So if I'm willing to accept that Ricky Jay has a phenomenal memory, and can memorize a whole deck of cards with little difficulty (he mentions in one of the videos that they had played rummy with the same deck previously, and used that as this opportunity -- discards and whatnot -- to learn the deck's configuration), and that likewise he is able to do such mechanic stuff as being able to cut an exact number of cards and to shuffle precisely -- left deck, right deck, left, right, left, right --... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 9:00 AM on October 3, 2007

sappidus: I'm familiar with the phenomenon you're talking about -- I had a card trick that I was great at because I sold it on the strength of psychological mumbo-jumbo like tells and involuntary responses. And so you sell sleight of hand by making it look like you're doing something else entirely ... I get that.

So is that the story of the video "Ricky Jay finds a card," linked above as "cards?" Would you suspect that he is employing something other... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 1:25 PM on October 3, 2007

Yeah, that's too contrived to even begin to fall for. The 21st century epistolary thriller is an alluring genre, but: no.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 12:53 PM on May 25, 2007

The 21st century epistolary thriller is an alluring genre

Having said that, let me offer this.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 1:10 PM on May 25, 2007

Master and Commander.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:57 AM on May 22, 2007

It's not in Order of the Phoenix, it's in Half-Blood Prince. (For real this time.)
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:57 AM on May 22, 2007

KEYSER SOZE MANUFACTURES ROSEBUD-BRAND TOBOGGANS! AND IS ACTUALLY A GHOST!
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 2:12 PM on March 12, 2007

I think that's quite nice. Two thumbs.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 9:22 AM on February 23, 2007

Well, OK, my parent is kicking to say that a party where the high school's homecoming king is having public, videotaped sex with multiple women is not at all cool.

Having said that, here's this for those that don't have it (Danger Mouse + Murs)

Dear Marcus
I know it's been hard time
since they made you the victim of your so-called crime
Kinda snatched you out the game of life in your... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:07 AM on January 25, 2007

Obligatory Jonathan Coulton link.

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/lyrics/womb-with-a-view
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:29 AM on November 22, 2006

I must say, finding out about the incest and the dog and so forth kind of puts my off Gill Sans in a way that, for instance, the various crimes of Roman Polanski did not put me off his work. Because I use Gill Sans as a tool to express myself, rathen than simply appreciate it from afar as an objet d'art, it seems distinctly icky.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:49 AM on November 14, 2006

My two questions -- what kind of printing are they doing (certainly not offset) and whether you can get rid of the flickr logo -- were not among those most frequently asked, apparently.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 1:24 PM on September 19, 2006

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm ready for this.

The episode of the X-Files is War of the Coprophages, whose robotic cockroach(es?) was/were premised on the idea that alien intelligences are more likely to send a small drone to evaluate another planet than actually land a craft here. What kind of drone? Well, a small one that could, among other things, be powered by methane (hence explaining the attraction of the bugs to dung.) The joke of the episode are all the competing... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:53 AM on September 14, 2006

He also wrote a pretty good book on design.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:15 AM on September 14, 2006

Better rebuttals here and here.

And here's the Google cache of a pulled Forbes article by the same author talking about the economic similarities of wives and prostitutes (like "champagne and beer").... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 10:44 AM on August 24, 2006

callmejay, I think the rebuttals take an appropriate tack. Without disputing how the studies were conducted (although they were certainly looking at data from a time period when men's attitudes about women in the workforce was lagging women's ascendancy), the Forbes article conflates correlation and causation and makes all manner of dumb statements. For instance:

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:16 AM on August 24, 2006

All right, all right: The Salon piece is the best rebuttal. But I defend the other two pieces because they are picking up the discourse at the level at which it was laid at their feet. While they don't counter with other studies, they do the reading between the lines that demonstrates what Noer is actually saying.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 12:25 PM on August 24, 2006

By and large, people who are shifting wholesale from crossword puzzles to Sudoku were never strong fans of crosswords anyway, just fans of killing time with a puzzle. Obviously, that audience is the great majority of the crossword audience, but they probably do not receive much pleasure from the challenge of crosswords, meaning that they're probably not doing top-tier crosswords. Put another way, I doubt a lot of NYT crossword devotees have "left" for Sudoku, especially relative to the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 7:37 AM on August 2, 2006

Jack Hoff and Hugh Jass called. They want their cousin's name back.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 7:10 AM on August 2, 2006

Not just Mignola, but producer Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me) and the voice talents of Patton Oswalt, Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce. Sometimes the stars align. This reminds me of when Mike Doughty recorded a one-man call-and-response song with the melody of "The Rainbow Connection" for They Might Be Giants to accompany a Chris Ware cartoon in McSweeney's, or Spike Jonze and David Eggers' adapting Maurice Sendak with Benicio Del Toro, Tom Noonan, and Catherines Keener... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:05 AM on July 14, 2006

I found Google's cache of the first page, but can't get to the second. Either way, this is the rub of the question:

challenging the long-term viability of carbon-based fuels (whether of the freshly-squeezed variety or not)

The challengers here are presented as context-free links to Al Gore and UCS. Generally speaking, both entities are in favor of biofuels as near as I've been able to tell. When you make something... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 2:57 PM on July 10, 2006

Excuse my laziness, but I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering why they brought Brando back instead of just getting a new actor. Anyone? I'm genuinely curious.

I'm just spitballing here, but Richard Corliss writes:

Earlier versions of Superman stressed the hero's humanity: his attachment to his Earth parents, his country-boy clumsiness around Lois. The Singer version emphasizes his divinity. He is not a super man; he... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 7:31 AM on June 20, 2006

Man, you can't just go and spoil the Principal Firebush joke. That's the best bit, which is why it's hidden at the end. The Sinead O'Connor joke sets it up and then spike!
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 10:19 AM on May 19, 2006

Siskel didn't die of his tumor until 1999, and these movies are from 1987. Plus, Gene was usually better composed on air. I vote for drunk.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 2:26 PM on May 12, 2006

I wish the trailer were better.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:30 AM on April 19, 2006

Chevy Tahoe: It takes a V8 engine to hoist yourself by your own petard this thoroughly.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:46 AM on March 31, 2006

mischief, Seitz writes for both the New York Press (as a film critic) and the Star-Ledger (as a TV critic), and his work for both is extremely literate, so it's not quite a fair shake to grouse about this story being about a blogger's post.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:17 AM on March 14, 2006

This means that responsible women can have sex, but only with irresponsible men.

That is a very apt, very shrewd encapsulation of the thread.

Well, sex certainly involves a risk of pregnancy, but it certainly isn't consent for someone else to turn that risk into fact via choice.

The reason anti-abortion factions are excited for this case is because the above is indefensible. I think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:18 AM on March 10, 2006

But agreeing to have an abortion does not follow from an agreement to not have procreative sex.

In criminal/fraud cases, I think there's an argument to be made against child support. But in a situation of, "We agreed it was just casual sex, we used birth control, we got pregnant anyway and she chose not to abort or adopt it," I don't think that the male can choose to be exempted from his responsibility because women have the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 9:14 AM on March 10, 2006

Talk about semantics. Above, I meant to say

I don't think it's semantics to point out that not choosing to not terminate a pregnancy is not merely choosing to have a baby.

Not that it changes the whole meaning or anything.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 10:05 AM on March 10, 2006

> But agreeing to have an abortion does not follow from an agreement to not have procreative sex.

I'm trying to wrap my head around that one. Then it's an agreement... to jointly engage in wishful thinking?

To the extent that you want to call believing that contraceptives are 100% reliable "wishful thinking," then yes. An agreement that a child is not a desireable outcome of sex and that contraception will... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 10:09 AM on March 10, 2006

Sex is a loaded gun, and vaginal intercourse, even with contraceptives, is especially so if the worry is pregnancy. If you have sufficient trust in the partner to be able to "know" what will happen in the event of a pregnancy, well, that's the best you can do. I don't know that the risk can be further mitigated than that. If all options in that circumstance seem "radical," I dunno what to say. We've done our best to divorce sex from babies, and it doesn't always work.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:42 AM on March 10, 2006

Good PR work from the NPCC to get out a funny press release like that in a timely fashion.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:00 AM on February 28, 2005

Technically?
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:36 AM on December 20, 2004

dash, Araucaria writes a different breed of crossword entirely.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:02 AM on December 17, 2004

Noah found and printed it last year. The reason it is Google-able, by and large, is because people read about it last year in Slate and blogged it themselves. By mentioning that it is Googleable in the '04 version, he's simply pointing out the re-printing/re-writing the holiday story he's writing is pretty redundant.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 9:12 AM on December 16, 2004

Did you buy comic books in the 90's? Did you start speculating? Did you buy issues just because they were a #1? Even though there were 12 million of them out there? Did you buy all the multiple covers?

Shut up. Just shut up.

To be honest, I don't know how it happened. I was in middle school/high school and had just started reading/collecting for the first time in a number of years when all that hit, and then the quality went... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 6:28 PM on December 9, 2004

Congrats, Matt. It's a trip.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 9:45 AM on December 8, 2004

The Herb Alpert mash-ups are best of breed.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 12:39 PM on October 19, 2004

AP, I probably shouldn't go find the link itself for you, since I'm at work, but that was Grant Stoddard's last "I Did It for Science" piece for Nerve.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 7:37 AM on October 18, 2004

Is that Optimus Prime?
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 12:40 PM on September 13, 2004

Flak Magazine did this on Tuesday.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 6:22 PM on August 27, 2004

No catspiders?
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 6:49 AM on August 27, 2004

You know, it's impressive, not unlike the Batman vs. Joker/Alien/Predator clip that was so popular six months ago, but: Come on. The big guys are extremely unlikely to let you come play in their pool on the strength of fanfic alone, no matter how well done. $18,000 is a workable amount of money in the indie film world; if you're that good, then parlay that money into something that you control the rights to and get it out there. I mean, what do you want: To have your vision... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 12:57 PM on August 25, 2004

inky, Wolfgang Petersen was trying to get one made quite recently until Chris Nolan's Batman revamp was deemed more attractive. Like WB's Superman project, Petersen's film was stalling because they couldn't come up with anyone to cast.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 1:03 PM on August 25, 2004

My point is, I think these tech workers are only hastening the pace of outsourcing and hence hastening their own demise. It's like making a pact with the devil -- good for awhile, but what do they do when the time to pay the bargain comes?

Well, I think the idea is that we'd then start to have worldwide economic parity and a lessening of global poverty. It might sound like trickle-down economics, but by saying they can't have those... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 8:16 AM on August 24, 2004

Stephen Himes thinks it's anti-Kerry, too, but from the other direction (i.e. the work of a Dean democrat).
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 4:52 AM on August 12, 2004

A script and a transcript are two very different things.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 5:09 AM on August 8, 2004

The Salon story reports that Mitchell was dressed as, simply, Mitchell.

Both scenes are a nice bit of dramatic imagination.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 11:16 AM on August 4, 2004

A similar story, written with more zing, from the defunct Ironminds.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer at 9:19 AM on July 21, 2004