In some places in rural England at least up to the industrial revolution, if you could build a cottage in a single night, you gained ownership (or at least rent-free life tenancy) of the structure. It had to look like a house-- four walls, roof, door. Niceties like floors, fireplaces and windows were added later. These were called "cob cottages" and I've read about them in 18th and 19th century english literature and histories, but I don't recall every reading exactly what... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:34 AM on August 7, 2008

Despite the best efforts here, via the trolling thread and Prof. Wesch, I had heard of exactly 18 of those, and it doesn't count because I heard of every single one either through traditional media or my young adult kids. Therefore, I now pronounce it officially-- I have no idea what is going on on teh internets.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:18 AM on August 7, 2008

Metafilter: GIANT RECURSIVE MEME VORTEX THAT WILL DESTROY THE INTERNET
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:21 AM on August 7, 2008

Weird. It sounds like my mother saying "Kronos to Earth, get in here and wash these dishes!"
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:01 AM on August 6, 2008

Personally, I welcome our new synaesthetic overlords.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 11:18 AM on August 6, 2008

39. I was on the right track-- prepositions, articles, pronouns, query words, common verbs-- and then my mind went blank and I missed variations like verb tenses, duh. Sesame street really helped (over under around and through! who what where why how! is am are!) I also typed in the instruction sentence which netted a bunch.

Internet quizzes have got to be a government plot to reduce the productivity of artists and nerds.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 6:36 AM on August 6, 2008

I've said it before, but why not say it again? Massive military procurement projects like this are really just ways of diverting billions in public funds into the hands of influential defense contractors.

What I have never understood is why massive civilian procurement projects to, for instance, repair infrastructure, develop new energy sources, improve education and preserve the environment can't serve the same function. Why is wasteful spending on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:32 AM on August 4, 2008

In other words, if you build a billion-dollar bridge in California, the people of Texas won't want to pay for it, unless you build them a bridge (or something similar), too.

Right. So, how many bridges in how many communities would this $20bil (or whatever it was) have built? Bridges (or public nurses, or free university education, or flood protection or wilderness preservation ) for everyone!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 9:18 AM on August 4, 2008

Made me laugh. But then, I'm a fool, so that's appropriate
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:40 AM on August 4, 2008

When learning about what goes on online I feel like a farmer in 1910, watching an automobile drive down the road. I know how to drive it, but not how it works or what to do with it. I know that it's the future, and I know that it will be useful and I can see that it is changing things, but it's just too new and complex. I'm already so far behind the curve that I don't see how I can possibly catch up in time for it to be useful for or to save me.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:24 AM on August 4, 2008

Rolex couldn't ship to Britain, or any of the Allies, because Switzerland was completely surrounded by occupied Europe. He shipped only to British officers because he felt he could trust in their honor to pay up after the war. He DID sell, cash-and-carry, to any Allied escapees already in Switzerland. And I imagine to any Germans in Switzerland and anyone else with the dough.

It's all in the article, folks.

Great story. Thanks, OP.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:59 AM on August 1, 2008

It's the right Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley is their daughter (and the author of Frankenstein). I kind of messed up the calendar but went with it anyway because it was such an interesting group of references (to me anyway). It's a kind of funny aspect of best of the web-- I often use this book of days to find information on the people selected on any given day-- it's like a little vacation from whatever I'm working on, and the web makes it so easy to find information and often actual... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 2:09 PM on July 29, 2008

Aack-- went back into the Mary W timeline-- good catch Konolia, and an error in my little book! From Wikipedia: After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.Mary Shelley was the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 2:13 PM on July 29, 2008

There is a conceit in the world right now that every viewpoint is equally valuable, every opinion bearer has an equal right to be heard, and that so-called ordinary people have more to contribute than experts. You see this on news programs where "balance" is demanded for every story that might conceivably be regarded as having an opinion rather than a factual basis, creationism and global climate change being the poster children here.

The whole thing has a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:19 PM on July 27, 2008

We need professional journalists as well as seat-of-the-pants information disseminators like bloggers for for the same reason we need both medical doctors and osteopaths and the lady who balances my chakras.

Any professional education-- doctors, lawyers, development officers, journalists, police, teachers, etc-- imparts (at its best) not only the tools of the profession (in the case of journalism that would be the tools of information gathering, which I think we all... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 6:45 PM on July 28, 2008

My 90 year old granma is the ultimate authority on cool. If she doesn't think you're cool, you are not cool. If you don't know her, too bad, you can never be cool.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 3:07 PM on July 28, 2008

I love to look at any wedding pictures, but pictures of traditional weddings are just sort of an intellectual addiction. However, every time I see pictures of same-sex weddings, just seeing the joy, the pure unadulterated (so to speak) joy on those faces makes me choke up (Thanks digaman, for sharing yours).
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 11:55 AM on July 25, 2008

you guys look so happy! choke, sniffle, dude, howmi supposed to make cogent comments when you guys keep making me cry!
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 2:20 PM on July 25, 2008

The State has an interest in promoting marriage-- stable families, tax benefits (to the State), child and elder care issues, all the things mentioned above. Anti gay marriage isn't against these things is it? So it must be something else-- I have it! It must be gay sex! It continues to completely stump me as to what anti-same sex marriage agitators think they are accomplishing. Do they think that gays will stop having sex if they are not allowed to marry? Stop having children? Stop... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 1:38 PM on July 27, 2008

I dunno, my kids couldn't get out fast enough. hmmmm...
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:58 PM on July 26, 2008

Kerasia, I heard a different take on that quote that might have some bearing here: "I made money so that my son would be able to listen to great music, and my grandson would be able to write it."
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:24 PM on July 27, 2008

I want to see it on ice skates.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:45 PM on July 26, 2008

Metafilter: personal validation facilitators
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:31 AM on July 25, 2008

And yet I keep coming back for more (heads over the MeTa)
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:39 PM on July 26, 2008

over to MeTa. validate that!
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:39 PM on July 26, 2008

sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values

Matthew 5:39 says differently
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:19 AM on July 25, 2008

Families use the image-freezing magic of the camera to isolate, record, and confer importance on certain events in their lives." This is so true-- everyone must have, like my family, those images that are recorded year after year (in my family, it's the food-- got to get a picture of the food, in case we forget that we had Thanksgiving dinner I guess).

I'm very schizophrenic on the topic of home movies. We never took any of our kids, which I regret somewhat now... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:30 AM on July 22, 2008

The thing about the images is that the intimacy and meaning they have for the people in them and the people who know the people in them (gah) changes completely when that personal connection is gone. In a way, I don't really need pictures of my FOB grandparents and their friends in Brooklyn, pretty much any pictures of Greek immigrants in 1925 will do, because I would have no idea whether they were related to me or not. I don't feel any less love for my grandmother because I don't have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 3:34 PM on July 22, 2008

Right, spicynuts. You have put your figure exactly on the schizophrenia of this. I love looking at the pictures from my parents' childhoods. But if I don't know the stories, if I don't have the words, they might as well be strangers. In fact I have boxes and boxes of slides featuring people who look familiar, but I've lost the stories. If I'd lost the pictures, it wouldn't matter, because the words live in my head which with any luck I won't lose. That's why I started writing down the words... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:08 AM on July 23, 2008

Very late to the party here, but what about those fantastic jungle gyms, 10 feet high, that we used to climb to the top of in order to hang upside down by our knees, head first over the blacktop they were built on. I don't remember more than 3 or 4 traumatic brain injuries in my entire childhood.
My romantic memory is of spending all summer with skinned knees and elbows, stubbed toes and bruised cheeks from all the falling on the hot blacktop. Now, at the summer sports camp that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:50 AM on July 22, 2008

Fantastic site, which would be even more fantastic if this damn machine would load video properly. Bookmarked for that mythical future where I have a computer that is less than 10 years old. Thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:38 AM on July 22, 2008

It's all about the baby hedgehogs.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:14 AM on July 22, 2008

its its its its its
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 6:24 AM on July 21, 2008

Feed me, Seymour!
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 6:23 AM on July 18, 2008

Sadly, this also sounds suspiciously like what young performers are promised in the big touring spectacles. They promise you big bucks-- you'll have backstage jobs, and you'll be an understudy, etc. etc. You start out in the red for the first 2 weeks hotel, you are fined for infractions of the rules (but all the money "goes to the closing party"), there are mysterious payroll deductions, they take out federal taxes at the highest possible rate no matter what your w4 says, and they... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 6:19 AM on July 18, 2008

This is great. Linking own images not working on Mac (no right click) especially since I'm a computer idiot. Suggestions?
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 6:39 AM on July 17, 2008

How about Cleaning Woman? She cleans tall buildings at a single swipe.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:03 AM on July 16, 2008

So my question is: is this necessarily complex, or unnecessarily complex? Fascinating, despite the fact that my head now hurts.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 3:51 AM on July 16, 2008

And let's not even get started on who even *owns* the copyright on works of art-- the "author" or the owner of the work? When I was working as an artist (20 years ago) the law seemed to be that you sold the rights to the image along with the physical work. I don't see that on the chart. (Why am I asking for even more complexity...).

Because of course when some of my old works start appearing everywhere, I'm totally going to want to collect.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:19 AM on July 16, 2008

Last year I was driving down McCormick Blvd, (zoom in for scale) a 4-lane through street with an average speed of 50 mph when a mother duck and her brood decided to cross (there's a canal and park on one side). I was the first car they would have come to, so I stopped to let her by. The first cars to realize what was happening were the oncoming ones who could see the duck parade blocking my car, so the oncoming traffic also stopped. This made the other lane of traffic on my side curious, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:16 PM on July 15, 2008

and Justinian, oh my god, just opened your link. You are officially forgiven for past snark on another thread. (Sorry for the double post, I'll remember to read the whole thread *first* next time.)
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 12:19 PM on July 15, 2008

Another example of a site that doesn't remember that some of us (I'm guessing the vast majority of us) out here in the real world are on shared bandwidth and 7-yr-old systems. I waited 4 endless minutes through all the adorable flash bullhockey and finally gave up. I guess I'll have to just trust the comments to find out whether I should have waited or not. Meantime, I think I'll go pick my home-grown, fertilizer-free vegetables and take them via public trans to my nursed-as-an-infant son's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 10:55 AM on July 13, 2008

gosh, justinian. I don't know if you're being facetious or what (you just sound like sort of a jerk, but maybe that's just the unsubtlety of the medium), so sorry my "frequent" trips offended you. Of course, there is no way for you to know that until this year, the last time I managed to leave Chicago was 1996. Next time I'll make sure that my business (which took me to Dayton), my son (whose college graduation I selfishly attended near Cleveland "just two weeks later") and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 1:15 PM on July 13, 2008

jimmythefish, thank you for pointing out a possible solution to my slow system.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 1:16 PM on July 13, 2008

Egomaniacal boomer here. batmonkey I wanted to be offended by your characterization, but I can't be. I can only say in our defense that we really believed that we were the last best hope of mankind, and that as such we would change the world. That the bright horizon was in reach and all problems would be solved. We would all live forever, drinking and dancing and screwing and creating peace and beauty in a grand unity of race, creed, and gender. That our legacy is instead the cynical and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:48 AM on July 12, 2008

Haven't RTA (I will, printed it for my mid-afternoon break), but from the comments this seems typical Murka-think. "If the rail system cannot get me all the way across the country as comfortably and quickly as an airplane, then rail is bullshit." Clearly, to travel 3,000 miles, air is the way to go. However, there is no reason that I should not be able to get from Chicago to Duluth (470 miles) more comfortably and quickly by train. At an average speed of 80, this should take 5... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:29 AM on July 11, 2008

Could Bush-Cheney please not poison everything that used to be wonderful about America? Please leave Goodnight Moon alone.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 11:11 AM on July 10, 2008

you are in the molecular flow regime where intermolecular forces are negligible and the mean free path is very long

Hey, I'm there right now!
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 7:44 AM on July 10, 2008

Somewhat related public hysteria: Following an apparent complaint from an irate theatergoer, the Chicago theatrical production of "Jersey Boys" has snuffed out cigarettes. from the Chicago Suntimes The point being that politicians, or whoever listens to this crap, allow one "irate theater goer" to use a law to draconian effect. As far as anything I've been able to find out, just one "irate theatergoer" got this done, and there has been... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 5:57 AM on July 9, 2008

memo to self: time to change the screen name.
posted to MetaFilter by nax at 10:25 AM on July 8, 2008