Over lunch he describes his novel in progress, currently titled “Anthill.” Its contents have occasioned certain differences of emphasis between himself and his publisher... Dr. Wilson would like ants to play a large role in the novel, given all the useful lessons that can be drawn from their behavior. The publisher sees a larger role for people and a smaller, at most ant-sized, role for ants. The novel is rotating through draft after draft as this tension is worked out.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 2:30 PM on July 23, 2008

Not being familiar at all with the field of evolutionary biology, can anyone tell me if this is a new concept? Or is he presenting evidence to confirm an already existing hypothesis?

Despite the Dawkins-led screams of GENES GENES GENES GENES!, group selection and multi-level selection have been around in form or another for a long time: Darwin toys with group selection in Descent of Man, as Wilson mentions in the Times article,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 3:24 PM on July 23, 2008

I spent a week in Sarajevo in 1996, mostly just walking around and listening to my friend Nebojsa and his friends and family members patiently and graciously tell their stories in answer to the inexorably stupid questions of a very young, very naive American visitor. Reading Dee's comments on that time, in that place, is like hearing those stories all over again, miraculously transmutated into perfect, understated English prose. I thank her for that, and I thank you for this callout.
posted to MetaTalk by dyoneo at 11:19 AM on July 23, 2008

It's got to be The World of Apu, by Satyajit Ray.
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 1:55 PM on July 22, 2008 marked best answer

The Melville caricature is actually George John Whyte-Melville. Calling poor Herman Melville "The novelist of Society" in 1871 would be like calling John Travolta "The King of Hollywood" in 1987.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 5:50 AM on July 21, 2008

(The negro as sex-starved maniac, frex).

Or the negro and homosexual as examples of human degeneration, in a biological sense, a reversion to a previous lesser form.

The Wilde caricature is from 1884, arguably before his first homosexual encounter - let alone the public scandals - so I'm pretty sure that the depiction of him as black is a reference to him being Irish.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 11:09 AM on July 21, 2008

The equation of African-Americans and Irish is unlikely to have had much currency in Britain.

Geez, and here I was thinking that I went out of my way to link to the relevant part of the article:
A prominent theme of ethnology in Victorian England largely stemming from social prejudices of the time was that the Irish were racially different from the English people and thus considered inferior. Polygenism was a dominant theory, as was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 6:11 PM on July 21, 2008

and that she doesn't just reprint press release copy but researches and describes everything in fresh prose

This is just plain not true. This listing is cut and pasted from here. This listing is cut and pasted from here. This listing is cut and pasted from here. And those are just the first three listings I checked.

"Kristin" appears to do nothing but reprint press release copy; either she... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 3:18 PM on July 21, 2008

I feel like a louse because I told Kristin recently that it would probably not be the end of the world if, in addition to her original write ups (which she sends out in her email list), she increased the content on her site by cutting and pasting interesting press releases. Looks like she has started doing that already (two of the PR-quoting events listed are new; one is seven months old).

The listing from March I just checked on at random is cut and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 5:35 PM on July 21, 2008

In 1610, thinking he had discovered two moons orbiting Saturn, Galileo composed a message: ALTISSIMUM PLANETAM TERGEMINUM OBSERVAVI ("I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form") … and sent it to Kepler as an anagram: SMAISMRMILMEPOETALEUMIBUNENUGTTAUIRAS

I can't believe I listened to the smart-ass who authoritatively informed me that this was Galileo's to-do list:

TEST ANAGRAM, MAIL IT; SIN, MUMBLE "E PUR SI MUOVE."
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 7:35 PM on July 16, 2008

Marc Maron, author of The Jerusalem Syndrome. You appear to be remembering the October 12, 2000 show (available on his web site, once you figure out that you need to disable your pop-up blocker).
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 8:47 AM on July 15, 2008 marked best answer

In case you're still having problems watching the video:

"What's the point of that, watching the Olympics? How does that make anyone feel good, especially someone like me? You know, I watched for like three minutes, I'm like, okay, great, you're the fastest swimmer... Yeah, it's like, oh boy, he's the guy that jumps over the thing with the pole the best. Whoooo! You know, it's like, good luck with that. You know, I don't come from that, I've never been an athletic... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 9:28 AM on July 15, 2008

davejay: You're putting words into Breyer's mouth. He didn't say "unimpressive" (as if the melody wasn't *beautiful* or *complex* enough to deserve copyright protection), he simply said "unoriginal".

I just read the opinion, and he doesn't even say that:
Would [the endlessly self-perpetuating nature of the publishers' claim] justify continuing to extend copyrights indefinitely, say, for those granted to F. Scott... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 7:02 PM on June 19, 2008

...Natter on to each other you old hens and leave us alone...
...the women quoted in the article, who are quite obviously insufferable hens...
...Which is a pretty fitting epithet for this cow...
...I tried to read that, but it was all like mew-mew-mew-mew-mew...

Keep 'em comin', folks! I expect a full barnyard by the end of the day.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 10:50 AM on June 19, 2008

The bar for greatness being lowered to "argues calmly and tentatively from established facts rather than shrieking sensationalistically" should depress me, but it just gives me more confidence in my cockeyed plan to conquer the Eastern and Central time zones with an army of eighth-grade math team members and part-time adjunct freshman composition lecturers.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 6:05 AM on June 17, 2008

Tucker Carlson says Obama... "seems like kind of a wuss"...

Tucker's complete lack of self-awareness is downright endearing. I imagine him standing in front of the mirror, straightening his bow tie, running a hand through his hair, catching his own eye, glancing away and quickly back, then staring, captivated by what he sees. "Who's a bad, bad man?" Tucker whispers to his reflection. "You are, Tucker," Tucker purrs back.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 12:52 PM on June 14, 2008

Muddler typed "...but I have to say I'm with the crowd of people that doesn't find the meaning of life in a toilet on a pedastal in the middle of an installation."

"Must you people take over every discussion on MetaFilter?"

I choose to think of comments like these as part of a vast conceptual art project, executed with sublime patience and deadpan wit over many years, intended to illustrate the permanent... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 11:56 AM on June 14, 2008

Does finding amino acids in space rocks really bolster the theory all that strongly? Your Panspermia link features rather more dashing hypothetical astronauts, such as bacteria, spores, and seeds. The difference would seem to be akin to that between the earth being pelted by iron molecules and the earth being pelted by Volkswagens.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 12:26 PM on June 13, 2008

I was just talking to a co-worker of mine about this. "Joe," I said, "Do you not agree that the placement of commercial products in such culturally essential British television programmes as '8 Out of 10 Cats', which airs on Channel 4 Fridays at 10 PM, imperils the esteem with which the international television-programme-watching community regards such outstanding exports as BBCOne's 'EastEnders' or 'The Apprentice'?"

Joe thought about this for a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 11:56 AM on June 13, 2008

My opinion is that some of you, have a axe to grind with the police and officials at the school, probably from some encounter other than reading about this one incident.

Yes, such unusual and disreputable encounters as a) attending high school; and b) being hassled by cops.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 6:46 PM on June 12, 2008

I too have decided that this isn't that bad. What Phillips Exeter does is much crueler:

Principal: Today it is my sad duty to report that each member of the senior class has only been accepted to his or her safety school.

Senior Class: Brown?!?!!

Audible gasps, crying, screaming, recriminations, fainting spells, pitched battles with lacrosse sticks and Louis Vuitton bags, mass hysteria.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 8:00 PM on June 12, 2008

So, let me ask you if it's OK to generalize about police, or just criticise the individuals responsible for this fiasco.

I'm glad that you've had good experiences with the police, but a lot of people haven't, and some of them see this incident as a sadly unsurprising extension of the behavior they've previously witnessed. I don't think this is "generalizing" or "axe-grinding" so much as "further rounding out a worrisome... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 8:22 PM on June 12, 2008

This appears to be pretty doable for most three-letter words, although it gets a hell of a lot harder at four letters. I say if you're going to do a sestina, which is a half-insane festival of compositional masochism to begin with, you might as well go whole hog and impose a theme on yourself:

cat (caterwaul, catechism, catsup, catastrophe, category)
ant (antechamber, antipathy, antlers, antique, antsy)
dog (dogooder, doggerel, dogged, dogma,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 1:54 PM on June 11, 2008 marked best answer

Some kids are just different, and there is no quick fix. Nurture them, care for them, and they'll probably be the next Einstein or Newton.

And some kids are so deeply sad, twenty-four hours a day, that they think of little besides their desire to mutilate or kill themselves. Some kids spend hours screaming at their parents and slamming doors and breaking furniture and assaulting their siblings. Some kids are so astonishingly withdrawn that they can't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by dyoneo at 3:41 PM on June 10, 2008

I do love Tim Parks, but, as Kattullus points out, he seems to have made exactly the mistake Spice cautions against: "Reviewers of Greed have met it at best with polite puzzlement, at worst with disdain. Philip Hensher said it was ‘atrocious’. And he was right – Greed is unreadable. But it is not the same book as Gier. What has also been atrocious has been the failure of anyone reviewing it to go back and read the German."... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 11:39 AM on June 8, 2008

It's not exactly diplomatic. I told it I had rice vinegar, three pomegranates, chocolate chips, sriracha, oyster crackers, half a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and a case of beer, and it told me to get a girlfriend already.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 5:28 PM on May 27, 2008

"you don't really have any idea of Proust unless you've read the whole thing."

I was thinking of his writing style, which you more or less get after a point (with the exception of certain scenes like the description of Venice in The Fugitive).

This is totally true, as far as it goes: you can read as little as a few pages of Proust and have a perfectly fine sense of how the sentences will sound... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 3:46 PM on May 27, 2008

I think aught and Kattullus have come closest to what you're looking for. Erickson, Wright, and Bolano are great suggestions (as are Gombrowicz, Cortazar, Calvino, Pynchon, Dick, Wallace, Danielewski, and Mitchell).

Other contemporary possibilities in this vein: Victor Pelevin, DBC Pierre, Alasdair Gray, Gary Shteyngart, Jeanette Winterson, Orhan Pamuk, Genichiro Takahashi, James Kelman, some of J.M. Coetzee. These aren't necessarily my favorites, but they do, in my... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2008

It's this kind of tone that has disappointed me about the modern American left. This sense of looking down one's nose at the rest of the world and how insufficient it is. The left used to have principles and goals. It was wonderful; it was real opposition; it had things to agree with.

The self-righteous hectorings of self-appointed arbiters of What Is Really and Truly Left usually make me weak in the knees and have me getting ahead of myself and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 8:21 PM on May 13, 2008

the academic chicness of a philosopher is often in inverse proportion to his or her lasting philosophical merit

You're hurting Zombie Sartre's feelings.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 5:23 PM on May 12, 2008

These are truly incredible (and have consumed much of my day). Thank you, Taksi Putra.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 12:29 PM on May 8, 2008

Is there a snappy Dutch phrase for "initial impulses of mockery and pity for another person's exorbitantly artificial fashion choices giving way to reflection that one's own conventional fashion choices are simply normalized artificialities, just as arbitrary and exhibitionist, resulting in acceptance of and even conflicted admiration for grown men who carry lorgnettes"? Because that would save me a lot of words.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 8:45 AM on May 8, 2008

This has to be better than the unbelievably shitty Waiting for Godot with werewolves I once sat through:

A country road. A tree.

Evening.

Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to chew off his foot. He pulls at it with his teeth, panting.

He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again.

As before.

Enter Vladimir.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 12:07 PM on May 7, 2008

"Rent a tiny battery-powered blimp and set it hovering next to the sink. Program the blimp to display the message GOOGLE CLEAN DISHES."
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 10:52 AM on May 7, 2008

"He's a philosopher; why should a biologist (or anyone else, really) care what he has to say about evolution?"

I think this is a bad way to talk. Some of the most interesting ideas of the twentieth century were produced by cross-field pollination--Thomas Kuhn, for example, was a scientist before he revolutionized the philosophy of science. The rigid contemporary barriers between academic fields are the largely arbitrary product of fanciful 17th and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 9:41 AM on May 6, 2008

Uh, folks? Why so surprised at the philosopher-hate from science people? By definition Philosophy doesn't produce falsifiable hypotheses. And is therefore useless. Considering how much time working scientists must waste fighting to exclude untestable, ignorant criticism, you shouldn't be surprised in the least at a hostile reception.

I suppose it's best left as a philosophical exercise for you to deduce the profession of the man who produced the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 10:53 AM on May 6, 2008

Fodor's academic preening is ghastly and only serves to provide creationists with greater fodder in their endeavors to discredit modern evolutionary theory.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Darwin provides creationists with fodder in their endeavors to discredit modern evolutionary theory. Nature provides creationists with fodder in their endeavors to discredit modern evolutionary theory. Getting up in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 12:00 PM on May 6, 2008

If you need this specific article for a specific, genuine reason (beyond "someone please summarize Between the Acts for me so I can finish my homework"), I'd suggest using the site's contact form to write to the editors and politely ask if they can give it to you. They give free subscriptions to institutions in countries with per-capita income below the world average, and while you're not an institution, and while Chile seems to not quite qualify by that measure, I... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 1:23 PM on May 5, 2008 marked best answer

Every week's a bad week for jazz musicians. (If by "bad" one means poor, under-recognized, etc). It's also a period when most of the giants are either dead or very old. There's not that many legends left (a few: Hank Jones, Sonny Rollins, etc)

I didn't even know of Giuffre, but felt welling in me a semi-automatic sadness when I saw this. Jazz - and poetry, and even the novel, to some degree - have hovering about them a valedictory air that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 6:55 PM on April 25, 2008

Can someone explain to me why Jonathan Franzen initially pairs The Corrections with Budweiser and seems really pleased with Budweiser and even films a commercial for Budweiser but then has a crazy temper tantrum and retracts his choice and disavows Budweiser and writes 18,000 words for Harper's on the reasons for his disavowal of Budweiser and then retires to his loft to start a second career writing essays about how hard it is to be Jonathan Franzen?
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 3:42 PM on April 25, 2008

The weird attempt here to smear the vaseline of equivalence over our lens on history has nothing to do with Jews slashing at fascists - who but a bleeding fascist would object? - and everything to do with preserving a contemporary rhetorical ground in which actors trying to effect change are no better than those trying to forestall it. That the apologetics necessitated by this feisty brand of historical relativism would extend to Nazis is initially disconcerting, but after prolonged exposure one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 5:55 AM on April 21, 2008

MIA. From Amsterdam Marsellus says you sailed.

VINCENT. 'Tis true. And thou hast taken to the stage?

MIA. My one brief moment in the sun.

VINCENT. What play?

MIA. A farce on spies, and women, "Fox Force Five."

VINCENT. How now?

MIA. A band of sisters, Fox Force Five.
This "fox,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 2:33 PM on April 20, 2008

Merzbow?
posted to Ask Metafilter by dyoneo at 3:01 PM on April 18, 2008

I slept right through it; thanks, alcohol!

notsnot's account pretty pithily shows how, at least in my experience, People Who Know It's An Earthquake have wildly different reactions from People Who Don't. I left the geologically underachieving American Northeast for college in Northern California in September of 1989, and when Loma Prieta came rumbling through I didn't immediately have a very clear idea of what had happened. It was actually, for a few minutes, incredibly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by dyoneo at 8:18 AM on April 18, 2008

As a born and raised native of NorCal, I find this one a little out there. I've lived through plenty of quakes and never saw anyone ashen-faced and crying about speculated dead somewhere else.

Fair enough. I may have been exaggerating slightly, but the Californians really did react differently, and more seriously, and there was crying. Teenage hormones and the being-away-from-mom-and-dad-for-the-first-time-ever factor undoubtedly heightened those... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by dyoneo at 9:31 AM on April 18, 2008

Jason Molina is a sweetheart who makes good music, but that's not how Jason Molina taught me the True Meaning of Rock and Roll.

Jason Molina is a friend of a friend, and I once ended up in charge of the table at the back of the room on which his CDs and lovingly-pressed vinyl were spread out for sale to the adoring masses at the end of the gig. The adoring masses, somewhat to my disappointment, never made their way to the table; they did, however, make their way to Jason... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 7:33 PM on April 17, 2008

Oh, great. If Amazon can accurately gauge how desperately I want the Hannah Montana Ultimate Pop-Star Sticker Book, I'm going to have to sell a kidney.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 9:15 AM on April 15, 2008

languagehat, though I'll freely admit to the hyperbole, I think there's some truth there. I do believe that the old rallying cry that those in power should not have it was really a backhanded way of saying that the agitators are the ones that should have it.

languagehat was surely alluding to anarchism, and, the easy irony of Fresh Prince Kropotkin aside, there's a long intellectual and practical history of revolutionaries for whom the elimination... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 5:33 PM on April 14, 2008

There's a weirdly extratextual declarative sentence in one of Kathy Acker's smuttier novels that goes something like: "I want to fuck one of The Gang of Four or The Fall." I didn't know much about music when I read that, and somehow became convinced that she was talking about competing Latin American revolutionary groups.

A year later I moved to San Francisco; Kathy Acker, by sheer chance, lived around the corner from me. Every once in a while I'd see this tiny... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 3:40 PM on April 14, 2008

As a multi-billionaire playboy who regularly flies my own personal 787 to Kauai to pick up the diamond-encrusted pineapples that make such fetching centerpieces at my monthly "Fuck It, We're Rich" theme parties, this thread makes me very, very happy.
posted to MetaFilter by dyoneo at 10:11 AM on April 14, 2008