I don't see what's so hard about a five-day test, really. I mean, a golf tournament lasts four days, a tennis tournament lasts more. Same with poker. As others have said, you can dip in and out, drink beer in the sun, listen to the radio commentary while doing something else, read a book in between overs, discuss the finer points of the game or the lyrics of the English fans' chants....it's a perfect sport in some ways.

And the subtleties of test cricket make it more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 3:17 PM on March 20, 2008

Partial to Sinclair vs Australia, myself.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:54 PM on March 20, 2008

Plexi: -concerning known murder offenders, 89.9 percent were males; 52.6 percent were black.

As of 2002, the total black population in the United States is around 13%. That is sadly the textbook definition of disproportionate.

Maybe one day numbers won't be racist - they will simply be a call to action.

But how we use numbers matters. You're only factoring race, but not age (or class, for that matter).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:27 PM on February 28, 2008

But one in a hundred? Would you be up in arms if it were one in 200? Do you want to release half of the current prison population ... today? OK. So, which half?

Ooh! ooh! I know!

The ones who are imprisoned for non-violent drug offences?
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:14 PM on February 28, 2008

Improvised sausage vindaloo does that to you sometimes

How delightfully Brit...oh, never mind.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:04 PM on February 27, 2008

Sometimes one-word reviews will do:

Artist: Teeth
Album: Grate
Review: False.

(From a short-lived free NZ magazine).
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:15 PM on February 26, 2008

At first, I thought it said David "Horowitz," and was bewildered.

At first I thought it said David Horowitz and was not the least bit surprised.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:35 PM on February 25, 2008

I know when I was in NZ in 2000, in some small town in the South Island they where already talking about a plan to cut wast by something like 75% and attempting to phase out landfills. So, yeah this doesn't surprise me, seems like they have the right idea.

We have very good intentions, but our record on following through on them isn't particularly great, so far. I suppose it's better to aspire to something worthwhile than not, but there has to be... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:12 PM on February 21, 2008

[1]No trip hop? [2]No psytrance? No post rock? No punk? No modern classical? No dubstep? No post punk? No ambient electronica? No death metal? No hiphop? No reggae?

[1] UK; [2] Israeli (remember, it says "American" music); all others - no doubt covered under "and more". Then again, in one of the linked articles he said there was no point in buying contemporary music. So maybe not. (You're right, really, I'm just being pedantic).
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:11 PM on February 18, 2008

I have the world's greatest music collection.

I keep it all over the internet.

Either my searching skills suck, or there's a lot that just isn't available online. Back when Oink was still running, I was going through a book called '1001 Records You Must Hear Before You Die' and trying to download all of 'em. You'd be surprised how many weren't available, especially the early stuff, even from big names (like Fats Domino). I'm... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 6:29 PM on February 19, 2008

So, is Orson overthinking a plate of peas?
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:58 PM on February 18, 2008

basicchannel: your tournament play link goes to this thread.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:22 PM on February 16, 2008

Thanks basicchannel. No support for Absolute, I see: you don't happen to know a similar site that works with Absolute? (My Google-fu is failing me).
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:43 PM on February 16, 2008

Scratch that, I found one: thepokerDB. It's accurate for my tournament stats, though seems to be missing my SnG stats.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:49 PM on February 16, 2008

Weird site. I didn't see any flameouts, everyone seems perfectly sensible and well-mannered, there are links to some interesting news stories....and then here and there a thread like 'scientific proof that women are natural prostitutes' or comments like 'of course Indians prefer fairer-skinned women, the darker ones are more primitive'.

Do Not Want.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:31 PM on February 15, 2008

Why do they put the word "secularly" in front of "pure" in that sentence?

It has to be a typo for "sexually", surely? It just doesn't make any sense, otherwise. It's a rather nice Freudian slip, really.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:50 AM on February 15, 2008

A Govinda, for example, would not have won a Lok Sabha seat from Mumbai without the staunch support of the north Indian community.

What's the meaning of Govinda, here? I know the meaning as a name for Krishna. Does it literally mean 'cowherd' in this usage?

An interesting fictional account of Mumbai politics is given in Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh (with Bal Thackeray represented by the character Fielding).
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:10 PM on February 13, 2008

^
That worked for me.

SLYT Paultard post. Truly the best of the web.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:48 PM on February 12, 2008

Gah, meant for eyeballkid.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:48 PM on February 12, 2008

UbuRovois: It failed. Just as Howard did in the election.

I did not know this (the first part, not the second). That's good news.

PeterMcDermott: would those whiteys have been transported around the early 1800s?

Wasn't it post World War Two?
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:35 PM on February 12, 2008

As always, absolutely no details about how the money will be distributed equitably. And, if it's done anything like how royalties from American Internet radio are handled, it absolutely won't be distributed equitably. It does sound like a great way for the biggest Canadian labels to prop themselves up for a while longer, however!

Yep.

You know, I wouldn't mind paying $5 per month (or more) if I knew it was going to the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:39 PM on January 29, 2008

But these are exactly the sorts of people who are most likely to see decent revenue from the traditional method of buying their CDs. If someone's selling their own album without a record label, presumably that person or band sees all the revenue from the sale, yes? Which then raises the question of why exactly are you downloading them in the first place if you still want to support them?

Fair comments. My point (I guess badly made) was that I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:50 PM on January 29, 2008

McGuinness criticized Radiohead's "In Rainbows" pay-what-you-want business model, saying that "the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire".

OK, I'm not claiming to be an expert on P2P or online file sharing in general, but why on earth would you bother downloading In Rainbows from Limewire? You could download it from the Radiohead site and pay nothing, if you chose - that's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 11:56 PM on January 28, 2008

Meh. It's better than the [expletive deleted] who "reviewed" my latest book in the Philadelphia Weekly

Oh God, Steven Wells. Listen, you got to realise not to take anything he says seriously. I think he's a great and very funny writer, but he tends to, well, make a lot of stuff up (my favourite was his front page interview with the Sugarcubes for the NME, where he claimed that they ate puffins, among other things). His regular readers will... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:50 PM on January 28, 2008

Of course, the problem with Amazon isn't limited to reviews; plenty of people are gaming the tagging system too (I like this example).
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:58 PM on January 28, 2008

Kattalus: interesting, I didn't know it was common in Iceland; but IIRC, most or all of the band were vegetarians. Which was their objection to the article in question.

bitter-girl.com: for what it's worth, the guy's a queer socialist punk who would at least claim to have sympathies with feminism, and he's got a strong record of writing stuff that supports feminist ideals. So I don't think he's missing the boat on feminist thinking in general,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 10:50 PM on January 28, 2008

James Blunt is amazed that people download music. I'm amazed that people pay to hear his.

Anyhoo: I thought this looked good, and was a bit surprised at the snarking. OK, I can easily download music from other P2P networks, but the advantage of something like this would be consistent metadata and file quality*, files that are actually what they say they are, etc. Plus, if money is really going to the artist, I'd prefer to support a service like this.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:31 AM on January 28, 2008

Pastabagel: What is happening now is that the content distributors are for the first time ever trying to collect money directly from me, in effect infinitely raising the price on what I got for free.

I'm feeling a little dense this morning, so I don't quite get what you're trying to say here. Can you expand on how they're trying to collect money directly from you?

Just on the DRM: the very first article I saw on Qtrax... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:17 PM on January 28, 2008

Oh I see, I thought you were talking about Qtrax. Thanks.

The Google/ASCAP idea is interesting (though I guess it would only reward song composers, so it doesn't directly deal with payments to band members who don't write the songs, or to producers/engineers/etc). Also there's issues of poor quality files/bad metadata. Maybe if it was a community like Oink, making money from ads like Google, and paying the ASCAP fee?

I think we're both (all?)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:49 PM on January 28, 2008

I have to say, reading the comments before the article makes this thread quite surreal.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 7:48 PM on January 27, 2008

Humanzee said it, but it needs repeating: because of differential enforcement. The original article specifically mentioned drug crime. Poor people aren't commiting more drug crimes - they're getting caught more often, because the police are watching the Brixton/Harlem street dealers, not the bankers doing coke at Canary Wharf/Wall Street.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 3:11 PM on January 24, 2008

What the discussion on this has largely left out is that it's not only the pharmaceutical companies that perpetuate this-- it's the medical journals and the media.

No one likes to publish "null results"-- it's called the file drawer effect. So even if the pharm cos had tried to publish (which they likely didn't try hard to do), they might not have succeeded.

Exactly, and the file drawer effect is not new, nor is it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:41 PM on January 17, 2008

.

Geez, Hillary is (was) the closest thing New Zealand had to common-man royalty. For a lot of us, he's respected much more for what he did *after* knocking the bastard off.

I always thought he'd have made a great choice as our first President, if we had decided to go that route. (Wikipedia says he missed out on being offered the Governor-Generalship by National because he had been involved in the 1975 election campaign on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:16 PM on January 10, 2008

Both of the blackjack ones are either flat out wrong (assume it's an 8) or incomplete (dealer's up card is a 5 - you should take cards if you have less that 12 and double with a 10 or 11 at minimum)

I'm not impressed by the poker ones, either. For a start, what form of poker? One of them says that 4/10 starting hands will contain a pair, which sure as heck doesn't describe hold 'em. Others talk about making $x profit then walking away from a game -... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 9:54 PM on January 9, 2008

I've heard some not-so-great things about the Master Chefs one.

Also I wouldn't exactly say that something like Maribou Stork Nightmare was bad, it just isn't a Trainspotting.

Maribou Stork Nightmares would be the book of his I admire most, after Trainspotting. I never want to read it again, but nonetheless....

Porno was good. Glue is also worth reading (it introduces many of the characters that turn... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:43 PM on January 7, 2008

A query, perhaps answerable by MeFi's kiwi contingent or else maybe ultimately unknowable: Why is New Zealand indie/garage so goddamn good? Is it the southern air? The water?

My private and probably completely wrong theory: because we're a small country at the end of the earth, it was basically impossible to make money out of playing music, other than by being as big as Split Enz, or being a bar covers band. So there was no pressure to conform or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:44 PM on January 6, 2008

^
Hmm, The Chills might disagree.

I like Sleepy Pete's suggestion. Maybe it was just dumb luck - five or six hyper-talented people just happened to be born at the same time and in the same place...
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 3:16 PM on January 6, 2008

Shoepal: Ok, she may not have said "prom." Maybe school dance. Something like that.

Probably "ball". Similar to your "prom", though perhaps not such a big deal here.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 7:09 PM on January 6, 2008

[On preview, i_am_joe's_spelln beat me to most of these, but I typed it all out so here you go anyway]

I wouldn't say The Front Lawn were ever popular in the sense of having major chart hits, but they're certainly well-regarded by Kiwi music fans.

They were a duo who put out two albums. Songs From The Front Lawn is the only one I could find available on the usual websites.

Harry Sinclair is probably better known now as an... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 7:37 PM on January 6, 2008

Miko: Yeah, I'm interested, but I can't quite understand what it's about. Is this so artists can make a living? Or just a creative collaboration?

There's a financial model: you can download material for free, but she encourages you to donate, if you like. You can also subscribe (get merchandise, CDs, guest list privileges) or sponsor Hersh (chip in cash, get a visit to the studio to watch her record, and/or a credit on the album).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 1:50 PM on January 5, 2008

The first link describes what the women were wearing: "one in a black dress, the other in a jeans and top." I know very little about Indian culture. Does this seem like inappropriate dress for the event or for a public place?

Seems like Western-style dress, which from my (10-year-old) memories of India, would be relatively uncommon: saris tend to be the standard.

For those comparing this to Western countries;... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:44 PM on January 2, 2008

Reynolds' Revelation Space series is also good, along those lines.

An interesting non-fiction book which explores dozens of hypotheses for our failure to encounter any intelligent life, is If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody?
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 11:42 PM on January 1, 2008

*How is filesharing any different from back when we used cassettes to share songs (beyond the obvious difference in efficiency)?

**It's not different at all. In fact, it was illegal then, too. ;-)

And the recording industry was campaigning against that, too: "home taping is killing music" - inspiring responses from:

Billy Bragg: "capitalism is killing music" and
The... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:31 PM on December 30, 2007

CoolPapaBell: Yes, they were. And then there was a legal decision regarding time-shifting, paving the way for VHS and mp3s and all that. But we're not talking about time-shifting. We're talking about distribution.

Yeah, I wasn't arguing with you, just expanding on your point.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:55 PM on December 30, 2007

Some of these complaints just don't hold up:

from the first article "everyone can see my real name" - only if you choose to use your real name as your nickname. It takes two clicks to change your nickname.

"easy to stalk someone" - unless they sign out of chat (one click!) or remove the prospective stalker from their contacts list (about three clicks!).

And to reiterate: this isn't sharing personal... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 12:03 AM on December 30, 2007

Seems a bit stupid to be censoring a song for homophobic lyrics when one of the band members is homosexual.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 2:45 PM on December 21, 2007

ArmyOfKittens: point taken; no problems with the 'why?' post from my perspective; it's a fair question.

I'm speaking as a straight man, so it seems wrong for me to get offended by the term, if Phil Chevron (openly gay, gay activist, played on the record) was OK with it. I'd also point out that the song is sung in-character - McColl isn't saying that she hates gays, she's singing from the point of view of a character who uses 'faggot' as an insult. I think there's a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 5:16 PM on December 22, 2007

Can someone translate this into American English please? Does this mean Spice Girls good or Spice Girls bad?

I don't think it's really a value judgment, either way, more of an observation: they were popular/successful for a while, then disappeared from the charts, and now they've come back, but still aren't going to be successful for more than a brief period before disappearing again. (Like Derby County, who were a good team a little while ago, got... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 3:04 PM on December 22, 2007

Fourth Division? The Spice Girls are Derby County.


Hmmm....by which logic, Oasis (ironically) are Manchester United; adored by millions of empty headed morons for no explicable reason, and loathed by the rest, they remain a benchmark of success in the UK, while Americans can't quite work out what the fuss is about.
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 3:11 PM on December 22, 2007

I'm sick of people slagging on Oasis. They are very very very good for what they are: middle of the road pseudo-rock that everyone can sing along to.

Yeah, I actually kinda like Oasis (got 3 or 4 albums, seen 'em live). And I support Man Utd. Just a silly riff on the Derby County analogy (and I mainly used it because Oasis are absolutely fanatical Man City supporters, so would hate being compared to United).
posted to MetaFilter by Infinite Jest at 4:34 PM on December 22, 2007