MetaFilter posts by alms.
Displaying 1 through 50. Subscribe: http://www.metafilter.com/user/14751/postsrss 
Is this a selfie?
posted on Jul-22-15 at 1:51 PM
Maximize autonomy, provide varied activities, be authentic
posted on Apr-10-15 at 8:54 AM
The changing — and unchanging — structure of TV. A discussion of the television industry, its pieces and parts; how the money flows and the dependencies bind; how it changed with the rise of cable and again with the advent of streaming; and how Apple's rumored web TV service won't save consumers or make Apple much money.
posted on Mar-18-15 at 9:16 AM
"It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves." After reading Neal Cassady's 16,000 word letter, Jack Kerouac threw out his draft of On the Road and started over, in the style he's now famous for. Ginsberg took the letter and lost it. Kerouac thought it had fallen over the side of a house boat. But now the Joan Anderson letter has been found.
posted on Nov-23-14 at 9:05 PM
Frog TV
posted on Sep-22-14 at 12:40 PM
Like Hell.
posted on Aug-11-14 at 7:48 PM
This could be your last best chance to see Comet ISON as it hurtles towards the sun following a nearly 16-fold increase in brightness last week. Many astronomers are doubtful it will survive its Solar close encounter, but if it does it could end up visible during the day when it returns in December, rivaling the Great Comet of 1680.
posted on Nov-20-13 at 7:19 AM
Men and Cats.
posted on Mar-28-13 at 12:13 PM
After a century of neglect, plans are in place to rebuild the historic Longfellow Bridge, running between Boston and Cambridge. The reconstruction will take place in 6 stages, allowing two-way automobile and train traffic to continue throughout the three-year process.
posted on Mar-5-13 at 7:34 PM
Driving in Russia. (SLYT) (warning: contains footage of many many car accidents.)
posted on Dec-14-12 at 7:44 AM
Putting a law degree to good use: a Deputy Attorney General of the State of Hawaii responds to a request for Barak Obama's birth certificate from the Secretary State of Arizona. (Scroll down for the actual correspondence.)
posted on May-21-12 at 4:25 PM
It Gets Better at Brigham Young Univesity (SLYT)
posted on Apr-9-12 at 1:03 PM
Governor Christine Gregoire announces her support for marriage equality in Washington State. "And let me just tell you, I feel so much better today than I have for the last seven years." (SLYT)
posted on Jan-4-12 at 6:55 PM
Trying to decide between a Ram heavy-duty pickup truck (gross combined weight rating of 24,500 pounds) and a Delta IV Heavy rocket (maximum payload 28,650 pounds)? This article and infographic will help.
posted on Jan-20-11 at 7:58 PM
The Rufous Hummingbird measures only 4-inches, but it can pack a lot of beauty into that small package. Often described as "feisty," it weighs just a little more than a penny. With a migratory range of 1500 km, the Rufous has the longest known avian migration proportional to its size.
posted on Nov-29-10 at 6:02 AM
1. Always be calm and cool. 2. You have the right to remain silent. 3. You have the right to refuse searches... 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.
posted on Apr-21-10 at 7:00 PM
From the middle of the middle of me, to the middle of the middle of you, RIP Brother Blue, master storyteller, deep soul extraordinaire.
posted on Nov-6-09 at 7:34 PM
An Iwo Jima Relic Binds Generations. (SLNYTTJ - single-link new york times tear-jerker.)
posted on Sep-18-09 at 3:09 PM
As a boy he grew plants up his bedroom wall. Patrick Blanc's most recent vertical garden is eight stories tall.
posted on Sep-6-09 at 8:29 PM
What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love (Abraham, Martin and John) (direct mp3 link), via My Life, h4cK3D!.
posted on Aug-29-09 at 10:43 AM
What she thought she knew.
posted on Jul-12-09 at 8:28 PM
The Red House sells black and white people furniture (youtube). (via bookofjoe)
posted on May-22-09 at 1:12 PM
"President" replacing the N-Word (SLYT).
posted on Feb-19-09 at 9:15 PM
"He grew up in a ruthlessly discriminatory world -- a world in which segregation of the races was pervasive and taken for granted, where lynching was common, where the black man's inherent inferiority was proclaimed widely and wantonly. Thurgood Marshall had the capacity to imagine a radically different world, the imaginative capacity to believe that such a world was possible, the strength to sustain that image in the mind's eye and the heart's longing, and the courage and ability to make that imagined world real." Born July 2, 1908, died January 25, 1993. Had he lived, he would have been 100 years old today.
posted on Jul-2-08 at 8:52 PM
Amazing Birth (NSFW). One link youtube post, requires login for age verification, but it's worth it.
posted on Jan-20-08 at 8:50 PM
Catalog Choice: one-stop shop for opting out of catalogs you don't want to receive.
posted on Dec-29-07 at 8:06 PM
In the wake of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal, several of the paper's top reporters have left for safer ground. Among them is Tara Parker-Pope, who joined the New York Times on October 3rd. Her blog, Well, currently accounts for three of the paper's top ten e-mailed stories: in addition to number 1, Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, she has number 5, Shhh...My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me), and number 8, Drug-Resistant Staph: What You Need to Know. Touché Rupert.
posted on Oct-25-07 at 9:15 PM
American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
posted on Jul-25-07 at 7:11 PM
Mark Malkoff visits, buys, and consumes something from all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in one day. (single link non-youtube video post)
posted on Jul-19-07 at 8:12 PM
Lest we think the London Olympics are unique in their remarkable bad taste, oddee.com brings us some of the most unfortunate logos ever.
posted on Jun-8-07 at 6:56 PM
WiserEarth is a user-editable relational database that aspires to list, categorize, and describe every non profit and civil society organization on Earth. It currently includes 104,304 organizations which can be viewed by name, location, or areas of focus. You can perform complex searches. You can post (or search) jobs, events, and resources. You can discuss areas of focus, such as Urban Forestry, Evolutionary Ecology, or government oversight and reform. You can also visualize the networks connecting these areas of focus and the various organizations.
posted on May-9-07 at 7:28 PM
An average of 81 people die of gunshot wounds in the US each day. Most of them aren't who you'd expect.
posted on Apr-22-07 at 2:05 PM
How to write a spelling corrector in twenty lines of Python.
posted on Apr-10-07 at 6:45 PM
John W. Backus, creator of Fortran, RIP
posted on Mar-19-07 at 8:49 PM
Want to increase your energy efficiency and use more renewable energy? Want to install solar panels on your roof, buy a hybrid car, put in new storm windows, or make any number of other green improvements to your home or business? Want to save money doing it? DSIRE is a comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility, and federal incentives that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. Just click on your state and take it from there.
posted on Feb-23-07 at 11:21 AM
A Call to Free the Cell Phones. Law professor and Net Neutrality activist Tim Wu throws down the gauntlet to wireless industry. Building on the Carterphone ruling, he makes the argument for Wireless Net Neutrality: that consumers, not wireless carriers, should choose how they connect to the wireless networks, what devices they use, and what they do with the bandwidth.
posted on Feb-11-07 at 9:25 PM
Positive Psychology: Can psychology break away from its obsessive focus on the negative? Four decades after Abraham Maslow popularized the search for self-actualization, academics are bringing scientific vigor to our search for the fulfilled life. Evolutionary biologist Nancy Etcoff believes that our Hedonic Set Point can be raised. George Vaillant is less concerned with happiness than with the Neurobiology of Spirituality and Joy. Daniel Gilbert studies prospection, our search for happiness, and our ability to recover from tragedy. Meanwhile, Tal Ben-Shahar teaches the most popular class at Harvard, Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology (includes links to syllabus, reading list, powerpoints, and realvideo of full class lectures).
posted on Jan-31-07 at 9:43 AM
There are Klingons in the Whitehouse! Er, make that faux Klingons.
posted on Jan-16-07 at 7:20 PM
It may feel hip to go carbon neutral, but are carbon offsets real? Now you can find out by reading Clean Air Cool Planet's Consumer's Guide to Carbon Offsets which asseses 30 providers of carbon neutrality and sets out criteria for understanding which are doing the best to help you save the planet. The consumer's guide reads more like an enviro geeks master's thesis, but it quickly becomes clear that the core of the matter is additionality, i.e. to what extent will this investment create emission reductions in addition to those that would have occured in its absence. If this is all too much for you and just want to cut to chase and save the world, you should just take the pledge at Treasure Our Planet. It's pretty simple stuff.
posted on Dec-18-06 at 7:50 PM
The incidence of breast cancer in the U.S. fell by 15% between August 2002 and December 2003. Why? Because starting in the summer of 2002 millions of menopausal women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy. How many women would be alive if they'd never started?
posted on Dec-14-06 at 6:02 PM
Suddenly, you feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. According to Wired, the Active Denial System has been certified for use in Iraq.
posted on Dec-8-06 at 5:20 PM
Maybe it's not really news because no one was killed, but you'd think that more people would notice when a massive explosion in suburban Boston totals 60 buildings, knocks out windows for a half mile around, knocks people out of bed in the middle of the night, and registers on the Richter scale 30 miles away.
posted on Nov-22-06 at 7:41 PM
Everything you need to know about investing in 129 words.
posted on Oct-15-06 at 7:05 PM
"Animals are on the run. Plants are migrating too. The Earth's creatures, save for one species, do not have thermostats in their living rooms that they can adjust for an optimum environment. Animals and plants are adapted to specific climate zones, and they can survive only when they are in those zones...Gardeners and bird watchers are well aware of this, and their handbooks contain maps of the zones in which a tree or flower can survive and the range of each bird species. Those maps will have to be redrawn." Jim Hansen on the global impact of global warming. Meanwhile, the National Association of manufacturers is happy to tell you everything you really need to know on the subject. (More from NAM here.)
posted on Aug-11-06 at 1:47 PM
President Bush on the state of the US Economy, including a discussion of the national debt and rising global interest rates, from today's news conference.
posted on Mar-21-06 at 6:59 PM
That scientist NASA tried to silence? He finally did the radio interview last week.
posted on Feb-6-06 at 5:38 PM
Answer threesimple tricky questions and predict your sensitivity to risk. via Washington Monthly
posted on Jan-27-06 at 12:02 PM
As of today, world oil reserves are five percent lower than previously thought. Well informed early toppers like Jeremy Leggett (previously discussed here) won't be surprised by the news, though they may be disappointed that it didn't make bigger headlines.
posted on Jan-20-06 at 2:05 PM
'Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a ‘state of public emergency’) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension.’ (Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.)
posted on Nov-9-05 at 8:57 PM
Abortion in America is a blogger's thoughtful summary of a report (pdf) by the Third Way Institute about who is having abortions in America, how many they're having, and why. (via sully.)
posted on Nov-1-05 at 3:06 PM
posted on Jul-22-15 at 1:51 PM
Maximize autonomy, provide varied activities, be authentic
posted on Apr-10-15 at 8:54 AM
The changing — and unchanging — structure of TV. A discussion of the television industry, its pieces and parts; how the money flows and the dependencies bind; how it changed with the rise of cable and again with the advent of streaming; and how Apple's rumored web TV service won't save consumers or make Apple much money.
posted on Mar-18-15 at 9:16 AM
"It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves." After reading Neal Cassady's 16,000 word letter, Jack Kerouac threw out his draft of On the Road and started over, in the style he's now famous for. Ginsberg took the letter and lost it. Kerouac thought it had fallen over the side of a house boat. But now the Joan Anderson letter has been found.
posted on Nov-23-14 at 9:05 PM
Frog TV
posted on Sep-22-14 at 12:40 PM
Like Hell.
posted on Aug-11-14 at 7:48 PM
This could be your last best chance to see Comet ISON as it hurtles towards the sun following a nearly 16-fold increase in brightness last week. Many astronomers are doubtful it will survive its Solar close encounter, but if it does it could end up visible during the day when it returns in December, rivaling the Great Comet of 1680.
posted on Nov-20-13 at 7:19 AM
Men and Cats.
posted on Mar-28-13 at 12:13 PM
After a century of neglect, plans are in place to rebuild the historic Longfellow Bridge, running between Boston and Cambridge. The reconstruction will take place in 6 stages, allowing two-way automobile and train traffic to continue throughout the three-year process.
posted on Mar-5-13 at 7:34 PM
Driving in Russia. (SLYT) (warning: contains footage of many many car accidents.)
posted on Dec-14-12 at 7:44 AM
Putting a law degree to good use: a Deputy Attorney General of the State of Hawaii responds to a request for Barak Obama's birth certificate from the Secretary State of Arizona. (Scroll down for the actual correspondence.)
posted on May-21-12 at 4:25 PM
It Gets Better at Brigham Young Univesity (SLYT)
posted on Apr-9-12 at 1:03 PM
Governor Christine Gregoire announces her support for marriage equality in Washington State. "And let me just tell you, I feel so much better today than I have for the last seven years." (SLYT)
posted on Jan-4-12 at 6:55 PM
Trying to decide between a Ram heavy-duty pickup truck (gross combined weight rating of 24,500 pounds) and a Delta IV Heavy rocket (maximum payload 28,650 pounds)? This article and infographic will help.
posted on Jan-20-11 at 7:58 PM
The Rufous Hummingbird measures only 4-inches, but it can pack a lot of beauty into that small package. Often described as "feisty," it weighs just a little more than a penny. With a migratory range of 1500 km, the Rufous has the longest known avian migration proportional to its size.
posted on Nov-29-10 at 6:02 AM
1. Always be calm and cool. 2. You have the right to remain silent. 3. You have the right to refuse searches... 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.
posted on Apr-21-10 at 7:00 PM
From the middle of the middle of me, to the middle of the middle of you, RIP Brother Blue, master storyteller, deep soul extraordinaire.
posted on Nov-6-09 at 7:34 PM
An Iwo Jima Relic Binds Generations. (SLNYTTJ - single-link new york times tear-jerker.)
posted on Sep-18-09 at 3:09 PM
As a boy he grew plants up his bedroom wall. Patrick Blanc's most recent vertical garden is eight stories tall.
posted on Sep-6-09 at 8:29 PM
What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love (Abraham, Martin and John) (direct mp3 link), via My Life, h4cK3D!.
posted on Aug-29-09 at 10:43 AM
What she thought she knew.
posted on Jul-12-09 at 8:28 PM
The Red House sells black and white people furniture (youtube). (via bookofjoe)
posted on May-22-09 at 1:12 PM
"President" replacing the N-Word (SLYT).
posted on Feb-19-09 at 9:15 PM
"He grew up in a ruthlessly discriminatory world -- a world in which segregation of the races was pervasive and taken for granted, where lynching was common, where the black man's inherent inferiority was proclaimed widely and wantonly. Thurgood Marshall had the capacity to imagine a radically different world, the imaginative capacity to believe that such a world was possible, the strength to sustain that image in the mind's eye and the heart's longing, and the courage and ability to make that imagined world real." Born July 2, 1908, died January 25, 1993. Had he lived, he would have been 100 years old today.
posted on Jul-2-08 at 8:52 PM
Amazing Birth (NSFW). One link youtube post, requires login for age verification, but it's worth it.
posted on Jan-20-08 at 8:50 PM
Catalog Choice: one-stop shop for opting out of catalogs you don't want to receive.
posted on Dec-29-07 at 8:06 PM
In the wake of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal, several of the paper's top reporters have left for safer ground. Among them is Tara Parker-Pope, who joined the New York Times on October 3rd. Her blog, Well, currently accounts for three of the paper's top ten e-mailed stories: in addition to number 1, Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, she has number 5, Shhh...My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me), and number 8, Drug-Resistant Staph: What You Need to Know. Touché Rupert.
posted on Oct-25-07 at 9:15 PM
American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
posted on Jul-25-07 at 7:11 PM
Mark Malkoff visits, buys, and consumes something from all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in one day. (single link non-youtube video post)
posted on Jul-19-07 at 8:12 PM
Lest we think the London Olympics are unique in their remarkable bad taste, oddee.com brings us some of the most unfortunate logos ever.
posted on Jun-8-07 at 6:56 PM
WiserEarth is a user-editable relational database that aspires to list, categorize, and describe every non profit and civil society organization on Earth. It currently includes 104,304 organizations which can be viewed by name, location, or areas of focus. You can perform complex searches. You can post (or search) jobs, events, and resources. You can discuss areas of focus, such as Urban Forestry, Evolutionary Ecology, or government oversight and reform. You can also visualize the networks connecting these areas of focus and the various organizations.
posted on May-9-07 at 7:28 PM
An average of 81 people die of gunshot wounds in the US each day. Most of them aren't who you'd expect.
posted on Apr-22-07 at 2:05 PM
How to write a spelling corrector in twenty lines of Python.
posted on Apr-10-07 at 6:45 PM
John W. Backus, creator of Fortran, RIP
posted on Mar-19-07 at 8:49 PM
Want to increase your energy efficiency and use more renewable energy? Want to install solar panels on your roof, buy a hybrid car, put in new storm windows, or make any number of other green improvements to your home or business? Want to save money doing it? DSIRE is a comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility, and federal incentives that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. Just click on your state and take it from there.
posted on Feb-23-07 at 11:21 AM
A Call to Free the Cell Phones. Law professor and Net Neutrality activist Tim Wu throws down the gauntlet to wireless industry. Building on the Carterphone ruling, he makes the argument for Wireless Net Neutrality: that consumers, not wireless carriers, should choose how they connect to the wireless networks, what devices they use, and what they do with the bandwidth.
posted on Feb-11-07 at 9:25 PM
Positive Psychology: Can psychology break away from its obsessive focus on the negative? Four decades after Abraham Maslow popularized the search for self-actualization, academics are bringing scientific vigor to our search for the fulfilled life. Evolutionary biologist Nancy Etcoff believes that our Hedonic Set Point can be raised. George Vaillant is less concerned with happiness than with the Neurobiology of Spirituality and Joy. Daniel Gilbert studies prospection, our search for happiness, and our ability to recover from tragedy. Meanwhile, Tal Ben-Shahar teaches the most popular class at Harvard, Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology (includes links to syllabus, reading list, powerpoints, and realvideo of full class lectures).
posted on Jan-31-07 at 9:43 AM
There are Klingons in the Whitehouse! Er, make that faux Klingons.
posted on Jan-16-07 at 7:20 PM
It may feel hip to go carbon neutral, but are carbon offsets real? Now you can find out by reading Clean Air Cool Planet's Consumer's Guide to Carbon Offsets which asseses 30 providers of carbon neutrality and sets out criteria for understanding which are doing the best to help you save the planet. The consumer's guide reads more like an enviro geeks master's thesis, but it quickly becomes clear that the core of the matter is additionality, i.e. to what extent will this investment create emission reductions in addition to those that would have occured in its absence. If this is all too much for you and just want to cut to chase and save the world, you should just take the pledge at Treasure Our Planet. It's pretty simple stuff.
posted on Dec-18-06 at 7:50 PM
The incidence of breast cancer in the U.S. fell by 15% between August 2002 and December 2003. Why? Because starting in the summer of 2002 millions of menopausal women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy. How many women would be alive if they'd never started?
posted on Dec-14-06 at 6:02 PM
Suddenly, you feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. According to Wired, the Active Denial System has been certified for use in Iraq.
posted on Dec-8-06 at 5:20 PM
Maybe it's not really news because no one was killed, but you'd think that more people would notice when a massive explosion in suburban Boston totals 60 buildings, knocks out windows for a half mile around, knocks people out of bed in the middle of the night, and registers on the Richter scale 30 miles away.
posted on Nov-22-06 at 7:41 PM
Everything you need to know about investing in 129 words.
posted on Oct-15-06 at 7:05 PM
"Animals are on the run. Plants are migrating too. The Earth's creatures, save for one species, do not have thermostats in their living rooms that they can adjust for an optimum environment. Animals and plants are adapted to specific climate zones, and they can survive only when they are in those zones...Gardeners and bird watchers are well aware of this, and their handbooks contain maps of the zones in which a tree or flower can survive and the range of each bird species. Those maps will have to be redrawn." Jim Hansen on the global impact of global warming. Meanwhile, the National Association of manufacturers is happy to tell you everything you really need to know on the subject. (More from NAM here.)
posted on Aug-11-06 at 1:47 PM
President Bush on the state of the US Economy, including a discussion of the national debt and rising global interest rates, from today's news conference.
posted on Mar-21-06 at 6:59 PM
That scientist NASA tried to silence? He finally did the radio interview last week.
posted on Feb-6-06 at 5:38 PM
Answer three
posted on Jan-27-06 at 12:02 PM
As of today, world oil reserves are five percent lower than previously thought. Well informed early toppers like Jeremy Leggett (previously discussed here) won't be surprised by the news, though they may be disappointed that it didn't make bigger headlines.
posted on Jan-20-06 at 2:05 PM
'Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a ‘state of public emergency’) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension.’ (Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.)
posted on Nov-9-05 at 8:57 PM
Abortion in America is a blogger's thoughtful summary of a report (pdf) by the Third Way Institute about who is having abortions in America, how many they're having, and why. (via sully.)
posted on Nov-1-05 at 3:06 PM