How can I test and build up my strength, tenacity, and courage. As far as I can see, there are limited opportunities to test my mettle in the corporate world ( besides calling out some a**hole in the boardroom ). I am looking for things to do that will put me to the test and see what I am made of. I am thinking along the lines of CrossFit, 'Man vs. Wild', high stakes negotiation, or skydiving. The only time I can really remember being tested was a fight in 10th grade and the hazing I went through in University. How can I earn a badge of honor when I spend most of my time in a cubicle. I would prefer answers that would not involve the risk of certain death, although I wouldn't mind getting the living sh*t scared out of me. I also wouldn't mind pushing my mind or body to the limit. I am willing to travel, spend money, bleed, and cry.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kaizen at 9:16 AM on September 24, 2008 (54 comments)

I am looking for movies with only a few main characters and little to no secondary characters. The main characters talk alot about philosophy, or politics or love or something, anything interesting really. (more inside). This type of movie often takes place in a deserted locale for much of the film... a few people get lost on a camping trip, or stranded on an island, or they share a jail cell together..
posted to Ask Metafilter by JokingClown at 3:22 PM on February 9, 2006 (86 comments)

Resources for exercises for my feet, arches, ankles, and lower legs?
posted to Ask Metafilter by middleclasstool at 6:42 AM on April 24, 2008 (12 comments)

I have a “career” right now and I’m sick of it and the industry. I want to go back to having a “job” that pays me enough to live. But I don’t think I’ve truly reconciled things in my head. How do I reconcile within myself that I’m not a failure if I give up on my career and chosen industry and go get a job doing…something?
posted to Ask Metafilter by misanthropicsarah at 5:11 PM on April 1, 2008 (34 comments)

Could someone recommend a social exercise log along the lines of We Endure but which allows one to track more general exercises (like weight training) along with activities like running and swimming. Thanks!
posted to Ask Metafilter by sk381 at 12:29 PM on March 27, 2008 (5 comments)

What's the most economical way to make your house/apartment smell good?
posted to Ask Metafilter by tanminivan at 12:44 AM on March 26, 2008 (42 comments)

What can you add to a cubicle to make it less cubicle-like?
posted to Ask Metafilter by idlemind at 10:53 AM on April 20, 2005 (30 comments)

I'd like to learn a new language during my daily commute. What is the best language learning audio cd available?
posted to Ask Metafilter by zippity at 12:53 PM on March 25, 2008 (12 comments)

Polyglot Michel Thomas came to prominence through his work for the French resistance and the successful interrogation of Nazis (who had formerly imprisoned him). After the war he started to develop (and eventually patent) a method for teaching languages that eschewed notes, books, writing, memorisation and homework. Instead, words and phrases would be built up in lego-like constructions to provide “confidence in hours not years”. He gave private lessons to a long list of A-list celebrities including Woody Allen, Natasha Kinsky, Tony Curtis and Grace Kelly. A BBC documentary from 1997 told his story and tested him out with the less exalted audience of 16 year old London school kids pre-selected to be “incapable of learning a foreign language” by their teachers [YT pt 1, 2, 3, 4]. He was secretive about how his methods worked until the end of his life when he finally made his courses available as audiobooks.
posted to MetaFilter by rongorongo at 7:00 AM on March 20, 2008 (24 comments)

Working in an office is destroying me! What kind of work can I do that will keep me out of one?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Anonymous at 8:30 AM on March 14, 2008 (42 comments)

Meet the People of the Peacock Angel, the Yezidi. Theirs is a religion and culture centered near Mosul, Iraq, as well as Syria, the Caucasus, the via the diaspora in Germany. Seclusive and secretive, the Yezidi have often been maligned by outsiders due to misinterpretations of the nature of their primary Deity, Malak Taus (once a rebel angel who recreated the world and doused the fires of hell with his tears). Gurdjieff (pt. I, pt. II) may have been heavily influenced by them. Unlike other middle-eastern religions, the Yezidi have rejected dualism and, therefore, the ideas of sin and evil. Various versions float around of the Black Book of the Yezidi and other works that form their sacred literature. Wars, political pogroms and proselytizing have placed this beautiful, complex and misunderstood tradition in jeopardy.
posted to MetaFilter by moonbird at 4:34 PM on July 4, 2003 (14 comments)

We're all familiar with Peruvian ceviche/cebiche (and if you're not, you should be), but what about ají de gallina (shredded chicken in walnut-cream-chile sauce)? There's also papa a la huancaína (potatoes with spicy cheese sauce) and ocopa (the same, but with pecans and huacatay/black mint). Oh, and don't forget anticúchos (marinated beef heart skewers) or causa limeña (hard to explain, but it's like a really amazing potato salad). Peru has a substantial and long-standing Chinese population, which has resulted in Chifa (some debate on whether that's Cantonese or Mandarin), Peru's "indigenous" Chinese culinary tradition. A staple (and my comfort food) of chifa is arroz chaufa (from Cantonese "chow fan," --> "fried rice").

Peruvian cuisine is getting a boost of interest around teh interwebs, thanks in no small part to dedicated blogs in English (1, 2, 3) and Spanish (1, 2). Even Wikipedia has a substantial entry in English and Spanish (and French). And the tourism industry hasn't missed out on this either (warning, food pr0n & YouTube).
posted to MetaFilter by LMGM at 5:15 AM on January 23, 2007 (37 comments)

I'm a modern man, I'm a modern man, A man for the millennium, Digital and smoke free. - George Carlin hits one out of the park with the first four and a half minutes of this hour and a half Google Video. Then it's back to his stock in trade.
posted to MetaFilter by Happy Dave at 2:09 PM on April 15, 2007 (89 comments)

I would like to quit my job and go on a self-sustaining adventure. By self-sustaining, I mean that it would mostly pay for itself, cost very little, or both. I have money saved, but I will need it as a buffer when I return to the real world and look for a job again. For argument's sake, let's say I can put $1500 toward this adventure. My time frame is 2 months to a year. I'm open to anything from being a frieght train hobo to volunteering in a far-away country to flying to Sweden and finding a job washing dishes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Anonymous at 2:32 PM on May 1, 2007 (25 comments)

Is there anything I can take up as a hobby which will earn me money while getting fit?
posted to Ask Metafilter by refactored at 4:43 AM on April 16, 2007 (22 comments)

A communication primer. A pretty basic, but well-written primer on effective communication, and proper understanding of the communication process, barriers, listening, feedback and non-verbal hints. Don Clark's site contains a lot of well-formed ideas on leadership and human performance without resorting to mumbo-jumbo and buzzwords. Not your typical MBA / self-help bs.
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 5:31 AM on April 26, 2007 (9 comments)

The National Automobile Slum: I propose that we now identify the human ecology of America precisely for what it really has become: the national automobile slum.-- James Howard Kunstler “Can America Survive Suburbia?”
posted to MetaFilter by lonefrontranger at 7:58 PM on March 20, 2007 (46 comments)

January is Quarter Life Crisis Month on Ask Metafilter.
posted to Ask Metafilter by lemur at 9:35 PM on January 29, 2007 (20 comments)

The World Lecture Hall is a compedium of links to open university materials. Some include lecture notes, text books and even video. The OCW at MIT is probably the most well known but there are many universities that provide online access to course materials. Want to learn about medicine? John Hopkin's kindly provides some popular courses (Cadaver not included). Notre Dame provides a number of courses focused on the liberal arts. The University of Washington provides Computer Science and Engineering courses. Tufts provides a potpourri of courses, including dentistry.
posted to MetaFilter by substrate at 4:39 PM on February 24, 2007 (13 comments)

What do I need to do in daily life that I don't realize I need to be doing?
posted to Ask Metafilter by phoenixy at 8:46 AM on February 21, 2007 (58 comments)

What are some sneaky ways to get paid to go to a foreign country? Ex: JET or French Assistantship
posted to Ask Metafilter by mustcatchmooseandsquirrel at 11:53 AM on February 23, 2007 (18 comments)

I'm re-teaching myself piano and need suggestions for drills, scales and other practice material.
posted to Ask Metafilter by ninazer0 at 12:48 AM on February 15, 2007 (12 comments)

Moving to Colorado. Looking for advice
posted to Ask Metafilter by gb77 at 9:02 AM on February 11, 2007 (29 comments)

I want to make a mix CD of songs with harmonica in them for a friend of mine. What's your favorite?
posted to Ask Metafilter by pelican at 10:58 AM on January 27, 2006 (59 comments)

Within the last few years, I've increasingly had to fight off my own tendency to break things down into nearly infinitesimal parts in order to get anything done. For example: I'll decide to have friends over for dinner. I'll invite them. I'll begin to peruse cookbooks, see recipes I like -- how will the side dish go with the entree? Is there a better place in town to get the chicken as opposed to the asparagus? And the music -- it would be nice to have a good jazz soundtrack going -- Sketches of Spain -- no, no! -- Johnny Mandel's score for "The Sandpiper"! Which I have on vinyl. Somewhere... the next thing you know, I've been out in the garage for 45 minutes, trying to dig up my copy.
posted to Ask Metafilter by mrkinla at 3:38 PM on January 27, 2007 (27 comments)

The more I work out, the more I realize that nutrition has a huge impact on my energy. When is the best time to eat various foods during the day so I have the most energy when I get to the gym at 5:30 p.m.? And how can I meet my nutritional needs, given that I'm a vegetarian who likes less-processed foods but doesn't have a lot of time for cooking (and can't handle eating beans every day)? I feel like I need a lot more protein all of a sudden.
posted to Ask Metafilter by croutonsupafreak at 12:45 PM on January 22, 2007 (25 comments)

How to make a simple railgun to demonstrate the principle to children?
posted to Ask Metafilter by jjsonp at 3:07 PM on January 19, 2007 (12 comments)

The Bard Prison Initiative is one of a very few programs in the country still supplying post-secondary education to inmates. After the Congress eliminated Pell Grant eligibility for prisoners, these programs must be privately funded. Bard just gives it away. The great thing is, education reduces recidivism.
posted to MetaFilter by anotherpanacea at 3:20 PM on January 17, 2007 (38 comments)

The Dreaming (arguably better known as 'The Dreamtime') is more than just the story of how the world was created as told by Aboriginal Australians. It is also the basis for their way of life and death, their source of power in life and it tells of the life and influence of their ancestors on their culture. It was so important to Aboriginal Australians in the time before the white invasion of Australia that it was the one commonly held belief amongst a culture that consisted of over 500 different tribes (discussion of Dreamtime beliefs here). Thought to be the oldest continuously maintained cultural history on Earth, it is often presented as a series of inter-related stories explaining Aboriginal Australian origins and culture, such as how the Australian landscape was created or how the Mimi spirits taught them how to paint these stories on the walls of caves more than 40,000 years ago.

And what better way to learn of several of the many different Dreamtime stories than to listen and watch them being told by Aboriginal Australians elders themselves? And if that isn't enough Dreamtime mythology for you, here's some links to various sites which allow you to view Aboriginal rock art to see how these stories were translated into a form of artistic expression which is now five times older than the Egyptian Pyramids themselves.
posted to MetaFilter by Effigy2000 at 5:25 PM on December 23, 2006 (14 comments)

Argentina Didn't Fall on Its Own. (Single-page, printer-friendly version here.) I don't normally read long articles on economic subjects, but this one is riveting, because it links Argentina's collapse to larger issues of how the world of money works today.

"The time has come to do our mea culpa," Hans-Joerg Rudloff, chairman of the executive committee at Barclays Capital, said at a conference of bank and brokerage executives in London a few months ago. "Argentina obviously stands as much as Enron" in showing that "things have been done and said by our industry which were realized at the time to be wrong, to be self-serving."

...It is like "a bizarre AA program in which you remove booze from the homes of people who are reducing the amount they drink and put it into the homes of people who are drinking more every day," Pettis said. "This is probably not the best way to reduce drunkenness."

posted to MetaFilter by languagehat at 12:20 PM on August 3, 2003 (7 comments)

What are some possible career paths or jobs suitable for a helpful, problem-solving, researching, decision-making, disorganized, short-attention-spanned recent college grad?
posted to Ask Metafilter by phoenixy at 5:35 PM on December 15, 2006 (18 comments)

As part of my Peace Corps application procedure, I have been asked to do some volunteer work with an organization that assists people with HIV and AIDS.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bryanzera at 4:09 PM on December 12, 2006 (6 comments)

Lately I've been reading a series of books on the 'digital divide' between certain world cultures. I'd like to do my share of narrowing the gap, but I'm not sure what route to take. Does anyone have experience going abroad to teach basic internet and computer applications, OR has anyone stayed in their native country and taught recent immigrants? What was your experience like?
posted to Ask Metafilter by deern the headlice at 8:52 PM on December 6, 2006 (5 comments)

I am not stupid, but I know nearly nothing and will never change this fact. Help me accept this.
posted to Ask Metafilter by JokingClown at 7:10 AM on November 28, 2006 (50 comments)

I've got an idea for a web-based product that, when completed, could eventually make me a millionaire. I'm confident it would work, I've got the necessary programming skills and all the steps from beginning to end mapped out in my head. And yet, I'm completely unable to start actually doing something – anything – about it. It's been the same thing over and over again with lesser ideas and small personal projects throughout my life, and I don't know how to break the cycle now that I REALLY should. Anyone have any ideas?
posted to Ask Metafilter by lifeless at 4:45 AM on November 19, 2006 (29 comments)

Norm MacDonald on Conan - part 2 - part 3. From sometime around 1997 I think, he was sick with flu like symptoms at the time. Also Norm MacDonald on the Daily Show shortly after the death of Steve Irwin.
posted to MetaFilter by Paris Hilton at 11:01 PM on October 28, 2006 (30 comments)

Academics: What are your favorite research papers?
posted to Ask Metafilter by tasty at 9:26 PM on October 3, 2006 (23 comments)