MetaFilter posts by caddis.
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R.I.P. Mr. Magic. Mr. Magic's Rap Attack on WBLS was the first and for some time the only commercial radio outlet for hip hop. On October 2 Mr. Magic, John Rivas, passed from a heart attack. Previously 1 2 3.
posted on Oct-7-09 at 7:05 AM
Insect Sushi Shoichi Uchiyama makes sushi of a different kind. Academic studies have shown insects are rich in nutrition and many are even more nutritionally balanced than meat or fish... In addition, they grow much faster and require less feed than animals and fish, and leftover vegetables are enough to farm many kinds of bugs. They grow in small spaces and don't compete with human beings over food... Recipes inside. (via Scribal Terror)
posted on Sep-29-09 at 7:06 AM
Running is actually good for your knees, if you haven't suffered knee injuries in the past. [D]espite entrenched mythology to the contrary, runners don’t seem prone to degenerating knees. An important 2008 study, this one from Stanford University, followed middle-aged, longtime distance runners (not necessarily marathoners) for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1984, when most were in their 50s or 60s. At that time, 6.7 percent of the runners had creaky, mildly arthritic knees, while none of an age-matched control group did. After 20 years, however, the runners’ knees were healthier; only 20 percent showed arthritic changes, versus 32 percent of the control group’s knees. Barely 2 percent of the runners’ knees were severely arthritic, while almost 10 percent of the control group’s were.
posted on Aug-18-09 at 8:03 AM
Friday Frivolity. We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose. A recipe for the infamous Crunchy Frog. No frogs were killed in the making of this recipe. (via Neatorama)
posted on Jul-31-09 at 12:37 PM
Thomas Jefferson's cipher message from Robert Patterson For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.... To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."
posted on Jul-2-09 at 7:43 AM
Sometimes the bear gets you, sometimes you get the bear.
posted on May-28-09 at 10:40 PM
The Portugal experiment. On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.... The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world. (pdf of complete paper)
posted on May-22-09 at 6:35 AM
Make your own pinball machine. The art of pinball machines is in decline, but some folks endeavor to keep it alive. From the basic, to the the full blown experience, these guys do it their way. DIY pinball goodness.
posted on May-20-09 at 7:27 PM
Start your engines. Megan Culbert, age 8, was in her first year of racing.... her best time so far was an 11.30 in the 1/8 mile. Vroom.
posted on May-2-09 at 9:34 PM
Mark "The Bird" Fidrych RIP. They really do come in threes. In '76, Bird was the word. Fidrych captivated baseball fans with his antics, talking to the ball, patting the mound, running off to talk to everyone. The Bird 1954-2009.
posted on Apr-13-09 at 3:56 PM
Take the world's hottest peppers, rub them in your eyes and then eat 51 of them in world record attempt. Mere mortals blanch at one or two (language in this last link unsurprisingly NSFW).
posted on Apr-10-09 at 7:32 PM
One for the fans. [A]t the Fantastic Fest Star Trek event at the Alamo Draughthouse Theater in Austin, Texas on Monday night. Star Trek filmmakers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof kicked things off by telling the crowd of around 200, that they would be seeing the Star Trek preview after Wrath of Khan. Two minutes in to the showing of TWOK, the film appeared to have ‘melted’ and the guys came back out on the stage and appeared to be stalling for time while the film was fixed…and then, wearing a ball cap, Leonard Nimoy came out in front of the audience holding a film can. Nimoy noted to the crowd that it just didn’t seem fair that people in Australia were the fist to see the film and asked them "wouldn’t you rather see the new movie?"
posted on Apr-7-09 at 7:46 AM
Things that go boom and flash and make pretty colors. DIY fireworks. From the the relatively benign Roman Candle to the fifty foot tall Cremora Fireball. (via Neatorama) previous explosive goodies: Pyroboy, Crump and pyro page
posted on Mar-18-09 at 7:19 AM
Lille Mand - Eight year old Mathis writes an essay for school entitled, "How to Understand Women." (via Neatorama) (It will be slow to load. Also, there is brief shower nudity so NSFW)
posted on Feb-13-09 at 8:05 AM
Evolution of the household 1950s to today, with values adjusted for inflation. (via Geek Press)
posted on Feb-10-09 at 4:38 AM
Cops regularly perjure themselves - Blue Lies. Though few officers will confess to lying -- after all, it's a crime -- work by researchers and a 1990s commission appointed to examine police corruption shows there's a tacit agreement among many officers that lying about how evidence is seized keeps criminals off the street.... Criminal-justice researchers say it's difficult to quantify how often perjury is being committed. According to a 1992 survey, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges in Chicago said they thought that, on average, perjury by police occurs 20% of the time in which defendants claim evidence was illegally seized. "It is an open secret long shared by prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges that perjury is widespread among law enforcement officers," though it's difficult to detect in specific cases, said Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals-court judge, in the 1990s.
posted on Jan-30-09 at 1:14 AM
Obesity can be “caught” as easily as a common cold from other people’s coughs, sneezes and dirty hands.... As many as one in three obese people may have become overweight after falling victim to the highly infectious cold-like virus, known as AD-36.
posted on Jan-26-09 at 4:35 AM
Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War.
posted on Jan-19-09 at 6:40 PM
“You can’t roll a joint on an iPod” or how the iPod killed the music industry. First the music biz overlooked the computer CD rom when they put copy control on cd burners. Then they eliminated the single. Shortly after that "mp3" replaced "sex" as the most popular search term. Apple has become the largest music seller largely against the wishes of the music biz, but 99 cents beats free. Yesterday Apple announced they were eliminating DRM. The questions remains, who needs Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI, does Apple? When is Apple just going to replace them? There were rumors a year ago that they would launch a record label with Jay-Z but that does not appear to have come to fruition.
posted on Jan-7-09 at 8:18 AM
How the president-elect tapped into a powerful—and only recently studied—human emotion called "elevation." Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, studies the emotions of uplift, and he has tried everything from showing subjects vistas of the Grand Canyon to reading them poetry—with little success. But just this week one of his postdocs came in with a great idea: Hook up the subjects, play Barack Obama's victory speech, and record as their autonomic nervous systems go into a swoon....It was while looking through the letters of Thomas Jefferson that Haidt first found a description of elevation. Jefferson wrote of the physical sensation that comes from witnessing goodness in others: It is to "dilate [the] breast and elevate [the] sentiments … and privately covenant to copy the fair example." (via Geek Press)
posted on Dec-20-08 at 7:25 AM
Police Officer Seen on Tape Shoving a Bicyclist Is Indicted - Update to the widely viewed video of a NYC police officer shoving a critical mass rider off of his bicycle, reported on MeFi here.
posted on Dec-16-08 at 8:01 AM
The Great Chess Doping Scandal Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk refused to submit a urine sample for a drug test at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden and is now considered guilty of doping. The world of chess is outraged that he could face a two-year ban... [He] has been a grandmaster for the past 20 years and is currently ranked third in the world.
posted on Dec-12-08 at 12:19 PM
Pomegranate is the Answer. James Brett perhaps has an answer to Afghanistan's Opium issue: On the drive back to Peshawar I saw the same farmer in his fields harvesting his crop. I asked my driver to stop the car. On the card I had previously bought I wrote the words ‘Pomegranate is the Answer’ and ran into the field to go and talk to the farmer. My translator called after me “Don’t go in there you could get shot” but it all happened in a second and I called back to him “come on I need you to translate” . Upon reaching a surprised farmer I asked him many questions and talked to him about the affects of Heroin and also the possibilities of Pomegranates. He explained to me about his family , children, how he lived and why he grew opium. I explained how it was possible for him to change his situation working together with other farmers and how this would help the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world. He appears to be having some success. (previously 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...) via Crooks and Liars
posted on Nov-10-08 at 11:23 AM
Give us your secrets. The Chinese government plans order foreign manufacturers to reveal information about their digital products, a Japanese newspaper reported on Friday. It will introduce rules requiring foreign firms to disclose secret information about digital household appliances and other products from May next year, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing unnamed sources. If a company refuses to disclose information, China would ban it from exporting the product to the Chinese market or producing or selling it in China, the paper said.
posted on Sep-22-08 at 11:12 AM
Is it a slide or a large uncircumsised appendage? Advances in playground technology - what will they think of next? (via BuzzFeed)
posted on Sep-10-08 at 4:26 AM
Saving the Regal Fritillary The Regal Fritillary (Speyeria idalia) is one of the largest and most spectacular butterflies found in North America....About ten years ago, the Regal Fritillary could only be found in a single nature preserve in Indiana. This year, the Fort Indiantown Gap Training Center won the [Environmental A]ward for its efforts in preserving the Regal Fritillary Butterfly and its habitat, building nesting boxes and tracking migratory patterns of 12 bird species, restoring five acres of wetlands, and conducting prescribed burns to manage fuel loads and forests.
posted on Jul-16-08 at 11:42 PM
Happy 100th Birthday to SOS. “Send SOS,” one of the Titanic’s radio operators supposedly said to another after the famous ship struck that infamous iceberg. “It’s the new call and besides this may be your last chance to send it.” That “new call” is 100 years old today... (via the J-Walk blog)
posted on Jul-1-08 at 12:10 PM
Farming with Dynamite Do stumps, clay or tired old soil have you down? Let "Red Cross" dynamite come to your rescue. (A blast from the past via )
posted on Jun-16-08 at 9:04 AM
Goodbye alt.* Andrew Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for [Verizon's] blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry." Verizon eliminates the entire alt. subset of usenet. Today, the alt.* hierarchy is by far the most populous on Usenet.
posted on Jun-12-08 at 7:07 PM
In the Matter of Daniel Smoote v. Frank & Jesse James As bank robberies go, the 1869 heist pulled off by legendary outlaws Jesse and Frank James in Daviess County, Mo., wasn’t much of a success: They may have left with no money, they probably shot the wrong man, and Jesse James lost his horse. Perhaps even more frustrating for the outlaw duo, they ended up getting sued by a local farmer and his ambitious young lawyer—the first and only successful civil action against the former Confederate guerrillas-turned-outlaws.
posted on Apr-28-08 at 8:44 AM
Pond scum saves the planet? In the beginning, there were algae, but there was no oil. Then, from algae came oil. Now, the algae are still there, but oil is fast depleting. In future, there will be no oil, but there will still be algae. ^ Power your ride with pond scum. In some iterations you don't even need light. (we have talked about this before and the fact that CO2 powers the algae production is not insignificant) More details here.
posted on Apr-17-08 at 8:04 PM
Toys - 59,237 of them. This group is about collecting photographic evidence that toys get up to things when people are not around. Well, not just that - It is also simply a space to collect good images of toys for everyone to enjoy. (via dorian)
posted on Apr-2-08 at 7:09 AM
ShelBroCo which has brought us:
The ShelBroCo Chain Cleaning System
FasterCard Titanium
The Nanodrive
Product W
Carrababy
Tork-Grip
Real Man Bicycle Saddles, and
SYMMETRISPOKES!;
this year brings us.....
Crank on Captain Bike. In memoriam to Sheldon Brown.
posted on Apr-1-08 at 12:04 AM
40 Years in the Future - Another "what will life look like in the future" article. This one from Mechanix Illustrated, 1968. (via Boing Boing)
posted on Mar-24-08 at 9:57 AM
With Comcast, your TV watches you. Comcast is developing cable boxes with cameras to watch the room. They will know who is there to provide shows in your profile, engage parental controls, and of course, deliver targeted advertising.Ceiling Cat Comcast is watching you....
posted on Mar-23-08 at 5:59 AM
Brilliant Women: The Blue Stocking Circle was a group of intellectuals with a strong desire to discuss, analyze, and examine the social, political, and educational problems of the day Mostly female intellectuals, but they included many prominent men as well. They assembled in the London homes of literary hostesses such as Elizabeth Montagu, Frances Boscawen and Elizabeth Vesey in the 1750s form the nucleus of the exhibition. .... At first, all the party-goers were nicknamed blues, but from the 1770s, the "bluestocking" tag was applied to the women members in particular. By the time of Montagu's death in 1800, any female intellectual might be labelled a bluestocking, whether or not she could claim a link to the original circle.
posted on Mar-21-08 at 8:25 PM
Obama's Gettysburg Address. Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (text)
posted on Mar-18-08 at 9:31 PM
When the wire won't carry your subversive tract, distribute your digital screed via flash drive. Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly. Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire ...[passed via flash drives]... and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.
posted on Mar-6-08 at 3:54 PM
Derrick Ashong A camera-wielding interviewer collars Mr Ashong in the street and starts to pepper him with questions. The interviewer assumes that his victim's casual appearance—he is wearing a baseball hat, a shell necklace and is chewing gum—betokens an equally casual approach to politics. “Do you have any specifics?” he demands aggressively. “What are their policies?” Mr Ashong delivers a series of carefully argued replies that could form the basis of an editorial in a serious newspaper. Emotional responses count too.
posted on Mar-4-08 at 6:18 PM
Is John McCain eligible to become president of the U.S.? He was born on a military base in the Panama Canal zone, which was not sovereign US territory. The Constitution provides:No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. Is McCain a natural born citizen?
posted on Feb-28-08 at 8:00 AM
Frozen Grand Central. A little bit of Saturday fun. The folks at Improv Everywhere are at it again. This time they freeze over two hundred people in Grand Central station. (via GoodSh** NSFW)
posted on Feb-16-08 at 7:56 AM
Mach 7 Origami Plane - Designs for origami planes abound. How many of them reach Mach? How many get launched from the International Space Station? A team from the University of Tokyo is planning just such a launch.
posted on Jan-16-08 at 8:26 AM
Ulysses - An Irish guy (in West Virginia) reads Ulysses and posts it to the web in 20 parts. It's a work best appreciated when read aloud and here is someone who has read it aloud just for you. (ultra-condensed version here )
posted on Nov-25-07 at 7:44 PM
The American military finds new allies, but at what cost? One afternoon, sitting with Captain Brooks in Thrasher’s rooftop gym, I asked if he felt that what he was doing in Iraq was appreciated by the people back home. “Oh, yeah,” he said. Turning to one of his N.C.O.s, who was seated nearby, smoking a cigar, he asked, “What do you think, Sergeant Cochran?” Lowering his voice, Cochran replied, “When that bullet goes by my head, all the politics goes right out the window. My only thought is to get my men out of there alive.” “Thanks for quoting ‘Black Hawk Down,’ Sergeant Cochran,” Brooks drawled. Turning back to me, he said, “When I went home the last time, we went skiing in Colorado. Everywhere we went, people thanked me. One man said, ‘I don’t support the war but I support the soldiers.’ I can accept that. We have a system that allows freedom of speech. Hell, I put on the uniform to defend that.”
posted on Nov-17-07 at 5:57 PM
String Theory in two minutes or less, or if the Reader's Digest Condensed version of string theory is too terse, spend an hour with Dr. Michio Kaku and Brian Greene. (previously) (via /. and WBAI)
posted on Oct-25-07 at 3:11 PM
To build a better mousetrap.
posted on Oct-24-07 at 7:04 AM
Whack aMole Nerd - Flash Friday
posted on Oct-19-07 at 8:09 AM
The Moby Quotient [I]n the late 1990s, the techno artist Moby, as hip as they come, openly boasted of having sold every track of his breakthrough album "Play" to an advertiser, or to a film or TV soundtrack. The album should perhaps have been called "Pay." In homage Bill Wyman of Hitsville has dubbed his formula for determining the offensiveness of a rock-based advertisement. (accompanying article)
posted on Oct-16-07 at 9:14 AM
"Sleeper":
Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
Has anything changed?
posted on Sep-19-07 at 6:58 PM
Jammin' with Buddy Guy You are a good guitar player, you are a really good guitar player, but you are eight years old, but whoa, here you are on the stage with one of the greatest bluesmen ever, Buddy Guy, and he is digging your sh**.
posted on Aug-25-07 at 12:50 AM
posted on Oct-7-09 at 7:05 AM
Insect Sushi Shoichi Uchiyama makes sushi of a different kind. Academic studies have shown insects are rich in nutrition and many are even more nutritionally balanced than meat or fish... In addition, they grow much faster and require less feed than animals and fish, and leftover vegetables are enough to farm many kinds of bugs. They grow in small spaces and don't compete with human beings over food... Recipes inside. (via Scribal Terror)
posted on Sep-29-09 at 7:06 AM
Running is actually good for your knees, if you haven't suffered knee injuries in the past. [D]espite entrenched mythology to the contrary, runners don’t seem prone to degenerating knees. An important 2008 study, this one from Stanford University, followed middle-aged, longtime distance runners (not necessarily marathoners) for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1984, when most were in their 50s or 60s. At that time, 6.7 percent of the runners had creaky, mildly arthritic knees, while none of an age-matched control group did. After 20 years, however, the runners’ knees were healthier; only 20 percent showed arthritic changes, versus 32 percent of the control group’s knees. Barely 2 percent of the runners’ knees were severely arthritic, while almost 10 percent of the control group’s were.
posted on Aug-18-09 at 8:03 AM
Friday Frivolity. We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose. A recipe for the infamous Crunchy Frog. No frogs were killed in the making of this recipe. (via Neatorama)
posted on Jul-31-09 at 12:37 PM
Thomas Jefferson's cipher message from Robert Patterson For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.... To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."
posted on Jul-2-09 at 7:43 AM
Sometimes the bear gets you, sometimes you get the bear.
posted on May-28-09 at 10:40 PM
The Portugal experiment. On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.... The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world. (pdf of complete paper)
posted on May-22-09 at 6:35 AM
Make your own pinball machine. The art of pinball machines is in decline, but some folks endeavor to keep it alive. From the basic, to the the full blown experience, these guys do it their way. DIY pinball goodness.
posted on May-20-09 at 7:27 PM
Start your engines. Megan Culbert, age 8, was in her first year of racing.... her best time so far was an 11.30 in the 1/8 mile. Vroom.
posted on May-2-09 at 9:34 PM
Mark "The Bird" Fidrych RIP. They really do come in threes. In '76, Bird was the word. Fidrych captivated baseball fans with his antics, talking to the ball, patting the mound, running off to talk to everyone. The Bird 1954-2009.
posted on Apr-13-09 at 3:56 PM
Take the world's hottest peppers, rub them in your eyes and then eat 51 of them in world record attempt. Mere mortals blanch at one or two (language in this last link unsurprisingly NSFW).
posted on Apr-10-09 at 7:32 PM
One for the fans. [A]t the Fantastic Fest Star Trek event at the Alamo Draughthouse Theater in Austin, Texas on Monday night. Star Trek filmmakers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof kicked things off by telling the crowd of around 200, that they would be seeing the Star Trek preview after Wrath of Khan. Two minutes in to the showing of TWOK, the film appeared to have ‘melted’ and the guys came back out on the stage and appeared to be stalling for time while the film was fixed…and then, wearing a ball cap, Leonard Nimoy came out in front of the audience holding a film can. Nimoy noted to the crowd that it just didn’t seem fair that people in Australia were the fist to see the film and asked them "wouldn’t you rather see the new movie?"
posted on Apr-7-09 at 7:46 AM
Things that go boom and flash and make pretty colors. DIY fireworks. From the the relatively benign Roman Candle to the fifty foot tall Cremora Fireball. (via Neatorama) previous explosive goodies: Pyroboy, Crump and pyro page
posted on Mar-18-09 at 7:19 AM
Lille Mand - Eight year old Mathis writes an essay for school entitled, "How to Understand Women." (via Neatorama) (It will be slow to load. Also, there is brief shower nudity so NSFW)
posted on Feb-13-09 at 8:05 AM
Evolution of the household 1950s to today, with values adjusted for inflation. (via Geek Press)
posted on Feb-10-09 at 4:38 AM
Cops regularly perjure themselves - Blue Lies. Though few officers will confess to lying -- after all, it's a crime -- work by researchers and a 1990s commission appointed to examine police corruption shows there's a tacit agreement among many officers that lying about how evidence is seized keeps criminals off the street.... Criminal-justice researchers say it's difficult to quantify how often perjury is being committed. According to a 1992 survey, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges in Chicago said they thought that, on average, perjury by police occurs 20% of the time in which defendants claim evidence was illegally seized. "It is an open secret long shared by prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges that perjury is widespread among law enforcement officers," though it's difficult to detect in specific cases, said Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals-court judge, in the 1990s.
posted on Jan-30-09 at 1:14 AM
Obesity can be “caught” as easily as a common cold from other people’s coughs, sneezes and dirty hands.... As many as one in three obese people may have become overweight after falling victim to the highly infectious cold-like virus, known as AD-36.
posted on Jan-26-09 at 4:35 AM
Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War.
posted on Jan-19-09 at 6:40 PM
“You can’t roll a joint on an iPod” or how the iPod killed the music industry. First the music biz overlooked the computer CD rom when they put copy control on cd burners. Then they eliminated the single. Shortly after that "mp3" replaced "sex" as the most popular search term. Apple has become the largest music seller largely against the wishes of the music biz, but 99 cents beats free. Yesterday Apple announced they were eliminating DRM. The questions remains, who needs Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI, does Apple? When is Apple just going to replace them? There were rumors a year ago that they would launch a record label with Jay-Z but that does not appear to have come to fruition.
posted on Jan-7-09 at 8:18 AM
How the president-elect tapped into a powerful—and only recently studied—human emotion called "elevation." Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, studies the emotions of uplift, and he has tried everything from showing subjects vistas of the Grand Canyon to reading them poetry—with little success. But just this week one of his postdocs came in with a great idea: Hook up the subjects, play Barack Obama's victory speech, and record as their autonomic nervous systems go into a swoon....It was while looking through the letters of Thomas Jefferson that Haidt first found a description of elevation. Jefferson wrote of the physical sensation that comes from witnessing goodness in others: It is to "dilate [the] breast and elevate [the] sentiments … and privately covenant to copy the fair example." (via Geek Press)
posted on Dec-20-08 at 7:25 AM
Police Officer Seen on Tape Shoving a Bicyclist Is Indicted - Update to the widely viewed video of a NYC police officer shoving a critical mass rider off of his bicycle, reported on MeFi here.
posted on Dec-16-08 at 8:01 AM
The Great Chess Doping Scandal Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk refused to submit a urine sample for a drug test at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden and is now considered guilty of doping. The world of chess is outraged that he could face a two-year ban... [He] has been a grandmaster for the past 20 years and is currently ranked third in the world.
posted on Dec-12-08 at 12:19 PM
Pomegranate is the Answer. James Brett perhaps has an answer to Afghanistan's Opium issue: On the drive back to Peshawar I saw the same farmer in his fields harvesting his crop. I asked my driver to stop the car. On the card I had previously bought I wrote the words ‘Pomegranate is the Answer’ and ran into the field to go and talk to the farmer. My translator called after me “Don’t go in there you could get shot” but it all happened in a second and I called back to him “come on I need you to translate” . Upon reaching a surprised farmer I asked him many questions and talked to him about the affects of Heroin and also the possibilities of Pomegranates. He explained to me about his family , children, how he lived and why he grew opium. I explained how it was possible for him to change his situation working together with other farmers and how this would help the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world. He appears to be having some success. (previously 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...) via Crooks and Liars
posted on Nov-10-08 at 11:23 AM
Give us your secrets. The Chinese government plans order foreign manufacturers to reveal information about their digital products, a Japanese newspaper reported on Friday. It will introduce rules requiring foreign firms to disclose secret information about digital household appliances and other products from May next year, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing unnamed sources. If a company refuses to disclose information, China would ban it from exporting the product to the Chinese market or producing or selling it in China, the paper said.
posted on Sep-22-08 at 11:12 AM
Is it a slide or a large uncircumsised appendage? Advances in playground technology - what will they think of next? (via BuzzFeed)
posted on Sep-10-08 at 4:26 AM
Saving the Regal Fritillary The Regal Fritillary (Speyeria idalia) is one of the largest and most spectacular butterflies found in North America....About ten years ago, the Regal Fritillary could only be found in a single nature preserve in Indiana. This year, the Fort Indiantown Gap Training Center won the [Environmental A]ward for its efforts in preserving the Regal Fritillary Butterfly and its habitat, building nesting boxes and tracking migratory patterns of 12 bird species, restoring five acres of wetlands, and conducting prescribed burns to manage fuel loads and forests.
posted on Jul-16-08 at 11:42 PM
Happy 100th Birthday to SOS. “Send SOS,” one of the Titanic’s radio operators supposedly said to another after the famous ship struck that infamous iceberg. “It’s the new call and besides this may be your last chance to send it.” That “new call” is 100 years old today... (via the J-Walk blog)
posted on Jul-1-08 at 12:10 PM
Farming with Dynamite Do stumps, clay or tired old soil have you down? Let "Red Cross" dynamite come to your rescue. (A blast from the past via )
posted on Jun-16-08 at 9:04 AM
Goodbye alt.* Andrew Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for [Verizon's] blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry." Verizon eliminates the entire alt. subset of usenet. Today, the alt.* hierarchy is by far the most populous on Usenet.
posted on Jun-12-08 at 7:07 PM
In the Matter of Daniel Smoote v. Frank & Jesse James As bank robberies go, the 1869 heist pulled off by legendary outlaws Jesse and Frank James in Daviess County, Mo., wasn’t much of a success: They may have left with no money, they probably shot the wrong man, and Jesse James lost his horse. Perhaps even more frustrating for the outlaw duo, they ended up getting sued by a local farmer and his ambitious young lawyer—the first and only successful civil action against the former Confederate guerrillas-turned-outlaws.
posted on Apr-28-08 at 8:44 AM
Pond scum saves the planet? In the beginning, there were algae, but there was no oil. Then, from algae came oil. Now, the algae are still there, but oil is fast depleting. In future, there will be no oil, but there will still be algae. ^ Power your ride with pond scum. In some iterations you don't even need light. (we have talked about this before and the fact that CO2 powers the algae production is not insignificant) More details here.
posted on Apr-17-08 at 8:04 PM
Toys - 59,237 of them. This group is about collecting photographic evidence that toys get up to things when people are not around. Well, not just that - It is also simply a space to collect good images of toys for everyone to enjoy. (via dorian)
posted on Apr-2-08 at 7:09 AM
ShelBroCo which has brought us:
The ShelBroCo Chain Cleaning System
FasterCard Titanium
The Nanodrive
Product W
Carrababy
Tork-Grip
Real Man Bicycle Saddles, and
SYMMETRISPOKES!;
this year brings us.....
Crank on Captain Bike. In memoriam to Sheldon Brown.
posted on Apr-1-08 at 12:04 AM
40 Years in the Future - Another "what will life look like in the future" article. This one from Mechanix Illustrated, 1968. (via Boing Boing)
posted on Mar-24-08 at 9:57 AM
With Comcast, your TV watches you. Comcast is developing cable boxes with cameras to watch the room. They will know who is there to provide shows in your profile, engage parental controls, and of course, deliver targeted advertising.
posted on Mar-23-08 at 5:59 AM
Brilliant Women: The Blue Stocking Circle was a group of intellectuals with a strong desire to discuss, analyze, and examine the social, political, and educational problems of the day Mostly female intellectuals, but they included many prominent men as well. They assembled in the London homes of literary hostesses such as Elizabeth Montagu, Frances Boscawen and Elizabeth Vesey in the 1750s form the nucleus of the exhibition. .... At first, all the party-goers were nicknamed blues, but from the 1770s, the "bluestocking" tag was applied to the women members in particular. By the time of Montagu's death in 1800, any female intellectual might be labelled a bluestocking, whether or not she could claim a link to the original circle.
posted on Mar-21-08 at 8:25 PM
Obama's Gettysburg Address. Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (text)
posted on Mar-18-08 at 9:31 PM
When the wire won't carry your subversive tract, distribute your digital screed via flash drive. Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly. Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire ...[passed via flash drives]... and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.
posted on Mar-6-08 at 3:54 PM
Derrick Ashong A camera-wielding interviewer collars Mr Ashong in the street and starts to pepper him with questions. The interviewer assumes that his victim's casual appearance—he is wearing a baseball hat, a shell necklace and is chewing gum—betokens an equally casual approach to politics. “Do you have any specifics?” he demands aggressively. “What are their policies?” Mr Ashong delivers a series of carefully argued replies that could form the basis of an editorial in a serious newspaper. Emotional responses count too.
posted on Mar-4-08 at 6:18 PM
Is John McCain eligible to become president of the U.S.? He was born on a military base in the Panama Canal zone, which was not sovereign US territory. The Constitution provides:No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. Is McCain a natural born citizen?
posted on Feb-28-08 at 8:00 AM
Frozen Grand Central. A little bit of Saturday fun. The folks at Improv Everywhere are at it again. This time they freeze over two hundred people in Grand Central station. (via GoodSh** NSFW)
posted on Feb-16-08 at 7:56 AM
Mach 7 Origami Plane - Designs for origami planes abound. How many of them reach Mach? How many get launched from the International Space Station? A team from the University of Tokyo is planning just such a launch.
posted on Jan-16-08 at 8:26 AM
Ulysses - An Irish guy (in West Virginia) reads Ulysses and posts it to the web in 20 parts. It's a work best appreciated when read aloud and here is someone who has read it aloud just for you. (ultra-condensed version here )
posted on Nov-25-07 at 7:44 PM
The American military finds new allies, but at what cost? One afternoon, sitting with Captain Brooks in Thrasher’s rooftop gym, I asked if he felt that what he was doing in Iraq was appreciated by the people back home. “Oh, yeah,” he said. Turning to one of his N.C.O.s, who was seated nearby, smoking a cigar, he asked, “What do you think, Sergeant Cochran?” Lowering his voice, Cochran replied, “When that bullet goes by my head, all the politics goes right out the window. My only thought is to get my men out of there alive.” “Thanks for quoting ‘Black Hawk Down,’ Sergeant Cochran,” Brooks drawled. Turning back to me, he said, “When I went home the last time, we went skiing in Colorado. Everywhere we went, people thanked me. One man said, ‘I don’t support the war but I support the soldiers.’ I can accept that. We have a system that allows freedom of speech. Hell, I put on the uniform to defend that.”
posted on Nov-17-07 at 5:57 PM
String Theory in two minutes or less, or if the Reader's Digest Condensed version of string theory is too terse, spend an hour with Dr. Michio Kaku and Brian Greene. (previously) (via /. and WBAI)
posted on Oct-25-07 at 3:11 PM
To build a better mousetrap.
posted on Oct-24-07 at 7:04 AM
Whack a
posted on Oct-19-07 at 8:09 AM
The Moby Quotient [I]n the late 1990s, the techno artist Moby, as hip as they come, openly boasted of having sold every track of his breakthrough album "Play" to an advertiser, or to a film or TV soundtrack. The album should perhaps have been called "Pay." In homage Bill Wyman of Hitsville has dubbed his formula for determining the offensiveness of a rock-based advertisement. (accompanying article)
posted on Oct-16-07 at 9:14 AM
"Sleeper":
Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
Has anything changed?
posted on Sep-19-07 at 6:58 PM
Jammin' with Buddy Guy You are a good guitar player, you are a really good guitar player, but you are eight years old, but whoa, here you are on the stage with one of the greatest bluesmen ever, Buddy Guy, and he is digging your sh**.
posted on Aug-25-07 at 12:50 AM
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