Afroblanco: The koans site is done by the Zen Peacemaker Sangha, a community of Zen practitioners who practice socially-engaged Buddhism. ("Bernie" in the koan link is the founder of that sangha, Roshi Bernie Glassman.)

Jim Ryudo Bastien is a senior trainee at the zendo at which the Sangha is based. His background is social work, and his social action koans are situations from his social work experience paired with traditional Zen koans.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:03 PM on July 15, 2008

It's mediated, neutered wisdom. Maybe studying true Zen Buddhism is too hard for the dipshits and douchebags who quote movies like this one.

Bernie Glassman inspires me, so my immediate reaction is to tell you off, but what I really mean is that I think his intentions are good. Other things he's done doesn't tell us anything about whether or not he's right this time, but some history about the sangha might at least draw a better... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 8:38 PM on July 15, 2008

Do bike thieves ever do that?

Bike thieves certainly attack the weakest part.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 5:41 PM on July 1, 2008

Do not trust the shover robot. Shoving is the answer. We are here to protect you.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 3:04 PM on June 12, 2008

b.) Open reservoirs exposed to sunlight are now rare. : can someone explain this?

They're covered, the net effect being that they're "underground" under a hill. Here's a satellite picture of Montreal's reservoir, (very shallowly) underground, and one in and another near Toronto.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 7:43 AM on June 11, 2008

I'm with dobbs. My ride to work is unfortunately all uphill and there's no shower there so it's carrying a change of clothes and some baby wipes, but I still enjoy it a lot more than taking the TTC. In fact, most days I take the TTC, I end up going "Why didn't I ride?".

(Then again I'm on the Dufferin bus.)

Speaking of Toronto: There's at least three shops off the top of my head here that sell what are basically... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 7:19 PM on May 25, 2008

The sexiness is weird because it's anthropomorphized, but really nature is all about gettin' it on, so it's not the sex that's weird...

I'm pretty sure they stick to their own species in the real forest.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:54 AM on May 24, 2008

The merchants have both power and responsibility over security. The payment card industry publishes a data security standard, which they creatively title PCI DSS. It specifies a number of requirements and holds merchants to them at different levels based on their size.

While PCI DSS compliance isn't that big a deal for merchants because few customers will be able to demand it, it's a bigger deal as you go up the chain; some companies will require their vendors to be... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:18 AM on March 18, 2008

I wish I could use that uninitialized memory to cope pipe without a jig.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:24 PM on March 15, 2008

AND boten means 'boats' in dutch, which led to a dutch parody with the same title that I think mostly featured scantily clad dutch girls on boats.

And the pedalboat is in a channel!
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 10:02 AM on March 10, 2008

If I were going to talk to someone about an architectural job, and this is what I saw upon driving up to the address, I don't think I'd bother knocking. I'd just leave.

I have a feeling these guys don't need walk-in business at this point. You'd be talking to them because they do things like this.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 8:33 AM on March 3, 2008

It's kind of weird that the surveyors apparently didn't know the adjective form of "Islam". (Christian, Jewish, Islam?)
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 5:03 AM on January 30, 2008

What's weird is that we already have a Veterans' Memorial Highway -- Highway 416, that takes you to Ottawa from the 401 around Prescott. And they didn't name the whole 401, just a 200 km stretch of it.

Me, I just want the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway signs back.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 5:38 AM on January 3, 2008

She looks braindead/lost/whatever because she's focusing on something behind the camera, because the camera's between her and the TV.

That's what people look like when they focus behind you and you expect them to be focused on you.

Now stop projecting.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 5:37 PM on November 22, 2007

It amuses me that Scott Adams still thinks that newspaper is the measure of success for comics.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 10:30 AM on September 9, 2007

Someone at Esquire wrote the story in 2006. The August 2007 date on the website is wrong. I remember reading it in the printed version, and I always have at least a few months' of Esquire around here, and it's not in them.

That 2007 date must be when they put the old story up on their website.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 7:44 PM on September 7, 2007

Thanks to this post, I've got The Runs!
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 8:54 PM on September 5, 2007

1. Install desktop thingy
2. ???
3. Save lives at sea!
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 3:48 PM on September 5, 2007

All this is is a list of articles for which some Wikipedia user has put the "This article is too technical" infobox on the article's discussion page. That's it.

It's not a Wikipedia-official list, or a particular damnation -- it's just a list of articles that someone (and not the same person every time) thought was too technical and would therefore like someone who knows the subject to take a look and see if it could benefit from simplifying.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:25 PM on August 30, 2007

I don't find it funny

Hence "humourless".
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 3:32 PM on August 27, 2007

aren't you worried about getting sweaty and dirty, about looking like a slob when you get to the destination that requires you to wear that nice clothing?
When cycling is as natural as walking, one simply doesn't sweat while doing it. There's nothing more to say about this.

A few things come to mind here. First of all, there are lots of places in the US where it is also too hot to walk to work without getting sweaty and dirty. Even way up... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 11:10 AM on August 26, 2007

The priorities of this contest are whacked.

I think that's why everyone's getting annoyed. It is not a contest. All that page is is the list of the beers which, over years of getting rated, have had the lowest ratings.

No committee gathered to form the list; it's just the results of a query on ratebeer's ratings database.

(And that's why interesting Belgians top session beers in the top-beers lists,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 10:16 AM on August 18, 2007

delmoi, "County officials have said they will seek out a private operator to take over King-Harbor and try to reopen it within 12 to 18 months. But previous attempts to find any takers failed, and success this time is by no means assured. If no private operator can be found, Chernof said, the county may attempt to reopen King-Harbor itself within the same time period."
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:48 AM on August 17, 2007

ITYM >(..)< HTH
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 8:39 PM on August 9, 2007

That sounds more like a near-hit than a near miss.

That's what "near miss" means. It was a miss, and the things that missed were near. Not a distant miss, but a near miss. And definitely not a near-miss.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 12:33 PM on July 30, 2007

If you click on some of the photos, they are NASA photos, but the text says "CREDIT MUST BE GIVEN IN FULL", but NASA photos should be public domain...

ALERT CORY DOCTOROW IMMEDIATELY.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:19 AM on July 30, 2007

The cat is fine (too).
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 2:48 PM on July 28, 2007

Encyclopedia Dramatica has background on Alex Wuori, the shadowed, voice-disguised former /b/tard in the video, who also prompted the story in the first place, and whose parents were the folks that got "phone tracking and a dog".
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:04 AM on July 28, 2007

I don't find this funny, but terribly disturbing, that supposed "journalists" can have a part in this stuff -- isn't Fox the most watched "news" channel in America?

This is, at least, just one local Fox affiliate, and not national news. I mentioned it to a friend who happens to live in the area that that affiliate serves, and the friend said "Phil Shuman [the reporter] has been a local moron for the last 20+ years".
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:30 AM on July 28, 2007

It's slightly suspicious to me that the clip doesn't mention 4chan even as it shows screenshots of it. I mean, Alex doesn't respect Rule 1 and 2, so why did Fox 11?
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:41 AM on July 28, 2007

(Etsy link above possibly NSFW.)
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 11:31 AM on July 25, 2007

Is Canada liberal enough to tip the US into solidly blue territory?

Ah, see, up here that's "red". Clearly joining would never work.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:34 AM on July 23, 2007

I was intending to delete the picture before it but pressed delete at the wrong time or something.

You fumbled the "delete" button while she was watching, then? "Yup, it's gone, no-one will ever see it."
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:17 AM on July 18, 2007

In Complications Atul Gawande, a surgical resident, mentions that it is not uncommon to remove the appendix when doing any other work that would leave a similar scar, in order to prevent the scar from delaying a diagnosis if the patient should get appendicitis later.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:03 PM on July 15, 2007

Because it comes up every time: No, this isn't the "Cracked" you remember as a kid. They went under and a lad mag bought rights to the name.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:30 PM on July 13, 2007

Canada is down to its last two, after our oldest (at 107), Lloyd Clemett, passed on in February. There's been talk of a state funeral for the last surviving vet, but none of the three (including Clamett) want one.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:33 PM on July 12, 2007

I wonder what tech publisher O'Reilly, who offer a read-our-books-online service called Safari, think of that name.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 8:19 AM on July 11, 2007

These are all so narrow! What I want: the graphical equivalent of a pastebin, where I can just draw something and link someone directly to it. No flowcharts, no mindmaps, no sign-ins, just drawing tools. A public, directly-linkable whiteboard.

Anyone know of such a thing?
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 7:14 AM on July 11, 2007

delmoi: I'm not sure. A four stroke is less powerful than a two stroke, but both have only one power stroke. The 6-stroke has two, one combustion and one steam. So a 6-stroke cylinder is on the power stroke 33% of the time instead of a 4-stroke's 25%.

It really depends on how much power the steam power stroke gets you, but there's certainly a possibility that the 6-stroke falls between the 4- and 2.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:09 AM on July 10, 2007

bruce: he has a brother.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 1:09 PM on July 5, 2007

It is being built in Antarctica by boring holes more than 2 km deep in the ice with hot water and then dropping strings of detectors into the holes.

Speak for yourself -- I find holes that deep quite interesting.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:22 AM on July 4, 2007

fandango_matt: Wow, I bet no-one else caught that.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:30 AM on June 29, 2007

Joe pulled something out of somewhere, that's for sure.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 8:11 PM on June 26, 2007

In case the wedding wasn't enough of a display of conspicuous consumption! Better to donate the dress if you're not interested in keeping it, says me.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 11:11 AM on June 25, 2007

Can anyone educate me on this? Should I actually have said something like, "Dude, calm down, I was only joking with her?" Would this have made a difference?

I have no idea if it would have made a difference, but based on the book that the FPP links to, I probably would have explained that it's a joke, and both you and your student knew that the target of the joke was people who make fun of other people's music.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:18 AM on June 23, 2007

You'd think they'd wait at least a week before reusing a stock photo.

Not the BBC. They know that their readers relish their abuse of stock photography. Years ago NTK used to point it out regularly, and eventually Headless Zombie Bunny started following it even closer, but unfortunately couldn't keep it going.

It's very much not news that the BBC reuses stock photos to ensure a photo on every article.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:59 PM on June 21, 2007

Mr_Zero: Wow, that's something. I didn't see it at all when I was trying, but as soon as I sort of gazed at the picture -- the same sort of gaze you'd use if you were trying to spot someone in a crowd when they could be anywhere -- it jumped out at me.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 9:32 AM on June 18, 2007

Every see a cartoon branded apple or banana?

I noticed that some bananas I bought had Curious George stickers on them a while ago. Now that's a product tie-in.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:28 PM on June 14, 2007

Safari: innocuous browser alternative or sneaky way for Apple to build its homegrown platform on top of Windows?

Given that the blog post linked to shows screenshots of the dialog boxes in which Apple asks you if you want to install additional software, and in which the description of the software is longer than the description in that blog post, I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it "sneaky".
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 10:10 AM on June 14, 2007

If Australia were to count, the largest island would be mainland Eurasia anyhow.
posted to MetaFilter by mendel at 6:23 AM on June 12, 2007