Leading zeroes are generally excluded in this type of puzzle, Perplexity.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 8:58 AM on September 4, 2008

"24-hour Apple store?"

Really?

Does the world need such a thing?

If the story is fake, I very much hope that's one of the made-up parts.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 7:30 AM on August 15, 2008

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you’ve got to be kind."

Makes any other "advice for life"-type thing seem like the Code of Federal Regulations, as far as I'm concerned.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 12:24 PM on August 12, 2008

It omits absorb vs. adsorb.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:50 AM on August 12, 2008

Boring, obvious and he lists zero examples of cheap food that's good for you.

That's what the blog, in general, is about. That's what many other posts in the blog are about. He admits right at the top of the post that it's a "detour" from his usual format.

You want to criticize the post for not being funny, fine. I don't think it's fair to criticize it for not listing cheap good food, since that's covered by other posts in the blog.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 1:06 PM on August 11, 2008

Chopping onions. But those are tears of joy, because chopping onions means something tasty is coming up. Well, joy, and dilute sulfuric acid. But mostly joy.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 8:41 AM on August 8, 2008

The Lilly Library is a fantastic resource.

Seconded. I was there recently, and was completely fascinated. They also have a collection of over 30,000 mechanical puzzles, some of which they have out for visitors to play with.

Also, unlike the Library of Congress, they'll let you take a picture of their Gutenberg Bible.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 10:33 AM on August 7, 2008

The art is...well, better than I could do at imitating Watterson. Not that that's saying much.

Not impressed with the content. JOBSSUCKSAMIRITE?
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:19 AM on August 7, 2008

Crap, beaten by DU, again.

No, ortho, you actually explained what you were talking about. DU merely referenced it to prove he was aware of it, not actually adding anything to the conversation: a minor variation on "FRisT psOT!!11!" at best.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 1:23 PM on August 4, 2008

Maybe it's just that I'm getting older, or maybe it's just that I spend too much time on the internet, but I've become so very, very tired of irony and sarcasm and snark. I would welcome more sincerity in conversations, especially online discourse. You don't like X? Great--tell me so, and tell me why! But you don't have to prove to me or to anyone else how smart you are by coming up with an oh-so-clever new way to put down X. It just seems tiresome now. I see your insult--less about the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 12:49 PM on August 1, 2008

Apparently the scary thing about our future of electronic books... is that we may be doomed to a future with fewer librarians in it.

If that's what you believe, you sorely underestimate librarians. We traffic in information, not paper. The fact that much of the information is currently on paper is incidental to what librarians do.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 3:08 PM on July 31, 2008

About 15/20 years ago, there was an excellent SF zine called SF Eye which took issue with one of Card's short stories. I don't remember the name of the story (I never read it), but it had some connection with one of Card's children, who was mentally handicapped, and SF Eye was outraged that the story seemed to be about Card fantasising about the death of his own child.

I think the story was "Lost Boys," which was later expanded into a novel.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 8:54 AM on July 30, 2008

3. Read "Speaker for the Dead" when it comes out. Huh... this one's not as good.

I liked Speaker for the Dead even better than Ender's Game.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 7:47 AM on July 31, 2008

I'm in the Mission Earth club too. The thing is, the books are quick reads--I could easily get through a volume in two days, and not full-time reading on those two days, either. By the time it occurred to me "this really isn't good," I was already halfway through the fourth volume, and felt compelled to finish it.

Embarrassed not to have read: all Dickens except A Christmas Carol, Great... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 3:13 PM on July 28, 2008

Then I tried to find out what exactly an Information Architect was, failed in a brief effort (best guesses: Pretentious Librarian, Pretentious IT Guy, or Pretentious Web Design Guy, but I can't be sure of those),

Well, I can rule out the first. We Pretentious Librarians call ourselves Information Scientists, not Information Architects.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 12:38 PM on July 17, 2008

Sounds like a recipe for generations of shared parasites.

Or for generations of shared symbiotes.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 11:43 AM on July 17, 2008

I don't think The Bunny Suicides was intended to be an instruction manual.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 10:21 AM on July 17, 2008

I need to find some typographical "errors" about cinnamon rolls to correct.

Jacqueline, you must have meant cinnamon roles, i.e., the various tasks and responsbilities that people involved in the cinnamon industry have to carry out.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 7:52 AM on July 16, 2008

No, you were right, Jacqueline; my mistake! (I can has sinamin rolz nau?)
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 7:53 AM on July 16, 2008

Bacon has been getting a lot of press lately, but this thread suggests peanut butter far outshines bacon in the "improves the most other foods" category.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 12:43 PM on July 11, 2008

Can we harvest energy off this slow wave?

Wave power in general is an emerging technology--not without challenges, but looking more and more like it's feasible. However, this particular wave represents only a tiny tiny fraction of all available wave energy in the ocean, and in any case ordinary faster waves are better as an energy souce than a "slow wave" such as this one.

It's kind of like asking if we can harness... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 2:56 PM on July 8, 2008

But Wikipedia is for when the answer doesn't matter. To learn the truth about something that matters, start with the library.

Starting with Wikipedia, even for something that matters, is fine, as the references listed therein are often useful. The error lies not in starting but in stopping with Wikipedia.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:00 AM on July 8, 2008

Wikipedia is getting almost as stuffy as Britannica.

Good.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:38 AM on July 8, 2008

No no no no. this is NOT how it's meant to end.

Of course it is. Haven't you read T.S. Eliot?
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 2:00 PM on July 7, 2008

When was the Hindenburg Omen formulated? I submit that with the millions of possible metrics that might be formulated from stock market data, it's easy to find one that appears to have good correlation with past events, and thus, only its results since the time it was published should be used to measure its accuracy. (And if you "tweak" it, you have to start over at the time the tweak is published.)

Around November 2004, I thought I had found a good metric... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 7:10 AM on July 7, 2008

I saw this for the first time a few years ago--the 2001 restoration, which was being shown in a local arthouse theater--and was absolutely enthralled.

I would pay inordinate sums of money to see the complete film.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 7:09 AM on July 3, 2008

I can't think of more than a handful of times when a cover is as good or better than an original.

You may be interested in this AskMe thread.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 8:37 AM on July 1, 2008

81 on the periodic table, without peeking at the table I have tacked up by my desk. Zinc was the one I was most embarassed to forget.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 6:44 PM on June 26, 2008

OK, I got 118 then.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 6:55 AM on June 27, 2008

THE GOVERNMENT IS GOOD! YAY BIG BROTHER! DOWN WITH GOLDSTEINISM! SEXCRIME DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD!

[a few posts later] Any chance for dialogue is apparently done.

Gee, I wonder how that happened?
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:32 AM on June 20, 2008

Is it okay to be a hypocrite as long as you are a liberal or an atheist?

Just because someone draws a line somewhere other than the extremes of "a wedding photographer must photograph any wedding he is asked to do, regardless of the circumstances" and "a wedding photographer is free to reject any invitation he receives, regardless of the reason why" does not make that person a hypocrite. You may believe in one of these two extremes,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 11:46 AM on June 20, 2008

Would I like to see to it that no religious person could ever own a business without violating his or her conscience? No.

Would I like to see to it that some particular religious people, the dictates of whose consciences I find morally abhorrent, could never own a legal business without violating those dictates? Yes, very much so.

It would not trouble me at all if, for example, Fred Phelps were unable to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 1:41 PM on June 20, 2008

SOME people get to make moral judgements and others do not? On what basis do we award the privilege?

While it is admittedly not an easy question, the short answer is a democratically-elected, representational government. Not a perfect system, I'll admit, but a better one than any other I'm aware of.

On what basis would you choose who gets to make moral judgments?

None of those are protected... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 1:59 PM on June 20, 2008

The only way this makes sense is if you decide as a group that religious people do not have rights.

You are setting up a false dichotomy between "religious people have the right to do whatever their religion commands" and "religious people have no rights at all."
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 2:03 PM on June 20, 2008

Where it's not a protected class, it's not illegal to do so. It may not be morally acceptable to some, however, which may be what you're getting at when you ask, "Is it OK?"

I guess the point I'm getting at is, if you rely on the illegality of discrimination based on sexual orientation as the basis for condemning such discrimination, that does not provide you with any rationale for arguing that such discrimination should be... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 2:07 PM on June 20, 2008

And biblically, we are supposed to not sin even if law requires it. See the book of Daniel-where Nebuchadnezzar threw three Hebrews into a fiery furnace for not obeying the law that they bow to a very large golden statue.

So by analogy, a "Christian" wedding photographer should refuse to photograph a gay wedding, and suffer the legal penalties for doing so, just as those Hebrews did. I'm OK with that. Shadrach, Meshach,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 2:26 PM on June 20, 2008

konolia so where in the Bible, cite chapter and verse please, does it state that taking photographs of a gay marriage is a sin?

Making fallacious arguments like that doesn't really help the cause of equal rights. If I believe in a religion that condemns murder, it's not unreasonable for me to conclude that actions which indirectly facilitate a murder are also forbidden, even if they're not explicitly stated to be so. There are many good reasons... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 2:34 PM on June 20, 2008

oaf: see "bona fide occupational qualification"
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 10:34 AM on June 24, 2008

149/150. Missed the "Fresh oil" one, which I've never seen.

Although I'm disappointed they left out the divided highway with a grave in the middle sign.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:34 AM on June 23, 2008

Baseball is a game for lawyers.

Any game played for millions of dollars is a game for lawyers.

Funny thing is, it's enough that the game has a million-dollar level of play for that to take effect, even if the particular match being played isn't at that level, in sort of a trickle-down effect. MLB has all sorts of rules covering all sorts of weird situations, so minor leagues and college get all the obscure rules, too. Even... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 11:28 AM on June 20, 2008

I suppose the flip side to believe that teenage girls are old enough and mature enough to make private, informed decisions about getting an abortion -- and this is a position I stand by -- you must also believe that they can similarly make the choice to have a baby.

Well, you have to believe they have the right to make the choice to have a baby. You don't have to approve of that choice, nor do you have to believe that the choice is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:01 AM on June 20, 2008

Maybe Indiana Jones is the reverse of Star Trek. The odd-numbered Indiana Jones movies are the good ones. (If they had numbers, and it's OK if they don't, since the Star Trek pattern held even after they stopped giving the movies actual numbers, at least through #9.)
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:54 AM on June 19, 2008

Recommended reading on this topic: The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead. Discusses both deliberately and naturally preserved bodies, including incorruptibles (and not just Catholic ones), and the people who research them, and at least a few who create them.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 8:41 AM on May 30, 2008

Sure, PDFs are mildly annoying, but I don't get why people complain about old links. So what if its old as long as its not some played out meme?

It's not a complaint, just an FYI, as heeraldo explicitly notes. Readers of the article would surely like to know that there is now another ten years' worth of data on Hibbert and Riviera which this article does not cover.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:18 AM on May 29, 2008

Please don't call it free speech if you're putting restrictions on it

By that standard, there isn't free speech anywhere in the world, except perhaps on the high seas. Everyone puts some restrictions on it. The particular restrictions vary from country to country, of course, but I'm not aware of any country that has no restrictions at all.
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 10:35 AM on May 21, 2008

Let me put it in stark terms. How many people have been killed due to belief in the CoS this year?

Well, in fairness you should normalize the statistics to the number of each religion's members. Catholicism and Islam are each orders of magnitude larger than CoS.

Now, maybe Catholicism and Islam come out worse even after you do this. I haven't looked up the numbers myself. But to say that they are worse than CoS just because... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 1:34 PM on May 21, 2008

From the page: "Graham postulates that all arguments falling below Contradiction are unconvincing."

Unconvincing to whom? In any case, I'm not so sure, given that many otherwise intelligent people seem to think that identifying an ulterior motive of the person making the argument constitutes a refutation of the argument, when in fact it's nothing more than a slightly dressed-up ad hominem. The existence of an ulterior motive is perhaps... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 10:43 AM on May 21, 2008

The bit from The Hunting of the Snark about the map:He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 10:24 AM on May 21, 2008

GreggLD: Certainly many religious/social liberals post on MetaFilter, but there are many moderates as well, and several regular posters are Christians. What unites "MeFites" is... well, nothing at all. Most MeFites prefer it that way; it allows for livelier debate. Although perhaps there is a general agreement that Western civilization is under siege from neoconservatives. Does this sound "paranoid?" Maybe at first glance, but if you actually take time to read the posts,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 6:48 AM on May 19, 2008

Covers come up fairly frequently on the green, under the tags cover or covers or coversongs. Here are a selection of the threads, for your convenience:

Why is it called a cover?
Covers better than the original
Bad covers
Covers translated from the original language
Covers that make you re-evaluate the original
Covers in a different genre from the original
Covers in a different genre from the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DevilsAdvocate at 9:28 AM on May 14, 2008