Displaying post 1 to 50 of 96
GemCraft
Flash Tower Defense goodness. Neat little rpg/upgrading touches in between maps. Lots of maps with some epic bosses thrown in every once in a while.
posted to MetaFilter by juv3nal
at 8:39 PM on June 14, 2008
(32 comments)
Lorenzo Semple, 84, has been a screenwriter for more than 50 years; his credits include "Papillion," "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor." Marcia Nasatir, 81, is a longtime agent and production executive, was the first female VP of production at United Artists, and produced films like "The Big Chill" and "Hamburger Hill." Together, they are the "
Reel Geezers," offering irresistible film reviews on YouTube. To wit:
Superbad,
Iron Man,
Sex and the City,
Lars and the Real Girl,
No Country for Old Men,
There Will Be Blood.
posted to MetaFilter by jbickers
at 3:35 AM on June 11, 2008
(27 comments)
Until recently,
earthquake lights were folklore. It wasn't until the phenomenon was captured in photographs, taken during the Matsushiro earthquake swarm in Japan between 1965 and 1967, that the
seismological community acknowledged their occurrence.
The precise mechanism is unknown. A stunning example was captured on
video thirty minutes prior to the Sichuan earthquake.
posted to MetaFilter by Pater Aletheias
at 11:02 AM on May 20, 2008
(66 comments)
At the University of Texas, researchers have produced some amazing videos and photos of liquid bouncing on liquid. This was one of nature.com's
Images of the Year for 2007 (picture number 6, in the upper-right corner). The project report, along with pictures and videos, is found on their
bouncing jet page, and it's quite extraordinary both for the counter-intuitive nature of the phenomenon and the extremely low-tech production methods. You can even do it at home with little more than a lazy Susan and some silicone oil.
posted to MetaFilter by math
at 5:57 PM on March 3, 2008
(12 comments)
People with a History
is "an online guide to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans history." Ranging from
the first stirrings of civilization to the modern day, People with a History gathers together original sources and academic articles dealing with queerness throughout history. To give you a feel for the wealth of material on the site, here are a few pages that caught my interest:
The Vikings and Homosexuality,
Coptic Spell: Spell for a Man to Obtain a Male Lover,
an acount of a gay marriage ceremony described by Michel de Montaigne,
But Among Our Own Selves (an 18th Century gay ballad),
a chapter from The Life of St. Theodore of Sykeon, a 7th Century Byzantine monk and bishop, which mentions
adelphopoiesis, or the
rite of brothermaking,
Wu Tsao, 19th Century Chinese lesbian poet, and finally
Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus
at 12:20 PM on February 2, 2008
(15 comments)
Ubuntu has quickly become the number one
Linux distro for the desktop. Not only is it free, but it has also made Linux easier to use than ever. Now,
Wubi enables
Windows users to install Ubuntu just like any other application, so you no longer have to mess around with partitions, burning CDs, etc.
posted to MetaFilter by Foci for Analysis
at 8:09 AM on January 21, 2008
(82 comments)
Prior to his critically acclaimed program The Wire, creator Edward Burns wrote the HBO miniseries
The Corner, which also focused on the drug trade in Baltimore.
Charles S. Dutton, an African-American Baltimore native and former convict probably best known to most as TV's "Roc," was chosen to direct the miniseries.
Who Gets To Tell a Black Story?, part of a Pulitzer-prize winning
NYT series on race in America, examines Dutton's take on how to make a TV program which portrays a mostly African-American cast of characters, the struggles and differing perspectives of Dutton and Burns, and how race is portrayed in Hollywood.
posted to MetaFilter by whir
at 10:02 PM on December 17, 2007
(24 comments)
Wake up cat
(YT, animated, 1:29) cat owners will understand.
posted to MetaFilter by vronsky
at 3:02 PM on October 23, 2007
(93 comments)
Zipskinny
Enter your zip code and get US census info-plus compare with other zip codes.
posted to MetaFilter by konolia
at 5:37 AM on October 17, 2007
(48 comments)
Rush
Rush is a
Canadian rock band comprising bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist
Gary Lee Weinrib, guitarist
Alexander Zivojinovich, and drummer and lyricist
Neil Ellwood Peart.
Bewitched by
Ayn Rand, obsessed by nuclear war and enraptured by
cheap science fiction, Rush were role models to
geeks everywhere,
yearning to be cool, but
failing. Still,
they rocked, in their own way.
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey
at 9:34 PM on October 15, 2007
(135 comments)
Margaret Talbot's wonderful profile of David Simon, the creator of "The Wire."
Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”
posted to MetaFilter by geoff.
at 10:50 AM on October 15, 2007
(37 comments)
Triumph of the Nerds is a 1996 three-part documentary recounting the rise of the personal computer, including interviews with Gates, Wozniak and Jobs, among others. It was originally produced for British television, and aired on PBS in the USA.
Part One:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6.
Part Two:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6.
Part Three:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6. Transcripts
here. After you watch, you can play the
"Guess the Computer" game.
posted to MetaFilter by amyms
at 2:35 AM on September 29, 2007
(19 comments)
Did anyone in the history of Used Car Dealerships ever go to greater lengths to get you to go see him than
Cal Worthington and his Dog, Spot?
Warning: video contains music that cannot be unlistened to & will haunt you to the grave.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson
at 11:23 PM on September 18, 2007
(63 comments)
The Mensch of Malden Mills
There's supposedly an exception to every rule. If CEO greed is a rule, the exception is
Aaron Feuerstein. When his Malden
Mills
burned to the ground in December, 1995, he
took a $300,000,000 insurance payment and used much of it to pay his 3,000 workers ther wages and benefits while
he began to rebuild the factory. [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by Kirth Gerson
at 8:00 AM on August 30, 2007
(56 comments)
In 1955, at least twelve men in Boise, Idaho were arrested for
"infamous crimes against nature.". In the resulting dragnet, the vice president of the Idaho First National Bank was
sentenced to seven years in prison, while national magazines fomented a McCarthyite
Lavender Scare with headlines such as
Male Pervert Ring Seduces 1,000 Boys. This dark chapter in
Idaho gay history was documented in both John Gerassi's 1966 book,
The Boys of Boise and the recent film,
The Fall of '55, by documentarian
Seth Randal, but neither Gerassi nor Randal could identify
The Queen, a closeted but politically connected homosexual who allegedly used his massive clout to stop the witch hunt.
posted to MetaFilter by jonp72
at 6:39 PM on August 28, 2007
(45 comments)
Social Wallpaper.
A community effort to classify, rank, and distribute high resolution images for use as computer wallpaper.
posted to MetaFilter by Mitheral
at 7:08 PM on August 12, 2007
(24 comments)
One day someone will write a post worthy of
The Wire. In the mean time, here's an
article about and an
interview with Felicia Pearson. Apparently there are a similarities between her and "
Snoop", her character on the show.
posted to MetaFilter by Alex404
at 8:11 PM on July 29, 2007
(78 comments)
Watch The Guild!
Why? Cuz it's the funniest damned thing since Leeeroy Jenkins!
(more inside)
posted to MetaFilter by ZachsMind
at 8:41 PM on July 28, 2007
(62 comments)
