I think my favorite is the "President Nixon." sticker from 1972. The big period at the end gives a sort of weight to the statement, and carries a lot more weight than the "McGovern" sticker from the same year.

I also really liked the LBJ/USA sticker. I think we should return to the idea of the grainy black-and-white picture of the candidate on the campaign sticker. And I totally agree with Chrischris' sentiment on this.

And... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 12:00 AM on May 16, 2008

loquacious: "

And even if he did do just that, helped feed the poor and hungry just because they exist... why is that wrong, exactly? "

Because dumping food surpluses on poor countries only means that local farmers can't compete, and therefore stay poor, thus making them dependent on aid instead of self-sustaining.

I'm sure this doesn't fit into your manifesto of good feelings, but this is the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 11:09 PM on May 3, 2008

sorry, that was a pretty obscure reference with regards to the policy debate thing. Critiques in high school policy debates tend to try to frame the debate round as some sort of microcosm and that the judge deciding in their favor will mean the prevention of nuclear war or the apocalypse and the ushering in of some sort of paradise because the judge will use his ballot to take a stand against some philosophy. But its just a debate round, and nothing actually ends up happening, the judge just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 12:27 AM on May 4, 2008

jock@law: "The jury has to do more than reasonably doubt the truth of the defense statement. "

I'm pretty sure Bookhouse was just trying to make some clever turn-of-phrase about how the jury didn't believe Reiser's story

Additionally, you could probably stand to stop trying to turn everything people are saying into a statement about the law and interpreting it literally. For instance that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 9:36 AM on April 29, 2008

OmieWise:

I think what jock@law was saying is that at some point, when only a small group of infected people remains infected, (much less than millions of people) the costs of vaccination will outweigh just killing those few people. Basically a cost-benefit analysis on murder, not mass murder.

which is still reprehensible, but its not the "lets round up all the dirty infected in camps and gas them tomorrow" rant that you want it to be.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 11:35 AM on April 24, 2008

lukemeister: "In my day we used the touch command, and we were glad to have it!"

grandsham@animecon /usr/female $ touch breast

touch: cannot touch `breast': Permission denied

Obviously, hese guys just need to know how to use chmod.
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 9:16 AM on April 23, 2008

auralcoral: "I mean really, what was Ben Stein thinking? "

As I understand it, Stein wanted to do this because he is "not a fan" of Darwinism because it was used by Nazis to justify the holocaust. Plus lets not forget he is still a huge conservative at heart, and about the biggest Nixon apologist this side of Charles Colson.

I almost want to see this movie as a sort of "see what the other side... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 2:12 PM on April 20, 2008

Pope Guilty: "
You're absolutely correct. While the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments"

I don't actually think scientists have produced any sort of abiogenesis in a lab. if you want to point me to an article about this, I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but I am almost positive what you've said here isn't true

But it is true that evolution has... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 2:34 PM on April 20, 2008

oh man, Total Annihilation was so amazing. I remember having 3 different unit packs installed at the same time, and the game ending up too unstable to run. and I have to agree with Avenger and blacklite that balance was definitely the least important design consideration in this game, making it a sort of anti-starcraft.

also, if you're looking for an updated, extended, and open source implementation of Total Annihilation, you should check out TA: Spring.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 10:01 PM on April 7, 2008

crunchtopmuffin: " Being in this space which celebrates women and in which there is *no* chance of sexual assault by a man was liberating."

this seems like a somewhat specious argument, considering the fact that the festival organizers are allowing in ftm transmen. It seems to me that, from a biological/hormonal perspective, you should be more concerned about a T-taking transman engaging in the sort of stereotypical male aggressive/sexual... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 10:52 AM on March 30, 2008

its really nice to read an article like this that actually has transitions and is one coherent body of work. I clicked the link thinking it would be some puff piece Cracked-style bullet list with only a little bit of background info. I was pleasantly surprised. Excellent find idiomatika.
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 10:31 PM on March 29, 2008

Is there any particular reason that those "The Big Sleep" links go to videos of Casablanca, and that Dial M for Murder link goes back to this FPP?
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 8:19 AM on January 11, 2008

ssg: "I can't believe that Anderson is blithely claiming that the process of harvesting trees and making pulp is carbon neutral. He clearly has never seen any actual forestry.

From surveying to road building, harvesting, processing, transporting, sorting, chipping, and replanting, forestry consumes an immense amount of diesel fuel. It is not even close to carbon neutral. Not to mention that a fairly good proportion of the total mass of wood cut gets left... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 4:14 PM on December 30, 2007

I just made a key lime pie yesterday (squeezed the real limes, used a pre-made crust though). It truly is the king of pies.
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 9:52 AM on November 30, 2007

MaryDellamorte
Guy: I'll take an iced tea (pauses) with ice.
(this kind of took me by surprise for a second, I couldn't believe what I just heard)
Me: With ice? Hence the name "iced tea?"


Because it is never possible to get iced tea without ice. Except for about 99.9 percent of cases where it is. What do you think they do, brew hot tea, pour it in a glass, and THEN put ice in the glass to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 5:35 PM on November 22, 2007

I have been using a 15 dollar microsoft wired 500 keyboard for about 2 years now, and it has continued to serve me well. the feel of the keys is good (not too gummy while not being too stiff), it doesn't have too many bells and wistles, but still has some extras that I really like (the calculator button is indispensable), and most of all (and the original reason I bought it), it doesn't have shitty features tied to its function keys, and it has an insert key in the "classic" location... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 9:43 AM on November 4, 2007

Hunter S. Thompson on breakfast:

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 11:06 PM on October 8, 2007

HuronBob: "I read this earlier on the Boing...

My thought.. this individual led a private life, and he had a right for it to remain private, no matter who is son is.

I'm sorry this hit the net.... There's really no point to it as far as I can see."

I find it very interesting in a "secret lives people lead" sort of way. and regardless, for someone leading a "private... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 2:41 PM on August 19, 2007

it may be intensely shallow of me, but I put down Angels and Demons at the end of the first chapter, because I was put off by the holier-than-thou scientist guy pontificating about how CERN created the world-wide-web. I think it was because my mind inserted "internet" for "world-wide-web" and I knew that the ARPANET was American.

But regardless of that, I really really like particle accelerators, if only for their grand scale and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 11:00 PM on August 2, 2007

Mayor Curley:
"glider (the proprietor of BME) is a member here and a Confederate Apologist. You must read that whole thread if you haven't seen it because he's so wonderfully insane.

The "Mexican sports cars" thing is because if glider shows up, he invariably talks about his house in Mexico or his sports cars to remind you that people who voluntarily get sliced up like a bundt cake are not crazy. (no, I didn't leave anything out. I'm... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 11:38 AM on July 31, 2007

damn dirty ape:

I'm inclined to beleive, based upon the copious follow-up posts on (Metafilter's own) Shannon's blogs that this is very much for real. Plus its been like, 3 years since he's actually done an april's fools hoax.

That said, I doubt I would ever get something like this done. Ditto for a tattoo on the bottom of my foot. Two places that make me squirm in pain just thinking about needles coming near.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 5:45 PM on July 10, 2007

deftly extended analogy aside, orthogonality, I don't understand why I need to have the "sinews" of context about screws and bolts and construction in general to remember that I rotate a screw clockwise to tighten it, and counterclockwise to loosen.

Similarly, why should I need to remember and constantly recall the vast concepts and information inherent to radiation and the way that my eye precives it, instead of just using "Roy G Biv".... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 6:39 PM on July 4, 2007

Pastabagel:

Likewise, Cheney can [ignore congressional subpoenas] as Vice president (they are both squarely in the executive).

unless you believe Cheney, who is claiming that the office of the Vice President is in the legislative branch. It would be interesting to see how his rhetoric on that issue will affect his stance if he's served a subpoena.
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 11:22 AM on June 28, 2007

perhaps I am showing my relative youth here, but I do remember being enthralled by MegaBloks (some lego substitute) when they produced a bunch of huge sets for building a battleship, the USS Kitty hawk, and a Space Shuttle. This was right around the time Lego was going hyper specialized in their kits, and the fact that I could buy a 1000 piece megabloks set for the same price as a 200 piece lego set, and probably get more than 5 times the fun out of the thing, made for some wonderful times.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 10:08 PM on May 29, 2007