MetaFilter posts by talos.
Displaying 1 through 50. Subscribe: http://www.metafilter.com/user/2808/postsrss 
"Yannis Behrakis , one of Reuters' most decorated and best-loved photographers, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 58".
A Pulitzer prize winner with the Reuters photography team, Behrakis was a veteran war reporter in Sierra Leone where he almost got killed (youtube). He won the Pulitzer for his work covering the 2015 European migrant crisis. In the past decade he also bore witness to his native Greece's deep crisis, covering the surge of homelessness, its rapid deindustrialization, the social upheaval, and many aspects of the migrant crisis.
In this interview he described how he tried to be "The voice of [the refugees] and the eyes of those on the other side"
posted on Mar-3-19 at 2:59 AM
On September 18, 2013, in a working class neighborhood of Piraeus, Greece, Golden Dawn nazis, attacked and stabbed to death 34 year old rapper Pavlos Fyssas [previously]. His murder precipitated, albeit belatedly, the seminal and ongoing trial of the organization. A guilty verdict on charges of forming a criminal organization would lead to Golden Dawn being outlawed in Greece.
At the trial, which has been dragging on for 4 years now, the prosecution invited Forensic Architecture, a "multidisciplinary research group based at the University of London that uses architectural techniques and technologies to investigate cases of state violence and violations of human rights around the world", to sort through the evidence and recreate what happened the night of Pavlos Fyssas murder. The findings where damning for both the police and the Golden Dawn thugs. The police is shown to have lied about the time of their arrival at the crime scene and about their proximity to the crime, standing next to Fyssas as he was being stabbed. The Golden Dawn members' mobile phone calls corroborate that there was a chain of command that ordered the killing.
Forensic Architecture's video on the murder summarizing their analysis, presented to the court along with their full report, is a masterpiece of analytic exposition and impressively recreates the events surrounding the murder based on available data sources.
posted on Oct-6-18 at 8:54 AM
The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction - by Shuja Haider. A story of: Time travel, a future superintelligence as unavoidably but passionlessly vengeful God, neoreactionaries as the alt-right's intellectual avant-garde, neoreactionaries planning White Flight to Mars, Google's Deep Dream and "the Cathedral", libertarian transhumanism and libertarian fascism, Lyotardian far-rightists, Deleuzian Thatcherism and accelerationism, the Dark Enlightment, superrich supercapitalist super-villains, Silicon Valley hyperracism, Noys, Lovecraft, AI as class disparity amplifier.And it isn't fiction.
posted on Feb-20-18 at 4:07 PM
Starting last month, the French daily Le Monde has been publishing an economic thriller in series, called Terminus pour L' Euro (in French) (The End of the Line for the Euro). The series is behind a subscription wall, but Presseurope has started republishing the series in ten languages, including English... The story narrates the events of summer 2012, as Germany decides to leave the Euro and what follows. It has caused a stir in France, as rumors about the true identity of the author (who signs the series as Philae, after an island in Egypt apparently) continue to circulate, and some think he is the French agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire. Some say that the rumors that led to the precipitous fall in French banks' stock a few days ago, were due to misunderstanding the fictional character of the story... Real rumors that Germany threatened to leave the Euro last year, were dismissed by its Chancellor, yet as the eurozone crisis develops, no one is certain any more that the series is simply fiction and not a possible, real scenario, advocated by many...
posted on Aug-13-11 at 8:09 AM
Wedded by the revolution...
"Dare to struggle, dare to win ... as married gays. After raiding a few Army camps, two communist guerrillas hid in a forest gorge and fell in love. Deeply. That was three years ago. On Friday, under a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.
They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army (NPA) who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)."
Some reactions. A wedding picture.
posted on Feb-22-05 at 9:42 AM
Vladimir Putin, wanted, alive.
Chechen Rebels responding to the 10 million dollar bounty placed by the Russian secret services on rebel leaders Basayev and Mashkadov, have upped the ante offering 20 million dollars for the detention of "the war criminal Putin"...
This is the sort of war crimes they are referring to.
posted on Sep-14-04 at 3:57 AM
The Valley of the Shadow.
Description: "The Valley of the Shadow is a digital archive of primary sources that document the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War...
...The Valley of the Shadow is different than many other history websites. It is more like a library than a single book. There is no "one" story in the Valley Project. Rather, what you'll find are thousands of letters and diaries, census and government records, newspapers and speeches, all of which record different aspects of daily life in these two counties at the time of the Civil War. As you explore the extensive archive and you'll find that you can flip through a Valley resident's Civil War diary, read what the county newspapers reported about the battle of Gettysburg, or even search the census records to see how much the average citizen owned in 1860 or 1870..."
A very interesting way of presenting history and an impressive testament to the web's potential as an educational tool.
posted on Mar-6-04 at 7:45 AM
US elections: the world-wide vote.
"In November 2004, U.S. citizens will elect their new President. The outcome of these elections directly influences the lives of citizens around the world. Theworldvotes.org seeks to apply new technologies to provide citizens around the world with a voice in matters that affects us all. Ensure that your voice is heard by registering electronically and add momentum to a worldwide drive to establish global democracy."
Noble sentiments, but isn't this an admission of submission to the empire? A surrender of sovereignty? A call for a new Caracalla's edict? Is this a good idea both for the US and the "rest of the world"?
posted on Jan-30-04 at 11:13 AM
Mapping History: The Darkwing Atlas Project "The Project has been designed to provide interactive and animated representations of fundamental historical problems and/or illustrations of historical events, developments, and dynamics." All sorts of simple historical animated and static maps as well as photos and images from Greek and Phoenician expansions, to the spread of Slavery in the American South 1790-1860 and christian graffiti from the Roman catacombs.
posted on Dec-4-03 at 9:07 AM
...“To be honest, I get sick every time I tell someone I am from Mostar [in Bosnia] and they ask me whether I am from the east or west side of the city (the city is divided into the Bosniak east side and the Croat west side),” said Nino Raspudic. “That is one of the reasons for building a statue of Bruce Lee. We are hoping that someone in the future will say: “I knew Mostar. That is the city with the Bruce Lee statue. If we succeed in that, then I can retire.”
posted on Sep-15-03 at 5:30 PM
Apronyms: Apt Phrases, Redolent Of Novel Yet Meaningful Sense.
"An apronym is a special kind of acronym where the initials spell out a word or phrase relevant to the expanded version". This in contrast to you run-of the-mill acronyms. Yes, the link might come in handy for the perpetuation of this, already legendary, thread.
posted on Jul-31-03 at 5:59 AM
Every worker is entitled to a pension.
Kerala elephants working for the local government will enjoy a number of work benefits according to the Indian state's decision on a set of rules for their upkeeping. West Bengal seems to have taken similar measures some years ago.
posted on Jul-28-03 at 7:28 AM
Nation Master An amazing resource that displays all sorts of comparative national statistics on practically everything, and with an option of selecting any region / list of countries you choose. It plugs itself as "The world's biggest general stat site" (which might or might not be true I don't know), and it has a wealth of data on economics, sports, population, geography and a dozen more categories. Some interesting statistics; Top 100 in Olympic medals per Capita. Top 100 Murders with firearms (per capita). Top 100 Military Expenditures as a percent of GDP . Top 100 Net migration rate .
A heaven for data freaks.
posted on Jul-10-03 at 4:56 AM
A gallery of obscure patents.
Bird diapers, a motorized ice cream cone and an apparatus for simulating a "high five" are among the treasures unearthed by delphion's gallery of incredible but real US patents.
See also their gallery of historic patents, featuring, among others, the patent for the hypodermic syringe (1843).
posted on Jun-27-03 at 7:59 AM
The Imam who cursed the Pope and Kofi Annan. "It's hard to summarize a story as complicated as this in a few lines: Fatwas, Mormons, ufologists, secret services, the Supreme Solomonic Order of the Princes of Shekal, coups in Somalia, nuns, a mysterious murder, an African dictator and a "God intoxicated" Communist dictator."
A gem of nefarious weirdness, so bizarre it has to be real. Very annoying pop-ups but still worth it IMHO.
posted on Jun-1-03 at 9:57 AM
The Hidden Dangers of Letter Campaigns.
A series of email petitions have been circulating over the past year, to prevent the execution of Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old woman found guilty by an islamic court in Northern Nigeria of adultery. Even signature-collecting websites have been set up by local Amnesty chapters (see for example this Spanish A.I. site). But this isn't helping - and is indeed damaging the cause of Amina Lawal, according to BAOBAB, a Nigerian group supporting Women's Human Rights:
...It turns out that letters and petitions, even the few that aren't just chain-letter foolishness, may do more harm than good and that the situation in Nigeria is at once far more complex and less dire than it seems from the outside. There are ways to help, starting with understanding what is really going on...
Good intentions, it seems, aren't good enough if one has little knowledge of what one is campaigning against or for.
posted on May-16-03 at 8:13 AM
Grub: The seti@home of search engines?
According to the New Scientist: "A distributed computing project called Grub, which harnesses individual users' spare computing power and internet bandwidth, began cataloguing millions of web pages this week."
Grub has thus launched before HyperBee, a similar distributed search project.
This link was previously posted on MeFi when it was still in the conceptual stage.
The project is being run by LookSmart (along with its own open directory project called zeal) but as the New Scientist article notes: "Website information collected by Grub is already being fed into one of LookSmart's search services, called WiseNut. But the collected data are also freely accessible to the public, so they can be incorporated into any web site or desktop application."
Possible Google competition or doomed from the start?
posted on Apr-21-03 at 5:44 AM
The Iraq debate - from Red Pepper.
"...The writers of these articles are some of the many people who have struggled against Saddam Hussein, who have been driven into exile by his brutal regime, who keep their links with dissidents in Iraq, who do not believe that the US military can liberate them, and who are arguing for diplomatic and humanitarian support..."
posted on Mar-23-03 at 4:27 PM
"Over 5000 years ago, a man climbed up to the icy heights of the Schnalstal glacier and died. He was found by accident in 1991, with his clothes and equipment, mummified and frozen: an archaeological sensation and a unique snapshot of a Copper Age man. For several years highly specialised research teams examined the mummy and the articles found with it. They have been on exhibit since March 1998 at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology." Apparently he suffered of arthritis and heart disease.
via baloney.com
posted on Mar-6-03 at 5:58 AM
Did you know what's behind that "new car smell"?
These apparently.
"What's that Stuff" explores the chemistry of everyday stuff.
posted on Feb-20-03 at 6:19 AM
Genomic Art. This lies somewhere on an interface between science and art that most never suspected existed. Check out the gallery.
Oh, and don't forget to visit the Randolph Y. Teasely Hospital - Dwayne Medical Center and it's current projects: male pregnancy, designer babies and Clyven, the world's first talking transgenic mouse.
posted on Jan-22-03 at 8:38 AM
Euro diffusion: "On January 2002 twelve European countries [plus San Marino, the Vatican and Monaco] have welcomed the euro as their new coin. The euro coins have a national side, which is different for every country... So there are fifteen different euro coins that can be used in every one of those 15 countries. Therefore, unlike in the past, the coins will not be collected and brought back to their home country. The coins will slowly but surely be spreaded over the 15 countries. This is the diffusion of the euro, the euro diffusion[.pdf file]." A statistician's playground, this unique historical opportunity, is leading to interesting collaborative internet projects
posted on Dec-19-02 at 7:21 AM
Heritage of humanity This month's Monde Diplomatique features an essay by one of the 2002 Nobel Prize winners in Physiology and Medicine, John Sulston. Sulston "writes about his battle to make the entire sequence of the genome public despite all the commercial attempts to patent it". His basic point is that: "If we wish to move forward with [Human Genome Sequencing], which will undoubtedly translate into medical advances, the basic data must be freely available for everyone to interpret, change and share, as in the open-source software movement." The public human genome database Sulston refers to, can be found on the Sanger Institute's website.
posted on Dec-13-02 at 1:08 AM
Teaching physics with superheroes...
...and comics in general. Comics are used to teach math, in "The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick". While this flash animation addresses the physics of everyday life. Interesting ways to present basic and sometimes not so basic [~400k jpg] topics in science.
posted on Nov-8-02 at 6:30 AM
The joke has become reality.
Albanian and Russian observers sent to monitor American elections... [via Cursor]
posted on Nov-1-02 at 3:13 AM
The Anthrax investigator.
Ed Lake, a retired computer specialist, has decided to solve the Anthrax attacks mystery. So he has created a very comprehensive site about the facts of the case. He has a theory about who did it. Very impressive data gathering for a single individual.
posted on Oct-24-02 at 8:43 AM
"A play? In Gaza? About feminism? With Palestinian actresses? Unbelievable!"
posted on Oct-23-02 at 6:52 AM
Timehunt. Time, philosophy, alchemy, tons of interactive puzzles and great flash. I can't tell you more, I'm still figuring it out.
posted on Oct-16-02 at 8:11 AM
A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. It was supposed to evolve into an oscillator (through a genetic algorithm). This is astonishing and shows the power of evolutionary algorithms... [via missing matter]
posted on Oct-7-02 at 8:38 AM
"Fundamentalism is the Enemy of All Civilized Humanity". The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization fighting against the Taliban for the past ten years, commemorates Sept. 11 and describes Afghanistan one year later. What they describe ain't pretty: "With their second occupation of Kabul, the 'Northern Alliance' thwarted any hopes for a radical, meaningful change. They are themselves now the source and root of insecurity, the disgraceful police atmosphere of the Loya Jirga, rampant terrorism, gagging of democracy, atrocious violations of human rights, mounting pauperization, prostitution and corruption, the flourishing of poppy cultivation, failure of beginning to reconstruct, and a host of further unlisted evils, too many to enumerate."
posted on Sep-21-02 at 5:18 PM
This war plan forces me to stand by the dictator who tortured me. Iraqi writer, an exiled dissident and victim of Hussein's regime speaks against war and sanctions: "You are "either with us or against us", they say. As an Iraqi that means choosing between war and the dictator. To be on the side of the oppressed does not mean we are unaware of the complexity of the situation. To campaign for the lifting of sanctions, for an end to the paralysing bombardment and daily threat of war is to stand by the Iraqi people; it is that policy which will help them to change the oppressive regime. Any change should be initiated from within Iraq, not imposed by Bush or Blair."
posted on Sep-18-02 at 7:34 AM
Spectacular atmospheric optics.
Beautiful pictures of atmospheric phenomena, common and rare. You can also run your own halo simulations if you like... (Found in New Scientist's Weblinks, an extensive, annotated collection of all kinds of science links from all over the web.)
posted on Sep-12-02 at 5:23 AM
Of GM food, the PR industry and Tony Blair. George Monbiot exposes the questionable methods (fake public interest groups) of the PR industry in defense of big Agribusiness.
posted on May-29-02 at 4:26 AM
Very high level of PCBs in whale raises alarms. "The orca found dead on the Olympic Peninsula earlier this year carried a level of contaminants that was among the highest -- if not the highest -- ever measured in killer whales, laboratory tests show". If that is the case with free ranging whales then I shudder to think what similar measurements on city dwelling humans will reveal. Does anyone know of similar contaminant research on humans? (via Baloney.com)
posted on May-13-02 at 7:51 AM
The Salem Witch Trials archive.
"The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription project is an electronic collection of primary source materials, including court records, contemporary books, maps, images, and literary works, relating to the Salem witch trials of 1692."
posted on May-4-02 at 2:50 AM
Every sport is an extreme sport in Afghanistan.
Sorry couldn't help posting this surreal news tidbit: "A friendly basketball game between U.S. and Afghan teams turned violent, with one American player kicked in the head and two Afghan spectators shot in the leg, peacekeepers and witnesses said Friday."
posted on Apr-29-02 at 4:25 AM
Chief of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons sacked, after intense US pressure. The whole thing was predicted a few days ago by Georges Monbiot. It seems that the succesful head of the OPCW wanted to restart UN chemical weapons inspections in Iraq. Washington has other plans in mind.
posted on Apr-24-02 at 3:53 AM
An Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition. "For the founders of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition, there is a possible way out of the present murderous impasse in the region: a return to the agreement drawn up at Taba in January 2001. Two of those who drew it up, one Israeli and one Palestinian, propose an alternative way forward."
posted on Apr-16-02 at 5:59 AM
Who really killed Daniel Pearl? According to Tariq Ali, Pakistan's Secret Service was involved. Which might explain Musharraf's reluctance to extradite the suspect to Washington...
posted on Apr-8-02 at 3:06 AM
Iconlite. Create, save and reedit 32*32 pixel icons.
posted on Apr-5-02 at 5:31 AM
The Integrator. Mostly for math/science/engineering people, this is a web based free Mathematica integrator. It can do indefinite integration on every integrable function (over one variable). It is a blessing for students and a great web resource. Anyone seen anything as scientifically handy on the web recently?
posted on Mar-12-02 at 6:28 AM
How engines work. This isn't new but it's a great resource for the mechanically minded and the mechanically challanged as well. It includes animations and step by step descriptions of how most existing engines work, from Steam Locomotive to Jet Propulsion. Simple yet informative.
posted on Mar-11-02 at 5:52 AM
What if...? Uchronia: The Alternate History List is an annotated bibliography of novels, stories, essays and other material involving the "what ifs" of history. Such texts may also be called as alternate histories, alternative histories, allohistories, uchronia, counterfeit worlds, counterfactuals, negative histories, etc. Alternative history is big on the web. See this alternative Russian Revolution example. For an exaustive AH list check out Uchronia's links pages. Are there any other favourite alternative history sites / books you have enjoyed?
posted on Mar-8-02 at 5:21 AM
The coming breed of couch potato jocks? "Discoveries made at the University of Dundee are helping in the development of drugs that fool your body into thinking that your are actively exercising even when you are not, and may help in the fight against the current increase in the incidence of obesity and Type 2 diabetes." It might seem that I'm just sitting in front of a computer screen all day, but in reality I'm training for the Olympics.
Story coverage from the BBC
posted on Mar-5-02 at 6:13 AM
New Scientist article about the Anthrax attacks. "After months of bungled investigation, it now looks certain that America's anthrax attacks came from within. The implications are terrifying".
posted on Feb-21-02 at 3:31 AM
The grid: The future of scientific networks. "Built on the Internet and the World Wide Web, the Grid is a new class of infrastructure. By providing scalable, secure, high-performance mechanisms for discovering and negotiating access to remote resources, the Grid promises to make it possible for scientific collaborations to share resources on an unprecedented scale, and for geographically distributed groups to work together in ways that were previously impossible."
posted on Feb-5-02 at 6:01 AM
Al Qaeda as death cult. From The Monde Diplomatique: "Al-Qaida has been thought of as a global or national political movement, or representative of an entire religion. It isn't. It's just another of the many death-obsessed sectarian movements to emerge in the past 20 years."
posted on Jan-18-02 at 4:11 AM
"Observing" other dimensions. The existence of tiny black holes, produced by cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere, if confirmed by the Auger cosmic ray observatory, might provide evidence for other dimensions beyond Space and Time.
Amazing how theories considered untestable by experiment a few years ago are turning into "real" science.
posted on Jan-15-02 at 8:32 AM
Al Jazeera english language summary. Since the original al Jazeera site is in arabic, this wbur website, gives a summary of the stories covered by the network in english. Of course, one can try to translate automatically (ajeeb, registration required), but the results are usually comical.
posted on Nov-23-01 at 3:58 AM
Said's ideal Mid East proposal. In one of the more insightful pieces written lately about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Edward Said might surprise those that see only fundamentalists in the Arab world. Excerpt: And since the Palestinian-Israeli struggle has been so humanly impoverishing I would suggest that important symbolic gestures of recognition and responsibility, undertaken perhaps under the auspices of a Mandela or a panel of impeccably credentialed peace-makers, should try to establish justice and compassion as crucial elements in the proceedings. Unfortunately, it is perhaps true that neither Arafat nor Sharon are suited to so high an enterprise. From Al-Ahram Weekly, one of the most interesting English language news magazines originating in the Arab world.
posted on Oct-30-01 at 7:26 AM
posted on Mar-3-19 at 2:59 AM
On September 18, 2013, in a working class neighborhood of Piraeus, Greece, Golden Dawn nazis, attacked and stabbed to death 34 year old rapper Pavlos Fyssas [previously]. His murder precipitated, albeit belatedly, the seminal and ongoing trial of the organization. A guilty verdict on charges of forming a criminal organization would lead to Golden Dawn being outlawed in Greece.
At the trial, which has been dragging on for 4 years now, the prosecution invited Forensic Architecture, a "multidisciplinary research group based at the University of London that uses architectural techniques and technologies to investigate cases of state violence and violations of human rights around the world", to sort through the evidence and recreate what happened the night of Pavlos Fyssas murder. The findings where damning for both the police and the Golden Dawn thugs. The police is shown to have lied about the time of their arrival at the crime scene and about their proximity to the crime, standing next to Fyssas as he was being stabbed. The Golden Dawn members' mobile phone calls corroborate that there was a chain of command that ordered the killing.
Forensic Architecture's video on the murder summarizing their analysis, presented to the court along with their full report, is a masterpiece of analytic exposition and impressively recreates the events surrounding the murder based on available data sources.
posted on Oct-6-18 at 8:54 AM
The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction - by Shuja Haider. A story of: Time travel, a future superintelligence as unavoidably but passionlessly vengeful God, neoreactionaries as the alt-right's intellectual avant-garde, neoreactionaries planning White Flight to Mars, Google's Deep Dream and "the Cathedral", libertarian transhumanism and libertarian fascism, Lyotardian far-rightists, Deleuzian Thatcherism and accelerationism, the Dark Enlightment, superrich supercapitalist super-villains, Silicon Valley hyperracism, Noys, Lovecraft, AI as class disparity amplifier.And it isn't fiction.
posted on Feb-20-18 at 4:07 PM
Starting last month, the French daily Le Monde has been publishing an economic thriller in series, called Terminus pour L' Euro (in French) (The End of the Line for the Euro). The series is behind a subscription wall, but Presseurope has started republishing the series in ten languages, including English... The story narrates the events of summer 2012, as Germany decides to leave the Euro and what follows. It has caused a stir in France, as rumors about the true identity of the author (who signs the series as Philae, after an island in Egypt apparently) continue to circulate, and some think he is the French agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire. Some say that the rumors that led to the precipitous fall in French banks' stock a few days ago, were due to misunderstanding the fictional character of the story... Real rumors that Germany threatened to leave the Euro last year, were dismissed by its Chancellor, yet as the eurozone crisis develops, no one is certain any more that the series is simply fiction and not a possible, real scenario, advocated by many...
posted on Aug-13-11 at 8:09 AM
Wedded by the revolution...
"Dare to struggle, dare to win ... as married gays. After raiding a few Army camps, two communist guerrillas hid in a forest gorge and fell in love. Deeply. That was three years ago. On Friday, under a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.
They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army (NPA) who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)."
Some reactions. A wedding picture.
posted on Feb-22-05 at 9:42 AM
Vladimir Putin, wanted, alive.
Chechen Rebels responding to the 10 million dollar bounty placed by the Russian secret services on rebel leaders Basayev and Mashkadov, have upped the ante offering 20 million dollars for the detention of "the war criminal Putin"...
This is the sort of war crimes they are referring to.
posted on Sep-14-04 at 3:57 AM
The Valley of the Shadow.
Description: "The Valley of the Shadow is a digital archive of primary sources that document the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War...
...The Valley of the Shadow is different than many other history websites. It is more like a library than a single book. There is no "one" story in the Valley Project. Rather, what you'll find are thousands of letters and diaries, census and government records, newspapers and speeches, all of which record different aspects of daily life in these two counties at the time of the Civil War. As you explore the extensive archive and you'll find that you can flip through a Valley resident's Civil War diary, read what the county newspapers reported about the battle of Gettysburg, or even search the census records to see how much the average citizen owned in 1860 or 1870..."
A very interesting way of presenting history and an impressive testament to the web's potential as an educational tool.
posted on Mar-6-04 at 7:45 AM
US elections: the world-wide vote.
"In November 2004, U.S. citizens will elect their new President. The outcome of these elections directly influences the lives of citizens around the world. Theworldvotes.org seeks to apply new technologies to provide citizens around the world with a voice in matters that affects us all. Ensure that your voice is heard by registering electronically and add momentum to a worldwide drive to establish global democracy."
Noble sentiments, but isn't this an admission of submission to the empire? A surrender of sovereignty? A call for a new Caracalla's edict? Is this a good idea both for the US and the "rest of the world"?
posted on Jan-30-04 at 11:13 AM
Mapping History: The Darkwing Atlas Project "The Project has been designed to provide interactive and animated representations of fundamental historical problems and/or illustrations of historical events, developments, and dynamics." All sorts of simple historical animated and static maps as well as photos and images from Greek and Phoenician expansions, to the spread of Slavery in the American South 1790-1860 and christian graffiti from the Roman catacombs.
posted on Dec-4-03 at 9:07 AM
...“To be honest, I get sick every time I tell someone I am from Mostar [in Bosnia] and they ask me whether I am from the east or west side of the city (the city is divided into the Bosniak east side and the Croat west side),” said Nino Raspudic. “That is one of the reasons for building a statue of Bruce Lee. We are hoping that someone in the future will say: “I knew Mostar. That is the city with the Bruce Lee statue. If we succeed in that, then I can retire.”
posted on Sep-15-03 at 5:30 PM
Apronyms: Apt Phrases, Redolent Of Novel Yet Meaningful Sense.
"An apronym is a special kind of acronym where the initials spell out a word or phrase relevant to the expanded version". This in contrast to you run-of the-mill acronyms. Yes, the link might come in handy for the perpetuation of this, already legendary, thread.
posted on Jul-31-03 at 5:59 AM
Every worker is entitled to a pension.
Kerala elephants working for the local government will enjoy a number of work benefits according to the Indian state's decision on a set of rules for their upkeeping. West Bengal seems to have taken similar measures some years ago.
posted on Jul-28-03 at 7:28 AM
Nation Master An amazing resource that displays all sorts of comparative national statistics on practically everything, and with an option of selecting any region / list of countries you choose. It plugs itself as "The world's biggest general stat site" (which might or might not be true I don't know), and it has a wealth of data on economics, sports, population, geography and a dozen more categories. Some interesting statistics; Top 100 in Olympic medals per Capita. Top 100 Murders with firearms (per capita). Top 100 Military Expenditures as a percent of GDP . Top 100 Net migration rate .
A heaven for data freaks.
posted on Jul-10-03 at 4:56 AM
A gallery of obscure patents.
Bird diapers, a motorized ice cream cone and an apparatus for simulating a "high five" are among the treasures unearthed by delphion's gallery of incredible but real US patents.
See also their gallery of historic patents, featuring, among others, the patent for the hypodermic syringe (1843).
posted on Jun-27-03 at 7:59 AM
The Imam who cursed the Pope and Kofi Annan. "It's hard to summarize a story as complicated as this in a few lines: Fatwas, Mormons, ufologists, secret services, the Supreme Solomonic Order of the Princes of Shekal, coups in Somalia, nuns, a mysterious murder, an African dictator and a "God intoxicated" Communist dictator."
A gem of nefarious weirdness, so bizarre it has to be real. Very annoying pop-ups but still worth it IMHO.
posted on Jun-1-03 at 9:57 AM
The Hidden Dangers of Letter Campaigns.
A series of email petitions have been circulating over the past year, to prevent the execution of Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old woman found guilty by an islamic court in Northern Nigeria of adultery. Even signature-collecting websites have been set up by local Amnesty chapters (see for example this Spanish A.I. site). But this isn't helping - and is indeed damaging the cause of Amina Lawal, according to BAOBAB, a Nigerian group supporting Women's Human Rights:
...It turns out that letters and petitions, even the few that aren't just chain-letter foolishness, may do more harm than good and that the situation in Nigeria is at once far more complex and less dire than it seems from the outside. There are ways to help, starting with understanding what is really going on...
Good intentions, it seems, aren't good enough if one has little knowledge of what one is campaigning against or for.
posted on May-16-03 at 8:13 AM
Grub: The seti@home of search engines?
According to the New Scientist: "A distributed computing project called Grub, which harnesses individual users' spare computing power and internet bandwidth, began cataloguing millions of web pages this week."
Grub has thus launched before HyperBee, a similar distributed search project.
This link was previously posted on MeFi when it was still in the conceptual stage.
The project is being run by LookSmart (along with its own open directory project called zeal) but as the New Scientist article notes: "Website information collected by Grub is already being fed into one of LookSmart's search services, called WiseNut. But the collected data are also freely accessible to the public, so they can be incorporated into any web site or desktop application."
Possible Google competition or doomed from the start?
posted on Apr-21-03 at 5:44 AM
The Iraq debate - from Red Pepper.
"...The writers of these articles are some of the many people who have struggled against Saddam Hussein, who have been driven into exile by his brutal regime, who keep their links with dissidents in Iraq, who do not believe that the US military can liberate them, and who are arguing for diplomatic and humanitarian support..."
posted on Mar-23-03 at 4:27 PM
"Over 5000 years ago, a man climbed up to the icy heights of the Schnalstal glacier and died. He was found by accident in 1991, with his clothes and equipment, mummified and frozen: an archaeological sensation and a unique snapshot of a Copper Age man. For several years highly specialised research teams examined the mummy and the articles found with it. They have been on exhibit since March 1998 at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology." Apparently he suffered of arthritis and heart disease.
via baloney.com
posted on Mar-6-03 at 5:58 AM
Did you know what's behind that "new car smell"?
These apparently.
"What's that Stuff" explores the chemistry of everyday stuff.
posted on Feb-20-03 at 6:19 AM
Genomic Art. This lies somewhere on an interface between science and art that most never suspected existed. Check out the gallery.
Oh, and don't forget to visit the Randolph Y. Teasely Hospital - Dwayne Medical Center and it's current projects: male pregnancy, designer babies and Clyven, the world's first talking transgenic mouse.
posted on Jan-22-03 at 8:38 AM
Euro diffusion: "On January 2002 twelve European countries [plus San Marino, the Vatican and Monaco] have welcomed the euro as their new coin. The euro coins have a national side, which is different for every country... So there are fifteen different euro coins that can be used in every one of those 15 countries. Therefore, unlike in the past, the coins will not be collected and brought back to their home country. The coins will slowly but surely be spreaded over the 15 countries. This is the diffusion of the euro, the euro diffusion[.pdf file]." A statistician's playground, this unique historical opportunity, is leading to interesting collaborative internet projects
posted on Dec-19-02 at 7:21 AM
Heritage of humanity This month's Monde Diplomatique features an essay by one of the 2002 Nobel Prize winners in Physiology and Medicine, John Sulston. Sulston "writes about his battle to make the entire sequence of the genome public despite all the commercial attempts to patent it". His basic point is that: "If we wish to move forward with [Human Genome Sequencing], which will undoubtedly translate into medical advances, the basic data must be freely available for everyone to interpret, change and share, as in the open-source software movement." The public human genome database Sulston refers to, can be found on the Sanger Institute's website.
posted on Dec-13-02 at 1:08 AM
Teaching physics with superheroes...
...and comics in general. Comics are used to teach math, in "The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick". While this flash animation addresses the physics of everyday life. Interesting ways to present basic and sometimes not so basic [~400k jpg] topics in science.
posted on Nov-8-02 at 6:30 AM
The joke has become reality.
Albanian and Russian observers sent to monitor American elections... [via Cursor]
posted on Nov-1-02 at 3:13 AM
The Anthrax investigator.
Ed Lake, a retired computer specialist, has decided to solve the Anthrax attacks mystery. So he has created a very comprehensive site about the facts of the case. He has a theory about who did it. Very impressive data gathering for a single individual.
posted on Oct-24-02 at 8:43 AM
"A play? In Gaza? About feminism? With Palestinian actresses? Unbelievable!"
posted on Oct-23-02 at 6:52 AM
Timehunt. Time, philosophy, alchemy, tons of interactive puzzles and great flash. I can't tell you more, I'm still figuring it out.
posted on Oct-16-02 at 8:11 AM
A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. It was supposed to evolve into an oscillator (through a genetic algorithm). This is astonishing and shows the power of evolutionary algorithms... [via missing matter]
posted on Oct-7-02 at 8:38 AM
"Fundamentalism is the Enemy of All Civilized Humanity". The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization fighting against the Taliban for the past ten years, commemorates Sept. 11 and describes Afghanistan one year later. What they describe ain't pretty: "With their second occupation of Kabul, the 'Northern Alliance' thwarted any hopes for a radical, meaningful change. They are themselves now the source and root of insecurity, the disgraceful police atmosphere of the Loya Jirga, rampant terrorism, gagging of democracy, atrocious violations of human rights, mounting pauperization, prostitution and corruption, the flourishing of poppy cultivation, failure of beginning to reconstruct, and a host of further unlisted evils, too many to enumerate."
posted on Sep-21-02 at 5:18 PM
This war plan forces me to stand by the dictator who tortured me. Iraqi writer, an exiled dissident and victim of Hussein's regime speaks against war and sanctions: "You are "either with us or against us", they say. As an Iraqi that means choosing between war and the dictator. To be on the side of the oppressed does not mean we are unaware of the complexity of the situation. To campaign for the lifting of sanctions, for an end to the paralysing bombardment and daily threat of war is to stand by the Iraqi people; it is that policy which will help them to change the oppressive regime. Any change should be initiated from within Iraq, not imposed by Bush or Blair."
posted on Sep-18-02 at 7:34 AM
Spectacular atmospheric optics.
Beautiful pictures of atmospheric phenomena, common and rare. You can also run your own halo simulations if you like... (Found in New Scientist's Weblinks, an extensive, annotated collection of all kinds of science links from all over the web.)
posted on Sep-12-02 at 5:23 AM
Of GM food, the PR industry and Tony Blair. George Monbiot exposes the questionable methods (fake public interest groups) of the PR industry in defense of big Agribusiness.
posted on May-29-02 at 4:26 AM
Very high level of PCBs in whale raises alarms. "The orca found dead on the Olympic Peninsula earlier this year carried a level of contaminants that was among the highest -- if not the highest -- ever measured in killer whales, laboratory tests show". If that is the case with free ranging whales then I shudder to think what similar measurements on city dwelling humans will reveal. Does anyone know of similar contaminant research on humans? (via Baloney.com)
posted on May-13-02 at 7:51 AM
The Salem Witch Trials archive.
"The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription project is an electronic collection of primary source materials, including court records, contemporary books, maps, images, and literary works, relating to the Salem witch trials of 1692."
posted on May-4-02 at 2:50 AM
Every sport is an extreme sport in Afghanistan.
Sorry couldn't help posting this surreal news tidbit: "A friendly basketball game between U.S. and Afghan teams turned violent, with one American player kicked in the head and two Afghan spectators shot in the leg, peacekeepers and witnesses said Friday."
posted on Apr-29-02 at 4:25 AM
Chief of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons sacked, after intense US pressure. The whole thing was predicted a few days ago by Georges Monbiot. It seems that the succesful head of the OPCW wanted to restart UN chemical weapons inspections in Iraq. Washington has other plans in mind.
posted on Apr-24-02 at 3:53 AM
An Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition. "For the founders of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition, there is a possible way out of the present murderous impasse in the region: a return to the agreement drawn up at Taba in January 2001. Two of those who drew it up, one Israeli and one Palestinian, propose an alternative way forward."
posted on Apr-16-02 at 5:59 AM
Who really killed Daniel Pearl? According to Tariq Ali, Pakistan's Secret Service was involved. Which might explain Musharraf's reluctance to extradite the suspect to Washington...
posted on Apr-8-02 at 3:06 AM
Iconlite. Create, save and reedit 32*32 pixel icons.
posted on Apr-5-02 at 5:31 AM
The Integrator. Mostly for math/science/engineering people, this is a web based free Mathematica integrator. It can do indefinite integration on every integrable function (over one variable). It is a blessing for students and a great web resource. Anyone seen anything as scientifically handy on the web recently?
posted on Mar-12-02 at 6:28 AM
How engines work. This isn't new but it's a great resource for the mechanically minded and the mechanically challanged as well. It includes animations and step by step descriptions of how most existing engines work, from Steam Locomotive to Jet Propulsion. Simple yet informative.
posted on Mar-11-02 at 5:52 AM
What if...? Uchronia: The Alternate History List is an annotated bibliography of novels, stories, essays and other material involving the "what ifs" of history. Such texts may also be called as alternate histories, alternative histories, allohistories, uchronia, counterfeit worlds, counterfactuals, negative histories, etc. Alternative history is big on the web. See this alternative Russian Revolution example. For an exaustive AH list check out Uchronia's links pages. Are there any other favourite alternative history sites / books you have enjoyed?
posted on Mar-8-02 at 5:21 AM
The coming breed of couch potato jocks? "Discoveries made at the University of Dundee are helping in the development of drugs that fool your body into thinking that your are actively exercising even when you are not, and may help in the fight against the current increase in the incidence of obesity and Type 2 diabetes." It might seem that I'm just sitting in front of a computer screen all day, but in reality I'm training for the Olympics.
Story coverage from the BBC
posted on Mar-5-02 at 6:13 AM
New Scientist article about the Anthrax attacks. "After months of bungled investigation, it now looks certain that America's anthrax attacks came from within. The implications are terrifying".
posted on Feb-21-02 at 3:31 AM
The grid: The future of scientific networks. "Built on the Internet and the World Wide Web, the Grid is a new class of infrastructure. By providing scalable, secure, high-performance mechanisms for discovering and negotiating access to remote resources, the Grid promises to make it possible for scientific collaborations to share resources on an unprecedented scale, and for geographically distributed groups to work together in ways that were previously impossible."
posted on Feb-5-02 at 6:01 AM
Al Qaeda as death cult. From The Monde Diplomatique: "Al-Qaida has been thought of as a global or national political movement, or representative of an entire religion. It isn't. It's just another of the many death-obsessed sectarian movements to emerge in the past 20 years."
posted on Jan-18-02 at 4:11 AM
"Observing" other dimensions. The existence of tiny black holes, produced by cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere, if confirmed by the Auger cosmic ray observatory, might provide evidence for other dimensions beyond Space and Time.
Amazing how theories considered untestable by experiment a few years ago are turning into "real" science.
posted on Jan-15-02 at 8:32 AM
Al Jazeera english language summary. Since the original al Jazeera site is in arabic, this wbur website, gives a summary of the stories covered by the network in english. Of course, one can try to translate automatically (ajeeb, registration required), but the results are usually comical.
posted on Nov-23-01 at 3:58 AM
Said's ideal Mid East proposal. In one of the more insightful pieces written lately about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Edward Said might surprise those that see only fundamentalists in the Arab world. Excerpt: And since the Palestinian-Israeli struggle has been so humanly impoverishing I would suggest that important symbolic gestures of recognition and responsibility, undertaken perhaps under the auspices of a Mandela or a panel of impeccably credentialed peace-makers, should try to establish justice and compassion as crucial elements in the proceedings. Unfortunately, it is perhaps true that neither Arafat nor Sharon are suited to so high an enterprise. From Al-Ahram Weekly, one of the most interesting English language news magazines originating in the Arab world.
posted on Oct-30-01 at 7:26 AM