MetaFilter posts by namespan.
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And they're like, it's better than yours. The automotive arms race continues -- what's bigger than a Hummer or Ford F350? The Navistar CXT. Or is this all about hauling power for people who don't just want to buy a Kenworth?
posted on Oct-23-04 at 6:55 PM
WTF, Mate? An easy lesson on nuclear proliferation (Audio nsfw) [via whattheheck.com]
posted on Oct-8-04 at 12:51 AM
Why no Pliestocene Park? "Everyone seems to assume that the primeval condition of the Great Plains was bison and prairie dog, with the occasional pronghorn herd, but no other large mammals. Yet for 1.65 million years, North America teemed with large animals: the 'pleistocene megafauna.' Then as the last ice age was ending and the first humans were coming over from Siberia, most of them died out." Sad -- doesn't everybody want a pony?
posted on Sep-9-04 at 12:06 AM
California's Tsunami Risk. " In the open ocean, tsunami waves travel at speeds of up to 600 miles per hour... As the waves enter shallow water, they may rise rapidly. Typical peak wave heights from large tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean over the last 80 years have been between 21 and 45 feet at the shoreline... If a large earthquake displaces the sea floor near the coast, the first waves may reach the shore minutes after the ground stops shaking. There is no time for authorities to issue a warning." 40 years ago this weekend the Alaskan Prince William Sound earthquake and its ensuing tsunami killed over 120 people -- 12 as far South as California. Nothing compared to the thousands hit in the 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami disaster, but still it's worth keeping an eye on California's tsunami risks. Or the entire West Coast's activity.
posted on Mar-28-04 at 10:10 PM
A place where light rain makes the news. An Arab country where, according to the CIA World Factbook, 50% of the population is actually of South Asian descent. And a place that could really use a better flash intro.
posted on Jan-28-04 at 9:24 PM
Interview with Profiler Roy Hazelwood. Enough to make you feel a little less safer, and to marvel at both the "the infinity of darkness," the depths of potential monstrosity, and the ability of some to understand broken minds and bent hearts. "'If I were to give you each a test, could you take it the way you think this offender would take it?' We said yes.... Both of us came out as paranoid schizophrenics. The psychiatrist was astounded. We sat there and tried to take the test as we thought the guy we had in mind would take the test. "
posted on Aug-2-03 at 2:32 PM
Judge Finds Documentation Connecting Iraq with Al-Qaeda? Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system. And in an article from the Tennessean, he claims to have found a newspaper published in the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper, run by Uday Hussein, in which was a "List of Honor" containing the names of 600 men in high esteem by the former ruling regime. Among these was, apparently, ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.''
posted on Jul-11-03 at 3:19 PM
Creatures from Waaay Down Under. Things you won't find in your average bathtub. Things that did not appear in the Little Mermaid. And believe it or not, the web design is pretty good, and it's a public institution. Strange indeed. [via slashdot]
posted on Jul-7-03 at 11:13 AM
Independence Days Worldwide. Happy Independence Week, Bahamas! or What else happens in July? There's a lot of independence holidays, as there was a fair bit of colonialism to get out from under during the 19th/20th centuries. And most countries in general have important victories and events to celebrate... many of us are familiar with Bastille Day and Cinco de Mayo, for example. The dates aren't so much important as the realization of the stories and struggles that have gone on and still go on around the world, but the dates are a place to start.
posted on Jul-4-03 at 11:45 PM
A solid sense of identity. A small but interesting essay that is ostensibly about blogging, but instead really about the core problem of personal identity. "Maintaining a successful blog requires a solid sense of identity. ...A blog's stickiness, or that quality that turns us into its regular readers -- comes not so much from the blog's informative value in content or through the network of links it provides as it comes from the blogger's authority... Teen blogs are boring because what permeates them mostly is a heightened sense of anxiety about one's place in the scheme of things. Having lost that sense of invincibility that comes from being a young adult, the over-forty is thrown in that same breath-choking cold current of doubts that he or she navigated as a teen. That is why a middle-aged woman's blog description of getting a haircut sounds the same as a teenage girl's account of the same event."
posted on Apr-2-03 at 5:07 PM
People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die. If you've been hanging around the net for a while, chances are you've seen this in someone's sig. In fact, it's so frequently quoted that it makes finding Jim Davidson's original post in alt.folklore.urban just a bit difficult to find -- but it's worth looking for! It sits in the middle of an interesting debate about how poisonous plutonium is, spurred on by the rumor(?) that it's one of the "most toxic poison[s] known to man." Deadly poison, Los Alamos Scientists, levitating hemispheres of metal... all it really needs to round it out is true love.
posted on Mar-30-03 at 9:17 PM
Pigs Fly. Orwell is in the house in downtown Beijing: a theatrical production of one of his most famous works opened last November. It escaped the censors -- actually getting the approval stamp in three days -- though it was altered somewhat by director Shang Chengjun. [more inside]
posted on Mar-10-03 at 3:57 PM
"This is getting ridiculous!" complained one veteran programmer on USENET a bit over two years ago... after being out of the workforce for a while, he was having trouble getting back in the door. While there's no way to put yourself in his prospective employers shoes and make a real judgement, it looks like he had the chops. Wonder how he's doing today...general conditions don't seem good, and I know several people with the same problem. The longer a period of unemployment goes, the worse your resume looks, and the harder it is to get a job. How do you break the cycle (from either a policy or a jobseeker standpoint)?
posted on Jan-4-03 at 1:37 PM
Who is Hans Blix? A 74 year old Swede with a long career in international law, he was recently featured as Time person of the week and is, obviously, something of a key figure in U.S.-U.N.-Iraq interaction. You can also examine his brief U.N. Bio (linked in title), a BBC Profile for an introduction, and a number of his past speeches and remarks (link to another CV on that site, too). Is he the man for the inspection job, or a a man who has and will again be fooled by Hussein?
posted on Nov-15-02 at 11:20 AM
Our Bastard(s) Somoza Speaking of brutal Nicaraguan dicatator Somoza, Harry Truman is supposed to have said "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard." Looking for a source for this quote, I discovered it's attributed to Truman, FDR, and Nixon. This is such a broad chronological range that I figured I could narrow it down by finding out when Somza lived. No such luck: according to two biography*/histories, there were actuall three Somozas: Anastasio Somoza Garcia, who fathered Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and the Somoza dynasty that ruled Nicaragua from the mid 1930s through the late 1970s. All three of those presidents could well have made the comment. But I'm still stuck for a source...
* This link (the first history/bio) requires anyone clicking from an outside page to go through an extra "Welcome Mat" page on the first time through. Annoying, but no registration required.
posted on Nov-11-02 at 10:58 AM
We don't need more voters, we need better voters "Far from urging everyone to vote, perhaps the media might better urge those who are going to vote to first make sure that they have heard both sides of the issues at stake, instead of just voting by habit, whim, or according to the image or rhetoric of the candidates. A case could be made that those who have not informed themselves on the issues have a patriotic duty to stay away from the polls on Election Day, rather than mess with something that is too important to be decided by ignorance or prejudice. " Is Tom's suggestion an attack on a civic institution/central tenet of democracy, or a needed improvement? I share the opinion that uninformed voter turnout is a greater problem than low voter turnout, and I know I'm not alone, but I prefer the approach of those who promote use of emerging information resources, especially the incredible Project Vote Smart, rather than simply complaining. Why don't Sowell -- or for that matter, the rest of traditional media -- push these organizations? What can we do about it -- other than posting on Metafilter?
posted on Nov-4-02 at 1:01 PM
Blogger Hacked A slashdot reader reported (on slashdot) that "Blogger has been severely hacked into, with users' passwords and e-mail addresses being replaced with 'hacx0redbyme' or 'hax0redbyme.' " Perhaps the most amusing comment in the ensuing discussion says "I'm glad I don't use a blog... I wouldn't want some l337 hax0r coming in and reading everything about my personal life!" But levity aside, is there some serious implication that a widely used web service is hacked? Is Pyra safe to use?
posted on Oct-25-02 at 10:57 AM
Platforms A summary of Democratic, Republican, and other party platforms over the last 150 years. Prettied up, current versions can be found for Republican,Democrat,Green, and Libertarian parties (and probably others!). Do you read such things? Do you find that when you read them, your perception of the party matches with the text of the platform? Do you find yourself persuaded by the text of any platform? Provoked to thoughts on policy?
posted on Oct-16-02 at 2:51 PM
posted on Oct-23-04 at 6:55 PM
WTF, Mate? An easy lesson on nuclear proliferation (Audio nsfw) [via whattheheck.com]
posted on Oct-8-04 at 12:51 AM
Why no Pliestocene Park? "Everyone seems to assume that the primeval condition of the Great Plains was bison and prairie dog, with the occasional pronghorn herd, but no other large mammals. Yet for 1.65 million years, North America teemed with large animals: the 'pleistocene megafauna.' Then as the last ice age was ending and the first humans were coming over from Siberia, most of them died out." Sad -- doesn't everybody want a pony?
posted on Sep-9-04 at 12:06 AM
California's Tsunami Risk. " In the open ocean, tsunami waves travel at speeds of up to 600 miles per hour... As the waves enter shallow water, they may rise rapidly. Typical peak wave heights from large tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean over the last 80 years have been between 21 and 45 feet at the shoreline... If a large earthquake displaces the sea floor near the coast, the first waves may reach the shore minutes after the ground stops shaking. There is no time for authorities to issue a warning." 40 years ago this weekend the Alaskan Prince William Sound earthquake and its ensuing tsunami killed over 120 people -- 12 as far South as California. Nothing compared to the thousands hit in the 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami disaster, but still it's worth keeping an eye on California's tsunami risks. Or the entire West Coast's activity.
posted on Mar-28-04 at 10:10 PM
A place where light rain makes the news. An Arab country where, according to the CIA World Factbook, 50% of the population is actually of South Asian descent. And a place that could really use a better flash intro.
posted on Jan-28-04 at 9:24 PM
Interview with Profiler Roy Hazelwood. Enough to make you feel a little less safer, and to marvel at both the "the infinity of darkness," the depths of potential monstrosity, and the ability of some to understand broken minds and bent hearts. "'If I were to give you each a test, could you take it the way you think this offender would take it?' We said yes.... Both of us came out as paranoid schizophrenics. The psychiatrist was astounded. We sat there and tried to take the test as we thought the guy we had in mind would take the test. "
posted on Aug-2-03 at 2:32 PM
Judge Finds Documentation Connecting Iraq with Al-Qaeda? Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system. And in an article from the Tennessean, he claims to have found a newspaper published in the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper, run by Uday Hussein, in which was a "List of Honor" containing the names of 600 men in high esteem by the former ruling regime. Among these was, apparently, ''Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.''
posted on Jul-11-03 at 3:19 PM
Creatures from Waaay Down Under. Things you won't find in your average bathtub. Things that did not appear in the Little Mermaid. And believe it or not, the web design is pretty good, and it's a public institution. Strange indeed. [via slashdot]
posted on Jul-7-03 at 11:13 AM
Independence Days Worldwide. Happy Independence Week, Bahamas! or What else happens in July? There's a lot of independence holidays, as there was a fair bit of colonialism to get out from under during the 19th/20th centuries. And most countries in general have important victories and events to celebrate... many of us are familiar with Bastille Day and Cinco de Mayo, for example. The dates aren't so much important as the realization of the stories and struggles that have gone on and still go on around the world, but the dates are a place to start.
posted on Jul-4-03 at 11:45 PM
A solid sense of identity. A small but interesting essay that is ostensibly about blogging, but instead really about the core problem of personal identity. "Maintaining a successful blog requires a solid sense of identity. ...A blog's stickiness, or that quality that turns us into its regular readers -- comes not so much from the blog's informative value in content or through the network of links it provides as it comes from the blogger's authority... Teen blogs are boring because what permeates them mostly is a heightened sense of anxiety about one's place in the scheme of things. Having lost that sense of invincibility that comes from being a young adult, the over-forty is thrown in that same breath-choking cold current of doubts that he or she navigated as a teen. That is why a middle-aged woman's blog description of getting a haircut sounds the same as a teenage girl's account of the same event."
posted on Apr-2-03 at 5:07 PM
People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die. If you've been hanging around the net for a while, chances are you've seen this in someone's sig. In fact, it's so frequently quoted that it makes finding Jim Davidson's original post in alt.folklore.urban just a bit difficult to find -- but it's worth looking for! It sits in the middle of an interesting debate about how poisonous plutonium is, spurred on by the rumor(?) that it's one of the "most toxic poison[s] known to man." Deadly poison, Los Alamos Scientists, levitating hemispheres of metal... all it really needs to round it out is true love.
posted on Mar-30-03 at 9:17 PM
Pigs Fly. Orwell is in the house in downtown Beijing: a theatrical production of one of his most famous works opened last November. It escaped the censors -- actually getting the approval stamp in three days -- though it was altered somewhat by director Shang Chengjun. [more inside]
posted on Mar-10-03 at 3:57 PM
"This is getting ridiculous!" complained one veteran programmer on USENET a bit over two years ago... after being out of the workforce for a while, he was having trouble getting back in the door. While there's no way to put yourself in his prospective employers shoes and make a real judgement, it looks like he had the chops. Wonder how he's doing today...general conditions don't seem good, and I know several people with the same problem. The longer a period of unemployment goes, the worse your resume looks, and the harder it is to get a job. How do you break the cycle (from either a policy or a jobseeker standpoint)?
posted on Jan-4-03 at 1:37 PM
Who is Hans Blix? A 74 year old Swede with a long career in international law, he was recently featured as Time person of the week and is, obviously, something of a key figure in U.S.-U.N.-Iraq interaction. You can also examine his brief U.N. Bio (linked in title), a BBC Profile for an introduction, and a number of his past speeches and remarks (link to another CV on that site, too). Is he the man for the inspection job, or a a man who has and will again be fooled by Hussein?
posted on Nov-15-02 at 11:20 AM
Our Bastard(s) Somoza Speaking of brutal Nicaraguan dicatator Somoza, Harry Truman is supposed to have said "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard." Looking for a source for this quote, I discovered it's attributed to Truman, FDR, and Nixon. This is such a broad chronological range that I figured I could narrow it down by finding out when Somza lived. No such luck: according to two biography*/histories, there were actuall three Somozas: Anastasio Somoza Garcia, who fathered Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and the Somoza dynasty that ruled Nicaragua from the mid 1930s through the late 1970s. All three of those presidents could well have made the comment. But I'm still stuck for a source...
* This link (the first history/bio) requires anyone clicking from an outside page to go through an extra "Welcome Mat" page on the first time through. Annoying, but no registration required.
posted on Nov-11-02 at 10:58 AM
We don't need more voters, we need better voters "Far from urging everyone to vote, perhaps the media might better urge those who are going to vote to first make sure that they have heard both sides of the issues at stake, instead of just voting by habit, whim, or according to the image or rhetoric of the candidates. A case could be made that those who have not informed themselves on the issues have a patriotic duty to stay away from the polls on Election Day, rather than mess with something that is too important to be decided by ignorance or prejudice. " Is Tom's suggestion an attack on a civic institution/central tenet of democracy, or a needed improvement? I share the opinion that uninformed voter turnout is a greater problem than low voter turnout, and I know I'm not alone, but I prefer the approach of those who promote use of emerging information resources, especially the incredible Project Vote Smart, rather than simply complaining. Why don't Sowell -- or for that matter, the rest of traditional media -- push these organizations? What can we do about it -- other than posting on Metafilter?
posted on Nov-4-02 at 1:01 PM
Blogger Hacked A slashdot reader reported (on slashdot) that "Blogger has been severely hacked into, with users' passwords and e-mail addresses being replaced with 'hacx0redbyme' or 'hax0redbyme.' " Perhaps the most amusing comment in the ensuing discussion says "I'm glad I don't use a blog... I wouldn't want some l337 hax0r coming in and reading everything about my personal life!" But levity aside, is there some serious implication that a widely used web service is hacked? Is Pyra safe to use?
posted on Oct-25-02 at 10:57 AM
Platforms A summary of Democratic, Republican, and other party platforms over the last 150 years. Prettied up, current versions can be found for Republican,Democrat,Green, and Libertarian parties (and probably others!). Do you read such things? Do you find that when you read them, your perception of the party matches with the text of the platform? Do you find yourself persuaded by the text of any platform? Provoked to thoughts on policy?
posted on Oct-16-02 at 2:51 PM