In a recent episode of Mad Men titled "Lady Lazarus," Pete Campbell has an existential crisis when he sees a picture of the Earth from space, but were there color pictures of the whole Earth in October 1966? First some background...
posted by quartzcity at 11:03 PM May 10 2012 - 87 comments [319 favorites]

Ten desirable skills you can teach yourself is a nice round-up of terrific guides to teaching yourself new tricks including basic repair skills, learning a language (the Foreign Services Institute has a chart of how hard various languages are to learn), teaching yourself to code, building electronics (starting with soldering), getting yourself up to speed in photography, learning an instrument, developing a basic sense of design, the inevitable cooking tips, and even some starter self-defense moves. Also, a very nicely organized list of free online college courses.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:55 AM May 2 2012 - 30 comments [297 favorites]

Free online graph paper generators: variations of squares, triangle, rhombus, and hexagonal, circular and polar, for drawing, gaming, writing, note-taking and much more. Blank Sheet Music (Flash) for all arrangements (PDF). Create and edit your own grids, probability and logarithmic graphs, petri-dish inserts and storyboards. Also, multilingual  monthly and yearly calendars. Plus, more than you ever wanted to know about ISO paper dimensions and printable paper models of polyhedra. Prev-ious-ly.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:50 PM May 28 2012 - 35 comments [270 favorites]

The Disappearing Double Chin Trick for Portrait Photography: "The key to looking good in photos? It's all about your jaw, as photographer Peter Hurley explains in this video." (YouTube, ~15 min.) Hurley's quick tips for better portraits in the NYT; Hurley's helpful headshot tips for actors. (~8 min.) Want more? FStoppers behind-the-scenes video (10 min.); an excerpt (from his DVD) of one headshot session (20 min.); a 2-hour seminar on "The Basic Headshot". An SLR Lounge interview with Hurley. (~40 min.) (main link via laughingsquid + lifehacker)
posted by flex at 6:23 PM May 22 2012 - 46 comments [232 favorites]

Undoubtedly, at some point in your life, a recipe has told you to brown or caramelize some onions for 5-10 minutes. As many frustrated cooks have found through experience, this step of the recipe is a damned lie. In fact, the now-ubiquitous suggestion of 5-10 minutes isn't even a remote approximation of the amount of time it takes to brown an onion; Alton Brown and Julia Child weigh in on the matter, suggesting that the task can take anywhere from 45 minute to an hour.
posted by schmod at 7:51 AM May 7 2012 - 202 comments [201 favorites]

America's Test Kitchen Super Quick Video Tips: "Test Kitchen wisdom distilled into eminently watchable video clips" of no more than a minute or two long, including tips for meat (how to make the most perfect bacon ever - how to quickly defrost meat - how to dry-age steak at home) to coffee (how to make pour-over coffee - how to fake a latte at home) and wine (the fastest way to chill wine) to pizza (flattening dough and baking a perfect thin-crust pizza ) and general kitchen tips (is your knife sharp enough? - do you really need to buy regular olive oil? - how to quickly soften butter and soft cheese). And there's Ask the Test Kitchen quick video tips as well (what's the best way to peel eggs? - how do I store brown sugar?).
posted by flex at 7:57 PM May 23 2012 - 72 comments [166 favorites]

"It's a Good Life" is a 1953 story by Jerome Bixby, who also wrote It! The Terror From Beyond Space, said to be the inspiration for Alien, and the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror" (the one with evil bearded Spock.) It was made into a famous Twilight Zone episode, and is generally considered among the greatest SF stories ever written. Is "It's a Good Life" about God? Communism? 1950s suburban conformity? Or just about the horror of the self-contained world it creates in its few pages and the terrible realization that it would be possible to survive inside it, for a while?
posted by escabeche at 8:46 PM May 1 2012 - 106 comments [154 favorites]

On the evening of May 8th, exactly thirty-five years ago tonight, two remarkable things happened at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. A beautiful spring afternoon suddenly turned to dropping temperatures, and by nightfall a light snow was falling on the campus; meanwhile, in a campus auditorium, Barton Hall, one of the greatest improvisational rock bands in history was performing what would later come to be known as their greatest concert.
posted by koeselitz at 6:20 PM May 9 2012 - 96 comments [129 favorites]

He uttered a sound much like a bull dog swallowing a pork chop whose dimensions it has underestimated. Random P G Wodehouse quote generator. That is all.
posted by unSane at 12:45 PM May 24 2012 - 104 comments [127 favorites]

BBC's Essential Mix has been running two hour DJ sets for nearly 20 years, usually continuous mixes of current club tracks. Nicolas Jaar took things in a decidedly different direction this week, with an eclectic mix of sound track music, jazz, hip-hop, IDM and pop music with just a sprinkling of deep house here and there. Truly essential listening.
posted by empath at 2:39 PM May 22 2012 - 60 comments [126 favorites]

Now I agree that to some people using half a kilo of chocolate to make 12 biscuits may seem excessive. But I can tell you I don't put a price on alleviating human suffering. - Nigella Lawson
posted by Trurl at 5:33 PM May 15 2012 - 126 comments [121 favorites]

Harvard and MIT today announced a new partnership for offering free online courses, called edX.
posted by -jf- at 2:19 PM May 2 2012 - 37 comments [109 favorites]

Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents. Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity. For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:13 PM May 11 2012 - 57 comments [108 favorites]

Following on the heels of the easy way to caramelize onions, there are lots of other ways to reuse common kitchen gadgets including waffle iron hash browns and crock pot souffle, cooking fish in your dishwasher, using your rice cooker for oatmeal (among many other uses), and making a cornish hen on your panini press (and more from the master of gadget reuse). And to find out what gadgets are just plain useless, you can of course ask Alton Brown.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:54 PM May 8 2012 - 126 comments [98 favorites]

37 Data-ish blogs you should know about
posted by shothotbot at 7:12 AM May 4 2012 - 10 comments [97 favorites]

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is...
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.

Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

MeFi's own John Scalzi provides an excellent, relatable metaphor for explaining the realities of race and gender without invoking the dreaded word "privilege".
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:04 AM May 15 2012 - 368 comments [95 favorites]

Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details.
posted by Artw at 3:20 PM May 24 2012 - 33 comments [91 favorites]

Name a style of music you dislike and Reddit's hivemind will try to change your mind. Or most probably it'll confirm that your musical tastes are not that easy to change.
posted by usertm at 8:16 PM May 3 2012 - 81 comments [89 favorites]

Zen Pencils is a blog with a pretty simple premise: take inspirational quotes and set them to comics. It's only a few months old but there are already a bunch of greats within: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, and more in the archives.
posted by mathowie at 10:46 AM May 2 2012 - 33 comments [88 favorites]

Star Wars: The Radio Play - Seven top voice actors table read Star Wars (YouTube) at Emerald City Comicon. "Join voice actors Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell, and Rob Paulsen as they re-create the magic of the Star Wars films, albeit in their own special way!" Characters include: Fry, Bender, Batman, Yakko, Wakko, Pinky, The Brain, Morbo, Bubbles, IronHide, Dr. Zoidberg, Jake the Dog, and many impressive celebrity impressions: Shatner as C3PO, Walken as R2D2, Tony Soprano as Greedo, Twilight Sparkle as Han Solo... (via reddit)
posted by flex at 9:00 PM May 24 2012 - 44 comments [88 favorites]