Best Of MetaFilter

inside elevation by parramitta (cc by)

Why does Wyoming have such a low population compared to neighboring states? barchan explains, jeb adds: "everything in the West comes back to water".

Ever wonder what a "nor'easter" is? Check out the great answers from Seymour Zamboni, plastic_animals, and weathergal in rules of thumb for weather patterns in the USA.

Lots of different places have unique colloquial weather terms too. (Gullywashers, the foxes' wedding, and lots of wind terms again from barchan.)

Also in language surveys: What are some antiquated place nicknames (like the Borscht Belt)? What do other languages call it when your foot "falls asleep"?

Different cultures also have their own languages of flower-meanings. Plus some cool info from sukeban on how new imported flowers like roses made their way into kimono designs in the late 19th century.

For geography/history detectives: How can I tell, just from clues in the document itself, when a world map was made or figure out when a photograph was taken?

Did you see the new photos from the formerly-hidden-from-visitors North Korean subway system?

Some great answers in travel threads recently: Italy: non-traditional but amazing?, and also Scotland: what not to miss.

IMG_3477 by Micah Sittig (cc by)

In the wake of the NYC subway tragedy, MetaFilter members wondered why we couldn't have sealed subway platforms with trains stopping only at doors (like those pictured above, called platform edge doors - PEDs). Users sevenyearlurk breaks down the immense cost of retrofitting lines and garius explains the difficulties of getting them to work correctly:

Just to provide some kind of summary on the whole "platform doors" thing, it's always worth remembering that, when it comes to Metro systems, it's generally pretty easy (and cost effective) to do stuff as long as its done or planned for when the system is built. After that though you're pretty screwed.

An astute observation from MeFi member JimmyJames:

Next time people ask why sociology is important, I'm going to show them this video.

On its own, when you see one person slip, you automatically assume that person slipped, was clumsy or not playing attention. But when you look at the aggregate, you realize that the failure isn't on the individual at all, rather the structures that cause certain people to fail with almost no fault of their own. And yet, without this data, they will very quickly ascribe the mistake to themselves.