and past president of the ACM Barbara Simons recently spent 15 minutes chatting with Charlie Rose [no transcript available yet] about the insecurity of electronic voting machines, ranging from Direct-recording Electronic systems (such as the Diebold systems which were shown to be insecure in the excellent Hacking Democracy [1h21m, also on Google Video and Hulu]) to optical scanning machines. Add into her expressed uncertainty and frustrations Virginia's wireless vote-tally reporting, Florida's problems with demonstrated voting machine hacking (and again) (not to mention a case in FL with outright wrong machine-tallied results), questions being raised in Chicago about the accuracy of electronic voting, a Utah election recount being halted after being found to be incorrect, possible appearance of impropriety about e-voting machines in Ohio, and a picture starts to be painted wherein the veracity of election outcomes is cast into doubt. Verified Voting gives information about which state uses what kind of voting, and provides a lot of numbers.
Explain it to me as if I were four years old...
How do I "start over" with my Macbook Pro without reinstalling the OS?