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MetaFilter Among Nation's Best

netbros — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:03:24 -0800

MagCover — start with a photo, add some headlines—voila—magazine cover. Here's a little MeFi sample I threw together.
Yes, you do have to register your email address to save and share what you create.

Turn around, bright lights

Eideteker — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:56:46 -0800

Starlight - (late) Friday Flash Fun.

Everything you know about U.S. involvement in Iran is wrong

lenny70 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:54:37 -0800

The Great Satan Myth. We have discussed the US supported coup of 1953 on MeFi before. Now, Abbas Milani, provides some more context to the complex relationship of the two countries.

The Future Gets Closer, Again

StrikeTheViol — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:39:05 -0800

Interesting developments in med-tech: gene testing machines for doctors, a plan to engineer stem cells to kill HIV, a new way to repair damaged nerves, the next generation of retinal implants, and the first bionic fingers up for sale. (Bonus for those uninterested in medicine: the newest take on a Minority Report-style interface, courtesy of MIT.)

Detroit: Worst Test Score Ever

Acromion — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:49:33 -0800

The results of the recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NEAP) tests are in. Detroit students posted the worst math scores ever in the history of the test.
"Those scores on the prestigious test are in the same range as would be expected from children who never attended school and simply guessed at the answers," said Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager of Detroit Public Schools, during a press conference Tuesday.

Frank Beckmann of the Detroit News says "the time for excuses is over."

Daniel Howes:
"This is the unraveling of an American city, a haunting parallel to the reckoning that is forcing fundamental change on the Detroit auto industry, its people, unions and communities. The keepers of the city's institutions are desperately fighting to maintain a status quo that is operationally broken, intellectually spent and morally indefensible."

He'll never be the head of a major corporation

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:05:56 -0800

Snapshots of Mike the Headless Chicken (NSFW, NSFV, previously)

Stop! Don't pass up this thread! The Flash's life depends on it!

Artw — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:03:43 -0800

The top 75 Iconic DC covers of all-time

Who can argue with the fibre?

bwg — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:40:08 -0800

Alien Vs. Cereal: a rather loquacious alien expounds upon the wonders of Raisin Bran Crunch.
Via Adfreak: "A chatty British alien explains how his life is so much better now that he's eating right—more Raisin Bran Crunch, less human meat and cerebral fluid—in this amusing three-minute video from Leo Burnett in Chicago. The creature looks a lot like one of the H.R. Giger creations from the Alien movie series. He even has the smaller inner set of jaws, which turn out to be perfect for eating spoonfuls of the cereal."

That is the question... yeah!

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:09:22 -0800

Actor Brian Cox gives an acting masterclass on Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy to a young student (SLYT)

Better Smile When You Cross That Border.

darth_tedious — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:14:55 -0800

Peter Watts Arrested and Beaten at the US Border. Author of the Rifters Trilogy, and that neat little vampire Powerpoint, he's been busted for "assaulting a border guard", and is looking at prison time. You can find more details here. His account of the matter is on his blog, here.
Watts, previously on MeFi here , here, and here . And in various comments...

India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

kanewai — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:01:14 -0800

Fed up with foreign companies patenting traditional medicine from India, the country's top scientific body is compiling a giant database of everything from yoga positions to medicinal fruit juice.
The initiative is designed to fight what traditional medical workers, and their supporters, view as bio-piracy: the monopolization (usually through intellectual property) of genetic resources and traditional knowledge or culture taken from peoples or farming communities that developed and nurtured those resources.

Two early cases: The US granted a patent to the University of Mississippi to use turmeric to clean wounds (granted 1995, rescinded 1997), and the Europe Patent Office issued a patent to W R Grace to use neem oil as a fungicidal (granted 1994, revoked 2000).

Also: Bikram Choudhury patents his version yoga (previously).

Back to the article: The TKDL already contains 30 million pages and more than 200,000 medicinal formulas derived from herbal and mineral-based treatments originating in India and abroad, such as ayurveda, unani, siddha, as well as yoga techniques.

Why is life worth living?

vronsky — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:27:34 -0800

"Well, all right, why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Uh, like what? Okay. Um, for me... oh, I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... and Willie Mays, and... the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and... Louie Armstrong's recording of Potatohead Blues... Swedish Movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne... the crabs at Sam Wo's... Tracy's face..."

Conflict of Interests

msalt — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:02:11 -0800

The feud between renegade Sheriff Joe Arpaio prev 1 2 3 and local officals is exploding. He has now indicted one judge who ruled against him (for obstruction of justice), and got a warrant to search the office and home of another.
Meanwhile, the Court of Appeals freed (pending appeal) the sheriff's deputy who grabbed a defense lawyer's privileged papers literally behind her back, and blocked that search warrant on the judge, also pending appeal.

Overview, from Talking Points Memo.
The indictment of highly respected judge Gary Donahoe caused the cancellation of a hearing that was considering whether to limit the power of Arpaio and his ally, County Prosecutor Andrew Thomas, to prosecute local officials. Arpaio and Donahoe now argue that Judge Donahoe, who has ruled against them in other cases, has a conflict of interest in cases involving them because of their indictment.

Thomas and Arpaio also filed a federal racketeering lawsuit last week alleging that the County Board of Supervisors of Maricopa County -- the nation's 4th largest, centered around Phoenix -- the presiding judge and several others are involved in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Here's a report by Phoenix's ABC affiliate, which supports the two. (warning: loud audio)

Reports say that the FBI is investigating Arpaio for retaliating against political opponents.

The future's a bummer.

blue_beetle — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:24:27 -0800

Only the super-rich can save us!

gerryblog — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:19:14 -0800

SLJaredDiamondOp-Ed: As part of my board work, I have been asked to assess the environments in oil fields, and have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I've also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I've discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world's strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability.
...What's my evidence for this? Here are a few examples involving three corporations — Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Chevron — that many critics of business love to hate, in my opinion, unjustly.

Religion à la Carte – Threat or Menace?*

ServSci — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:44:16 -0800

A major survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A strong majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, including majorities of nearly every religious tradition, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. The survey finds that constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace, as every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents. (.pdf of full report (268 pages) or watch the video of Pew Forum Director Luis Lugo giving an overview of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and talking about some of its key findings.)
on commodification of religion and "a la carte" religion:

"As capitalism became the dominant logic system for social relations, religious beliefs, practices, and symbols first became commodities, and then later signs and abstract signifiers that modern consumers use to signal to others seemingly vital elements of their identity and status, but which have no actual ties to the religion's practices, community, and its demands for social justice. In effect, the hegemony of commodification trains people to relate to all culture as cultural products; that is, commodities, which may be bought and sold on the free market. Consumers choose their religion, enjoy it, and once it has served its purpose—usually to achieve self-fulfillment—they discard it."

- Scott Klein - The Morality and Politics of Consumer Religion: How Consumer Religion Fuels the Culture Wars in the United States

... but,

"[...] many anthropologists, on both sides of the Atlantic, have personally expressed to me strong reservations about ever employing the word syncretism. If asked why they hold this view, they are often unable to articulate a specific reason. Some, however, did express one or both of the following objections: (1) syncretism is a pejorative term, one that derides mixture, and/or (2) syncretism presupposes "purity" in the traditions that combine. Both of these reservations will be considered below, but it is the broad disagreement within the anthropological community on the appropriateness of the very term syncretism that has stimulated this inquiry. Such ambivalence reflects basic uncertainties about how to conceptualize cultural mixture."

- Charles Stewart - Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture

FridayFlashFilter: Nostalgia with Gorillas and Nibbles

filthy light thief — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:36:12 -0800

Let's take a jaunt back, to the early days of DOS, from the early 1980s to early 1990s. Way back to IBM PC DOS 1.00 and 1.10. Back when Bill Gates wrote code. This was the time of avoiding donkeys on the road (gameplay), gorillas lobbing explosive bananas over skyscrapers (gameplay) and a hungry line named Nibbles [a variant of the older Snake game] (gameplay). So have at it! Gorillas recreated in Flash | Flash tribute to Gorillas, with updated graphics | Snake | two-player Nibbles | Radical Snake (now with curves) | Snake (like Radical Snake, but with landscape obstacles) | Nibblets (All 10 original levels from the QBasic game Nibbles, but with a new control system) | Snake/Nibbles for Vim (download) | Donkey (QBasic source code)

Bro, check it out - seriously huge rave on Zombie Island tonight!

jbickers — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:35:43 -0800

WTF Comcast is "proof that whoever writes the Comcast OnDemand descriptions is drunk."

Alleyn and company

verstegan — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:32:06 -0800

The papers of Edward Alleyn, the Elizabethan actor-manager, are now available online in a digital edition. Most of what we know about the London theatre in the age of Shakespeare comes from this archive; highlights include the only surviving example of a 'part' or script written out for an actor in an Elizabethan play (image) and the contract for building the Fortune playhouse in 1600, just a year after the building of the Globe. Sadly, the archive doesn't include any manuscripts relating to Shakespeare, because Alleyn worked for the Admiral's Men, one of the two main theatre companies in London, whereas Shakespeare worked for the competition (the Lord Chamberlain's Men), though that didn't stop the nineteenth-century forger John Payne Collier from faking a few documents of his own to fill the gap.

Leaning tower of South Padre Island

Albryhno — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:32:21 -0800

Colorful drive-by commentary on the $125 million boondoggle that is the leaning tower of South Padre Island.

Airbus A400M takes maiden flight

JohnR — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:30:58 -0800

Airbus A400M took its maiden flight today. video 1, video 2, video 3. cockpit

Mozilla exec recommends you Bing it from now on

Nyarlathotep — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:06:12 -0800

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." (SLYT) Because of this statement, made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Mozilla's director of community development Asa Dotzler has informed readers of his personal blog how to change Firefox's default search engine from Google to Bing. This is a pretty interesting stance coming from someone who works for a company that not only directly competes with Microsoft (the owners of Bing), but also derives a huge amount of its revenue from support from Google. (via)

If you wouldn't like living that way (in the lowest status slot in the pecking order), you're doing it wrong.

The Whelk — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:47:48 -0800

Metafilter's Own Charlie Stross asks the question; " You, and a quarter of a million other folks, have embarked on a 1000-year voyage aboard a hollowed-out asteroid. What sort of governance and society do you think would be most comfortable, not to mention likely to survive the trip without civil war, famine, and reigns of terror?" engrossing commentary follows. (via)

The Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper

reenum — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:33:17 -0800

The Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper Gawker's Tommy Craggs talks with an ex-scorekeeper for the Vancouver Grizzlies, and reveals the subjectivity of stat keeping in the NBA. This guy once gave Nick Van Exel 23 assists just because he felt like it.

Filed under "Stuff Lyndon B Johnson never did"

seanyboy — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:24:47 -0800

11 Presidents. 1 Queen.