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

A Young Republican whose debut on the public stage was as a liar. That's news.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 5:11 PM on April 1, 2008

Wait - she did her senior thesis on Saul Alinsky - on her way to being valedictorian of her Seven Sisters college - and this is supposed to be somehow embarrassing???

Mad props for her. That's one of the best things I've heard about her. What kind of crazy country are we living in where writing about organizing communities is supposed to count against a political candidate? Organizing people to seek their own interests is supposed... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:44 AM on March 16, 2008

Well, there was a brief interval - maybe from the '40s to the '70s? - when we believed that the "underclass" were Americans, too. And not some scary Other.

And that looks a lot like the Summer of '73 in my own rustbelt city, too. I got out of high school that June.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 12:53 PM on March 15, 2008

The canonical use of Polaroids is to hand them out to Third-World kids. It makes friends, it gives the kids a thrill, and it gains you cooperative subjects for your Real Photography.

I can't imagine trekking in an inkjet printer to hand out digital prints; not yet, anyway. So there's at least one niche that the Death of Polaroid will leave that's going to remain unfilled for a while.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:36 PM on March 13, 2008

OK, the list is called "1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die"...and it's got more than just pop trash, more than just pop and rock, it's got some 'Difficult Listening' indie stuff, it's even got some jazz...ok, it encompasses several genres of music...it goes back several decades, even....I get it so far....

...but:

Of all the music You Should Hear Before You Die... there wasn't room for a single classical album?

Isn't that just a bit odd?
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:19 PM on March 13, 2008

This 'Emperor's Club' Escort Service: not so good with the grammar, but, man, they have some really inspired marketing.

You - the potential client of their "high-class" services - have the option of hiring a "One Diamand"-rated hooker - say, Miss Trudy, here - for $1,000/hr. Or you can hire a "Seven Diamond" hooker - say, Miss Ekatrina, here - for $5,000/hr.

Apparently there are guys with $5000 in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:42 PM on March 12, 2008

people aren't "evil" merely for the fact of their conservatism

Except that conservatism is an evil ideology, a political philosophy that seeks to maintain or impose class-based heirarchies. People who support modern conservatism are evil in proportion to the degree that they help conservatism triumph over democratic progress.

Buckley was charming: he was able to present horrible ideas - racism, misogyny, homophobia... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:28 PM on February 27, 2008

Holy crap! Does it matter in the least that she's been a complete fucking DISASTER at her job? Does it matter at all that she's not even any good at her nominal area of expertise?

She's another of the incompetents who have brought us nearly eight years of unremitting disaster.

She's not worth the effort to run down the exact anecdote, but I seem to recall that during the run-up to Bush's attack on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 3:43 PM on February 10, 2008

Pyr asked
What exactly should a Secretary of State be doing during Katrina?

Well, off the top of my head, when the Bush junta abandoned a major American city, the Secretary of State might have picked up the goddam telephone and assured our allies and trading partners that the thousands of foreign nationals visiting New Orleans - and all the merchant shipping in port - were all accounted for and safe;... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:59 PM on February 13, 2008

"gyc", of course; I apologize for getting the name wrong. (Don't know where that came from...)
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:00 PM on February 13, 2008

Sorry, but as a connoisseur of urban decay, I gotta say that Cleveland - as shown here, anyway - just doesn't make the grade. Not old enough, and not decayed enough. I can show you an 1840's mill with the roof burned off. It's probably be knocked down in a couple of years, when the city can find the money. I can show you an 1860s cathedral that the Church couldn't afford to keep, and the city had to step in to stabilize the thing before it fell on the neighbors.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:46 PM on February 7, 2008

Sorry, I don't have anything to add.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:25 PM on January 24, 2008

I'm absolutely not a comic-book guy - I have only the vaguest familiarity with The Hulk. And I've never even seen the TV show.

But I still think that this is why the internet was invented.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:51 PM on January 24, 2008

It's really worrisome when the only decent example of law enforcement conduct is in Albany.

Skorgu: as it happens, a couple of years ago, I was actually hassled by the State Police for taking pictures of the New York State Capitol. (They were concerned because I was using a tripod. Which implied that I must have been a terrorist.)

Given that I was copying the very same picture of the building that appears on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:29 PM on January 22, 2008

Dammit, now I have T. Rex's Bang A Gong going through my head.

(Those of you old enough to remember the lyrics will understand.)
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:09 PM on January 1, 2008

And dammit, kcds beat me to the T. Rex reference.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:11 PM on January 1, 2008

See, now this is why I'm a Luddite: I didn't wait for your darn "internet" and your darn modern "downloads" - no, I wrote off and mail-ordered the damn physical object back in the last century.

(And it's hilarious how many Mefites already know about this music.)

Yes, it's awesome, and you kids should all get off my lawn.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 8:47 PM on December 15, 2007

There were giants in the earth in those days.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:03 PM on December 12, 2007

"Triple Canopy" is another of the mercenary outfits that the Bush junta has hired to provide security in Iraq. (Like Blackwater, only smaller.)

Several of their employees have also been accused of randomly shooting Iraqi bystanders.

And Triple Canopy cuts corners by hiring Latin American mercenaries, who they pay much less than their American employees. So we have not just private armies running around, but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:36 AM on December 9, 2007

Oops, ericb beat me. Preview is my friend.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:37 AM on December 9, 2007

There's now a third post up at Pinakothek.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 1:32 PM on December 8, 2007

Back in the dark days before the internet, it was actually hard to find information - about anything, really, let alone about alternative points of view. And when I was a young boy, I ran across a copy of Creem, the one that contained Lester Bangs' James Taylor Marked for Death. It changed my life.

It also helped me find my way to a college radio staion in time for Roxy Music - which means I've been listening to Eno for over... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:55 AM on December 8, 2007

Now, in all seriousness, I ask:

How is this not child abuse?
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:42 PM on December 1, 2007

Well, thanks for bringing the new version to my attention.

Not only do I own a copy of the original, but, back when the world was young, I use to play Metal Machine Music on the air. In its entirety.

It got some great phone calls from the listeners, pretty evenly divided between "This is the greatest thing I've ever heard" and "Your radio station seems to be badly broken."

College radio was fun.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:23 PM on November 18, 2007

I never quite get who this stuff is marketed to.

Apparently, you can successfully base an entire industry on the 'occasional user'. I'm thinking of the kid who downloads a couple hundred CDs' worh of music, or who takes the occasional snapshot, or somebody who doesn't bat an eye at paying $10 for an occasional airplane book (as cited in the article). People seem to cheerfully line up for all this new-fangled stuff.

But those of us who are Heavy... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 2:17 PM on November 18, 2007

Hey! "Anchor Optics" is Edmund Scientific!

I have fond memories - more of browsing the catalog than of the crappy junk itself - but still, for a geek in the dark days before the internet, this was pure pr0n.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 12:05 PM on November 17, 2007

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

On preview, I see that ladd had much the same reaction.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:58 AM on November 11, 2007

You're all assuming that there's some need for voters to find the polling places.

The victors have already been selected, and the victors do not include the people of Pennsylvania.
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 3:42 PM on October 28, 2007

I assumed that the number of grains would double with each successive square, until the number exceeded the number of grains in the universe, and the Shah would have me executed out of sheer annoyance.

(Cool link, but after 500 grains or so I started feeling really stupid.)
posted to MetaFilter by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:32 PM on October 17, 2007