This is a slight derail, but AppleSeed above at 10:06 PM raised the interesting question:

* Perhaps someone in the military can chime in on what it really means to be an effective "commander in chief", which every candidate has laid claim to. Is that something a mid-level officer can just waltz into? What about someone with no military experience whatsoever?


Not mentioned in this campaign is the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:28 PM on October 4, 2008

Hard working people like... John McCain, who married into a fortune that financed his senate run and bought his eight-to-ten-depending-on-how-you-count luxury homes.

And don't forget: McCain's trophy wife bought him a private jet so that he could fly around the country and denounce his opponent as an elitist.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 1:01 PM on August 30, 2008

the_bone: the Republican Party is not, and never will be, the friend of the working man.

This year's Republican National Convention is designed to showcase their scorn for the working man/woman: they're opening their convention on Labor Day (which was once a holiday to honor Labor...).
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:17 PM on August 30, 2008

The rabid desire for someone in Palin's family - anyone! - to have failed to meet the standards of the conservative chastity brigade is pretty phenomenal.

Have you not been paying attention?

Haven't you noticed that the folks who are obsessed with policing other people's morality are more likely than average to misstep themselves?

How many Baptist preachers auto-asphyxiating themselves will it take... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:49 AM on September 1, 2008

I don't understand why those Alaska Republican legislators who were interviewed by the New York Times were so open about the fact that Palin was not vetted. Are they trying to destroy her nomination? It would seem that, as Republicans and (presumably) Palin supporters, they would want to give the illusion that she was carefully vetted; instead, they are bending over backwards to confirm everyone's suspicion that she was not vetted, and they are being strangely forthcoming about that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:50 PM on September 1, 2008

Yeah, what Surfurrus linked to at 9:07: not only do abstinence-only programs not work, but the more "liberal" states have lower rates of teen pregnancy, lower rates of abortion, AND they have lower divorce rates, at least partially because they don't put as much pressure on 17-year-olds to get married. It's pretty well correlated: the more "conservative" the state, the higher the rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, and divorce.

(The state with the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:24 PM on September 2, 2008

There's only one metric that matters: the "surge" will be a success when the United States can bring its occupation forces home from Iraq.

Have the troops come home? No? Then the surge is not yet a success.

That is to say, it's still a failure.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 5:30 AM on September 5, 2008

Almost...
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:47 PM on September 13, 2008

Last!
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:50 PM on September 28, 2008

What should I be doing to take advantage of the troubled economy?

Invest in canned goods and shotguns.
posted to Ask Metafilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:21 PM on September 26, 2008

What
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:57 PM on September 25, 2008

OK, I liked the early Stevenson. And me? I am The Guy For Whom Cryptonomicon Was Written. (That is to say, I don't know of a book that I enjoyed more, "Captain Crunch" digression and all.)

Reading the Baroque Cycle, on the other hand, was more of a painful duty.

And so I dutifully picked up Anathem the day it hit the stores - but the first few pages set off my personal... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:53 PM on September 25, 2008

Duck Season.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 3:35 PM on September 20, 2008

"Black & white films to be remembered", the front page promised.

So I clicked through, expecting a link to old guys reminiscing about the Good Old Days of trying to get Panatomic-X to dry flat, or something.

Instead, it's a link about old movies.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:00 PM on September 15, 2008

Landfall is supposed to be about 2pm Monday. The RNC is supposed to start at 3:30 pm.

Oh, and good luck, ColdChef.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:17 PM on August 30, 2008

The Forbes list makes just about as much sense when read backwards. (Note the cluster of engineering schools at the bottom. I think it's safe to say that engineering students often have unkind things to say about their teachers.)

I mean, really: they rank Cornell College well above Cornell University.

I'd be willing to make the case that "ratemyprofessor.com" ratings should be used upside down: I know that I had a pretty adversarial... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:16 PM on August 24, 2008

Jeez, what a train wreck.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 5:35 PM on August 24, 2008

Well, that was lame.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 1:27 PM on August 24, 2008

I'll still need to crank through the calculations myself. I'm OCD enough that I already keep track of my mileage. An automated ap should at least do this better than I do it by hand.

Fuelly would be a LOT more useful if it was smart enough to sum from fill-up to fill-up regardless of how many partial tanks intervene. (It should sum any partial fill-ups that occur in the interim).

As it is, it simply ignores all partial fill-ups, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:57 PM on August 21, 2008

Mathowie: on preview, I was just about to reply when you figured it out.

You don't need to figure the mileage on partial tanks. But you do need to figure it from fill-up to fill-up, including all of the partial fill-ups made in the interim.

(Total miles driven) / (total gasoline purchased). Easy.

Oh, and as long as we're used MetaFilter to report Fuelly bugs: my car hasn't shown... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 5:16 PM on August 22, 2008

The great thing about this take-down is that Liberman's critique put about a hundred times as much work - and intelligence - into the question than is shown in Brooks' original piece.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:50 PM on August 14, 2008

The one thing I know about Julia Child is that she met her husband in Ceylon while working for the OSS in WWII. (I have no idea how I know this, but I heard about it back when she was still on TV.)

So, I think this is more "confirms" rather than "reveals".
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:14 PM on August 13, 2008

Meh. Lots of Americans save their deepest hatred for, you know, other Americans.

Lots of Americans don't know that France even exists, so the French don't get half the hate that Libruls get.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:39 PM on August 11, 2008

Oh. Well, that's OK then.

Besides, my house is at 81 meters above sealevel, so this doesn't affect me.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:46 PM on August 10, 2008

Her cover of On Reflection was pleasant enough - until it gets to the round.

I found it disconcerting and distracting to hear her sing all the parts simultaneously - a triumph of multi-tracking over the natural human voice.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 12:16 AM on August 9, 2008

47.

It's an interesting feeling, as your brain runs dry and the clock keeps ticking.

On the other hand, I copied out their list and found that I can just barely type in their hundred words in 5 minutes. (Even without having to wait for inspiration.)
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:50 PM on August 6, 2008

My wife uses this machine a lot. (Yeah - that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 30%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 70%

I'm sure that if I got the girl cooties out of this computer's cookies, it would duly report my actual

Likelihood of you being MALE is 110%
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 3:38 PM on August 2, 2008

On the one hand, you have the reporter who broke the stories about both My Lai AND Abu Ghraib.

On the other hand, you have an administration that has lied about absolutely EVERYTHING.

Track records: on the one hand, a reporter who has proven his chops for four decades. On the other hand, a gang of incompetent thieves and proven liars.

Now, granted, past results are no guaranty of future performance - but, that's the way... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:33 AM on August 2, 2008

When I saw the headline ("Too Fit to Be President?") I naturally assumed that they were talking about his fitness for office - that is, his intelligence.

The WSJ is no longer a serious news source.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:15 AM on August 2, 2008

localroger: then you should start getting ready for June 2012's transit of Venus.

The 2004 transit was the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever seen: 2012 will be the last chance in our lifetime to see one.

And in all the discussion leading up to it, nobody told me that (if you were very careful about, you know, looking directly into the sun(!)) the transit of Venus was a naked-eye event.

It was electrifying.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:20 PM on July 18, 2008

(Seconded.)
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:33 AM on July 19, 2008

I seriously considered buying one of Johnny Cash's black shirts: I still regret missing it.

Now I'll go to my grave regretting not buying one of James Brown's capes.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:29 AM on July 19, 2008

It was sort of interesting taking these in the personae of my parents (married 1945).

I don't know what a woman would have to do to rate as a "Superior" wife.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:24 AM on July 19, 2008

30% of the American public doesn't know what party controls the House.
44% of the American public doesn't know (literally) the first thing about John McCain (that he's Senator from Arizona).

And some fraction of these people will be voting in November. (Many of them are non-voters - but some of them do vote.)

This explains a lot, actually.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:59 AM on July 19, 2008

miss lynnster: I think in a lot of ways we're much more uptight about nudity in America now than we were back then.

The nude girl in Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak was eleven years old.

In the '20s, it was the was popular print in America, selling millions, until it was in in something like every fifth household.

Parrish would be in jail if he tried to sell that in 21st-century... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:39 AM on July 13, 2008

This is supposed to make me want to buy Guyville again?

They're doing it wrong.


I mean, I loved the album the first time, and the promise of outtakes makes it conceivable that I might be persuaded... but if this is the "bonus" DVD they're including to induce me to buy it again... well, then, I'm sure glad I got to see it for free beforehand.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:36 PM on July 8, 2008

And NOBODY is bragging about how they did on the periodic table? (The quiz doesn't even ask you for them in order, they'll accept them in whatever order they come to mind.)

No wonder the 21st century will be China's and India's.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 4:06 PM on June 25, 2008

The campaign has denied it.

But they're Republicans.

By now, you should have learned that they lie all the time, about everything.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:46 PM on June 22, 2008

See now, this is one of the unheralded advantages of old-fashioned film photography: back in the day, a person would get a fancy camera, and nobody would ever see their first 10,000 images of their journeyman work as they learned the craft. It takes active effort to develop a roll, contact-proof it, choose one to enlarge, print it up, and stick it up for strangers to see. The tech acted as an aesthetic filter.

Whereas in digital, any crappy image... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:48 AM on June 14, 2008

can someone tell me what noisy means?

Badly exposed digital images will have random pixels ("noise") of random color distributed through the image.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:51 AM on June 14, 2008

Impeach.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:18 PM on June 5, 2008

I'm going to be the Last Guy in America to get my check (they're being sent in numerical order).

My current plan is to use half of it to buy heating oil (so we don't freeze next winter); and the other half I'm going to give to the Democrats, to help drive the GOP from power.

I devoutly hope that the GOP is keep far from the levers of power for the rest of my children's lives.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:34 PM on May 31, 2008

That list is pretty useless.

Right off the bat, he missed the true 'top benefit' of gas at $8/gallon:

#1: There will be fewer idiots in giant SUVs pulling out in front of me while yakking on their cell phones.

My wife and I have been driving cars that get 35mpg or so since 1975. If everybody else did, gas would still be 80¢ a gallon. (Which - remember? - was what we were paying during the second Clinton administration.)
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:23 PM on May 31, 2008

People wearing tights as pants? In public?
Where Leon Kass might see them?
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 2:30 PM on May 31, 2008

Huh. Both sites seem to show that there are states that are likely to vote Republican this year.

Have people not been paying attention?
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:00 PM on May 29, 2008

Luxury goods are getting relatively more expensive because there is more demand for them.

There is more demand for luxury goods because, you know, rich people now have Scrooge McDuck-like piles of money that they can throw away on overpriced luxury goods

This does not actually demonstrate that income inequality is declining.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:40 PM on May 19, 2008

Movies starring the Chrysler Building?

Don't forget Q
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:22 PM on April 30, 2008

I didn't think that there were accurate charts from that far back (pre-1958).

And sure enough, the FAQ says:

To be honest, the research from these years is squirrelly at best, but it's what we have.

posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:57 PM on April 12, 2008

If a person only read these 110 books their whole lives, they would be very unlearned.

Well. They'd be better read than about 99% of humanity, and probably better read than 99.5% of the Telegraph's audience.

It's certainly not a bad list, as these things go.

Mostly what it shows is that 110 mostly-serious books is a woefully inadequate number for someone to be... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:41 PM on April 8, 2008

Bay to embark on new ‘Odyssey’ for Warner

(I'm simply going to proceed with my life on the assumption that that's an April Fools prank: the timing is right.)

I won tickets to the local premiere of 2001. In wide-screen Cinerama. I wore a suit for the occasion.

I was twelve years old.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:27 PM on April 3, 2008