MetaFilter

Whether it is seasonal flu or novel H1N1, people have been touting the need to wash hands often. Some evidence suggests that since the virus is airborne, washing hands may not be the most effective strategy to prevent it. This evidence is hard to swallow by some.
comment posted at 4:32 AM on Oct-3-09

Panoramic shots of people doing yoga in Umag, Croatia taken at sunset (1 2 3) and one in the morning. (Previously)
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Oct-2-09

Zaytuna College in Berkeley, CA will accept its first students in the fall of 2010 or 2011. Founded by Sheik Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, it will be the first accredited Islamic college in the United States, open to men and women of all religions.
comment posted at 9:22 PM on Oct-1-09

Lottie the Otter is Winnie the Pooh's newest pal in the new book (released Oct. 5) Return to Hundred Acre Wood. Lottie is said to enjoy cricket and is a stickler for etiquette.
comment posted at 4:19 AM on Oct-1-09

Saturn is no more. "Other industries could learn from the Saturn Corporation. Certainly GM is taking what they have learned from their Saturn investment and incorporating it into their existing plants and facilities where practical. It will not be an overnight experience. Like Saturn, it will take time, investment and a strong commitment to regain the role of world leader in the automobile industry."
comment posted at 3:52 PM on Sep-30-09

Paul Ewald, an evolutionary biologist at University of Louisville in Kentucky states his conviction, in one interview with Discover Magazine that, that by 2050 the human species will have found that between 80% and as high as 95% of cancers are caused by viruses.
comment posted at 3:55 PM on Sep-30-09

I have proposed, in the past, that the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations should disperse the Amerikkkans throughout the Third World instead of allowing them to remain in occupied North America. Here are some of my reasons.

comment posted at 4:24 AM on Sep-30-09

Cleveland Rocks! While the IOC is still preparing to elect the host city for for 2016 Olympics, the (unaffiliated) Federation of Gay Games has just announced that the 2014 Gay Games will be held on Lake Erie, with Cleveland's bid beating those of Washington, DC and Boston.
comment posted at 4:53 PM on Sep-29-09

Though many have long suspected that the title of John Lennon's Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was a barely-concealed reference to the drug he was so fond of, Lennon himself always maintained otherwise, as in this interview with Dick Cavett, explaining that the inspiration for the fanciful name was from his son Julian, who'd brought him a drawing of his nursery school friend. That friend, one Lucy O'Donnell, just passed away.
comment posted at 4:36 AM on Sep-29-09

Two weeks ago the first episode of The Jay Leno Show gathered to big ratings, leading some to question what his appeal actually is. After the inevitable fall in ratings a review of the show showed up in The New Yorker.
comment posted at 4:53 AM on Sep-29-09

The Costs of Becoming a Journalist: "Journalists born since 1970 predominantly come from middle class to upper middle class backgrounds. And Journalism ranks third in the list of the most socially exclusive professions, just behind doctors and lawyers." One reason: "a prerequisite for entrance into a career in journalism is at least one internship experience, and ... many, if not most, are unpaid." For some of the problems with unpaid internship: Take This Internship and Shove It
comment posted at 4:04 PM on Sep-28-09

Brassed off?! (YouTube, 5 min.) Like the health care debate itself, the boycott / buycott confrontation regarding the recent article by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey may be heating up. Mackey, who was previously investigated by the SEC for making anonymous internet posts talking up his stock while trashing the valuation of an acquisition target, now faces opposition from suppliers and labor groups, a decrease in brand perception, investor calls to step down... and pesky oom-pah bands.
comment posted at 12:12 PM on Sep-28-09

David Byrne has just published a new book about bicycles called Bicycle Diaries. A long time rider, Byrne muses on how the world looks and works from the vantage point of a cyclist. It's getting pretty good reviews. To launch the book, Byrne is touring the US and arranging public forums. Each event features a civic leader, an urban theorist, a bicycle advocate, and Byrne himself speaking about bikes in cities. Here’s a schedule of the upcoming events. He’s also designed some bike racks for his hometown of New York City.
comment posted at 12:32 PM on Sep-27-09

Walter Moers is one of the most prominent cartoonists from Germany. One of his most famous creations is "Das kleine Arschloch" (The little asshole). In 1998, the first comic book with the title "Adolf - Die Nazisau" (Adolf - the Nazi pig) was published. Two more were to follow. To promote the third volume, the video "Ich hock' in meinem Bonker" was made in 2006, showing Hitler sitting in his Führerbunker during the last days of the Second World War, unwilling to surrender to the Allies. Here is the German original. It was also translated into English (I'm sitting in my bunker) and French (J'suis seul dans mon bonker). I find myself trapped in a moral dilemma when watching these videos. On the one hand, I can't help wetting myself because they are incredibly funny. But on the other hand - as a historian AND a German - I can't help but feel that this is VERY wrong. Poking fun at National Socialism in general and those last days of the Second World War in Berlin in particular, where tens of thousands from both sides died the most horrible deaths, is just ... well, gross. I'm looking forward to your comments. Am I being over-sensitive?
comment posted at 5:03 AM on Sep-27-09

In response to an incest case in which a man imprisoned, raped and fathered two children with his own daughter, Poland's Lower House of Parliament has approved an amendment to their penal code which makes chemical castration of pedophiles mandatory in certain cases.
comment posted at 12:40 PM on Sep-26-09

Oak twig carved from dissolved recording of the heartbeat of an unborn child and the last heartbeats of a loved one, bone dust from every bone in the body, ring finger bones coated in bullet lead from various American wars, glass eyes for wounded soldiers coated with trinitite produced during the first atomic explosion, WWI cavalry boots made from a melted record of Skeeter Davis' "The End Of The World".

San Antonio-based artist (he prefers "marterialist poet") Dario Robleto crafts exquisite objects using a physical lexicon that includes bone dust, analog audio recordings, war objects and remnants of extinction. By recontextualizing these items he hopes to reverse "historical amnesia" and to reengage the past by "seeking out and sympathizing with another era's hopes and losses through its people's stories and materials." Highly influenced by music, he considers his work sampling. As he says: "you don't have to make up anything; the world is magical on its own."
comment posted at 1:32 PM on Sep-25-09

Cushing Academy, a New England prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, is taking a (not all-together) novel direction with their library: they're getting rid of the books. There is plenty of commentary on the decision, but this isn't the first school to go digital. One of the earlier adopters was the University of Texas at Austin, who changed their undergraduate library into a 24-hour electronic information commons, though almost all of the library's 90,000 volumes were dispersed to other university collections (their other libraries are still intact).
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Sep-24-09

Spaced is 10. Fried gold!
comment posted at 12:43 PM on Sep-24-09

On October 2, 2009, the International Olympic Committee will meet in Copenhagen to choose between Chicago, Rio de Janiero, Tokyo, and Madrid as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics. While Chicago sends some of its most famous citizens to Copenhagen, a protest against Chicago's bid is planned at City Hall.
comment posted at 4:43 AM on Sep-24-09

Molecular Visualizations of DNA
comment posted at 3:55 PM on Sep-23-09

The newspaper industry is facing challenges, and what might be done to ramify the situation Newspapers have been an institution for over a hundred years, but are now under threat of being undermined by the Internet and other sources. This article gives a decent background of the current crisis faced by the industry and how the industry might respond to the threats the printed paper faces.
comment posted at 3:43 PM on Sep-23-09

The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted, it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock-picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favouring their projects. In short: it is for those who have a sense for poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four-year-old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream. Learn film with Werner Herzog.
comment posted at 10:52 AM on Sep-23-09
comment posted at 6:19 PM on Sep-23-09

INFORMATION; SEASPEAK IS A RESTRICTED LANGUAGE USING SIMPLE STANDARD PHRASES FOR CLEAR COMMUNICATION AT SEA; OVER.
ADVICE; BEGIN EACH PHRASE WITH MESSAGE MARKERS SUCH AS INSTRUCTION, ADVICE, WARNING, INFORMATION, QUESTION, ANSWER, REQUEST, INTENTION; OVER.
QUESTION; ARE THERE RELATED LANGUAGES; OVER.
ANSWER; YES AIRSPEAK, TUNNELSPEAK; OUT.
comment posted at 10:44 AM on Sep-23-09

Biohistorical research • Wax engraving • The Thinker after the bomb • Alfred Stieglitz's palladium photographs • Tibetan bronzes with interior contents • The examination and treatment of a pair of boots from the Aleutian Islands — A small sample of the articles available from the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC).
comment posted at 8:30 PM on Sep-22-09
comment posted at 5:02 AM on Sep-23-09

a collection of kisses.
comment posted at 4:05 AM on Sep-22-09

A complete Album/CD on Youtube... but without any actual video.

...Mercifully, Henry hit him with the soft end of the pistol. Scrotum sprawled on the parquet flooring, and Henry strode back to the window and took aim at the hang glider, now several hundred yards past the lime trees and fast diminishing...

Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (link to Transcript) By Vivian Stanshall
comment posted at 3:58 PM on Sep-21-09

NY Post Special Global Warming Edition (courtesy of The Yes Men). Thousands of hard copies hit the streets of New York at the crack of dawn.
comment posted at 10:59 AM on Sep-21-09

Nearly 1 in 5 young adults is out of work. Student debt is the highest its ever been. With a 10 year job growth of negative 230,000 jobs, the pool of available jobs is the lowest its ever been as a ratio to available college grads. And even with this dwindling tax base, in order to sustain Medicare and Social Security by 2020, we will need to tax 1.5 workers for every retiree.
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Sep-19-09

"The Oyly-Well: or, A Topographico-Spagyrical description of the Oyly-Well, at St. Catharines-chappel in the Paroch of Libberton." by M. Mackaile, was originally published in Edinburgh by Robert Brown in 1664.
comment posted at 2:00 PM on Sep-18-09

The Red Book , full of calligraphy and grand illustrations, is Carl Jung's last unpublished book. Written in private and quite possibly never intended to actually be published, it has been called full of "infinite wisdom" and conversely "the work of a psychotic". It has been carefully guarded for the past 40 years by his family, who only recently have been convinced of the importance of its publishing. This is the story of how it happened.
comment posted at 4:24 AM on Sep-17-09

"The most important of the all-too-human functions of consultants is to sanctify and communicate opinion. Like ministers of information, consultants condense the message, smooth out the dissonances, unify the rhetoric, and then repeat and amplify it ad nauseam through the client's rank and file. The chief message to be communicated is that you will be expected to work much harder than you ever have before and your chances of losing your job are infinitely greater than you ever imagined."

If you've ever known a management consultant, this explains why they always seem to have that "outrageously unjustified level of self-confidence." A fascinating insider's look into the anthropology of business consulting -- Masters of Illusion: The Great Management Consultancy Swindle
comment posted at 4:42 AM on Sep-17-09

Dusty Springfield Beatles Medley with Mireille Mathieu, Juliet Prowse and Burt Bacharach on piano.
comment posted at 4:01 PM on Sep-16-09

Canon 1 à 2 from J. S. Bach (slyt) For you math teachers out there....the Crab Canon
comment posted at 8:43 PM on Sep-12-09

Last Tuesday, The Augstine Commission - an independent council created earlier this year to study NASA's human spaceflight objectives - released their findings. While many are responding to the report's grim findings on NASA's budget woes, former aerospace engineer Rand Simberg has a criticism of his own: "If our attitude toward the space frontier is that we must strive to never, ever lose anyone, it will remain closed. If our ancestors who opened the west, or who came from Europe, had such an attitude, we would still be over there, and there would have been no California space industry to get us to the moon forty years ago. It has never been 'safe' to open a frontier, and this frontier is the harshest one that we've ever faced."
comment posted at 11:11 AM on Sep-12-09

The sounds of a loon, two owls, cat, wood stork and cuckoo are the sole musical instruments in this furry arrangement of the classic, "Fur Elise," composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Furry, trained flies, underwater astonishments, make new animals and more at Switcheroo Zoo.
comment posted at 11:01 AM on Sep-12-09

Fifty years ago, Alan Lomax (folk music collector) recorded the first United States Sacred Harp Musical Association convention at Fyffe, Alabama. His recordings, published by the Library of Congress and later reissued by Rounder records, introduced Sacred Harp music to a wide audience outside the South. And, with the influx of many non-traditional singers since then, his recording is one of the best testaments to traditional Sacred Harp singing. This Saturday and Sunday, the United States Sacred Harp Musical Association returns to Fyffe. Get there early--it's going to be crowded. But check Youtube, Flickr and Facebook in the next few days--there's bound to be plenty of modern field recordings of the event. (Previously: Singing School, 'The Lost Tonal Tribe').
comment posted at 3:13 PM on Sep-11-09

Graphic Concrete is a process with which textures, patterns, typography, images, or works of art can be "printed" on concrete surfaces, with subtle and dramatic results. Invented by Finnish designer and architect Samuli Naamanka, Graphic Concrete is being used in projects all over the globe.
comment posted at 4:17 AM on Sep-11-09

An ever-growing treasure trove of magazine cover and advertising art from the Golden Age of American illustration. Check out wonderful covers from Theatre Magazine, Adventure Magazine, the Argosy, Photoplay, and Black Mask. Here's a scary cover from Laughter magazine, a strange and beautiful Life cover from 1887, and a copy of The Liberator that I dearly wish I could flip through. See also collections of great old ads for soap, cigarettes and books, among others. The intro page is here.
comment posted at 3:02 PM on Sep-9-09

Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty is a blog featuring selected drawings by Isaac age 10; Grace, 9; and Lily, who is 6. They participate in Illustration Friday, and even do book reviews. Recently, to celebrate the 3rd year anniversary of the blog, their father asked readers to submit some 'fan art' using past CNLT drawings as inspiration. Here are the submitted art works, accompanied by the original drawings that inspired them.
comment posted at 3:31 AM on Sep-9-09

The practical possiblility of augmented reality contact lenses. Contact lenses that reshape the eye. Bone-anchored hearing aids. Voice box transplant plans.
comment posted at 4:25 AM on Sep-8-09

Social mobility, income inequality and wealth disparities.
comment posted at 10:41 AM on Sep-7-09

How does a director follow up the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time*? (*adjusted for inflation) He remakes a French classic - taking an international cast to a Caribbean nation ruled by a military dictatorship, where hurricanes, irascibility, other difficulties take him far over a budget already large enough to be shared by two studios. The result is his personal favorite among his films. But deceptive marketing and cute robots contribute to its making back less than half of its costs. (previously)
comment posted at 8:39 AM on Sep-7-09

Geoff Hunt has been painting cover art for Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of historical novels since 1988.
comment posted at 2:50 PM on Sep-5-09

Punctuality, privacy, dead time, concentration: all dead or dying at the hands of the Internet, according to this list in the Daily Telegraph.

Only at festivals with no Wi-Fi signals can the gullible be tricked into believing that David Hasslehoff [sic] has passed away.
comment posted at 3:11 PM on Sep-5-09

JERICHO, Ark. — It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps. The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.
comment posted at 3:36 AM on Sep-4-09

Duke Ellington recalled "... that's one of those things Tizol came up with. See, it wasn't in tempo, he stood [and played it] sort of ad lib. He played it, [the] first ten bars, we took it and worked out the rest of it." That thing was Caravan, and the instigator was Juan Tizol, who was a trombonist in Duke Ellington's orchestra. The track, originally recorded in 1936, became a jazz standard. The lyrics were penned in 1936 by publisher and manager Irving Mills, adding to the exotic feeling and romance of what is considered by many to be the first Latin jazz piece, before the late swing era and first decade of bebop when Latin Jazz (also called Afro-Cuban Jazz) came into prominence. The track didn't cross into other genres until Les Paul created his version of the track in 1948, which lead to other covers, and eventually a successful cover by The Ventures (source).
comment posted at 1:32 PM on Sep-2-09
comment posted at 1:36 PM on Sep-2-09

I was shot in the head two years ago. I was in prison for six years. I live in a Taliban hub. I need to be an amputee. I'm four. I'm six. I'm eight. I have a micropenis. I've had sex both with and without a foreskin. My sister and I are in love. I'm in love with my mother. I married and had a daughter with my first cousin. I love my dog. I have killed someone while driving drunk. I have superpowers from chemotherapy. I was in a cult for seven years. I own a woman. I used to be asexual (I am still asexual). I was in porn (and I'm still in porn). I took a boy's virginity. I am killing myself in a few months.
comment posted at 11:01 AM on Aug-30-09