November 25
Fotomat 's tiny drive-up huts with the yellow roof were an icon of the 1970s suburban experience, with 4000 of them throughout the U.S. You drove up, gave your film to the girl inside, and got prints a couple of days later. But stores began
closing en masse in the 1980s with the
boom of in-store "prints in an hour". Most Fotomats have been torn down or are crumbling away (
cool slideshow), a few being used for
coffee or
cigarettes. Former alumni are out there and share some memories
stories on Facebook. Fotomat unbelievably is around and has a
website but this September they threw in the towel on their Snapfish-like business model.
posted by crapmatic at 12:53 AM - 0 comments - Post a Comment
November 24
Although it's commonplace nowadays to assume that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was the primary source of inspiration for Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax when they created the world's first tabletop roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons, a careful examination of the game suggests otherwise... James Maliszewski on
The Books That Founded D&D. Some
disagreement.
posted by Artw at 4:13 PM - 53 comments
"This week we will be confronting a fact that, by definition, haunts the average online dater: no matter how much time you spend polishing your profile, honing your IM banter, and perfecting your message introductions,
it’s your picture that matters most."
(Previously 1 2 3)
posted by gman at 2:24 PM - 107 comments "I began bringing a camera along to work, photographing my surroundings. And as this project progressed and I slowly learned my craft, I became increasingly fascinated with other photographers who had been in a similar situation, those who had found themselves recording their own jobs:
The Insiders [A tiny bit NSFW] ."
posted by chunking express at 9:08 AM - 19 comments November 23
Remember AOL Time Warner, the poster child of dotcom corporate hubris? It's still around, if only for a few more days. On December 9, the current media megacorp will fraction off former computer network behemoth AOL as a web portal firm and online brand. And what will that brand be? It will be a stock photo superimposed with
a white Helvetica "Aol." And, well,
that's it.
[more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 6:56 PM - 143 comments "We were concerned that the study would raise a lot of controversy and be misused," Pardo said. "We were right." Some practitioners treat autistic children with the anti-inflammatory
intravenous immunoglobulin, citing
a study by Carlos Pardo, et al. showing inflammation in the brains of deceased autistic patients. Pardo:
"modulators of immune reactions (e.g. intravenous immunoglobulins, IVIG) WOULD NOT HAVE a significant effect." Others, following the work of Simon Baron-Cohen on
autism and the male brain,
treat autistic children with testosterone inhibitors, a prospect which Baron-Cohen says "fills me with horror." Another anti-inflammatory treatment, hyperbaric therapy, is supported by
one recent clinical trial, but looks bad in
another. Side effects include
horrible death by fire.
(via the Chicago Tribune)
posted by escabeche at 2:42 PM - 49 comments
The newly launched Atari.com includes the
Atari Arcade, wherein you may play Adventure, Asteroids, Battlezone, Crystal Castles, Lunar Lander and Yars' Revenge in your browser.
posted by jbickers at 2:30 PM - 37 comments What do you do if you're a fan of the
Back to the Future films and you know how to make mods in the PC game
Crysis? Why, you make an awesome
Back to the Future mod, of course!
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:19 PM - 34 comments It's been 35 years this month since
the Arecibo message was sent from the
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, when the 1,679 digit message was sent once, towards
Messier 13. More messages have been sent sky-wards since, in attempts for
communication with extra terrestrial intelligence (
CETI), with the (
ill-fated)
Team Encounter was instrumental in
Cosmic Call 1999 and 2003 (more details:
58 page PDF). The more complex three-section
Teen-Age Message was sent out in 2001, including a musical piece entitled
1st Theremin Concert for Aliens. In 2008
NASA sent the Beatles into space, transmitting "Across the Universe" for the 40th anniversary of the song's recording, the 45th anniversary of the
Deep Space Network (DSN), and the 50th anniversary of NASA (
prev). If you felt left out of the sending of signals,
Talk To Aliens offered a "deep space e-mail service" and a certificate of interstellar broadcast (
prev), but no more. Now
Sent Forever offers a
long-lasting alternative to traditional greeting cards, or simply
the worst tie-in for Apollo 11.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:54 PM - 13 comments Matthew Roberts, a 41-year-old DJ who lives in Los Angeles, said the shock of discovering his
father sent him into depression.
posted by Balisong at 1:08 PM - 60 comments Just in time for your Black Friday wish list needs, MeFi's own
mightygodking has written a guide on
how to start reading comics. Perfect for total comics newbies or people* who have really only ever read webcomics and seen superhero movies, the guide is a list of twenty volumes of comics that would be good for introducing people to the medium, and why they are his choices.
[more inside]
posted by Caduceus at 12:18 PM - 119 comments This has not been a
good year for
SCI, the worlds largest funeral services corporation. Now allegations have surfaced that groundskeepers for Eden Memorial Park were secretly instructed to desecrate graves (possibly in excess of 500 individual bodies) in order to make room.
[more inside]
posted by es_de_bah at 8:35 AM - 79 comments Jesus ate primarily natural foods in their natural states - lots of vegetables, especially beans and lentils. He would have eaten wheat bread, fruit, drunk a lot of water and also red wine. And he would only eat meat on special occasions, maybe once a month. The Jesus Diet [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:50 AM - 70 comments
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