You should ask, "are there a lot of people who look like supermodels who are not supermodels?".

More or less, that is what I mean to be asking, creasy boy. I was worried that the word "beautiful" or the idea of beauty might interfere with the question as I intend it. Supermodels are identifiably similar in many respects, and as Jeanne notes with the reference to the AMA guidelines, some of those respects are strict indeed. I'm... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 4:30 AM on June 29, 2008

Too true about "not wanting to be a model"; and that's a big part of my question, Nattle. Are there a lot of people (and I see people saying "vastly, vastly" and "far, far" so maybe so) who possess whatever attributes agencies and fashion industry people desire, who aren't part of that industry? That's really what I want to know. A demographic breakdown would be wonderful, if it existed, but I doubt I'll be so lucky as to find such a thing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 5:13 AM on June 29, 2008

Plain old demographic curiosity, leotrotsky.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 5:36 AM on June 29, 2008

Some really good answers here. Thanks to everybody.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 8:51 AM on June 30, 2008

Björk's "Bachelorette" always reminds me of a Bond song; as does Pizzicato Five's "Twiggy Vs. James Bond" (for obvious reasons).
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 6:41 PM on April 26, 2008 marked best answer

Just today I heard "Lucifer Sam" by Pink Floyd. YouTube link. Its Bondish quality is only at the beginning, but it's unmistakable, at least to me.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 8:14 PM on June 17, 2008

It happens in the saloon scene in Serenity, which is a kind of "space western." The crew surrenders their weapons, which are locked in a big rotating drum full of drawers of weapons. When River goes nuts, they have to figure out how to get their guns back to stop her.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 10:15 AM on May 28, 2008

You may want to read a ferocious alternative history story by Greg Egan called "Oracle." It involves debates between a figure standing in for Turing and a figure standing in for C. S. Lewis, and it's very, very good. Terry Eagleton wrote a weird screenplay about Wittgenstein, which Derek Jarman adapted into a movie.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 12:36 PM on May 14, 2008

IMDb calls these "crazy credits, but their "browser" function only lets you search, as far as I can see. There is a keyword search, though, and there's a list of "scene during end credits" movies with just under 150 titles.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 5:43 AM on May 6, 2008

As Good As It Gets has Jack Nicholson playing a compulsive character, as does Matchstick Men with Nicholas Cage. And you might like Benny & Joon, with Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson both psychologically a little different from norm, and perhaps Don Juan, another Depp psychological portrait.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:05 AM on May 2, 2008

For a more chilling, less fun version of things, perhaps Julianne Moore in Safe?
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:06 AM on May 2, 2008

Oh. Disregard me: Detective stuff. I'll reconsider.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:07 AM on May 2, 2008

On reconsideration, lhlfl, I think Matchstick Men stands, as it's a story about con artists and scams and crime. Primal Fear with Richard Gere and Edward Norton has some psychologically complicated stuff happening amidst its brutal murder trial of a plot. Not to mention Vertigo, which is an obvious point of reference for this kind of story, right?
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 3:20 AM on May 2, 2008

Oh! And a movie nobody ever sees called Whispers in the Dark, part of the scene of stylish thrillers released around the same time as Basic Instinct (which also might count, if you're lenient about psychological tics). Not a perfect movie, but worth seeing for the performances. I'd say the same thing about Zero Effect, recommended above. Pullman's good and weird, and you can see Kim Dickens before Deadwood. Heck,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 3:34 AM on May 2, 2008

I think I'm still missing the point in a lot of ways. You want stories with psychologically challenged protagonists who themselves solve crimes somehow? I'm giving you nothing. Sorry, long haired lover from liverpool.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 4:20 AM on May 2, 2008

This sounds to me like you're remembering Jean Baudrillard's ideas about simulacra.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 2:48 PM on April 21, 2008

humannaire, the best answer is: Greg Egan. And the best answer is Ted Chiang. And the best answer is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (despite kindall's opinion—and kindall's views usually are in line with mine).
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 9:02 PM on April 13, 2008

Oh. I'm an idiot. The best answer is Peter Watts, of course. (The link to the streaming Vampire Domestication video only sort of works. You have to download it to watch it.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 9:39 PM on April 13, 2008

One approach I've used successfully in conversation and in written conversation like IM or here on MeFi is to ask about the phrase, its meaning, its origins, whatever. So you could say, publicly or privately, "What is a 'Pyrrhic victory'?" On MeFi, in AskMe, someone will likely be helpful and tell you; elsewhere, you might get snarkier JFGI-style comments. Still, the questioning approach works better than the Pronouncement of Authority, in my experience, anyway.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 7:33 AM on April 10, 2008

David Warsh of Economic Principals strongly recommends Partha Dasgupta's Economics: A Very Short Introduction. The primer I have enjoyed most, the one I would recommend to a friend who wanted to learn how economists think about the world right now, is one that passed almost completely unnoticed into the stream, perhaps because it is so slight. But then, that is the point of Economics: A Very Short Introduction, by Partha Dasgupta, the Frank Ramsey... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 9:42 PM on March 30, 2008

In 1991, before anyone knew who he was, Clive Owen was in a movie called Close My Eyes, along with Alan Rickman and Saskia Reeves. It's as tasteful and understated a depiction of brother-sister incest as can be imagined, I think. A well-done thing. Seek it out.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 6:21 PM on March 26, 2008

I usually say, "And then it came to me" for those tip-of-the-tongue solutions.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 11:33 PM on March 17, 2008

Yeah, apophasis is the broadest term, and paralipsis is the rhetorical move.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 9:33 PM on March 5, 2008 marked best answer

I'd recommend Colin Tudge's book The Time Before History (published in the UK as The Day Before Yesterday) and Jonathan Weiner's The Next One Hundred Years for readable surveys of the ideas at hand (planet-scale homeostasis). Kevin Kelly wrote about Lovelock in Out of Control (relevant chapter online). Here's a New Scientist review of Tudge's book.

I'd also recommend... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 7:56 AM on March 2, 2008 marked best answer

To answer your questions a little more specifically (and sorry for the missed first attempt there), scientists who reject the Gaia idea focus elsewhere in their studies than the large scale Gaia is supposed to describe. Gaia attempts to shift paradigms—to get all pop-Kuhn on it—to a macro-level unusual for biologists or geologists, more in line with astronomers' level of abstraction, I think. Since it's not what Kuhn called "normal science," it's less "rejected" than simply... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 8:07 AM on March 2, 2008 marked best answer

To answer your question about book recommendations, AceRock, try Robert P. Crease's The Prism and the Pendulum. And, from Physics World, where the readers were asked to suggest experiments for Crease's book, here's the final list and the top alternates:

1 Young's double-slit experiment applied to the interference of single electrons
2 Galileo's experiment on falling bodies (1600s)
3 Millikan's... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 4:33 AM on February 28, 2008

F. M. Cornford—a Cambridge classicist—published From Religion to Philosophy in 1912. It was reprinted a many times, and there are electronic texts available in many formats. Cornford examines the way pre-Socratic mythological thinking changed and developed into more skeptical, philosophical thinking.

From the book: If we are to dwell on the freedom of Greek thought from dogmatic prejudice, we cannot be too grateful for the absence of this particular... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 2:28 AM on February 27, 2008

Kate Bosworth & friends in Blue Crush: The whole movie is about a surf competition, and it doesn't completely suck.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:10 PM on February 25, 2008

Oh, and the "Charlie don't surf" scene from Apocalypse Now. (It's about three minutes into this eight-minute clip; the line itself is at the very beginning of Part 1, just before the "Ride of the Valkyries" helicopter attack sequence.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:26 PM on February 25, 2008

donovan reminded me of Garrett Lisi, who journalists describe as a "surfer-physicist." Last year he published a candidate for a "theory of everything" that was taken seriously by other physicists. (So he's not a crank, so far as I know.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:56 PM on February 25, 2008

I'd eat it (and I'm a wuss about stuff like this). The canned broth decides the matter for me. I'd probably eat it if the broth had been that boxed stuff, too, but if the broth was stock, made from the bones of a chicken, I'd probably throw it away after it sat out overnight.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 8:13 AM on February 25, 2008

I was too late to recommend Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker in an earlier thread, but I can by golly manage it here! They're novels and they encompass the whole history and evolution of humanity—in the first book—and then the ultimate destiny of the cosmos entire—in the second.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 4:46 AM on February 23, 2008

Here's science writer George Johnson reviewing The Life of the Cosmos, Lee Smolin's speculative answer to your question, Bonzai. Smolin posits an expanded variety of natural selection on a cosmological scale to account for our universe's qualities. Untold, uncounted, probably unimaginable numbers of other universes don't allow their Big Bangs to happen as ours has, does, did, is, or whatever tense is needed to describe a universe in toto. Another... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:20 AM on February 21, 2008

crinklebat, I suspect war is probably a better excuse for tins. As far as champagne in a box goes, it appears you're out of luck, sparkletone, or, perhaps, in luck. The pressure answers above all look correct to me (not that I'm any kind of expert; I'm just a Google-user who was interested in the question).... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 8:54 PM on February 20, 2008

Maybe you're thinking of this MeTa derail, jacquilynne. (Kadin2048 chimed in there, too, with some refrigeration science.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 7:29 PM on February 19, 2008

I have no specific recommended word, unSane, but I can recommend Howard Rheingold's book, They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases, which deals with your question pretty much throughout, and is fun to read and to browse.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:33 AM on February 19, 2008

One very wide-ranging example in terms of managing a lot of different time frames is John McPhee's nonfiction book The Annals of the Former World. (I feel as if I link this title in every book-related AskMe.) The subject is the geological history of the United States at the 40th parallel, and the book leaps around in time over the course of four or five billion years, always adroit and precise.

Another example, probably more useful to you, is A. S.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 3:03 AM on February 18, 2008

Pff. I cannot recommend a book without any demonic clowns.

But XMLicious's remembrance reminded me of Poul Anderson's Boat of a Million Years, an sf odyssey with a bunch of basically immortal people trying to hide amongst the normals, and that reminded me of the whole subgenre of vampire stories, which often involve some element of long timelines. Among them, I'd recommend Suzy McKee Charnas's book... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 3:47 AM on February 18, 2008 marked best answer

And Orlando is really, really good, too. Unlike, say, my Boat of a Million Years thing, which is just okay. The Stapledon stuff has the potential to blow minds, which I heartily endorse, and which I wish I'd remembered. Stapledon's vistas make McPhee's Earth stories look parochial. But I imagine you are probably thinking in historical terms, not in cosmological ones, right, deCadmus? So I recommend another set of books, Kim Stanley... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 5:30 AM on February 18, 2008

It's definitely the most-favorited AskMe thread.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:11 AM on February 17, 2008

nicwolff is probably right about immobilizing the wrist, sparrows. You move it in your sleep without knowing and it can keep happening and worsen your pain and take a lot longer to heal; it's better to keep it from moving, and it will heal much faster.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 1:40 AM on February 9, 2008

Yeah, I have the thought that this is textbook chatfilter and should be deleted pronto. How is this an answerable question?
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 5:55 AM on February 3, 2008

Our first-world economy may be a variation on a house of cards, but economies are real-world phenomena as real as marriages or tornadoes. Facts are in ready supply and usable for whatever purposes clever people want to put them to. Yeah, "the economy" is fake, as fake as marriage, as fake as any property rights, as fake as free will. Bill Hicks didn't have an answer for this question; he had an attitude and a perspective, Effigy2000.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 8:02 AM on February 2, 2008

ascullion, jstef is asking about the Extreme version, not the Express version.

jstef, I have one of the older AirPort Extremes, not the 802.11n version Apple sells now. It's worked for about five years now, in a number of different environments, with PCs and Macs. It has also been mailed across the U.S. in questionably-packed circumstances twice now, and it's still doing its thing all right. Configuration via the AirPort Admin Utility works for... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 2:29 AM on February 1, 2008

now now now
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 2:29 AM on February 1, 2008

Seconding LobsterMitten. I had a broken back lower molar get infected, progress to an abscess, and needed two CT scans and an overnight stay in the hospital after an incision and drainage, while they pumped IV antibiotics through my system in hopes of preventing worse infection. Total cost: Just under USD 10,000, uninsured, through my own stupidity and laziness. (This happened the day before Christmas, a few weeks ago; the molar had been broken since August.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 3:51 AM on January 27, 2008

In 1947, Robert A. Heinlein wrote an essay called "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction"; in it, among other things, he offered these rules for writing:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

These are pretty good... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 12:40 AM on January 26, 2008 marked best answer

Seconding the ear plugs. If you have distracting lights, find a way to block them, whether curtains, shades, or just one of those sleep masks. If it's dark and quiet, and you are tired, you should have no trouble falling asleep. If you do have trouble, even when you've made a dark, quiet space and you're tired when you lie down, then you probably need to see a doctor to see if you have trouble breathing or some other difficulty.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 10:19 AM on January 20, 2008

Hey, thehmsbeagle, can I pop into your Recent Activity and see if you've read any of the stuff recommended yet? Something about this question has prompted me to want to read similar material—though I've been distracted by roots music studies stuff like Greil Marcus's The Old, Weird America. If you have any shout-outs, maybe I can switch to the surviving, instead of the lamentin' or the murderin' or whatever else those old folk ballads get up to.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 10:09 AM on January 20, 2008

Here is Howard Waldrop introducing Chad Oliver, who is probably the best-known writer of anthropological sf besides Ursula Le Guin. His work is unfortunately difficult to find, but it's really, really good. You should look for it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by cgc373 at 12:42 AM on January 20, 2008