MetaFilter posts by stbalbach.
Displaying 101 through 150. Subscribe: http://www.metafilter.com/user/1915/postsrss 
Wikitravel.org is sort of like a Wikipedia for travel information. It's a for-profit service supported by banner ads. In a recent RfC over at Wikimedia - the non-profit that runs Wikipedia and other projects - it was decided to start a new Wiki-based travel project. Meanwhile at least 38 of 48 the volunteer admins at Wikitravel.org said they would jump ship and join a new Wikimedia travel site (travel.wikimedia.org). The owners of Wikitravel, Internet Brands, have responded by issuing law suits against two of its admins in a possible bid to intimidate the creation of a Wikimedia travel site. Wikimedia is counter-suing and supporting the legal defense against the two admins.
posted on Sep-5-12 at 10:58 PM
Incandescent lightbulbs are now banned across the entire European Union as of September 1. "Concerns about poor performance of replacement bulbs have been proved wrong." It is predicted to save 39 terawatt-hours of electricity across the EU annually by 2020. "The phase-out has been very smooth." BanTheBulb said "..the vast majority of the public have adjusted to using the next generation of lighting technologies with the absolute minimum of fuss and drama."
posted on Aug-31-12 at 1:04 PM
Amazon Election Heat Map 2012. Republican landslide in Amazon book vote.
posted on Aug-22-12 at 8:33 AM
I DID IT! I FINALLY CAUGHT A HERITAGE UNIT! (UP 5009) is a rail enthusiast video that inspired responses culminating in the Double Trainbow (caution: horns / screams).
posted on Aug-2-12 at 1:46 PM
Watching Syria's War [Caution: war]. The New York Times is posting video coming out of the Syrian Civil War with context and background: Street Fighting in Allepo (related), Crusader Castle Becomes Rebel Redoubt (AFP report), Tank Stalking, Harrowing ride through the streets of Homs. The online video has "allowed the war to be documented like no other", according to the Times, presumably because of the ubiquity of video cameras among the fighters and access to the Internet.
posted on Aug-1-12 at 1:30 PM
Flying Lasers Reveal Buried Historical Structures (pictures)
posted on Jul-29-12 at 12:42 PM
"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first 3D printed firearm in the world to actually be tested." Gentleman describes how he used an old 3D printer and CAD files to print his own working gun.(*)
posted on Jul-26-12 at 9:23 PM
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, Bill McKibben
posted on Jul-19-12 at 11:15 AM
Is the Web Driving Us Mad? (Newsweek, cover) Evidence wise, the verdict isn't looking good. The proof is starting to pile up.
posted on Jul-11-12 at 11:27 PM
As the world gets warmer from global warming more people use air conditioning which increases Co2 emissions which increases the warmth of the world which causes more people to use AC... this positive feedback loop turns out to be non-trivial. Cooling a Warming Planet: A Global Air Conditioning Surge. Some facts about air conditioning and the environment, by Stan Cox.
posted on Jul-10-12 at 11:13 PM
Back in March, Samuel Smith wondered "Will 2012 be the summer when Colorado finally burns to the ground?" A perfect combination of record high heat, record low snow pack, low humidity and high levels of underbrush made Colorado (and elsewhere) a tinderbox ready to blow. Unfortunately, that is now playing out. The Denver post says the fires are "shaping up as one of the biggest disasters in Colorado history." Some of the best sources for following the fires..
posted on Jun-28-12 at 11:23 AM
Showcase of rare movie posters coveted by movie poster collectors. The 10 most expensive movie posters. Browse some posters up for sale right now, or wait for the crown jewel of the poster world which could soon become the first to break the $1m mark.
posted on Jun-27-12 at 8:44 AM
Luis von Ahn has spoken about the idea of Human Computation in the past, he's the guy who created ReCAPTCHA's, using those anti-spam tests to help decipher digitized books. Now he has a new idea, Duolingo - learn a language for free while helping to translate text from the web.
posted on Jun-20-12 at 12:23 AM
Online articles often change after publication, except there is no history tab and sometimes those revisions are controversial, for example this Politico story on General Stanley McChrystal. Enter NewsDiff: Tracking Online News Articles Over Time. It allows you to compare evolving versions of online news articles after they are published, starting with The New York Times and CNN. Here are some example diffs - see anything controversial? Last year, Times executive editor Jill Abramson called the idea "unrealistic" in response to an OpEd calling for diffs. (via)
posted on Jun-18-12 at 11:24 PM
Blue trees are to be seen in cities around the world, a colorful plea to save the trees.
posted on Jun-7-12 at 2:02 PM
Undoctored photograph of a Chicago milk-truck driver's face. What we're seeing is called photoaging.
posted on Jun-5-12 at 1:00 PM
Unglue.It (v. t.) 4. For an author or publisher to accept a one-time fixed amount of money, raised by the public, for the perpetual release of an ebook under a Creative Commons license. A crowd-funded project created by Eric Hellman and friends at Gluejar.
posted on May-28-12 at 7:43 PM
While there were a few attempts at right-wing folk music during the 1960's, most notably The Goldwaters, Janet "anti-Baez" Greene was the darling of the conservative anti-communist right. Her songs include Fascist Threat, Commie Lies, and her most (in)famous, Poor Left Winger
posted on May-26-12 at 12:27 PM
American cities going dark. Detroit is the poster child, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are already broken, but under a new plan half the city is going permanently dark in an effort to get citizens to move. “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas". Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Bonus: 360-degree photo tour of abandoned rail station in Detroit.
posted on May-25-12 at 11:54 AM
Frenchman Xavier Chevrin is driving an electric car 3,000 miles through Africa, from Nairobi to Johannesburg. Finding outlets is a challenge, about 65 percent of Africans do not have access to electricity. The daily video logs are a joy not only for the beautiful scenery along a contemporary African road trip, but the excitement of many Africans who have never seen an electric vehicle. The vehicle is a souped-up version of cars used by the French postal service, a Citroen Berlingo powered by Venturi. This is Xavier's 2nd long distance electric car expedition, previously he did Shanghai to Paris, it set the record for the longest distance traveled in an electric vehicle.
posted on May-23-12 at 4:03 PM
How Fast Do You Read? Compare yourself with national averages. Compare yourself with Anne Jones, a Champion Speed Reader who consumed the last Harry Potter book in 47 minutes, about 1 page every 3.75 seconds.
posted on May-17-12 at 11:18 PM
One week ago, anonymous engineer "BTE Dan" put up a website called Build the Enterprise. He envisions a $1 trillion spaceship modeled on the USS Enterprise. There are highly detailed plans for constructing and funding it. It quickly spread all over the news to GizMag, DailyMail and other places. The BTE website is slow to load, while waiting why not Build the Starship Enterprise from useless office supplies.
posted on May-14-12 at 8:39 AM
Why fiction, even trashy TV, is good for you, by Jonathan Gottschall related to the book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (book trailers), more at Scientific American, and a video presentation (6-min).
posted on Apr-30-12 at 11:07 PM
Mexico passes ambitious climate change law to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The law also stipulates that 35 percent of Mexico's electricity should come from renewable sources by the year 2024. It joins the United Kingdom in having legally binding emissions goals aimed at stemming the effects of climate change.
posted on Apr-26-12 at 12:18 PM
Rethinking the War on Drugs (WSJ video / not OpEd). A more nuanced view than typically found in the anti-drugs vs. legalize drugs ad nausea. Practical solutions being done today.
posted on Apr-21-12 at 12:38 AM
For centuries, ships navigated by the stars. Thousands of ships' logs representing hundreds of thousands of position readings were diligently recorded by sailors for a future use they never could have imagined: 100 years of ocean travel 1750 to 1850.
posted on Apr-15-12 at 9:43 PM
The Storm Prediction Center (NOAA) has issued a rare “high risk” outlook for severe weather more than a day in advance. A “high-end, life-threatening” tornado outbreak is likely on Saturday from Texas northeastward to Iowa. Weather briefing. More info. This is only the second time a 2-day forecast of this type has ever been issued, the last time was for an outbreak on April 7, 2006, when more than 70 tornadoes touched down, killing 13 and causing more than $1 billion in damage. Running total of tornadoes to date compared with historical averages.
posted on Apr-13-12 at 8:03 PM
Ein Stop-Motion-Film, inspiriert von Ernest Hemingway's Kurzgeschichte “the old man and the sea“
posted on Apr-4-12 at 10:06 PM
The top 25 American writers, as determined by the amount of scholarship on them. Literary flowchart by Jimmy Chen.
posted on Mar-29-12 at 11:42 PM
The Titanoboa commutes (more). The Titanoboa disco (more). The Titanoboa vs. T-Rex. Titanoboa: Monster Snake. previously.
posted on Mar-25-12 at 11:59 PM
Nature Valley Trail View is sort of a "street view" for 300 miles of hiking trails in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Great Smokies National Parks.
posted on Mar-21-12 at 6:34 PM
The earliest surviving Charles Dickens film, thought lost since 1954, has been re-found in the British Film Institute's archive. The Death of Poor Joe (YouTube HD, IMDB, Wikipedia), a one minute-long silent film based on an episode in Dickens' novel Bleak House, was filmed in 1901.
posted on Mar-11-12 at 9:35 PM
"The Turnip Princess" is one of 500 German fairy-tales recently unearthed in an archive. They were collected by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth about 150 years ago, around the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting fairytales. Some are variations of well known stories such as Cinderella, others are completely new like a Turnip Princess, or the story of a maiden who turns herself into a pond to escape a witch, who then attempts to drink the lake. A translator is working on an English edition.
posted on Mar-7-12 at 10:37 PM
The Public Domain Review is one year old as of Jan 1, 2012. It's like a mashup of New York/London Review of Books, Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive. Contributors. Previously.
posted on Feb-24-12 at 9:43 AM
Three startup companies led by prominent scientists are working on new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These scientists have launched start-up companies and attracted well-to-do investors — most notably Bill Gates — along with venture capital and, most recently, the attention of Wall Street.
posted on Feb-23-12 at 8:32 AM
"rip lnu". So ends 13 months of the greatest pirate ebook site the world has ever known.
posted on Feb-16-12 at 10:32 AM
Marco Arnaudo reviews wargames on YouTube
posted on Feb-5-12 at 12:51 AM
US National Archives releases newly discovered JFK assassination tapes, of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination. The digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov
posted on Jan-30-12 at 8:56 AM
We Were Wanderers On A Prehistoric Earth (3m14s, fullscreen)
posted on Jan-18-12 at 6:02 PM
"Probably the most important conservation statute ever enacted into America’s fisheries law".. as of 2012, all 528 federally managed fish species now have imposed catch limits. The US is arguably the first country in the world to do it. This means every species has a hard limit of how many fish can be taken - not just how many per-boat or angler - an absolute cap on the total number (actually by weight). The law was enacted in 2006 under a policy forged under President George W. Bush and finalized with President Obama's backing.(previously)
posted on Jan-9-12 at 1:35 PM
Best single-volume histories of WWII, a survey by Edward Kosner
posted on Jan-7-12 at 9:50 AM
You know about the Great Depression, but do you know about the Long Depression? For a while now some have been suggesting we're in a "Third Depression", not so much like the Great one, but more like the Long Depression (1873–96) of 23 years (originally called the Great Depression). Suggesting "This slump won’t end until 2031".
posted on Dec-15-11 at 11:02 AM
As you leave Beijing traveling north on the road to visit the Great Wall of China you pass by this (map). It's unguarded, and various people have explored it, reporting back. There are two theories of its demise, local farmers, or Disney.
posted on Dec-13-11 at 7:39 AM
Everything feels old. There have been no radical changes in style, culture, art, and fashion over the last 20 years—a stark contrast to every other two decade period going all the way back into the 19th-century, Kurt Anderson argues in Vanity Fair. Every 20 year period marked a drastic and unmistakable shift in cultural appearance with the exception of our current quarter century.
posted on Dec-8-11 at 8:15 AM
Islands make up only about 3% of the earth's land area but host about 20% of all species and 50 to 60% of endangered species. The biggest threat to islands are invasive species, mainly rats, but also pigs and cats, who feed on nesting birds and native plants. New Zealand has been the innovator in clearing islands of rats because of its endangered populations of flightless birds which are vulnerable. One species of flightless parrot, known as the kakapo, has only 131 individuals left in the "wild" - they are closely guarded 24x7 on Codfish Island, their nests surrounded by rat traps and cameras vigilantly on the lookout for invaders.
posted on Nov-27-11 at 9:02 PM
You probably don't know about a giant 10-story tall Russian memorial to war dead on American soil. It's not a trick statement, like on the contested Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. No, real America. New Jersey. It's called To the Struggle Against World Terrorism (or "Tear of Grief") and was installed in 2006 on the end of a working pier, facing the Statue of Liberty, prime real estate. Snopes created a page after incredulous queries. You can see it on Google Maps, Wikipedia.
posted on Nov-19-11 at 12:08 AM
A massive rare 'superstorm' is currently bearing down on Alaska, with hurricane force winds (100+mph gusts), blizzard, sea-surge flooding. "This is going to be one of the worst storms on record over the Bering Sea". The storm passed through an area of unusually high sea surface temperatures. "This may help explain why the storm is turning from an ordinary Bering Sea disturbance into a ‘superstorm’."
posted on Nov-9-11 at 11:49 AM
Detecting alien life by looking for cities at night (a world tour). [via]
posted on Nov-7-11 at 10:00 PM
"As each of us has his own impression of Afghanistan that is predominantly marked with pictures of foreign forces, explosions and terror, we were privileged to have access to capture daily life and portrait some people of Afghanistan." Afghanistan-Touchdown in Flight (5m39s, full-screen).
posted on Nov-5-11 at 8:49 AM
YouTube (Google) is spending $100 million dollars to create 25hrs a day of new original content. Intending to compete with cable TV, they'll have 100 "channels" with regular series and well-known talent. The channels are being developed "specifically for the digital age," which sounds like they're trying to create a new type of media, they compare it to the advent of cable television. There's a graveyard of ideas like this that failed, but maybe YouTube is different this time. First channels show up in a few weeks, most appear in 2012.
posted on Oct-29-11 at 11:08 AM
posted on Sep-5-12 at 10:58 PM
Incandescent lightbulbs are now banned across the entire European Union as of September 1. "Concerns about poor performance of replacement bulbs have been proved wrong." It is predicted to save 39 terawatt-hours of electricity across the EU annually by 2020. "The phase-out has been very smooth." BanTheBulb said "..the vast majority of the public have adjusted to using the next generation of lighting technologies with the absolute minimum of fuss and drama."
posted on Aug-31-12 at 1:04 PM
Amazon Election Heat Map 2012. Republican landslide in Amazon book vote.
posted on Aug-22-12 at 8:33 AM
I DID IT! I FINALLY CAUGHT A HERITAGE UNIT! (UP 5009) is a rail enthusiast video that inspired responses culminating in the Double Trainbow (caution: horns / screams).
posted on Aug-2-12 at 1:46 PM
Watching Syria's War [Caution: war]. The New York Times is posting video coming out of the Syrian Civil War with context and background: Street Fighting in Allepo (related), Crusader Castle Becomes Rebel Redoubt (AFP report), Tank Stalking, Harrowing ride through the streets of Homs. The online video has "allowed the war to be documented like no other", according to the Times, presumably because of the ubiquity of video cameras among the fighters and access to the Internet.
posted on Aug-1-12 at 1:30 PM
Flying Lasers Reveal Buried Historical Structures (pictures)
posted on Jul-29-12 at 12:42 PM
"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first 3D printed firearm in the world to actually be tested." Gentleman describes how he used an old 3D printer and CAD files to print his own working gun.(*)
posted on Jul-26-12 at 9:23 PM
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, Bill McKibben
posted on Jul-19-12 at 11:15 AM
Is the Web Driving Us Mad? (Newsweek, cover) Evidence wise, the verdict isn't looking good. The proof is starting to pile up.
posted on Jul-11-12 at 11:27 PM
As the world gets warmer from global warming more people use air conditioning which increases Co2 emissions which increases the warmth of the world which causes more people to use AC... this positive feedback loop turns out to be non-trivial. Cooling a Warming Planet: A Global Air Conditioning Surge. Some facts about air conditioning and the environment, by Stan Cox.
posted on Jul-10-12 at 11:13 PM
Back in March, Samuel Smith wondered "Will 2012 be the summer when Colorado finally burns to the ground?" A perfect combination of record high heat, record low snow pack, low humidity and high levels of underbrush made Colorado (and elsewhere) a tinderbox ready to blow. Unfortunately, that is now playing out. The Denver post says the fires are "shaping up as one of the biggest disasters in Colorado history." Some of the best sources for following the fires..
posted on Jun-28-12 at 11:23 AM
Showcase of rare movie posters coveted by movie poster collectors. The 10 most expensive movie posters. Browse some posters up for sale right now, or wait for the crown jewel of the poster world which could soon become the first to break the $1m mark.
posted on Jun-27-12 at 8:44 AM
Luis von Ahn has spoken about the idea of Human Computation in the past, he's the guy who created ReCAPTCHA's, using those anti-spam tests to help decipher digitized books. Now he has a new idea, Duolingo - learn a language for free while helping to translate text from the web.
posted on Jun-20-12 at 12:23 AM
Online articles often change after publication, except there is no history tab and sometimes those revisions are controversial, for example this Politico story on General Stanley McChrystal. Enter NewsDiff: Tracking Online News Articles Over Time. It allows you to compare evolving versions of online news articles after they are published, starting with The New York Times and CNN. Here are some example diffs - see anything controversial? Last year, Times executive editor Jill Abramson called the idea "unrealistic" in response to an OpEd calling for diffs. (via)
posted on Jun-18-12 at 11:24 PM
Blue trees are to be seen in cities around the world, a colorful plea to save the trees.
posted on Jun-7-12 at 2:02 PM
Undoctored photograph of a Chicago milk-truck driver's face. What we're seeing is called photoaging.
posted on Jun-5-12 at 1:00 PM
Unglue.It (v. t.) 4. For an author or publisher to accept a one-time fixed amount of money, raised by the public, for the perpetual release of an ebook under a Creative Commons license. A crowd-funded project created by Eric Hellman and friends at Gluejar.
posted on May-28-12 at 7:43 PM
While there were a few attempts at right-wing folk music during the 1960's, most notably The Goldwaters, Janet "anti-Baez" Greene was the darling of the conservative anti-communist right. Her songs include Fascist Threat, Commie Lies, and her most (in)famous, Poor Left Winger
"I'm just a poor left-winger, befuddled, bewildered, forlorn, duped by a bearded singer, peddling his communist corn. In the cafe, espresso, sounds of guitars could be heard, twanging a plaintive folksong, spreading the communist word..."
posted on May-26-12 at 12:27 PM
American cities going dark. Detroit is the poster child, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are already broken, but under a new plan half the city is going permanently dark in an effort to get citizens to move. “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas". Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Bonus: 360-degree photo tour of abandoned rail station in Detroit.
posted on May-25-12 at 11:54 AM
Frenchman Xavier Chevrin is driving an electric car 3,000 miles through Africa, from Nairobi to Johannesburg. Finding outlets is a challenge, about 65 percent of Africans do not have access to electricity. The daily video logs are a joy not only for the beautiful scenery along a contemporary African road trip, but the excitement of many Africans who have never seen an electric vehicle. The vehicle is a souped-up version of cars used by the French postal service, a Citroen Berlingo powered by Venturi. This is Xavier's 2nd long distance electric car expedition, previously he did Shanghai to Paris, it set the record for the longest distance traveled in an electric vehicle.
posted on May-23-12 at 4:03 PM
How Fast Do You Read? Compare yourself with national averages. Compare yourself with Anne Jones, a Champion Speed Reader who consumed the last Harry Potter book in 47 minutes, about 1 page every 3.75 seconds.
posted on May-17-12 at 11:18 PM
One week ago, anonymous engineer "BTE Dan" put up a website called Build the Enterprise. He envisions a $1 trillion spaceship modeled on the USS Enterprise. There are highly detailed plans for constructing and funding it. It quickly spread all over the news to GizMag, DailyMail and other places. The BTE website is slow to load, while waiting why not Build the Starship Enterprise from useless office supplies.
posted on May-14-12 at 8:39 AM
Why fiction, even trashy TV, is good for you, by Jonathan Gottschall related to the book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (book trailers), more at Scientific American, and a video presentation (6-min).
posted on Apr-30-12 at 11:07 PM
Mexico passes ambitious climate change law to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The law also stipulates that 35 percent of Mexico's electricity should come from renewable sources by the year 2024. It joins the United Kingdom in having legally binding emissions goals aimed at stemming the effects of climate change.
posted on Apr-26-12 at 12:18 PM
Rethinking the War on Drugs (WSJ video / not OpEd). A more nuanced view than typically found in the anti-drugs vs. legalize drugs ad nausea. Practical solutions being done today.
posted on Apr-21-12 at 12:38 AM
For centuries, ships navigated by the stars. Thousands of ships' logs representing hundreds of thousands of position readings were diligently recorded by sailors for a future use they never could have imagined: 100 years of ocean travel 1750 to 1850.
posted on Apr-15-12 at 9:43 PM
The Storm Prediction Center (NOAA) has issued a rare “high risk” outlook for severe weather more than a day in advance. A “high-end, life-threatening” tornado outbreak is likely on Saturday from Texas northeastward to Iowa. Weather briefing. More info. This is only the second time a 2-day forecast of this type has ever been issued, the last time was for an outbreak on April 7, 2006, when more than 70 tornadoes touched down, killing 13 and causing more than $1 billion in damage. Running total of tornadoes to date compared with historical averages.
posted on Apr-13-12 at 8:03 PM
Ein Stop-Motion-Film, inspiriert von Ernest Hemingway's Kurzgeschichte “the old man and the sea“
posted on Apr-4-12 at 10:06 PM
The top 25 American writers, as determined by the amount of scholarship on them. Literary flowchart by Jimmy Chen.
posted on Mar-29-12 at 11:42 PM
The Titanoboa commutes (more). The Titanoboa disco (more). The Titanoboa vs. T-Rex. Titanoboa: Monster Snake. previously.
posted on Mar-25-12 at 11:59 PM
Nature Valley Trail View is sort of a "street view" for 300 miles of hiking trails in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Great Smokies National Parks.
posted on Mar-21-12 at 6:34 PM
The earliest surviving Charles Dickens film, thought lost since 1954, has been re-found in the British Film Institute's archive. The Death of Poor Joe (YouTube HD, IMDB, Wikipedia), a one minute-long silent film based on an episode in Dickens' novel Bleak House, was filmed in 1901.
posted on Mar-11-12 at 9:35 PM
"The Turnip Princess" is one of 500 German fairy-tales recently unearthed in an archive. They were collected by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth about 150 years ago, around the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting fairytales. Some are variations of well known stories such as Cinderella, others are completely new like a Turnip Princess, or the story of a maiden who turns herself into a pond to escape a witch, who then attempts to drink the lake. A translator is working on an English edition.
posted on Mar-7-12 at 10:37 PM
The Public Domain Review is one year old as of Jan 1, 2012. It's like a mashup of New York/London Review of Books, Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive. Contributors. Previously.
posted on Feb-24-12 at 9:43 AM
Three startup companies led by prominent scientists are working on new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These scientists have launched start-up companies and attracted well-to-do investors — most notably Bill Gates — along with venture capital and, most recently, the attention of Wall Street.
posted on Feb-23-12 at 8:32 AM
"rip lnu". So ends 13 months of the greatest pirate ebook site the world has ever known.
posted on Feb-16-12 at 10:32 AM
Marco Arnaudo reviews wargames on YouTube
posted on Feb-5-12 at 12:51 AM
US National Archives releases newly discovered JFK assassination tapes, of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination. The digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov
posted on Jan-30-12 at 8:56 AM
We Were Wanderers On A Prehistoric Earth (3m14s, fullscreen)
posted on Jan-18-12 at 6:02 PM
"Probably the most important conservation statute ever enacted into America’s fisheries law".. as of 2012, all 528 federally managed fish species now have imposed catch limits. The US is arguably the first country in the world to do it. This means every species has a hard limit of how many fish can be taken - not just how many per-boat or angler - an absolute cap on the total number (actually by weight). The law was enacted in 2006 under a policy forged under President George W. Bush and finalized with President Obama's backing.(previously)
posted on Jan-9-12 at 1:35 PM
Best single-volume histories of WWII, a survey by Edward Kosner
posted on Jan-7-12 at 9:50 AM
You know about the Great Depression, but do you know about the Long Depression? For a while now some have been suggesting we're in a "Third Depression", not so much like the Great one, but more like the Long Depression (1873–96) of 23 years (originally called the Great Depression). Suggesting "This slump won’t end until 2031".
posted on Dec-15-11 at 11:02 AM
As you leave Beijing traveling north on the road to visit the Great Wall of China you pass by this (map). It's unguarded, and various people have explored it, reporting back. There are two theories of its demise, local farmers, or Disney.
posted on Dec-13-11 at 7:39 AM
Everything feels old. There have been no radical changes in style, culture, art, and fashion over the last 20 years—a stark contrast to every other two decade period going all the way back into the 19th-century, Kurt Anderson argues in Vanity Fair. Every 20 year period marked a drastic and unmistakable shift in cultural appearance with the exception of our current quarter century.
posted on Dec-8-11 at 8:15 AM
Islands make up only about 3% of the earth's land area but host about 20% of all species and 50 to 60% of endangered species. The biggest threat to islands are invasive species, mainly rats, but also pigs and cats, who feed on nesting birds and native plants. New Zealand has been the innovator in clearing islands of rats because of its endangered populations of flightless birds which are vulnerable. One species of flightless parrot, known as the kakapo, has only 131 individuals left in the "wild" - they are closely guarded 24x7 on Codfish Island, their nests surrounded by rat traps and cameras vigilantly on the lookout for invaders.
posted on Nov-27-11 at 9:02 PM
You probably don't know about a giant 10-story tall Russian memorial to war dead on American soil. It's not a trick statement, like on the contested Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. No, real America. New Jersey. It's called To the Struggle Against World Terrorism (or "Tear of Grief") and was installed in 2006 on the end of a working pier, facing the Statue of Liberty, prime real estate. Snopes created a page after incredulous queries. You can see it on Google Maps, Wikipedia.
posted on Nov-19-11 at 12:08 AM
A massive rare 'superstorm' is currently bearing down on Alaska, with hurricane force winds (100+mph gusts), blizzard, sea-surge flooding. "This is going to be one of the worst storms on record over the Bering Sea". The storm passed through an area of unusually high sea surface temperatures. "This may help explain why the storm is turning from an ordinary Bering Sea disturbance into a ‘superstorm’."
posted on Nov-9-11 at 11:49 AM
Detecting alien life by looking for cities at night (a world tour). [via]
posted on Nov-7-11 at 10:00 PM
"As each of us has his own impression of Afghanistan that is predominantly marked with pictures of foreign forces, explosions and terror, we were privileged to have access to capture daily life and portrait some people of Afghanistan." Afghanistan-Touchdown in Flight (5m39s, full-screen).
posted on Nov-5-11 at 8:49 AM
YouTube (Google) is spending $100 million dollars to create 25hrs a day of new original content. Intending to compete with cable TV, they'll have 100 "channels" with regular series and well-known talent. The channels are being developed "specifically for the digital age," which sounds like they're trying to create a new type of media, they compare it to the advent of cable television. There's a graveyard of ideas like this that failed, but maybe YouTube is different this time. First channels show up in a few weeks, most appear in 2012.
posted on Oct-29-11 at 11:08 AM
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