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January 31
breaking CAPTCHAs.
In this case the programmers were able to use software they had already designed to analyze images of people.
posted by delmoi at 10:57 PM PST - 33 comments
Surgical Eyes
- source of info about complications and their treatment from Lasik and other vision correction surgeries.
posted by Gyan at 6:43 PM PST - 35 comments
Hypothesis as thought-crime
...Now, however, a new brouhaha has erupted [at Harvard]and it seems impossible that Summers [the president]will emerge from this one without serious erosion of his moral authority. The trigger was a statement he made at a conference, suggesting that the reason there are more men than women in the mathematical sciences at top-flight institutions has to do with a small statistical difference in inate ability, which becomes a pretty large disparity when one looks at the 'high end' of the respective distribution curves...
The fatal words did not set forth his main theme, but merely constituted a brief aside, thoroughly hedged and qualified. Nonetheless, they touched off a firestorm of indignation, the most striking aspect of which was the intemperate response of a number of feminist scientists, who offered no counter-arguments, but simply declared the whole idea misogynistic and therefore forbidden intellectual territory.
posted by Postroad at 6:10 PM PST - 71 comments
TV Tickets!
A great gallery of tickets to TV show tapings, some going back to the 1950s. Includes some fascinating commentary by Mark Evanier.
posted by braun_richard at 5:28 PM PST - 7 comments
Quicktime
virtual reality panoramas of thousands of picturesque places in the Western United States and Canada. Feast your eyes on
The Grand Canyon,
Death Valley,
Yosemite,
Mossbrae Falls,
Monument Valley, a
Ghost Town, the
Cascades,
Palm Canyon,
Joshua Tree,
Las Vegas,
Redwood Forests,
poppy fields,
palm groves, and
Bumpass Hell.
(via Highways West) (previous Mefi appearance)
posted by euphorb at 11:49 AM PST - 8 comments
Pretty slick mind-reading trick...
Perhaps wizened MetaFilter readers will see through its inner workings, but to me, this site just looked like magic. The page vanishes after a minute of disuse, so you may need to link more than once.
(My first post on MF.)
posted by humannature at 9:01 AM PST - 36 comments
Thinking with Type
The online companion to the book of the same name offers a nice little online primer on the finer points of typography, including my favourite new online game: Dumb Quotes. Remember kids: only
you can prevent poor kerning.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:42 AM PST - 15 comments
Pushing the open source agenda to the international stage.
Brazilian Pop superstar / Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, Grateful dead lyricist John Barlow and others participated yesterday in a World Social Forum gathering in Alegre, Brazil to urge a free open source software policy in the developing world. An open source constitutional discussed previously on metafilter
here.
posted by tidecat at 5:42 AM PST - 26 comments
MakePovertyHistory.
"The gap between the worldss rich and poor has never been wider. Malnutrition, AIDS, conflict and illiteracy are a daily reality for millions."
This seems like an interesting endeavour, with people like Nelson Mandela involved, as well. I'm a bit of a cynic about this because one of the biggest endorsements has come from
Gordon Brown. He's a
known quantity, and I wonder if this is another P.R. run to bolster his international credentials.
Oh, and there's a possibility it could be
blocked before it gathers enough steam -- so much for
Soft Power.
posted by gsb at 2:51 AM PST - 18 comments
Mapping couplings at a high school
Sociologists graphed the romantic and sexual relationships of 80% of an entire high school (832 out of ~1000 students). The research indicates that high schoolers lack sexual alpha-persons resulting in partner maps that are mostly long lines rather than the more hub and spoke like maps common in adult maps.
posted by Mitheral at 12:14 AM PST - 47 comments
January 30
filmaffinity.com
looks like another useful tool to get recommendations for your viewing pleasure-once more of us start rating! It's in English and Spanish now (with more languages yet to come).
Movielens seems promising as well.
IMDb Pro looks cool too, though I haven't gone
that far. However,
this guy says beware!!
posted by HyperBlue at 8:06 PM PST - 11 comments
Israeli Pro-Palestinian activist Tali Fahima to remain in custody.
Tali Fahima grew up in a conservative desert town in Israel and voted
Likud for years. As the second intifada erupted she read about the brutality of the occupation on the Internet and eventually travelled to Jenin refugee camp where she met Zakariyeh Zbeideh, a local leader of the terrorist organization and Fatah offshoot, Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. She was arrested and jailed in Israel, accused of translating a document for Zbeideh into Arabic. that allowed him to warn fighters marked for Israeli assassination.
Fahima has been under arrest nearly six months.
Her case has gained prominence not just because she is an Israeli Jew supporting Palestinian resistance
but because she is a Mizrahi, a
Sephardic or "Arab" Jew. This group has historically formed a solid bloc of support for aggressive policies against the Palestinians. [MI]
posted by By The Grace of God at 7:15 PM PST - 30 comments
“If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits”
Prostitution was legalized in Germany just over two years ago, and brothel owners, who must pay tax and employee health insurance, have been granted access to official government databases of jobseekers and have equal status with any other employer. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse. Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her unemployment benefit.
“There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry. The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.”
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 4:13 PM PST - 119 comments
Bosnia's horrific war memories
There were countless horrors in the wars which led to the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A Serbian army general has now surrendered to the authorities and will go to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague to answer war crimes charges dating back to 1999. But what happens once camp guards have served their sentences?
Dragan Kolundzija (Kole) stood trial in The Hague in Holland in 1999
Dragan Kolundzija, Kole to his friends, is sitting at the bar of the Hotel Prijedor when we enter....
posted by Postroad at 9:54 AM PST - 1 comments
For 170 years, crossing the Channel from the UK to France would have brought you 11 days forward in time, and crossing back would have brought you 11 days earlier. Why? Because the Church of England wasn't about to adopt
a new Calendar instituted by
a Catholic pope. After all, if the old style was
good enough for Caesar.... In fact, it took over 300 years for the new Gregorian Calendar to
come into use throughout Europe, causing, no doubt, more than a few missed lunch dates as people forgot to
convert between them as they traveled.
There are, of course,
many other calendars in use around the world, and no shortage of people suggesting that
let's do the time warp again.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 6:47 AM PST - 16 comments
Beyond boxers or briefs: Undergarments vary much more than the current styles we find in the nearest
haberdashery department or at
Victoria's Secret. Mormons have the
temple garment.
Suffragettes invented
bloomers, the next bold step after
pantaloons. But throughout modern Western history, women tended to wear
dress-like undergarments, (with or
without accompanying drawers) though both 19th century
men and
women wore the union suit, an earlier type of long-johns.
Of course, there's always the earliest of them all, the loincloth, worn by the ancient
Egyptians and
Tarzan. Similar is the
malo worn by some Pacific Islanders, the
Japanese fundoshi (warning: excess of manflesh), and the more elaborate Indian
dhoti, the male companion to the sari.
And we mustn't forget the bra! Though not a lower-body garment, it has had a long--if
tumultuous--
history worthy of quick
mention.
posted by lychee at 3:42 AM PST - 9 comments
January 29
Those OLD states are totally 2004.
I should wait until
Thursday, but: If you're fed up with the idea of living in America OR Canada, consider moving to
The State of Jefferson, a county on the Cali/Oregon border with big dreams and a kickass
flag.
Of course, they haven't seceded
yet, but when they do, it's only going to be a matter of time before we can all live in the utopian
Republic of Cascadia, where, as Jefferson residents, we'll run on Metric Time and help
strengthen Cascadia's southern border against Californian incursions.
And hey!
Public radio!
posted by dougunderscorenelso at 8:54 PM PST - 20 comments
Momblogging.
The NY Times (reg. required) looks at some blogging mamas. As someone who's regularly losing friends to the new-parent netherworld of suburbia and early nights, I had previously had little interest in reading about childrearing. I checked out
Bad Mother because I'm a fan of the author's husband - the novelist Michael Chabon - and realised it was a hoot. I also like
the Pessoptimist. So what other good bringing-up-baby blogs are out there?
posted by liam at 5:15 PM PST - 23 comments
Of the few memories I still have of childhood,
Ed Emberley is tops among them. Though I am to this day a miserable artist, his
drawing books were staples of my young life. And I always thought he was my little secret. [via
BoingBoing]
posted by absalom at 12:50 PM PST - 15 comments
Jim Capaldi,
legendary rock & roll drummer and Hall of Fame inductee, died Friday at the age of 60 after a brief fight with stomach cancer.
posted by geeknik at 12:12 PM PST - 8 comments
USAF playing cat and mouse game over Iran
and yes: there is no hard evidence that this is taking place. But we do recall what Bush had earlier said about the axis of evil and his warnings to Iran about nuke capability. "The U.S. Air Force is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Iran's ayatollahs, flying American combat aircraft into Iranian airspace in an attempt to lure Tehran into turning on air defense radars, thus allowing U.S. pilots to grid the system for use in future targeting data, administration officials said.
"We have to know which targets to attack and how to attack them," said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.
posted by Postroad at 9:22 AM PST - 72 comments
ytcracker
- "if this is your first time to
ytcracker.com, allow me to thank you for coming here. i am the self-proclaimed king of true computer nerd rap. i represent the dirty nerdy south and digital gangsters worldwide. after conquering chess clubs across the globe, my mission has been to provide my fellow hackers, spammers, carders, and phreaks something to get down to."
I suggest
f*ck antis about fighting the anti-spammers,
drink more, post more about message board hijinks, and the instrumental techno tune,
baby be my twisted pair.
posted by Argyle at 9:15 AM PST - 13 comments
If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
Think advocates for
gay marriage and
group marriage face a lot of social prejudice? Try campaigning for legalizing
adult consensual incest. Its an idea that seems equally distasteful to those on both
the right and the left. But what about, say, the very real situation of adoption and sperm donation resulting in meetings between adult siblings
who arent even aware of the relationship? (Previously discussed
here and
here.) And then theres the earnest
cousin marriage movement, which makes a lot of people reassess their views on the laws. In fact, the adult consensual incest movement has picked up support from some
surprising quarters. Of course, most people are opposed to it, often citing the - quite
overexaggerated (PDF) - dangers of inbreeding. (But, of course, this doesnt explain why theyd still be against adult gay incest, or incest after, say, a tubal ligation.) In the meantime, it is happening, and people are genuinely
being
arrested
for this. Should Montana be sentencing people for up to
100 years for a tryst with a pretty cousin?
posted by kyrademon at 12:11 AM PST - 91 comments
January 28
Thanks for the memories
..."I know its a fallacy * That grown men never cry
Baby, thats a lie * We had our bed of roses
But forgot that roses die * And thank you so much..."
posted by growabrain at 11:56 PM PST - 10 comments
Revolution Radio
is a concept that died in Minneapolis years ago. It never had a chance to take off before being assimilated by the RadioBorg -- the idea that you play good songs, regardless of whether or not they fit under some canned "format." The Suburbs. The Beatles. G-Love and Special Sauce. X. Tori Amos. Adam and the Ants. Loretta Lynn. Trip Shakespeare.
Their playlist definitely leans more toward the "alternative" side of the dial than anything else, but now, thanks to Minnesota Public Radio's
brand-new station, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the musical variety.
Submit a request online. Not fortunate enough to live in Minnesota? You can still listen along to commercial-free radio a couple of
different formats.
Viva la revolution!
posted by RKB at 7:27 PM PST - 39 comments
National Lampoon
appears to be less than optimistic about the election in Iraq. Nevertheless, Bush seems to
expect much of what's depicted in that satire, he manages to maintain higher hopes in the end. I'm sure
Jim Henry would love to give a pre-election pep talk.
posted by ThePrawn at 6:02 PM PST - 16 comments
Wikipes
is another application of wiki. Everybody go in, put in some of your favorite recipes, and cook dinner for your sweety. Thank me later.
posted by mychai at 2:16 PM PST - 21 comments
gorgeous women getting waxed for the first time (sfw)
"There's hardly a square centimeter of nudity in this video for a catchy pop tune by Markus Nikolai, but we're certain there's a bunch of gently sadistic Brazilian wax fetishists out there getting off on the facial expressions of all those cute twentysomething girls with Australian British accents experiencing the skin-wrenching thrill of the wooden spatula for the first time."
posted by tsarfan at 1:19 PM PST - 44 comments
Dick Cheney, Dressing Down
I can't decide if this is interesting cultural criticism or ridiculous nitpicking about something that isn't very important. Maybe it's both. Side note: It's a nice change to read about a male politician's appearance and wardrobe for once.
posted by scratch at 12:08 PM PST - 117 comments
Hell Yes...
It's time for some Friday Flash Fun! (Well sort of, since even though this video was probably created in Flash, it's delivered in crap-tacular streaming format) Anyway, everyone's favorite white-boy (or
"guero") hip-hop superstar is back in action with a new video [
rm] [
asx] for his
forthcoming album. The video was created by Flash maestro
Mumbleboy, and for those that found Beck's
last outing a little vanilla for their tastes, it signals a welcome return to the man's
Chunky Monkey roots. Enjoy!
posted by idontlikewords at 11:49 AM PST - 18 comments
Iraq
- Pulitzer prize winning journalist
Seymour Hersh shares his thoughts on the path of america. (streaming video and audio, transcript included. Video is long, 20 minutes 49 seconds. Worth watching) Seymour Hersh works for the
newyorker. He is best known for breaking the My Lai massacre story from Vietnam.
posted by sourbrew at 6:57 AM PST - 24 comments
January 27
Sports Illustrated
explains seven or eight professional soccer/football teams, including highly regarded Manchester United and
FC Porto, are interested in "a phenomenon, probably the best player to come out of Brazil" : Jean Carlos Chera, nine years old and 4' 6". A
video (
additional source) [wmv format, 8MB] demonstrates Jean's abilities.
posted by quam at 6:42 PM PST - 46 comments
Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it
wasn't always
so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.
How things have changed. (Yours now,
$110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of
two planets and
one moon (with a
second in the works). Actually,
we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.
Maybe Not.
posted by absalom at 5:51 PM PST - 17 comments
"Precious Lord"
sung by Mahalia Jackson (mp3)
No artist brought more acclaim to gospel music than
Mahalia Jackson (October 26, 1911 January 27, 1972). Beginning in 1950, her
divine (.wav) talents were featured weekly on
Studs Turkel's radio program, and through
her music and gentle personality she became so beloved worldwide that
her funeral rivaled that of royalty. Mahalia sang "Precious Lord" at Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral -- at Mahalia's funeral, Aretha Franklin did the honors.
Mahalia was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame posthumously
in 1997. Word has it she also made a mean
okra gumbo.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:22 PM PST - 6 comments
Little-Known U.S. Document Signed by President Adams Proclaims America's Government Is Secular
Some people today assert that the United States government came from Christian foundations. They argue that our political system represents a Christian ideal form of government and that Jefferson, Madison, et al, had simply expressed Christian values while framing the Constitution. If this proved true, then we should have a wealth of evidence to support it, yet just the opposite proves the case.
Although, indeed, many of America's colonial statesmen practiced Christianity, our most influential Founding Fathers broke away from traditional religious thinking. The ideas of the Great Enlightenment that began in Europe had begun to sever the chains of monarchical theocracy. These heretical European ideas spread throughout early America. Instead of relying on faith, people began to use reason and science as their guide. The humanistic philosophical writers of the Enlightenment, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, had greatly influenced our Founding Fathers and Isaac Newton's mechanical and mathematical foundations served as a grounding post for their scientific reasoning.
posted by Postroad at 5:19 PM PST - 49 comments
This is, quite possibly, the funniest TV spot for an independent videogame retailer I've ever seen. Not that there are many out there (funny ones, I mean). There's more
here and
here. (via
Joystiq, requires QT)
posted by riffraff at 3:33 PM PST - 16 comments
Malu cachu
(that's Welsh, I'll leave the interpreting to you) - a comprehensive guide to swearing in 165 languages. This probably offers the most appeal to the younger crowd,
subverting classroom etiquette undetected--but it's not without its draw for the
inebriated.
It may also be a good idea to cross check your
business name before going global. A representative of
AmaCorp visiting Japan is likely to catch a few odd looks.
posted by ThePrawn at 2:16 PM PST - 14 comments
A9 yellow pages features PHOTOS!!!
So A9 starts doing
yellow pages, and I'm thinking, big deal, right? But then, I think, ok I'll check out some
Italian restaurants near my work, cause it's close to lunch. And that's, well, ok, but what's the big deal?
But then, I click on one of the
little numbers in the map, AND THERE'S A PHOTO of the restaurant, right there! And little arrows, so I can WALK UP AND DOWN THE STREET!!!
And
here's how they did it! (via
kottke)
posted by jasper411 at 10:07 AM PST - 72 comments
Moan Home!
Jenna Jameson, further pushing into the mainstream and "coming" to a cellphone near you, is now going to sell her "moan tones" for $2.50 a pop.
Best bit of the article? "If you can get her to say my name then I would buy it. I need that kind of personal attention," said New Yorker Julian McCullough.
posted by fenriq at 9:30 AM PST - 3 comments
Got a Secret?
(Discussed briefly previously
here)
The idea behind Frank Warren Artomatic exhibit was simple: distribute 3,000 post cards asking the public to share a secret with him anonymously by reply mail, and sit back and wait for the replies. Some of the post cards are
now on display at the Anne C. Fisher gallery, but if you can't make it to the Georgetown show don't worry, Warren has created a
"Postsecret" blog where you can see some of the most interesting replies. (via
DCist)
posted by indiebass at 7:48 AM PST - 13 comments
Ivan Noble's Tumour Diary
The BBC's Ivan Noble has been keeping an online diary of his fight against a malignant brain tumour. Alas, his illness is now getting the better of him, and this will be his final column.
He has been, at times, an inspiration, incredibly brave and totally honest about his illness. As a former colleague, he shall also be remembered fondly.
Start from
the beginning, it's a must read.
posted by scaryduck at 2:56 AM PST - 10 comments
When is suicide selfish?
Yesterday in Los Angeles a suicidal local man stabbed himself in the chest, slit his wrists, and drove his car up onto train tracks, lost his nerve and hopped out at the last minute, to watch in anguish as not one but two trains collided with his car and with each other, killing 11 people (so far) and injuring almost 200 others. [more inside]
posted by LondonYank at 2:19 AM PST - 100 comments
January 26
Etiquette Hell
For those who throw good manners, common decency, and proper etiquette to the wind, here is a website collecting stories about social gaffes that are often hilarious.
posted by livingsanctuary at 8:18 PM PST - 14 comments
Blogs are a phenomenon. Technorati, a blog search engine, tracks 6,406,667 blogs. Two years ago, it tracked 100,000. About 27% of adults now read blogs, up from 2% in 2003. But really they're nothing new, says
Kevin Maney in USA Today.
posted by rushmc at 7:01 PM PST - 35 comments
