Links posted in November 2003
November 30, 2003
Every Seinfeld episode The plots, the scripts, the streaming video! All of it ...
Famous monkeys throughout history.
It slimed me If, like me, you have an eelskin wallet, you might be interested in what it's made from. It turns out it's not an eel, but a hagfish, aka slime eel. Yes, it's called a "slime" eel for a reason. Its slime is the subject of ongoing research, including egg replacement in scones. Before we get too far, let's not fall prey to hagfish misconceptions.
Friendless Churches in Britain. Pictures, and information, on abandoned churches in Great Britain. [more inside]
Whether it be a nostalgic look at the decisions that changed America, or maybe you just want to remind yourself of that sad day in history. Whatever the case may be, the Legal Information Institute has documented Supreme Court Decisions from 1990 to present as well as many historical decisions.
The astronomy picture of the day, as brought to you by the folk at NASA. Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Pirate Riddles for Sophisticates
-
Q: What's a pirate's favorite aspect of computational linguistics?
A: PARRRsing sentences.
I know this is too late for Talk Like a Pirate day, but it made me laugh all the same.
The Mojave Desert Phone Booth The sad, cautionary tale of a phone booth that became too popular for its own good. However, I have heard of another...
November 29, 2003
Butterflies on Japanese crests Japanese family crests contain numerous designs based on butterflies.
a guide to very eclectic australian sound and noise makers including a guy who plays record players (as opposed to a guy who plays records on record players)
The mind numbing mediocrity offered up by the global- music-mart can't be avoided; but while using this archive it can temporarily be ignored
The Texas Camels
No, it's not a new MLB expansion team; wild herds of camels can be spotted along US Hwy 287 in the vicinity of Wichita Falls, Texas. What are camels doing roaming Texas pastures? While this lot is apparently there for mesquite control [scroll down to bottom of page], importing camels into the Lone Star state dates back to 1835.
ZooperStars Shaquille O'Seal, Harry Canary, Shark McGuire and Clammy Sosa dancing and clowning for your family entertainment. [more inside]
Activism, Old Ladies, and Funny Hats.
The Raging Grannies emerged in the late 1980's to bring attention to pressing peace, justice, and environmental issues. Their goal was to create a more humane, just and non-violent world for their grandchildren and for all the world's people.
Hint: The Seattle Chapter has the best songbook by far.
MAD SHOUT OUT TO NOKIA N-GAGE!
This website, which spoofs the n-gage mobile game deck made the rounds a bit ago, but I wanted to share it with those of you whom may have missed it…
The truth behind a bizarre tradition [more inside]
Step lightly Be sure to welcome your new kitten overlords.
Want to buy Jaws' jaws? A NZ fisherman who expressed "remorse" last week after catching a 7-metre pregnant great white shark is trying to sell the shark's jawbone - but only if the price is right. Unable to get $20,000NZ for the jaw, he's asking $10,000NZ. Any takers? And, by the way, is it reasonable to profit from accidentally killing an endangered species?
November 28, 2003
Filter 2.0 I think that MoFi gives us a great opportunity to not just replicate Mefi, but to improve on it. How would you make the concept of the Filter better - radically, not just incrementally better? How can we recombine the concept with other technologies, mutate it, or maybe even strip something away to radically improve it? Or maybe, simply, you do want MoFi to be the same old Filter. Either way, let's discuss it here.
"Hit Song Science," an application that can analyze a song and determine it's "hitability." The company's website is worth poking around in as well. Does this scare anyone else?
I say we mutiny!
Wouldn't it be interesting if once MeFi started "inviting" new members from Monkeyfilter... we all just said, "Oh, no thanks, we're having fun over here by ourselves." And then we close Monkeyfilter membership to anyone from MeFi. Heh.
Mappalujo. A story/writing experiment by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard. Created using these rules.
Through the eye of a Mac browser Deprived of a Mac? See how your site looks in Safari.
The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos This link goes to an abstract from the totally legit Netherlands nature journal Deinsea. The actual article can be found here (warning: .pdf), or at the Google cache. [more inside]
Historic tale construction kit [needs Flash] construct your own storys
Codex SERAPHINIANVS Strange and Extraordinary Representations of Animals and Plants and Hellish Incarnations of Normal Items from the Annals of Naturalist/Unnaturalist Luigi Serafini. Rather strangely beatiful works of art.
Little Red Riding Hood and her furry friends. If someone can explain what the hell this is about, I would be grateful. [Quicktime.] [Via Boing Boing.]
Band-aids are so passé: Instead, try some nippies, pasties, diva dots, nip guards, titty tape, or nipple stickers.
Clearly NSFW.
Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Pirated MP3s "Do not be frightened, young children, I am Lars Ulrich, powerhouse drummer for Metallica, and we are needing your help, Encyclopedia Brown."
chemical in turkey makes me sleepy
November 27, 2003
I was looking for a list of prime numbers when I descovered this wonderfully useful tool.
Luciferous Logolepsy Do you fear a kerasine baffona? Are you a bibliobibuli?
Books cost a bomb, film at 11
In the course of my work, more and more trade paperbacks are coming across my desk, and I wonder — is this (admittedly very attractive) packaging producing what is effectively an inflationary trend in paperback prices?
[more inside]
Song Trellis - A Collection of Music and Musical Know-How For You
Scheduled Server Outage
From our hosting company: The data center that our servers are located in will be undergoing a major network upgrade on Friday, 5 December. This will result in a maximum downtime of 4 hours from 6pm. Unfortunately, the timing of the event is outside of our control. We apologise for any inconvenience that may result from this upgrade.
That's NZDT, or GMT+13 hours.
What's trendy in Japan, according to Rie. Are you kawaii or are you an oyaji? A site with everything from essays on war to recipes for Japanese curries to the Japanese online dating scene.
Breaking News for MeFi Wannabes Matt must've got antsy when the MoFi membership hit 100.
Harvard @ Home : Multimedia Lectures from Harvard on a variety of topics. Currently you can hear Professor Diana Eck lecture on the Manifestations of Shiva. You can also look in the archive for lectures on topics such as The Recovery of the Bach Manuscripts,Oliver Cromwell or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
Mathematical patterns in african-american hairstyles "Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematical ideas involved in the cultural practices of a people. Its richness is in exploring both the mathematical and educational potential of these practices."
November 26, 2003
Black Man with a Gun. Maybe he could teach these guys about gun safety.
Allen Spiegel [fine arts] [more inside]
Apes face extinction. According to the UN's Great Apes Survival Project, all the apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans - face a very high risk of extinction within 50 years at most.
File this under "Why They Hate Us"
The rest of the world, that is. They hate us because we make and market and buy things like Miracle Seat, "a vacuum toilet seat that COMPLETELY removes all odors BEFORE they escape from the toilet bowl."
Listing of illustrators web pages. Scroll down the list and randomly click and be wowed. [some images NSFW; some Flash]
25 years ago today San Francisco's Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed at City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White. Although younger, non-Bay Area natives may not remember, at the time the story shook San Francisco like an earthquake.
A movie and popcorn to fight global warming? Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon is the self-proclaimed first college or university to comply with the Kyoto protocol. All for the cost of a movie and popcorn per student, or the cost of 0.0025% of a credit hour.
1.800.201.7575 - That's the number for Amazon.com customer service, in case you've been as frustrated as I am that the only way to get in touch with them is to email them. Why is phone support lacking from their business plan? Once word spreads will they change it?
Apparently, it's time for member authentication thanks to Mr. I-need-to-spoil-the-party.
Worthwile dilemmas. The Oblique Strategies, now in flash.
Hooray for Lileks. He done smack down that coward Salam Pax good! [more inside]
November 25, 2003
Why obscure languages are more fun to learn. Teach yourself Abkhaz, Schwäbisch, Hornoserbski or Italkian, or a hundred other minority languages.
November 24, 2003
MeFi Will See You Now... It feels like we are sitting in the MeFi waiting room, thumbing through old copies of Highlights and Newsweek. (Not to criticize the FPPs, which have been good.) How can we gather more members? And what else can we do to make MoFi its own thing?
Forty years ago today Doctor Who was born.
Toast portraits This guy makes mosaic portraits of famous people using toast.
Anonymous confessions. "I just now figured out the Colonel Lingus skit from SNL. It just suddenly made sense to me, but I'd seen it months ago." This and other, mostly (but not all) sex-related confessions. (Via Fark.)
November 23, 2003
In other news
, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (but of course) has just sacked 28,000 schoolteachers — because they were former Ba'athists.
Won't somebody please think of the children?
November 22, 2003
Freeway blogging. One surefire way to make your voice heard: put your blog on the side of the road. Of course, this isn't always popular: in Scotts Valley, CA a pair put an anti-war banner on an overpass bridge after the Sept. 11 attacks. While the US flags and pro-America sentiments were allowed to remain, Caltrans removed Courtney and Brown's banner, claiming that it was more "distracting" than a flag. We can be thankful that Caltrans policies regarding this were overturned, so people can use this unusual but valuable medium.
From trees to buildings In the last few decades, the inventive Swiss architect Marcel Kalberer has perfected a method of "living architecture", using willow rods. (via amberglow)
November 21, 2003
Appeals court reinstates gun lawsuit - The 2-1 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates a lawsuit filed against gun manufacturers and distributors whose weapons were used by a white supremacist from Western Washington who shot a Filipino-American postal worker to death and wounded five people at a Jewish day-care center in a 1999 Los Angeles-area rampage. [more inside]
"Hi, it's me, I've had a terrible car accident and I'm unexpectedly pregnant. Will you give me money?" Despite the fact that I'm a complete stranger, that is.
chlorophyll as a photographic medium "...the idea of actually using the green pigment of chlorophyll to make extraordinary photographic images in grass..."
November 20, 2003
I was stalked at Amazon.com - Author Allison Burnett had her Amazon.com ratings tampered with by a personal enemy or an unsympathetic reader. The result, along with a lot of personal anxiety, was a tangible drop in her rank and sales. Given the very real possibility of reputation and financial damage, should Amazon put tighter controls on comments and ranking or is this just sour grapes? [more inside]
Emotional jewellery 'Moi, a PhD student at the Royal College of Art, London, has over the last four years developed prototype jewellery that does not merely exist beautifully on the body. It also interacts dynamically with the wearer by indicating emotional changes in the wearer's mind.' (via Beverly Tang)
Guess the gender! Those crazy Europeans and their gender-specific languages! If a native English speaker was confronted with, say, a pair of scissors, what gender would we assign them? See if you're with the majority.
Got 'arf a quid, darlin'?
American woman has a stroke, wakes up English.
Explains everything, doesn't it? I knew there had to be a reason the English played such brain-dead rugby...
November 19, 2003
Stephen King
wins National Book Award for Lifetime Acheivement. Previous winners include Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, Arthur Miller, Phillip Roth. Should King's work fall under the same category as writings by these authors?
(I realize this information was released in Sept. but I just heard about it this morning on NPR.)
Northwestern University hate crime never happened Xander Saide reported to police he was held at knifepoint by an attacker who used a racial slur. Other incidents on campus were reported this year, so a student rally was held last week. On Monday, Saide was arrested for filing a false police report. University officials and police say the communications major confessed to lying about the attack to "initiate dialogue about race relations." (via TMN)
This story made my eyes water. Now you too can exercise those ducts. Bonus! Clears blocked sinuses!
Maps and territories An occasional blog by an amateur map lover
November 18, 2003
Amazing street art by Kurt Wenner. These paintings are incredibly three-dimensional.
One-minute vacation - "Take a one-minute vacation from the life you are living. One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else."
Two bloggers go on honeymoon in Bali. They take beautiful pictures of animals. (Okay, I really linked this for the monkeys.)
"Body sushi" is "performance art." A Japanese restaurant in Seattle serves sushi on the bodies of naked women. [Via Yahoo.]
Andrew Northrup lays it down — follow these simple rules and reduce blogosphere wank by 89%.
(Although I don't know if Lars von Trier's numbers were that good.)
(On preview -- where's my title, dude?)
Tampon Art: Not as scary as I thought it would be. Possibly NSFW. [Via memepool.]
November 17, 2003
"My wife and I intended to make our exit together but had very limited time to do so." Is euthanasia an acceptable way to deal with severe mental or physical illness? Shouldn't we respect someone's right to die, if that is what they want? Maybe the easiest way is just to kill ourselves - the Church of Euthanasia would appreciate it.
Traveling in comfort
In 2002, two intrepid cyclists rode a human powered couch through Maritime Canada.
[via Presurfer]
Mathowie is working on getting new people into MetaFilter.
Testing, testing, etc. There's a test metaphilter mofi up. Please go ahead and try it out, let me know what bugs you find, what you think of the colour scheme, and so on. [more inside]
web-less spider webs 'The thumbnail pictures do not show spider webs; they show the tracks of spiders during web construction. The tracks have been coloured to emphasise the different phases of web construction.' Posted to mofi by dhruva.
