Tags : religion | toleration | religious
MetaFilter Web Feed
MetaFilter 
Sun May 9 22:39:56 EDT 2010
Home: http://www.metafilter.com/
Feed: http://xml.metafilter.com/rss.xml
Walk away - Forclosure? This evening 60 Minutes did a segment on "walking away" from your underwater home... They featured a web site Youwalkaway.com (previously) which, this evening, is suffering from an overload of hits.
Are we going to see an uptick in folks who have said enough...
Too Much Horror Fiction - Too Much Horror Fiction: "Covering horror literature and its resplendent paperback cover art, mostly from the 1960s through the early 1990s. Mostly."
Marble Hornets: Part 1 Completed - Marble Hornets (previously) started out as Alex Kralie's movie project. However after Alex became more paranoid the movie was aborted and he planned on burning the tapes. Jay (or "J") then convinced Alex to give him the raw footage instead. J began watching the tapes and noticing several odd things about them when suddenly things started happening to him.
After almost a year, the popular alternate reality game Marble Hornets has completed Part 1. (link to credits)
In the videos, Alex and J are stalked by Slender Man which was created at the Something Awful forums (NSFW, link to original thread which has some creepy stuff), which is also where Marble Hornets was originally posted. Unfiction picked up on the game and devoted a section of their forums to it. Clues were found in the videos by analyzing the audio/video (most can be found on the Unfiction forums under the individual threads for each video). Updates to the series were given through a Twitter account, J's Youtube account, and later through a Youtube account called totheark. The Twitter updates are not necessary to understanding the story though, they just give updates on what he's been investigating outside of the videos, J's thoughts on the events/videos, and a few uploaded pictures. All videos from the Marble Hornets and totheark accounts in order of posting: Introduction; Entry #1; Entry #2; Entry #3; Entry #4; Entry #5; Entry #6; Entry #7; Entry #8; Entry #9; totheark: Regards; Entry #10; TTA: Operator; Entry #11; TTA: Deluge; Entry #12; TTA: Impurity; Entry #13; TTA: Exit; Entry #14; TTA: Program; Entry #15 – Interview with Tim; Entry #16; TTA: Addition; Entry #17; TTA: Signal; Entry #18; Entry #19; TTA: Return; Entry #20; TTA: Version; Entry #21; Entry #22; TTA: Attention; TTA: Admission; Entry #23; Entry #24; Entry ######; Entry #25; Entry #26; Credits
Fast on the road - Precocious 14-year-old Alfie McKenzie writes an article for The Guardian on his Warholian 15 after voting in the UK General Election.
Perfection - Dallas Braden had a rough childhood. A problem child in the tough neighborhood of Stockton, California, he was raised by his mother and, after she died, his grandmother, both of whom he credits for turning his life around. Today, on Mother's Day, in front of a small home crowd and his grandmother, Dallas Braden pitched the 19th perfect game in Major League Baseball history and the second in as many years against the white-hot Tampa Bay Rays. This also happened to be 42 years and 1 day after the A's only other perfect game, by Catfish Hunter.
Prior to today, Braden was perhaps best known for calling out Alex Rodriguez for violating the "unwritten rule" against running across the pitchers mound. A-Rod at one point accused Braden of trying to extend his "15 minutes of fame".
working working memory with dual n-back - dual n-back is a simple working memory game of unbounded difficulty.
The phrase crystallized intelligence describes static or systematic knowledge that is accumulated piece-by-piece over the course of a lifetime, career, or practice within a specific subject. Methods to improve it abound; standardized tests, study groups, flash cards, rote learning, and highly specialized apprenticeships could all be understood as mechanisms to promote crystallized intelligence. But fluid intelligence has proved difficult to develop directly, as training methods which promote the development of working memory capacity often fail to offer generalizable results. In response, 2008 study explored methods to improve fluid intelligence (previously mentioned on mefi) via a short-term memory game of unbounded difficulty, dual n-back, in which players must remember increasingly long series of positions and sounds. Study participants who played the game for 19 days showed marked improvement in fluid intelligence capacity relative to controls--- the authors argue that they have explored a method to improve fluid intelligence. A subsequent study has further demonstrated that working training games can in turn improve crystallized intelligence acquisition among learning-disabled students. The provided link points to the project page for Brain Workshop - a Dual N-Back game, which provides an open source version of the game used in the 2008 paper on fluid intelligence. A web-based flash version also exists.
This is why we can't have nice things. - Less than 24 hours after it was opened, Detroit's $5M Bagley Avenue Pedestrian Bridge was vandalized.
Detroit's Mexicantown has been divided by I-75 for 40-some years. One of the vandals caught on tape was Detroit Free Press copy editor and blogger Oneita Jackson. Despite the rampant defacing, the bridge is just one part of the Gateway Project, which will provide easier access to the Ambassador Bridge , the busiest international border in North America in terms of trade volume.
Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative - Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative
[I]n December, with the help of newly hired Beltway privacy experts, it reneged on its privacy promises and made much of your profile information public by default. That includes the city that you live in, your name, your photo, the names of your friends and the causes you've signed onto. This spring Facebook took that even further. All the items you list as things you like must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don't want them linked and made public, then you don't get them — though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.
Are you smarter than a kindergartener? - Why Kindergarten children beat Business School graduates at finding solutions.
The Whatsisname Collection - The Whatsisname Collection. A number of years ago there was a place called A&S Magazines on 40th Street behind the Port Authority, which sold used magazines. One week I went in there and they had this particular collection of magazines, boxes and boxes of them, which they were selling quite cheap, because they had all been defaced. A gentleman in Connecticut had been buying magazines - mostly men's magazines - for several decades, from the forties to the early seventies - and deconstructing them. He would take them apart, and then he would make a new magazine from the remnants of several, arranging the pages to highlight certain stories and downplay others. He would staple the pages back into the cover, and then he would cross out whatever stories weren't in his version with a wax pencil. Finally he would stamp his name on the cover and number the whole thing, presumably for his "library." Even though vintage, these oddly shaped, crude reassemblages really wouldn't appeal to many people. Obviously I bought as many as I could. Michael Kupperman's Whatsisname Collection -- Part 1 // Part 2.
My Conversation With an Anti-Porn Feminist, By Annie Sprinkle with Mae Tyme - We are two women from different worlds with very different experiences. I, Annie, have performed in, directed and produced pornography for twenty five years. Mae Tyme has been anti-pornography for equally as long. We met at a lesbian video night several years ago. You might think that we'd be enemies, because we have such different viewpoints. Could we come together to record a conversation, share our ideas, and show that women of desparate [sic] backgrounds and beliefs can communicate and collaborate?
MOVE, 25 years after - 25 years after the siege at the MOVE house in Philadelphia ended with the police dropping a bomb on the house from a helicopter, killing 11 and destroying a city block, the Philadelphia Inquirer looks back on the events with contemporary footage and interviews with participants and those affected. The failure to rebuild adequately the houses that were devastated in the siege and fire remains an enduring scandal in Philadelphia.
Murder at UVA - Murder At UVA: George Huguely, Yeardley Love, And Lacrosse's Worst An Andrew Sharpe column with some personal analysis. Food for thought.
When Five Fell - Morning. Before the world wants anything from her. When Five Fell is the beautiful short film about the five senses loving you back... from Wong Fu Productions.
Beautifully done in 1080i with a Canon XHA1. Watch in fullscreen if you can.
Thoughts on Mother's day - Betty White hosts the mother of all Saturday Night Lives, Why I hate Mother's day, PostSecret: Mother's Day Secrets, Mother's day with no mother, Mr. T's Mother day message and a Mother's joy on learning her 15 month old daughter will get open heart surgery again.
Say it with water - Falling water controlled by microchips in Kyoto Station welcomes you using a technology similar to that used in inkjet printers. Here are some others. They are made by Koei Aquatec.
The Big Pink Elephant In The Room - Actress Kristin Chenoweth responds to a Newsweek article which focuses on her Promises, Promises costar Sean Hayes (who recently came out) as evidence that gay actors can't convincingly play straight.
China is the new Dubai - China is the new Dubai (when it comes to architecture)
To sing? Or blow the flute? How about both? Yeah! - When you think of African music, flutes may not be the first instruments that come to mind, but across West Africa there are some flute traditions that often involve a unique combination of vocalizing and blowing into the instrument, resulting in some amazing music that's a hella lotta fun to listen to. There are some nice examples on YouTube here, here, here and here.
The State of Metropolitan America - The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program (led by Bruce Katz) has just released its The State of Metropolitan America report (full pdf). The report builds on eight years of the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys; and includes a spiffy State of Metropolitan America Indicator Map of changes in population indicators at state, metropolitan, and suburban levels.160;160; Some interesting findings:
- America's suburbs are now more likely to be home to minorities, the poor and a rapidly growing older population as many younger, educated whites move to cities for jobs and shorter commutes.
- Two-thirds of primary cities in large metropolitan areas grew from 2000 to 2008
- For the first time in several decades, the population is growing at a faster rate than households, due to delays in marriage, divorce and births as well as longer life spans. People living alone and nonmarried couple families are among the fastest-growing in suburbs.
For additional finding on
- Population and Migration
- Two-thirds of primary cities in large metropolitan areas grew from 2000 to 2008
- Race and Ethnicity
- For the first time, a majority of all racial/ethnic groups in large metro areas live in the suburbs.
- Immigration
- Ten states, led by Arizona, surpass the nation in a "cultural generation gap" in which the senior populations are disproportionately white and children are mostly minority.
- Age
- Households and Families
- Educational Attainment
- Work
- Poverty and Income
- The suburban poor grew by 25 percent between 1999 and 2008 — five times the growth rate of the poor in cities. City residents are more likely to live in "deep" poverty, while a higher share of suburban residents have incomes just below the poverty line.
- Commuting
- Policy Implications
Pulp Sci-Fi Title-O-Tron - The Sphere of Mercury's Mathematician and other thrilling randomly generated retro pulp Sci-Fi titles are available to you now from the Random Pulp Sci-Fi Title-O-Tron!
A Renaissance Fair(e) for the Web - Renaissance Fair(e)s are fun(ny). All's Faire is a web comedy series about the fictional Southeastern Delaware Renaissance Faire and its actors/employees.
With 14 episodes, there are a lot of subplots and interesting characters. The weird commercial aspect of such fairs and spotty emphasis on authenticity is featured heavily. (This is a bit single-linky, but after the Mary Kate Olsen webseries FPP the other day, I thought this might appeal.)
She's sweet 16 and never been kissed! Never! - Pamela's Prayer: This heartfelt motion picture presents the highest standard of purity before marriage. Remember, a kiss isn't something you should just give away!
I'll take care of them. - Here kitties kitties.
I wonder what happens when one is unhappy and the other is content.