Displaying post 1 to 50 of 2300
In a single 1931
document, electrical engineer
Alan Blumlein patented stereo records, stereo movie sountracks and surround sound. His equipment was used to make some of the
first stereo recordings at EMI's Abbey Road studios - several decades before the technology came into popular use. Blumlein went on to pioneer
405 line TV (the first wholly electronic format which won out over John Logie Baird's rival system) and to produce the equipment that made the
first outside TV broadcast possible. At the outbreak of World War 2 he was a key architect of the secret
H2S radar project. Unfortunately he was killed in a plane crash while testing the technology and the whole incident was kept secret. Hence he remains an obscure figure despite his achievements. A
recent BBC Radio 4 program contains a lot of the archive stereo footage and tells his story.
posted to MetaFilter by rongorongo
at 9:10 AM on August 7, 2008
(5 comments)
India is big.
You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Fortunately, somebody has rendered the whole sub-continent down to a series of maps. Want to know
who speaks what, where, or maybe the
AIDS prevalence by state? Or how about the
history of India (Flash). Or (if you're on vacation) a map of the
average rainfall and
some travel maps might help. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Indian political, climate, historical, and cultural maps to check out.
posted to MetaFilter by Panjandrum
at 8:52 PM on August 6, 2008
(14 comments)
Men in Women-in-Prison [Films]
"This dynamic — of eroticized male exclusion from, and investment in, female relationships — was the defining feature of a handful of women-in-prison films from the 1970s. In these movies, female sisterhood, generally in the face of oppression, is itself fetishized — feminism is turned into a kind of masochistic male wet dream. How this unlikely cathexis occurred, and how it functioned, is the subject of this essay."
posted to MetaFilter by carsonb
at 12:08 AM on August 7, 2008
(23 comments)
The Tinkering School.
"A 'real project' is where you make a thing that isn't a pretend something else. If the kids want to make a boat, that's fine, but we're going to take it down to the harbor and put it in the ocean."
[via NPR, no transcript yet]
posted to MetaFilter by fantabulous timewaster
at 10:28 AM on August 5, 2008
(13 comments)
He wrote the childrens book
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a travel guide called
Thrilling Cities, a study of
Diamond Smugglers... and created
James Bond.
Ian Fleming, who died of a heart attack at 56, was born
a century ago this past May. He led a fascinating life. Born the
son of an MP, educated at
Eton and
Sandhurst, he served in the
Black Watch, and then in
Naval Intelligence. His time in naval intelligence
led to his most famous creation, and the writing of
Casino Royale.
An immediate best seller in the US when President Kennedy listed 1957's
From Russia With Love as one of his favorite books, Fleming
eventually wrote twelve novels and nine short stories
featuring 007, leading to
one of the most successful movies empires of all time. Fleming returned the favor, suggesting to Kennedy over a dinner ways in which
the CIA could work to discredit Fidel Castro. Not only a prolific writer, Fleming was also a talented bibliophile and collector,
amassing a collection of books
now held by the
Lilly Library at
Indiana University, Bloomington.
posted to MetaFilter by NotMyselfRightNow
at 7:49 AM on August 6, 2008
(36 comments)
Realist Fiction by
George Saunders:
"Last night, in a biker bar, I overheard two men discussing what distinguished “realist” fiction from more “experimental” work. Although one shouldn’t generalize, I never expect bikers to be literary critics. Well, these were literary critics, and good ones—in fact, they’d bought their “hogs” with royalties from a book they’d co-written,
Feminine Desire In Jane Austen."
Experimental Fiction by
George Saunders:
"Experimental fiction is the art of telling a story in which certain aspects of reality have been exaggerated or distorted in such a way as to put the reader off the story and make him go watch a television show."
posted to MetaFilter by plexi
at 8:46 AM on August 5, 2008
(37 comments)
The Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration
has drawings of uniforms and regimental regalia from all over the world. Assembled by one of these great, eccentric collectors of the late 19th Century, Dr. H. J. Vinkhuijzen, a Dutch medical doctor who started out as an army physician and eventually rose to the position of official court physician to Prince Alexander of Netherlands. He pulled plates out of books, colored in black and white drawings and painted his own watercolor illustrations. His collection includes pictures of the soldiers of
many different nations and eras, from military superpowers like the
Roman Empire,
France and
Great Britain, to lesser known, but no less formidable forces, like
Byzantium and
Persia and even taking in such minnows as
Luxembourg,
Monaco and Montenegro. Due to Vinkhuijzen's unusual classification system it can be hard to find some of the more interesting images, such as pictures of
Etruscan cavalry,
Spanish military musicians and
1830's Belgian ambulance.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 10:05 AM on August 4, 2008
(11 comments)
Library of Dust depicts individual copper canisters, each containing the cremated remains of patient from a state-run psychiatric hospital. The patients died at the hospital between 1883 (the year the facility opened, when it was called the Oregon State Insane Asylum) and the 1970’s; their bodies have remained unclaimed by their families.
posted to MetaFilter by oneirodynia
at 10:39 PM on August 4, 2008
(16 comments)
Frederick...made linguistic experiments on the vile bodies of hapless infants, "bidding foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no wise to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments."
posted to MetaFilter by voltairemodern
at 8:23 AM on August 4, 2008
(27 comments)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
has died. (
BBC ) The great author and opponent of totalitarianism lived to see the end of Communism in the Soviet Union and almost everywhere else. He survived WWII as a commander in the Soviet army before being put into gulags where he spent 20 years. He went on to write the
Gulag Archipelago and win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
posted to MetaFilter by sien
at 3:18 PM on August 3, 2008
(75 comments)
How easy is it to learn to pay the banjo?
posted to Ask Metafilter by A189Nut
at 2:48 PM on August 1, 2006
(27 comments)
Scrabble anxiety
posted to Ask Metafilter by A189Nut
at 4:58 PM on July 20, 2008
(65 comments)
JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives
is a collection of photographs, diaries, letters, camp newsletters, personal histories and a wealth of other material relating to the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The site is divided into four categories:
People, the men, women, and children who were incarcerated.
Places, prewar neighborhoods and wartime camps.
Daily Life, eating, sleeping, working, playing, and going to school.
Personal Experiences, letters, diaries, art and other writing by internees. Among the photographers hired by the War Relocation Authority was famed dust bowl photographer Dorothea Lange.
855 of her photos are on the site. Even though she was working as a propagandist many of her images captures a starker reality, for instance
this picture of a glum little girl.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 8:53 AM on August 3, 2008
(10 comments)
Christian Sex Retailing.
Christian Sex Toy Retailing There's a new sexual revolution happening, and the people driving it are not exactly a bunch of free-love libertines. Many people probably think of evangelical Christians as being more preoccupied with denying the pleasures of the flesh. Christianity has always had a lot to say about sexuality. But attitudes are changing and new approaches to Christian sex are emerging. Dagmar Herzog was interviewed today on CBC's The Current (second segment, requires Flash Player), and, who says in
a recent interview with Salon:
For liberals, sex has become the problem that has no name; one simply does not hear liberals articulate a defense of sexual rights. Instead, what we have witnessed is a coalescing of conservative evangelical and mainstream secular perspectives on sex. The conversation on sex in America -- when sex is discussed in a serious and earnest way at all -- tends largely to adopt the parameters set by the Religious Right.
Herzog's new book. A collection of print interviews with Herzog can be found
here.
posted to MetaFilter by KokuRyu
at 4:22 PM on August 1, 2008
(44 comments)
Fortunes are rarely won by playing it safe. On the contrary, the biggest fortunes have been won by those willing to step outside the box and change the way the game is played. Following are
twenty-five business innovators of the past, present, and future whose stories are different in many respects, but all point to the same truth: Ingenuity, improvisation, and daring are more important than following the rules (even though you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law once in a while). Via Fortune.
posted to MetaFilter by infini
at 1:40 AM on August 2, 2008
(31 comments)
Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here
"Over the past few days we’ve been transitioning Delicious over to our new platform, quietly starting with RSS feeds and APIs. Today we’re taking the final step and flipping the switch on the new web site".
posted to MetaFilter by tellurian
at 6:13 PM on July 31, 2008
(84 comments)
Zeno of Elea, Socrates and Jesus, Weev said, are his all-time favorite trolls. He also identifies with Coyote and Loki, the trickster gods, and especially with Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. “Loki was a hacker. The other gods feared him, but they needed his tools.” The New York Times investigates the ever-evolving, LOL-corrupting, epileptic-seizuring, iPod-leaving-on-gravestone-ing phenomenon of major Internet trolling, featuring interviews with Jason Fortuny, Weev, and a gentleman named Christopher Poole (
prev).
posted to MetaFilter by Sticherbeast
at 9:44 PM on July 31, 2008
(94 comments)
In 1975,
Roger Glover of
Deep Purple staged
a rock opera based on
William Roscoe's poem
"The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast". (The book had been reprinted the previous year, with illustrations by popular record sleeve artist
Alan Aldridge.)
The performance -- which featured such talent as Judi Dench, Vincent Price, Twiggy, and Ronnie James Dio (!) -- and subsequent recording met with enough interest that British animation company
Halas &
Batchelor had planned a feature-length animated adaptation. While the full animated movie never materialized, a
Max Fleischer-influenced three-minute short accompanying the opening song,
"Love is All", was broadcast frequently around the world. (Stateside viewers might remember it from such disparate programs as
"The Great Space Coaster",
"Pinwheel" and, uh,
"Night Flight".) [
Previously on MeFi: Alan Aldridge.]
posted to MetaFilter by pxe2000
at 5:15 AM on August 1, 2008
(8 comments)
Women Explorers and Travellers of Asia and the Middle East - In an age where women struggled for basic human rights, these individuals were literal trailblazers. Leaving their homelands for varying motivations (but often due to dissatisfaction with their social lot in life), they devoted their lives to "explore these
antique lands before they are irretrievably caught up in the cacaphonic whirl of the modern world."
posted to MetaFilter by ikahime
at 8:41 AM on August 1, 2008
(10 comments)
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