When Betty looks at the phone bill in the first season, I was annoyed at the fact that the mailing address was typewritten. Surely if they had a billing system that stored the time and place of calls, Ma Bell would have had dot matrix based mailing systems. They should hire an old mainframer for IBM's OS/360 (which was being introduced during the timeframe of Mad Men) along with the font nerds proposed above.

Shame on them! How am I to maintain believability if they keep... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 12:03 PM on October 8, 2008

Yeah, there's no self destructing email.

what about GUIDs and removal of the email from a server once it's read? Well, there's these things called cell phone cameras... though I suppose you could show only parts of the letters and have them rapidly switch between between frames that show individual parts of the letters in such a way that it would be impossible to figure out the message from one frame... but then you could just record the video... what about special LEDs... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 2:43 PM on September 26, 2008

...When I went on vacation...

One of the ten commandments of travelling is this: McDonald's is your bitch. Everyone has spent hundreds and even thousands of dollars of their own money there. If you've just walked down a Shinto mountain in Fukuoka, Japan and you've got mud all over your shoes, you have full rights to use as much paper in the bathroom as you need to clean that mud off.

They even have McDonald's restaurants in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 5:16 PM on September 18, 2008

Yes, McStayInSchool... Someone who argues that "TV is evil," and whose argument stops there is missing the point. It's a good thing to put your mind someplace for a while, even if it is vapid. And some of it isn't vapid, and in fact would stand up amongst some of the best stories we as humans have produced.

You can't be "on" all of the time. But if you're spending more than 10% of your waking hours (which equates to 2 hours per day) on something, I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 9:12 AM on September 4, 2008

I'll buy the movie rights to vi, if any of you people out there want to sell it. I've written about 10 pages of the spec script.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 2:37 PM on August 30, 2008

90% of viewers would never figure out how to leave the theatre.

Idiots!

Tap the door two times to enable the door's turning cylinders, turn the knob to the left if you would like to recall your memories of watching the movie in your brain in the future, and then turn the knob to the right like you would any other door. If you're really sure that you know what you're doing, punch the door with your fist at the end.

Simple.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 3:25 PM on August 30, 2008

The argument that can't be beaten about this topic.

Do some method acting and say this line: "I am a 9 year old girl. My government thinks I am ugly."
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:52 AM on August 27, 2008

Their families probably need to melt down the gold to buy food.

...only if they have spend the reward money they received on North American real estate.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:19 PM on August 20, 2008

Sorry DU, that ain't gonna work.

There's no way to spin this. And it's not serious enough to warrant a response from either the Republicans or the Democrats without the Republicans looking petty or the Democrats drawing attention to it.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 11:09 AM on August 20, 2008

I suppose that could work. It would have to be clear that the brother never, ever, asked for help from Obama. Appreciating self reliance is one thing, but refusing to help someone when the rewards and losses between the parties are so glaringly different would be another.

Thankfully, it appears this is a more a wiltering relationship rather than an outright refusual to acknowledge a family member.

And about the sandals, that one didn't make it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:07 PM on August 20, 2008

And when do we get to see the picture of Obama smoking?

That'll be a fun week for the talking heads. They have to be saving that one up.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:10 PM on August 20, 2008

For example, a couple months ago they aired a Lewis Black stand-up special ... with every commercial break being the same minute-long ad for Girls Gone Wild.

Someone has a modern studio with lights, cameras, and mikes, decades of experience in performing, a team of writers, and nation wide distribution of the signal, and you're complaining that to pay for all of this, you have to watch boobs for three minutes.

Exactly how does one go about making you happy?
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:36 PM on August 16, 2008

re: http://www.brownharrisstevens.com/detail.aspx?id=364979#

Type: Triplex
Penthouse: Yes
Rooms: 16.0
Bedrooms: 5

Laundry in building: Yes

Thank god there's laundry services available. It would get old very quickly if you had to lug your clothes all the way down to the local laundromat.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:28 PM on August 9, 2008

Favorite wrestlers : curt henning,randy savage,raven,Hulk Hogan, owen hart,kurt angle,the rock.

If you don't like capital letters, fine, I can accept this. Bear in mind, though, that one should not capitalize Hulk Hogan's name like He is a God amongst mortals.

He's not.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:25 AM on July 17, 2008

Team blue was the documentation team (or guy), which I found fascinating as the "blue" period of Python's development preceded a time of heavy checkins and, as mentioned in the caption, Python's explosion of popularity.

I wasn't into Python back then; are there are Pythoners out there who can corroborate this? Was the time after the massive documentation the time of Python's initial popularity explosion?
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 9:20 AM on June 19, 2008

When is youtube going to get permalinks?

If you want to be all googly about it, you'd do it something like this.

1. The URL for videos will be http://www.youtube.com/watch?l=grover_learns_the_meaning_of_pie

2. There will be a server that responds to all "l" requests in the query string by sending that portion of the string (in this case, "grover_learns_the_meaning_of_pie") to a cluster of computers... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:56 AM on June 5, 2008

I just have to plug this album so more people will hear it... If I Was Prince, a compilation of Prince covers that was released a few years ago.

He was always a great musician, his facade was just a bit off for a while there.

"I'll tell you a funny story about Prince. I was in this studio and I heard Prince was coming in. There was a time I thought he was awesome, but what a fucking creep! The rules were, you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:38 PM on May 27, 2008

Wow, Faze. That hit me. You have no idea. And, assuming you're from North America, you get up real early in the morning, geezer.

But seriously, I'm reading that over a few times tonight in my small rent-sucking Hong Kong apartment as I think about what I've given up for a few spins around the proverbial Shenzhen underground nightclubs and a glimpse of the harbour from an office on the 30th floor during a failed job interview. There are things I will take from this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 6:10 AM on May 27, 2008

Wow.

It has to be real -- check out the scene at the end of the horses section. The trolley smashes into a subway pole, and the guy goes flying. The picture fades out, most likely due to the fact that the camera man stopped cranking the film to help his coworker and there was no more footage.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:06 AM on May 26, 2008

I was in total agreement with that page, hortense, until they brought Tom Petty into the argument.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:07 PM on May 19, 2008

With perhaps greater consequences, the earthquake has been seen by Chinese as the government losing the "Mandate of Heaven", as the fall of previous administrations

That is in complete disagreement with what I'm hearing in the media here in HK. Go through this page, and run some of posts through this translator. The prevailing consensus seems to be "加油 中国人!" or "Chinese people refuel!". The Salon article you gave even... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:35 PM on May 19, 2008

Let's think of new clocks to make.

Mine would be this: all the numbers are raised from the surface. They will be cut in the form and shape of the number. The hour will be signified by the number being mechanically risen from the surface of the clock. All of the numbers' top surface will be covered with LCD elements, and the hour hand will fade from grey to white to grey. The surface of the clock will be black. The minute signifier will be another LCD screen, but it will... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 10:01 AM on May 16, 2008

I'm looking into the D programming language lately, and... oh crap. Walter Bright looks like a wrinkled 12 year old. The only thing that is missing is a Seattle Mariner's baseball cap.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 11:19 PM on April 30, 2008

schmegegge: The Orb's remix of Semisonic's Secret Smile uses the "...stop beating that gong, man. It's a drag; very hard on the nerves." quote.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:27 AM on April 2, 2008

It's not just Shanghai... They have most of Hong Kong mapped, Xi'an, and Beijing. Click on the first blue link on the menu bar at the top for a list of the cities mapped. The cities are named in Chinese, but you can look up the characters in Wikipedia.

Is this better? I have trouble finding roads in dense areas like Hong Kong Island. Finding Tian'anmen Square was cool, though. It would have been just as much work to make the buildings 3D models. If that were so, there... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:24 AM on April 1, 2008

Hey... this could be fun...

Google cache of the bedsitter man says he's an inventor of things that don't exist. Aren't they all.

He camps. He started a website in 2001, whose tagline submitted to the search websites is "Drawings of impossible inventions, demonstrations of useless machines and satirical comment. In English and Finnish.". He sings, but not terribly well. He's from Finland. He makes tar.

Some of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 6:33 AM on March 24, 2008

When I time travel, I just run around shooting dinosaurs in the foot. You won't believe some of things that have happened.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:39 PM on March 19, 2008

Cette website n'est pas disponsible.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:38 PM on March 13, 2008

I think that's a very US-centric viewpoint.

Who else has been to the moon? Who else turned their back on the motherland and started a new society without looking back?

Though, in thinking potential counterpoints to my "yah USA!" argument, I think the closest humans have ever came to doing the lone traveler thing would be the Polynesian tribes in Micronesia.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 5:31 AM on March 8, 2008

This is true. Good sushi presentation is far from anonymous to me, because it's not something I eat all the time. Hamburgers, on the other hand, I take for granted, and rarely think about the guy who made it.

Good sashimi comes from good fish that is properly transported, prepped, and cut from the sea to the table. The chef is not important, only the techniques and the fish are. Salmon sashimi shouldn't look different wherever in the world it is sold.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 12:04 PM on February 24, 2008

They had a drive-in theater in my little town of Virden, Manitoba, Canada when I was a kid. I remember ET, but barely. And some Michael J. Fox-is-in-Wall-Street film. And a couple on a couch kissing before my parents told me to go back to sleep.

For a few summers, I went to the drive-in in Winnipeg (which is still open) as an excuse to see whatever the blockbusters of the summer were. I couldn't justify seeing "Charlie's Angels 3" what with all those Wes... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 5:17 AM on February 18, 2008

To fix the problem with the "delete "adult scrolls conflict for delete adult scrolls conflict for"" problem there will be a dicta-button which is pressed to change the input mode of the text being entered, just like vi. Because those inclined to vi will not spent much time on speech recognition software and won't like the idea of pressing keyboard buttons to change text modes, the software should come with a simple usb interface that has a button similar to a Jeopardy button.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:04 AM on February 17, 2008

It's a gut instinct, but it seems to me the tone he using in the 'delete' command sequences implied that he was simply annoyed -- not someone who looks at the failure of the software as an exposure of the mechanics behind the software. A simple pause after a mistake is all it takes for me. He seems like someone who writes code in moses-on-the-mountain mode and is annoyed at the foibles of men who interpret the writing, and not in investigator mode. Perhaps it's acting to make Vista... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:43 AM on February 18, 2008

I did this in China, Spain, Russia... I'll be busy uploading now.

Thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 3:23 AM on November 27, 2007

The ending is "cheesy" for stylistic reasons. In the last few panels, the narrator of the comic has left, along with North and all of his other handlers. Reagan, as a character in his own biography, is saying goodbye to the audience (the readers of this comic) in his own words and in his own style.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:41 PM on September 8, 2007

My recommended s3m: Point of Departure. Awesome song. Slightly dated 12 years on, but fun.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 4:58 PM on March 23, 2007

One thing that is rarely discussed in the whole Borat story is the diplomatic response. It seems rather strange that the president of the United States would hold a meeting about a comedy film with a seemingly insignifigant country, unless you follow the oil trail... Kazakhastan has large reserves of oil. The quote "It's sort of unfortunate that he hit upon Kazakhstan." in reference to the diplomatic relations to the USA and Kazakhastan from the wikipedia page is rather telling.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 6:22 AM on November 16, 2006

Wierd. I was in CB (actual local parlance that they use to refer to their town) a month ago for work... and i was annoying the SHIT out of the squirrels on the weekend i had off there. I hate them, those stupid dolphin-brained rodents.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 1:08 PM on August 21, 2006

There's crude oil in the ground in that area of Saskatchewan. I'd keep up with this story, it could get interesting...
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 10:16 AM on July 8, 2006

a series of costume parties

nerd.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:45 AM on June 23, 2006

There's more to it than presenting snappy narrative -- you don't need an audible good-bye because the visual cue of hanging up the phone signifies the end of the conversation. If you were writing a radio play, you would need to write in the good-byes.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:48 PM on June 12, 2006

Here's an overwrought sentence dripping with poisonous wrath of which those of the snarling leftie persuasion may cut and paste: His people have most likely found and hung, half-staff on flagposts in remote environs of our Northerly Territories, anyone who was at that convention.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 9:15 PM on April 26, 2006

If the wire layers had their way, internet bills would look like cell phone bills. That 'feh' would have cost homunculus 15 cents.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:07 PM on April 24, 2006

I think taxes would be a larger influence on price than supply and demand. If Canada were on this map, everything would be red.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:44 AM on April 20, 2006

I'd love to do some research and actually support the following statement so it doesn't sound like a leftist bumper sticker... This is what the internet would be like if it were created by a company.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 6:41 AM on March 14, 2006

my my... this is fun.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 8:14 PM on February 17, 2006

Yes, I would argue that. Chickens were bred to be eaten, and there are billions of them. Whales are wild animals that could end up being another animal on the list of large animals that will be made extinct by resource mismanagement. I do feel you will disagree with this statement as I suspect you have a more compassionate-to-individual-souls viewpoint than myself, but at least we agree that you shouldn't waste whale meat on your pets.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 5:11 PM on February 10, 2006

This works well as a parody or an homage to old school games. I caught a Ninja Gaiden reference and a Rocket Ranger reference in the first cut scene.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 7:48 AM on February 5, 2006

Canada is even less densely populated than the United States, yet broadband is available to most of the populace. My parents' farm is 3 hours from Winnipeg and 10 km from the nearest town, yet they are capable of receiving broadband for less than $50 CDN / month.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 6:33 PM on October 18, 2005

Almost nothing concerning cooking

Half of these recipes called for boiling water.
posted to MetaFilter by sleslie at 5:57 AM on August 14, 2005