9 Beet Stretch - What if you took Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which normally runs about 70 minutes (this is, incidentally, the reason CDs are the length they are), and stretched it out to 24 hours using digital audio processing? The pitch remains intact; only the length is changed. What you end up with can only be called majestic and ethereal, kind of an orchestral version of loveliescrushing. For your convenience, you can listen to the work in one-hour, twenty-minute RealAudio chunks. Hm, I wonder what other music might work well with such radical time-expansion... (via interconnected)
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 1:14 AM on July 27, 2002 (43 comments)

Ask and you shall receive. Move over, Amazon Honor System! Now you can sign up for a one-click service that lets visitors to your Web site donate something you'll really appreciate: oral sex. Best of all, they don't keep a percentage of your donations like Amazon and PayPal do.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 12:29 AM on February 9, 2002 (6 comments)

AMC to add commercials? American Movie Classics, a cable TV channel which has for sixteen years been showing classic films without commercial interruptions, is considering adding commercial breaks to movies as early as this year. (The channel already shows commercials before and after movies and in its documentaries, but until now has kept the movies themselves intact.) If you're a movie buff and are distressed by this possibility, let AMC know about it. (Personally, I think this is a bad idea, if only because it will likely cost them lots and lots of viewers.)
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 9:59 AM on July 22, 2001 (18 comments)

A brand new way to harass misfits at school. First, accuse them of being terrorists. Then hide behind a proposed California law (see last paragraph of article) that protects you from being sued by the accused for defamation. What happened to the Tapia family, whose daughter Kristina made just such an accusation (apparently in good faith) and who have since run up $40,000 in legal bills defending her from a suit from the family of the kid she reported (who was arrested and expelled), is of course a travesty, but is a "shield" law the right solution when it's all too easy to imagine it just making the whole "zero tolerance" environment of U.S. public schools even more sick and twisted?
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 1:16 AM on March 27, 2001 (13 comments)

No less tragic than the Santana shootings. I hope this poor girl's tormentors spend the rest of life asking themselves "What would Jesus have done -- and why didn't I?"
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:03 PM on March 12, 2001 (33 comments)

New to computers? Confused by that message telling you to "hit any key"? Get professional help here. Now, aren't you glad you bought a Compaq?
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:26 PM on February 26, 2001 (4 comments)

Quiet that computer! This site offers some great tips on reducing the noise produced by your computer. I just got a new Power Mac G4 and a couple of external FireWire drives to go with it, and was appalled at how loud the setup was -- particularly the fans in the FireWire drive cases. Mike Breeden at Xlr8yourMac.com has a great tip on reducing the fan noise on the G4 itself, which I applied to the FireWire drives with good results (haven't tried it on the G4 yet). If your computer (Mac, PC, or otherwise) is loud enough to be heard over your MP3s, maybe these pages will help.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 2:15 AM on February 17, 2001 (8 comments)

$425 for an empty box. Imagine how much more it would be worth if it contained a Playstation 2. (Check his feedback, he really did send someone the empty box. "Caveat emptor"...)
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 4:35 PM on January 26, 2001 (48 comments)

Telegraph Codes. Was doing some searching the other day to remind myself what code traditionally goes at the end of a wire story (it's "-30-" of course) and stumbled upon this gem. Best of all, it's not political.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:34 PM on January 23, 2001 (4 comments)

Undecided voters aren't stupid after all. They're just waiting to see which candidate will best achieve their goal of governmental gridlock, which will be determined primarily by how control of Congress shakes out.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:40 PM on October 24, 2000 (8 comments)