Some great stuff here, some I know and lots I don't, thanks. Does anyone know any internet mediated examples? I'm not sure whether I mean 'only exists online' or anything like that, but I am sure I have heard of books that allow their content to leak out into webspaces.

Any ideas?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:04 AM on November 1, 2009

I want to mark all the answers as the best answer, thanks so much. I have used some of these examples in an article I have written, to be published at 3quarksdaily tomorrow. In praise of you all.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 1:07 PM on November 1, 2009

Can anyone recommend a good, multi-region, external DVD drive?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:06 AM on October 22, 2009

There are lots of programs out there that promise to sort out your files without the hassle, but I find that none of them work perfectly. I have used tagscanner for years, but I like to manually handle all my music and have always done so, keeping everything tidy along the way. Tagscanner is robust, but you'll have to work at it.

Lifehacker has a lot to say on the subject of organising your mp3s. Check them out... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 10:26 AM on October 11, 2009

Firstly, it needs to be 3G

Secondly, you will need to have Japanese text enabled

Thirdly, it will need to be jailbroken

You can get prepaid sim cards. Email from these sim cards is included in the price, so you'll never have to add any cash if you use it mainly for email. Softbank do a good one and most convenience stores will top you up. You might not be able to get a sim card on it's own, some plans are tied in with a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:29 AM on September 25, 2009

Dokaka is worth hearing. he worked with Bjork on her Medulla album I think. Some amazing stuff with just a normal set of vocal chords
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:16 AM on September 18, 2009

This project would involve very little concrete, apart from the dam perhaps. The entire bowl is below sea level, so building an artificial river from the sea to the bowl will drain the water off the sea. Deepening the oceans would require a lot of digging at an astronomical cost (underwater diggers?). Again, here are the main parts of the job:

1. Dig a massive dam/river system from ocean to below-sea-level-bowl-region.
2. Move people out of the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 5:51 AM on September 18, 2009

jwells: most of those below sea level figures are 'bowl' types, but some are merely low lying coastal regions. The Lagos Island is just an island. It could not be used to store the offset. But anyway. Assuming that 4.89786208 × 10^13 cubic meters is the most that we could squeeze from the land, across the world, would it be enough for a 1 metre sea rise?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 6:20 AM on September 18, 2009

What better way to calm the problems in Israel than to flood the entire region?

But seriously, I too think it's an idea we should consider - or I wouldn't have asked the question. Coastal regions around the world are the most densely populated, even if you take out of the figures places like New York, London and Tokyo which are all mainly just above sea level. The other option of course would be to put a vast sunscreen into orbit above the Arctic and/or Antarctic,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:08 AM on September 18, 2009

You should hear this:

'Monoliths & Dimensions' by Sunn O)))
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:04 AM on September 18, 2009

I suppose it would depend what scale the 'extinction event' was. If most life died out then the Earth would likely settle into a long bacterial era. Perhaps an extinction event on this scale would leave few valuble eco-niches in its aftermath. A smaller scale event, that perhaps just manage to kill off all humans, might leave larger niches open for life to fill.

What I find more interesting would be the consequences of an extinction event if, say, a few humans did... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 5:23 AM on September 18, 2009

I obviously mean to book online from the UK an overnight train within Japan... few
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:10 AM on August 11, 2009

Thanks.... Skymark is looking like the best option so far. is there a ferry from Tokyo to Kyushu? It doesn't look like it, but who knows.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 4:04 AM on August 11, 2009

Thanks once again. I have another way around this. If you have any advice again I would appreciate:

I arrive in Tokyo on the 13th. I want to leave on the 17th. I also will be hiring a car at some point. So I thought perhaps getting a train to Osaka and hiring a car in Osaka to drive to Kumamoto and return the car on the 30th of August back in Osaka.

I have looked online for car rental. The cheapest I have found is europcar.jp for £468.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 5:16 AM on August 11, 2009

Space-time folding back upon itself infinitely to a point of absolute density? You ain't getting through.

Perhaps a mush of radiation that was you might get through, but there would be no re-building you because the data need to recompose you would be destroyed (or maybe just scrambled).

Perhaps the black-hole, like all the deepest ideas, should be best understood as a metaphor for the ultimate... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:08 PM on August 3, 2009

I LOVE my Asus 901 EEE PC. Because:

1. It does everything a bigger laptop can do, but it fits in my bag and has a battery of 6-->8 hours. With an upgrade to 2GB ram (under $30/£20) it can do even more.

2. It doubles as an e-reader when rotated on its side. If you press CTRL+ALT+UP (in Windows XP) the screen rotates and the EEE PC is a book. I have the user buttons on my eee pc set to run this command and also rotate the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:59 AM on March 26, 2009

8. Oh yeah, and I recently put the FULL, 8gb English version of Wikipedia on my SDHC card (thanks to WikiTaxi). Now I take it wherever I go, whether I am online or not. Kindles can't do this, and iPod/iPhones can only wikipedia in a wifi zone.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:03 AM on March 26, 2009

yeah, but no answer
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 1:08 AM on February 22, 2009

I should probably mention this previous askmefi question I posed, about the phenomenology of text. It is related, but didn't cover 'mimesis' in particular.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:31 AM on February 16, 2009

Some great stuff, thank you. The autopoiesis route is very much what I have in mind, the self-making capacity of digital medias, and the way in which users/readers can affect texts as if they were writers interests me. Digital media ART and its potential for mimesis also.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 1:58 PM on February 16, 2009

It doesn't have to be opera... Just experimental
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 2:45 AM on February 2, 2009

"Stephen Cornford" - that's real weird, I saw his work at the final show of his MA at Dartington College of Arts in Devon. Great to see he is doing so well! How did you find out about him?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 10:39 AM on February 2, 2009

Your question is an intriguing incite into the workings of other, reading, minds - thank you.

I do not necessarily visualise scenes in a book, but I do have a visceral sense of them that lingers in my head as I read them. It is surely impossible to find categorically similar scenes and locations in the 'real world' that will help you visualise EVERYTHING you encounter in the fictional world. For instance, take this descriptive passage of a vinyl-record groove from... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 5:56 AM on January 29, 2009 marked best answer

...that should be 'insight' not 'incite'.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 6:01 AM on January 29, 2009

Your question also reminded me of a quote attributed to André Breton:

The man who can't visualise a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.

No offence intended...
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 6:01 AM on January 29, 2009 marked best answer

At first it's a little bit more dancy, but play around with it and you can get some great ambient droning sounds: Tony B Machine

Or you could just go to the last.fm Brian Eno/Terry Riley/Ambient page and let loose!
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:33 AM on January 20, 2009

I laugh uncontrollably sometimes, just after it's all over. My girlfriend was put off at first, but now she joins in with me. It's the enormity of the release that does it. Just hold her, cradle her and get involved. It'll bring you closer
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:23 AM on January 20, 2009

DVD lens cleaner?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:09 AM on January 20, 2009

3quarksdaily.com

...is my daily dose of brain food.

More podcast ideas here
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 4:28 AM on January 16, 2009

This is quite extreme, so only use it as a last resort, and don't blame me if it fucks your laptop! Do this if there is still any odour after you have cleaned out all the dust as outlined above.

Put your laptop in an airtight plastic bag. Using a vacuum cleaner suck as much air out of the bag as you can. I really mean ALL the air - suck for a while and then make sure you tie the bag up really tight straight away. Tape any remaining openings shut and tape together the end... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2009

Treasure hunt! Set it up before you part ways and then one day send him the first clue by text message. He'll spend all afternoon hunting for clues/gifts and thinking about you.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 6:08 AM on December 19, 2008

A good place to buy cheap/second hand in the UK (except ebay). I reckon I will get a 50mm 1.4
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:43 AM on December 10, 2008

"if we make enough to cover our travel, we'll be happy"

If you make enough to pay for your sun-cream think yourself lucky... No offence, but $600 (a month/a year/a decade) is never going to happen.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 2:21 PM on December 8, 2008

Wow wow wow. Thank you all so much. AskMetafilter never disappoints.

I have a lot to go and listen to...
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 1:39 PM on November 9, 2008

I want the proper stuff, not the instant ramen. Proper pork bone-marrow brothy goodness
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 5:01 AM on October 12, 2008

Thanks MakiMaki... The links you posted got whittled down to just this one. What was the other?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:59 AM on October 12, 2008

Any more ideas?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 2:13 AM on October 13, 2008

'Chopper' has an amazing commentary by Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read himself. A great commentary by director Andrew Dominik also comes on the DVD, but Chopper on Chopper?! Priceless
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 4:14 AM on October 12, 2008

Although it looks interesting, psycholinguistics is probably not quite the right area of study. I think my PhD will focus on text as a technology, i.e. once text is re-aligned with its technological description what effect does this have on its phenomenological features. How do/have the changes in the technologies of text altered our perceptions?

[If you are interested, there is a tiny snippet from my MA thesis linked in my profile that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:27 AM on September 18, 2008

Mcluhan is the man - kind regards. Has anyone since attempted to directly follow up his work?
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:31 AM on September 18, 2008

Some superb avenues to follow here, thank you muchly. And it's nice to know (thanks Suedehead) that my MeFi presence has an essential quality all of its own.

I'm off to do some link clicking.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 11:46 AM on September 18, 2008

Thanks again...

Jamjam, that is a great metaphor for texts in general (I fear though that getting deeper into that without talking about 'memes' might be difficult.)

On the schizophrenic point, is there a recognised syndrome related to a compulsive engagement with text? I know of the writing equivalent, hypergraphia. The compulsion to constantly have one's mind caught inside text seems more enrapturing, even religious, in... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:59 PM on September 18, 2008

Ah ha, Hyperlexia
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 4:05 PM on September 18, 2008

I you are not sexually attracted to him then the chemistry between you will let his body know this, even if his mind doesn't. Your sex ual relationship sounds like it is happening with two people in two very different minds and for this reason you will never 'gel' as a sexual couple.

You could either break up with him (which it sounds like you are set on doing anyway) or try and concentrate COMPLETELY on him as a sexual being WITHOUT concentrating on yourself.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 5:36 AM on September 4, 2008

I am such a dunce, I had a Japanese dictionary about a metre away from my hand.

Some great examples, thanks. I think I found a favourite in ‘museigen’ translated as ‘boundless’ or ‘without limit’. It fits perfectly in the context I want to use it (an essay I am writing).

More interesting examples would be very much appreciated.
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:06 AM on August 8, 2008

I think any particular book tends to be too slim in scope. I am a writer/artist who hs a strong interest in science. Science magazines is where I get my kicks - your friends will too.

New Scientist is my staple (I don't really read the newspaper, so this weekly mag fills in for all my needs - its news as viewed through science, rather than the other way around).

Seed Magazine is EXACTLY what your friends need. It is a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 2:43 AM on August 6, 2008

If you answer these questions for us, I think we could point you in more specific directions:

- Where do you live? : Where you are based will have an enormous bearing on how you will 'break into' any performance scene. Big cities are by nature more likely to habour flourishing scenes - the smaller your locale is, the more specific those scenes are likely to be. I spend quite a lot of time frequenting the London poetry scene, and most specifically the scene of poets who... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 7:21 AM on July 28, 2008

It only takes a twist in perceptions to posit any art as performative. If the performance space is the page then poetry is the performance within that space
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 10:05 AM on July 28, 2008

Your boyfriend is who he is, labeling him 'aspergers' isn't going to change anything. Ask yourself these questions:

- Does his behavior warrant medical/psychological treatment/therapy/care of some kind?
- Do you love him?

If the answer to both these questions is yes, then it is your duty to try and make him aware of his behaviour. I suspect though, from your description, that he does not need any 'help' at all. Furthermore, having the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 8:34 AM on July 27, 2008

Don't think - just buy a Wii. Your family will love you more than they do now
posted to Ask Metafilter by 0bvious at 3:21 AM on July 23, 2008