Displaying comments 1 to 50 of 1027
MeFi post:
RIP Thomas Disch
As to Big Idea # 2, I'll get to that later.
(from his Livejournal, July 1st, 2008)
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 9:08 AM on July 7, 2008
MeFi post:
Keeping it in "The Family"...
Diane Rehm's vocal cords are damaged. She gets periodic treatment. I sometimes feel like that, then she will tear into some Lying McLiar Pants on the air and all is forgiven.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 12:15 PM on June 24, 2008
MeFi post:
Boris Johnson - War criminal
"Just when the police are trying to focus on beating knife crime and making the streets safe"
Knife crime! See what happens when you outlaw guns? You get messy knife attacks. Reading that sentence while I sit in American feels like I'm in a Harry Turtledove novel.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 11:00 AM on June 24, 2008
MeFi post:
CRACKED and Loaded
If you charge $50 per bullet, people will reload them using spent brass and you'll create a black market for bullets.
I had a friend who was give a .410 shotgun by his dad because it was safer than a .22, insofar as the shot wouldn't travel as far as a bullet. I think he was 15.
Years later my friend was apparently suffering from depression (or a stomach ulcer--nobody was ever clear on this). So he had been put on a new medication and had a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 10:45 PM on June 23, 2008
MeFi post:
Your quest awaits!
What was the game they showed a teaser for, where a samurai jumps in the air and slices a helicopter in half while thinking (out loud) something like "Once again, I am disturbed by another useless object." Was that cliffhanger?
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 9:12 AM on June 22, 2008
MeFi post:
Underthinking a plate of cheese
I used to mock people with pets and trap rats and mice. Then I got my kids some pet rats. Now they crawl on my while I watch TV and we build them little toys. And I talk to them like an idiot.
So if I had just a single mouse I'd probably hang out with it. If I had a wild rat I wouldn't use deadly force, but I'd remove it. Owning rats has rewritten my rat-hating neural pathways.
I'm sure there's an important lesson to be learned here, but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 1:24 PM on June 20, 2008
MeFi post:
Flickr founders leaving Yahoo
The two recently celebrated, along with Flickr's other original employees, a "Vestfest" for their take from the $35 million sale of Flickr to Yahoo three years ago;
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 10:07 PM on June 18, 2008
MeFi post:
High Performance Kart Racing
Our neighborhood is filled with 50 cc scooters right now, as people try to avoid rising gas prices. Screw that, I want one of these with a roll cage for my daily work commute.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 6:37 PM on June 15, 2008
MeFi post:
Stealth bomber crash
I would never have guessed there were so many military aviation nerds lurking on mefi. I thought it was all Obama and unicorns around here. In other news, clicking on any related links on Youtube will lead you down a dark road of airplane snuff films set to heavy metal tunes from somewhere in Eastern Germany.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 8:36 PM on June 6, 2008
MeFi post:
Inflatable Electric Cars
So tired of cool cars that are only two years away but you can invest right now step right up monorail the end.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 3:59 PM on June 5, 2008
MeFi post:
A moment in history; Obama Wins Presidential Nomination.
I want to find a "Bob Dole for President" bumper sticker but given that I live in Utah it might be taken seriously by far too many people.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 5:39 AM on June 4, 2008
What worries me is that if Hillary Clinton doesn't get the VP nod she'll decide to run as an independent.
My ability to sleep at night just decreased considerably. Fortunately Hillary is $20 million in debt and in the process of shaking down Obama for some of that money.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 6:35 AM on June 4, 2008
MeFi post:
Apparently he missed 5% of it.
These are hilarious and interesting, despite the crappy interface.
Metafilter: Look at that mutton fly--someone's having lamb kebab for lunch!
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 6:32 AM on June 4, 2008
MeFi post:
"Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways"
These are beautiful but the SuperAdobe strikes me as the design with the most potential impact due to its low cost. I made the mistake of reading a comment by Stewart Brand that walls are something like 18 percent of the cost of a new home, while the rest is composed of wiring, land acquisition and other infrastructure. This has made me less excited about many of these plans for lower cost housing such as straw bale homes, and skeptical of most of the "mortgage porn" that crops up, i.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 6:28 AM on June 4, 2008
MeFi post:
Life in a retirement home
Metafilter: The residents are old, and many are frail, but they're not done growing, they're not done learning, and they're not done with the messy business of love and loneliness and rage and joy that defines the human experience.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 9:37 PM on May 29, 2008
MeFi post:
New Law Cracks Down on Animal Fighting and Puppy Mills - Amazon Begs To Differ
I wanted to respond to jfuller (with whom I agree), by arguing that there is no such thing as free speech anyway. Our right to express an opinion or take a position is always limited by an invisible line that balances the interests of the individual with those of the wider community or state.
I find that statement absolutely repugnant and disgusting.
posted by delmoi at 5:16 PM on May 23 [1 favorite +] [!]
Stanley... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 11:12 PM on May 24, 2008
MeFi post:
Pigs can fly?
This post deserves about 200 favorites. Just excellent.
I've received four-inch long porcelain replicas of the pig from Chile and Peru, but with all the graffiti in Spanish, exactly copied onto them. They're really beautiful. They sit on my mantelpiece, at home. I treasure them.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 10:16 PM on May 22, 2008
MeFi post:
Keeping it simple, voluntarily
Check out Farewell, My Subaru.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 3:58 PM on May 22, 2008
When my wife joined a church her non-religious sisters immediately pushed her away, even though she never pushed it on them or brought it up. I'm guessing it's because they felt they were being implicitly criticized or something. I think that may explain some of the harsh responses in this thread as well.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 9:50 PM on May 22, 2008
MeFi post:
What's up bud!
It's amazing how much time and mental horsepower mefites spend thinking about metafilter.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 5:28 PM on May 20, 2008
MeFi post:
The Black Cab Sessions
How original.
posted by patr1ck at 11:06 AM on May 16 [+] [!]
Sadly, being snarky and dismissive is not that original, true.
Apparently this is chapter 41, so they've done this [calculates...] 40 times previously, with other bands.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 11:40 AM on May 16, 2008
MeFi post:
Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope
Unfortunately I downgraded from Vista to XP, using a rogue copy of XP, so I can't upgrade it to use all the crap this app will require (I did purchase a legal XP license key).
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 9:10 PM on May 12, 2008
MeFi post:
The Something Store
Ok, they list stuff they refuse to send, which is a total dealbreaker for me: Body parts; Organs or other body parts; body fluids; stem cells; embryos
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 11:57 AM on May 12, 2008
MeFi post:
Yellow sign on the line which is dotted
This is definitely Long Tail territory. I know that some board and wargame publishers have a p500 pre-ordering system for their games so they only print when they know they'll break even. Then, when a game is successful, they run out immediately and everyone has to wait six months for more copies to be printed up.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 11:11 AM on May 11, 2008
MeFi post:
A long time on the lam
Help, I'm trapped in a bad revision of Les Miserable.
If she's got blood on her hands, then lock her up.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 3:35 PM on May 2, 2008
MeFi post:
Anchors Aweigh
Whiny, knee-jerk politics aside for a moment, I caught the last 20 minutes of this and it was fascinating.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 8:12 PM on April 27, 2008
MeFi post:
Space, to lick the very fuzzy navel of the heavens
Watched disk 1 of "Apocalypse Now". Shep tried to explain why Robert Duvall is always wearing the black cavalry hat, but being a Navy guy, he's not sure he understands it either.
It's like twitter, for astronauts. Twitternauts!
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 11:28 PM on April 25, 2008
MeFi post:
On Having A Black Name
I'm realliy white, whiter than Steve Martin. Once when I had long hair and a beard I was at a restaurant frequented by really rich people in Canada, in the Gulf Islands, and they refused to serve me and my wife. I think it was because we looked like hippies and were on the wrong side of the track.
Here is the Utah baby namer. Some of these names seem less white than others.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 10:32 AM on April 25, 2008
MeFi post:
"You must have a stockpile of words that you can pass along to your children for their stockpile."
"This is kind of tangential, but doesn't it seem like there are a bunch of "public intellectuals" who run around spouting all kinds of bullshit, but lard it up with lots of metaphor in order to fool people into think[ing] they're smart?"
So, to make this thread a little more productive--who *are* the public intellectuals who are both accessible and smart?
Regarding Thomas Friedman--maybe he doesn't know that he's not a genius.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 10:04 AM on April 25, 2008
MeFi post:
Modelling human memory, predicting forgetting
I found this article fascinating--not only because I find obsessive, genius freaks interesting, like Wolf's great profile of Ted Nelson, but because it taught me something about the nature of memory and how, when science runs against conventional wisdom, it is routinely ignored. I'm seeing parallels with Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories which is about bad science creating consensus.
I don't know, to me this seemed like a great, extended example of tantalizing,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 7:34 PM on April 22, 2008
I downloaded the multiplication tables database and Anki onto my fifth grader's palm pilot. I'll report back.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 6:48 PM on April 23, 2008
MeFi post:
Hive-minded
My brother keeps trying to turn me into a top bar beekeeper.
We have small kids.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01
at 6:27 PM on April 23, 2008
