Pavement recorded a similarly abusive version—full of forgotten words, dropped notes, and disdainful chuckles—during a late-'90s BBC appearance.

To be fair, they do that to their own songs too.
posted to MetaFilter by painquale at 12:10 PM on July 21, 2008

As someone who is going through a major career change process right now, I've read a lot on this subject. There are days when full time work plus night class seems like too much trouble, not to mention too much expense. There are days when I don't want to give up this paycheck, even though I know my new path will bring so much more satisfaction. That's why I appreciate articles like this, because they remind me of how much I really do want to make this change, and that it's possible.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vytae at 1:14 PM on June 26, 2008

[catch-phrase]!
posted to MetaFilter by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 8:30 AM on June 25, 2008

Here's how you write about scientific studies for broadsheet* newspapers:

1) Summary of findings copied more or less verbatim from press release.
"Scientists investigating oxytocin, a natural hormone that assists childbirth and helps mothers bond with newborn babies, believe it could become a wonder drug for overcoming shyness. Trials have found that oxytocin can reduce anxiety and ease phobias."

2) Misleading but still... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jofus at 7:17 AM on June 24, 2008

Avenger: the debate rages in the form of discovery versus invention.

My own intuitive, uninformed take on it is that we discover the logical consequences of the axioms we set forth in the creation of a system. For instance, take i; it's an invented solution to the problem of the value of the square root of -1, but Euler discovered later that e to i * pi = -1. The rules of how these symbols operate create these relations that we... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by invitapriore at 4:45 PM on June 17, 2008

*Buries case of Orange Jubilee MD 20/20 in the desert, right next to all the copies of the Atari 2600 ET game.*
posted to MetaFilter by cog_nate at 6:56 AM on May 30, 2008

Your link to "military might" that s on "display" sends us to a Wikipedia page about the Red Army, which does not exist anymore. Here's the Wikipedia page for "Russian military"...

My Wikipedia link above has an interesting contradiction or inaccuracy. The Wikipedia article I linked to states:

Dale Herspring from Kansas State University said in 2008 that, "The Russian military will be back about 2010.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by KokuRyu at 8:07 AM on May 11, 2008

I'll have a Full Scottish most Sunday mornings. Oh yes...

Black pudding, chicken tikka masala, deep fried Mars bar, spoonful of heroin, and a swift kick to the genitals?
posted to MetaFilter by Sys Rq at 9:19 AM on April 18, 2008

Until that fatefu day comes when you can download pussy, I am fairly certain that dudes will continue to make and perform music.
posted to MetaFilter by Senor Cardgage at 4:11 PM on April 11, 2008

. . . : . . . : . . . : . . . : . . . : . . . : . . . : . . . :
posted to MetaFilter by ardgedee at 12:06 PM on April 2, 2008

I would SO pay a small amount to watch the unedited video with enthusiastic if inaccurate commentary by Murray Walker.
posted to MetaFilter by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:04 PM on April 1, 2008

Or, you know, not blowing it all on your military.
posted to MetaFilter by Durn Bronzefist at 9:32 PM on March 28, 2008

and a 13 minute performance by Tom Lehrer

It was very decent of you to post that part. Many of us would have clicked on the link otherwise.
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 8:05 PM on June 14, 2005

I almost didn't want to read it when I clicked on it and saw a picture of the Sex Pistols. Apparently, though, it's just that one of the musicians picked "God Save The Queen". One of the others picked The Smiths' "Panic", and others picked songs by The Kinks, Faces and Beatles, so it wasn't as worthless as I thought it would be.

Can we please put to rest the myth of the Sex Pistols? They were fake. They were manufactured. They were a fucking boy band... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DecemberBoy at 2:13 PM on March 5, 2008

• Wikipedia sucks^{[citation needed]}


• Wikipedia rules^{[citation needed]}

You can help MetaFilter by expanding on this argument stub.
posted to MetaFilter by DU at 5:20 AM on February 29, 2008

In other "record review goes wrong" news:

"There's a famous story about critic Richard Williams, who while writing for the Times in the early 1970s was sent a copy of a John Lennon/Yoko Ono album to review. One side of the album consisted of a single, unmodulated sine tone. Williams was initially a bit taken aback, but after a few listens began to enjoy what he heard, remarking in his review on how the record drew attention to imperfections in the vinyl,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by meech at 11:45 AM on February 26, 2008

A lot of the Ulster Scots identify themselves as "Scotch Irish." They are descendants of the of scottish settlers who were sent by the British to ensure that Ireland remained under the control of British protestants. They really had no power in Scotland, and saw moving to Ireland as a way to become landholders for once. They had lived there for 300 years, and at what point do you deny them their heritage also?

The Ulster Scots are quick to remind people that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mrzarquon at 1:05 PM on January 14, 2008

Did you hear about the prehistoric computer disk they found? Apparently this thing could hold about a trilobyte.

I'll be here all week.
posted to MetaFilter by kcds at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2008

Well said Miko. To expand a bit on that, most studies in psychiatric health and other conditions offer additional therapies to participants, whether they receive placebo or not, so it is generally not accurate to portray modern double-blind studies as "treatment" vs "no treatment/fake treatment". Most patients are receiving some sort of treatment as appropriate to their conditions, as it would be unethical not to provide such treatment. Point being, many of the patients in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mister_A at 9:37 AM on January 17, 2008

omg flapjax, that tiny Chinese girl is definitely a child prodigy. She's amazing and so funny how much she enjoys playing. Her joie de vivre is in keeping with the music piece. Loved that!

How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb? 1,000... 1 to change it and 999 to say 'I could have done that!'

Heh. Funny.

What is it with music posts that make MeFites either speak competitively or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nickyskye at 6:58 AM on January 16, 2008

Some ill-informed person: Why must we have a commercial replacement?

Some other ill-informed person: Music is mentally difficult to produce but physically easy. If I had the skills to sing, use music software, and use mixing software, I could put together an MP3 in my bedroom that isn't easily distinguishable by the common non-audiophile non-expert radio listener such as myself, minus the theorized production skills, from a rip of a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lupus_yonderboy at 3:49 PM on January 2, 2008

This guy's legacy has been tainted forever.

David Cross is a funny guy. I love his work. But I think what he understands is that he is never going to have a "legacy." Even if he had the possibility of having a legacy, I think it safe to say that he would immediately turn it in in order to get food on the table, or the place near the Deleware River he wanted.

People gotta get paid. This is the real world. The fact... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ironmouth at 10:38 PM on January 1, 2008

at my school they taught me to pee on other people's hands so that they'll go and wash their god damn hands.
posted to MetaFilter by shmegegge at 1:53 PM on December 20, 2007

...but I wonder how well the experiment translates from 1900's manufacturing work to computer programming. They require entirely different mental and physical resources. It could be that Game programmers are still productive at 12 or 14 hours of work a day.

I would suggest that programmers utilize far more mental resources through the workday than the factory worker of the 1900's did. I would imagine that mental fatigue is a much more serious issue,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Thorzdad at 10:26 AM on December 14, 2007

I liked the "cut-and-run" posters on Malkin's site. Specifically the "Saigon Embassy" ones. I think its funny because the purpose of the poster was to try and elicit shame ("Remember this?!?! You don't want this to happen again, do you!?!??!?!") yet most young Americans (and some older ones too, I suspect) probably wouldn't care how we get out of Iraq, as long as we do. If we have to send helicopters up to the Embassy again,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Avenger at 11:12 AM on December 9, 2007

At last, solid proof of the lie that is evolution. If we evolved from chimps, wouldn't we be better than them, eh Mr. Darwin?

Humans and chimps descended from a common ancestor.
posted to MetaFilter by delmoi at 6:08 PM on December 3, 2007

Evolutionary Strategy No. 8737437:
Hide inactive copies of yourself in the germline DNA of host. Wait for host's evolutionary descendants to evolve intelligence and invent science so they can recreate you.

For my favorite way to win evolution, I think this beats that Venter guy making sure his genes the ones that will be mirrored perpetually as the first-ever-sequenced.
posted to MetaFilter by TheOnlyCoolTim at 3:38 PM on November 27, 2007

I too loved the US SMB2 and the weird-ass legacy it left to the mario canon... especially the overworld music (but not the underworld or birdo battle music). Here is a fantastic big-band arrangement of that song by Estradasphere just in case you haven't heard it before.

My favorite thing about SMB2 in addition to the almost visceral physics that Greg Nog mentioned was the Extra Chance slot machine thing at the end of each level... I found it very easy to find the rhythm... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ulotrichous at 3:19 PM on November 5, 2007

From TFA:

"The key to excelling at Super Mario Bros.—I have no idea how to excel at the Real Super Mario Bros. 2—is to learn the game's territory, to become so deeply familiar with it that you don't even have to think about what you're doing. But to do that requires painstaking exploration. You can't just test each block of bricks—to uncover all of the game's secrets you have to test every single block of airspace, in case a hidden vine, extra life, or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Effigy2000 at 3:27 PM on November 5, 2007

Well, I'm a scientist. I work on equipment WAY more expensive and sensitive than any HiFI I've ever seen (even on Gizmodo).

I've used 4 machines that could measure mechanical measurements to sub-nanometre resolution. One of those instruments could actually function as the most accurate record player on the planet and is still cheaper than the most expensive record player.
I've used machines that can measure a single photon and what happens to it in a few... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Homemade Interossiter at 12:12 PM on October 22, 2007

Lemonade lesbians. What a bunch of sourpusses.
posted to MetaFilter by ooga_booga at 12:57 PM on October 17, 2007

How dare the musicians I listen to sell their work for substenance, while I'm whoring myself out at this corporate job? The true, unmitigated gall of it all!
posted to MetaFilter by Blazecock Pileon at 2:45 PM on October 16, 2007

Radiohead? Those guys totally ripped off Interpol, and Thom Yorke sounds exactly like the lead singer of Muse.
posted to MetaFilter by schroedinger at 6:59 PM on September 30, 2007

11.) Peremptorily and elaborately detail irrelevant material, that addresses the anticipated counterarguments of various nemeses, of whose positions the reader knows nothing.
posted to MetaFilter by StickyCarpet at 4:12 PM on September 12, 2007

UbuRoivas: "Seriously, this is similar to German aggression circa 1914.

Not a Godwinist, but I think 1939 might be the analogy you were thinking of."

An even better date would be 1940 (attack on France after successfully annexing the Sudetenland) or 1941 (opening a second front on the Russian side).

As a German, this is a problem close to my heart: in our history lessons in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by PontifexPrimus at 7:35 AM on September 3, 2007

Once, way back in the dark ages (like 1996 or so), me and some freidns decided to set up a really nasty egroup and see who joined. We considered "Felching Rabbis", we debated "Corpse Buggerers", but in the end we went with the simple "Sex With Fish" egroup.

Now, in the days before Yahoo assimilated egroups, it took a lot of effort to stand out in in the slime there. But without any marketing, advertising, publicity, or even posting,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by meehawl at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2005

piratebowling - Slipping "I don't like George Bush" into the conversation early on seems to work quite well, something my American wife and I discovered on our travels around Europe.


Its kind of wierd. I also had to keep repeating that I didn't vote for George Bush to get Europeans to trust me.

Oddly, it gives me a strange feeling to say so. I mean I'm all for burning effigies and stuff here in San... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vacapinta at 3:24 PM on August 28, 2007

Steven C. Den Beste :In particular, if this was a digital simulation, then Relativity would not be correct. There would be an absolute frame of reference -- the one the digital simulation was using.

Actually this not not so! Today's massive oline games have issues that are based on the real-world problems of lightspeed and space/time separation. The obvious algorithm that synchronizes everything on the main server doesn't work because the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Osmanthus at 7:11 PM on May 21, 2007

"And you know what the really crazy thing is? Our whole universe could be, like an atom in some giant's fingernail. And his whole universe could be an atom..."

"Dude, when you see the color blue, is it the same color I see?"

"Wait, wait, what if we are totally wrong, and we are, like, all just living in some kind of virtual reality? Like the Matrix dude?"

"Party foul! No one mentions the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by quin at 5:37 PM on August 14, 2007

A number of answers in this thread are based on outdated notions, or simply on the fact that one has read Gun, Germs, and Steel, which while entertaining is certainly not definitive. First and foremost, as for 1491 there were nearly as many people in the "new world" as the "old", the largest city in the world, therefore the place with the highest population density was Tenochtitlan, you may know it by it's current name of Mexico City.

Additionally... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by BobbyDigital at 7:13 AM on August 13, 2007

Well, I tried that and I ended up clicking out of Photoshop into Safari and ordering a pair of crotchless pantyhose from Amazon.
posted to MetaFilter by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 7:19 PM on July 10, 2007

Ireland, suspecting a Danish Trojan Horse, scrambles into remaining round towers, pulls up ladders.
posted to MetaFilter by steef at 8:09 AM on June 30, 2007

When I was in high school, I hung out w. a small crew of super-smart kids. We mostly “didn’t care” about grades, but at times we got a bit competitive. When we did, we always insisted, mostly not jokingly, that for the purposes of our competition, studying hard was a form of cheating. After all *anyone* could get a good grade if they worked hard for it...

It was a petty fucked up worldview that suffice it to say required some adjusting in adulthood.
posted to MetaFilter by ManInSuit at 8:09 AM on February 13, 2007

The bands that 'make it' now are hardly ever bands that have fought obscurity for many years.

This is demonstrably false, as there are many, many counterexamples. The only way in which it's not is if we don't hold bands to the same definition of "making it."

I agree that things have changed for all sorts of reasons, the Intarweb being one of the biggest ones. But I do think the ratio of good to bad stuff hasn't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sparkletone at 10:41 PM on January 25, 2007

Davy, evolution on a small scale is a testable theory with independent verification. Macro-evolution is a theory that is based on hard evidence, from independent sources, and all signs point to one thing; in addition, it is re-confirmed by predictions from micro-evolution.

Indeed, 1500 years ago, people believed a martyr's corpse would be in tact. Then somebody dug it up, and it wasn't. The scientific method disproved that theory by using investigative methods.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by one_bean at 10:16 AM on December 12, 2006

the issue not brought up: why did Hitler open a second front and thus get hell from both ends of the world, that is Russia and US /England? Or: why after chasing allies to Dunkirk, did he not invade England instead of letting allies escape ?

The answer to that question is simple--Hitler's primary goal in the Second World War was the invasion of the Soviet Union. He bailed on taking out the allies because he had covered his back for four years after... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ironmouth at 8:22 AM on November 17, 2006

I grew up in Bismarck, ND. In a religious family. My parents forced me to be around all kinds of sick fucks like these. I know they meant well, and were only doing what they thought was right, but it had a deep effect on me, and not the way they intended. The priest in their church, Corpus Christi, Fr. Steve Zastoupil, fucked kid(s) and got away with it. I still remember my dad telling me about the church meeting - people still wanted him to be the community's leader! But that's not what this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fake at 10:45 PM on November 8, 2006

Star Wars: A New Hope - Young Boy helps rebuild a world destroying space station, hands princess over to the bad guys in exchange for an old man. Old man and boy lose their friends, ditch some robots and then go and live seperately on a dusty planet and forget about each other.

You don't want to know what happens after that, it's rubbish.
posted to MetaFilter by Navek Rednam at 9:54 AM on May 21, 2006