Most favorited posts in the past 7 days (24 hours, 30 days, all time):
A woman walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a double entendre, so he gave it to her.
Ba-dum dum.
What's green and has wheels? Grass. I lied about the wheels.
Ba-dum dum. A baby seal walks into a club.
(pause) Ba-dum dum. How many kids with ADD does it take to change a lightbulb? LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Ba-dum dum. A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
Ba-dum dum. Instant Rimshot. For all those times you need a big red Flash button that'll give you a well-timed rimshot.
(Jokes courtesy of Ask Mefi.)
posted by WCityMike at 7:10 PM May 12 2008 - 247 comments [164 favorites]
Contrary to what you probably think you know about hypnosis, it can be done very quickly and can be used to convince someone to do something they normally wouldn't--like, say,
giving away their wallet, phone, and keys to a stranger (English mentalist
Derren Brown). What's happening here is known as a
handshake induction, a technique pioneered by American psychiatrist
Milton Erickson. There are
other methods of rapid induction hypnosis. These methods, along with techniques of verbal suggestion, are used by practitioners of
Neuro-linguistic programming, a field which some have associated with Mr. Brown's performances, though
he denies it. I wonder, though, how he manages to get a cashier at a dog track
to pay out on a losing ticket?
posted by flotson at 8:31 PM May 11 2008 - 83 comments [61 favorites]
Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy from the collection of The Library of Congress. 373 individual pieces from ranging in time from the 9th to the 19th Century, all explained and some translated. A few personal favorites (note that very high quality scans can be viewed by clicking the appropriate link after clicking thumbnail):
marriage decree,
verses on tragic love,
practice sheet,
verses 10-11 of the 48th chapter of the Qur'an,
poetic verses offering advice,
frontispiece of Qur'anic exegesis and
quatrain by Rumi. There are also four special presentations:
Calligraphers of the Persian Tradition,
Ottoman Calligraphers and Their Works,
Qur’anic Fragments and
Noteworthy Items. This last presentation also features representational art, for instance images of
The battle of Mazandaran and
the Persian king Bahram Gur hunting.
posted by Kattullus at 5:21 PM May 12 2008 - 11 comments [31 favorites]
Look up any Zip Code
here, get lots of cool demographic data by entering it
here (make sure you enter a zip code, not just a town and keep scrolling down, down, down).
posted by Rafaelloello at 10:25 AM May 10 2008 - 27 comments [27 favorites]
With a pickup mounted on the body of the instrument just below the strings,
Revathy Krishna,
KP Sarada and Sivanandam and
Jayanthi Kumaresh get an unexpectedly fat sound out of their
veena. Rocking! The instrument is more often amplified with a microphone, in which case it sounds more like this performance by
D. Balakrishna, who, as you'll hear, ain't no slouch, neither. And here
Pichumani gets his
groove on, no doubt about it. So, hey, two more raags for the road, courtesy of
Rajeswari Padmanabhan. The second tune on her clip, by the way, has got some
deep blues in it, so I'm thinking maybe Rajeswari might've been down to the crossroads at midnight...
[NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:24 AM May 16 2008 - 28 comments [25 favorites]
100 Must-Read Books (for dudes) Men just have different ... needs ... than women, so apparently they need to read different books as well. However (as a chick myself) I tend to check this sort of thing out in a futile but ongoing attempt to figure out men. Hmmph. Men. Go figure ....
posted by kd at 1:29 PM May 14 2008 - 90 comments [23 favorites]
« All Popular Favorites
