MetaFilter comments by baylink

1630 MetaFilter comments by baylink (displaying 1 through 50)

How to Get a Real Education, by Scott Adams
comment posted at 10:15 PM on Apr-22-11

The best TV show you're not watching this season -- and if you're a geek, really; why the heck not? -- is Chuck, which is mired in the Monday Night Traffic Jam on NBC. It hasn't been picked up yet, but a campaign started by Give Me My Remote leaked over to (of all places) Whedonesque, (especially after a couple people pointed out that, like Buffy, Chuck is about a young person, chosen against their will to help save the world) and it seems to have gotten NBC's attention. I like Chuck for its acting and characterizations, I like it because they get the geek shout-outs right (like Al, in 'Pentiums'), and of course, being male and not homosexual, I like it because Yvonne Strzechowksi is just the most beautiful woman on TV, and Sarah Lancaster is a close second. But mostly, I like it because, the occasional plot hole aside, it's just fun to watch. So, if you do too, the most productive thing you can do, besides writing to NBC to tell them so, is go to their website or Hulu, and watch a lot of episodes the next couple weeks. Unless you're a Nielsen family. :-)
comment posted at 6:42 PM on Apr-8-09

Cops Hate Knives
comment posted at 6:27 PM on Apr-8-09

Rick Cook, the author of the 5 novels in the "Wizard's Bane" series of computer-infused light fantasy from the early 90s (the first two are available, free, and legally, courtesy of the Baen Books Free Library) was in the middle of writing a sixth in Spring 2000, when he underwent emergency heart surgery. The result of that, and the meds that followed — he says in his blog — is that he has the sixth book (The Wizard Recapitalized) about 90% complete, but can't finish it, and he wants to know if he should release it anyway. Not all that much
comment posted at 8:26 AM on Feb-22-08
comment posted at 8:30 AM on Feb-22-08
comment posted at 12:35 PM on Feb-22-08
comment posted at 12:42 PM on Feb-22-08
comment posted at 9:48 PM on Feb-25-08

To celebrate Tom Cruise's wedding, ABC News reprints the 1992 Ted Koppel interview with Cruise's best man, and spiritual leader, Religious Technology Center chairman David Miscavige. It was his first and last significant interview, and you can see why.
comment posted at 1:10 PM on Nov-26-06

Definite tech trouble with voting machines this year. I just attempted to vote at 3 different locations here in Denver. Lines were extra long due to voting booth malfunctions. Luckily they had a combination of old voting booths and new voting booths at most locations. Lines were terrible as a result of these tech failures.
comment posted at 7:46 PM on Nov-7-06

This short NPR interview with two guys that do negative campaign ad voiceovers is not to be missed. They cover buzzwords, types of delivery, and then riff on nursery rhymes. [via notmartha]
comment posted at 5:42 PM on Dec-4-06
comment posted at 5:45 PM on Dec-4-06

What to do once your beer is all gone All right, so you’ve finished your beverage. You’ve discreetly released the gas from your digestive tract via your mouth. And now you want to dispose of the empty can. You consider your options. Public-spirited as you are, you are too savvy to believe that you can redeem the pull tab for a wheelchair or a dialysis machine, or that an aluminum beanie will protect your brain from alien forces, and you are far too civilized to smash the can against your forehead. As a responsible, ecologically minded person you could recycle, but you’re also creative, and recycling would leave that artistic urge unsatisfied. So, perhaps you whip up a morning glory wreath for the front door. Or an airplane. Or a honeybee. Or the Starship Enterprise, a shark, a knight in shining aluminum armour, a piano, a hot rod, a Christmas tree, roses for your beloved, or Easter lilies for your mother. Or whatever else strikes your fancy. Then you have twin epiphanies: that you’ve entered the wonderful world of aluminum crafting, and that after emptying all those cans you urgently need to pee.
comment posted at 8:13 AM on Nov-7-06

The Fart Heard Round the World. An extraordinary performer, who farted for his living for 20 years, Le Pétomane (YouTube) was the highest paid stage artist of his time in 1897 France. He farted songs, impressions of people, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and farm animals, among other things. The management of Moulin Rouge had to hire nurses to help members of the audience who passed out laughing so hard. He was pusued for many years by an obsessed doctor. Two movies were made about his life in English, the 1979 short film (33 minutes) of Le Pétomane (Google video) and in 2005 Parti Avec Le Vent, which translates as Gone With the Wind. [more]
comment posted at 3:38 PM on Aug-20-06

Roman Numerals and Arithmetic
comment posted at 2:42 PM on Aug-19-06

New Line drops the SOAP today. After months of gags, comments, and speculation, the most-talked-about movie of the year, and one of the largest epidemics of viral marketing in film history, opens in theatres. So is the movie actually good? AICN says so. Rotten Tomatoes says so. And Samuel L. Jackson... let's let him speak for himself. And if you don't like it, go make your own.
comment posted at 2:59 PM on Aug-19-06

Media-opoly from Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse skit created by Robert Smigel broadcast in 1998 on NBC, a subsidiary of GE. Not broadcast since, apparently.
comment posted at 5:14 PM on Aug-14-06

They'll never piggyback on your wireless again Your router makes the computer look funny. (via MeTa)
comment posted at 9:01 PM on Aug-10-06

For those who worry that the concrete pillars around U.S. Federal buildings aren't strong enough to stop a motivated car bomber in an 18 wheeler, this video should comfort you. Similarly, for those of you who are worried that the concrete shielding around our weapons bunkers is not thick enough, this video should put you at ease. And finally, for those of you that worry that dogs & monkeys are putting aside their differences to team up against mankind, this video should lay that myth to rest.
comment posted at 9:13 PM on Aug-10-06

The Stephen Colbert "On Notice Board" Generator
comment posted at 9:32 PM on Aug-10-06

In 1899, the core of downtown Seattle burned to the ground. While the shops quickly rebuilt & re-opened, the city itself took the opportunity to rebuild the streets some 36 feet higher than they previously had been (ostensibly to combat water pressure/sea level issues), meaning that pedestrians climbed ladders to go between street level and building entrances. Eventually, the city laid down sidewalks up on the new street level, and the underground city was all but forgotten. Today, via a building in Pioneer Square, you can still tour what remains of the abandoned underground, looking up at the people above through the opaque glass sidewalk.
comment posted at 7:28 PM on Aug-9-06

Star Trek Inspirational Posters (page 2, zip file) available for download. And, of course, you knew you could make your own, right? (as seen on MetaChat)
comment posted at 8:19 PM on Aug-9-06

So my mum-in-law was visiting Dover Castle last week, when she spotted this 1940s replica postcard which she sent to me. It talks about how the stalwarts of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) supposedly took "bile beans" for things like nervous debility and "female complaints." This term always sounds (at least to me) so quaint and condescending; a search on it led me to the quackery of patent medicine, one of the prime purveyors of which was Lydia E. Pinkham (“Only a woman can understand a woman's ills.”). I'd feel smug and advanced about how far we've come if only it weren't for the resurgence of the term on herbal remedies sites. We may have come a long way baby, but we've still got some work to do in women's medicine, at home and abroad apparently.
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Aug-9-06

Google earlier this year joined Harvard, Oxford, Consumer Reports, Sun Microsystems, and Lenovo to Stop Badware and will now begin warning searchers of dodgy websites. Badware means spyware, malware, and adware. If you got the Google warning too late, cleanup with AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy.
comment posted at 8:32 PM on Aug-9-06

Can a user interface exist without clicking? dontclick.it
comment posted at 4:45 PM on Aug-7-06

Dead Ringers: the Science Museum asks us the question "should we upgrade our mobile phone?" "No" and "no" say the Times and the Observer, but we still do: on average every 18 months. What's the problem? Well it isn't just the lead, arsenic, beryllium and brominated fire-retardant cases (pollutants all) disappearing into our land fills (which are not covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive [WEEE] in Europe). Coltan also goes into our phones. It occurs mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and as such our demand for upgrades has been contributing to a war (despite mobile phone companies' claims to the contrary, coltan is not regulated like timber). If we must upgrade, we can at least recycle or hack our old phones.
comment posted at 4:47 PM on Aug-7-06

Effective Against Elton John. Amazon starts selling groceries online. People start reviewing their products. Hilarity ensues.
comment posted at 1:07 PM on Aug-7-06

Have you ever wanted to see an exploded view of a Formula One car? How about live and in person? via SpoFi
comment posted at 7:28 PM on Aug-2-06

Worst Ever Security Flaw in Diebold Voting Machine A single switch is all that is required to cause the machine to boot an unverified external flash instead of the built-in, verified EEPROM."
comment posted at 7:43 PM on Aug-2-06

THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) is an anti-missile weapon jointly developed by the US and Israel (at great expense) to track and destroy incoming Katyusha rockets. It had even been recently suggested to deploy it in Iraq. Unfortunately, it seems that the program was shelved in September 'cause it doesn't work. You know the rest
comment posted at 2:35 PM on Aug-1-06

MTV turns 25 today. Music Television, otherwise known as MTV, was launched with its first broadcast on 1 August 1981, 25 years ago today. Famously, the first video broadcast was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." Ironically, MTV evidently isn't going to acknowledge its anniversary on-air in any way, with a spokeswoman saying that "We made the decision when MTV was founded to always stay young and evolve with our audience. To do that, it has been important to serve our audience at that moment, not our audience of yesterday." This is about par for the course, though, since when was the last time that MTV actually broadcast music videos? A broader question: does anybody who wasn't weaned on MTV (or anybody who was, for that matter) care anymore?
comment posted at 10:48 AM on Aug-1-06
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Aug-1-06

One might think that in today's world of cell phones, text messaging and the Internet, you shouldn't write off ham radio just yet. Not only can Morse code be faster than text messaging, but when when you need it most, you can still communicate with the world [PDF]. If you're lucky, and the conditions are right, you might be able to chat with operators hundred of miles away thanks to tropospheric ducting. There's more to ham radio than just the old chatter, though: you can use the ham radio bands to operate radio-controlled planes, send and receive TV [PDF] (sort of), wirelessly connect to networks, or talk with astronauts.
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Aug-1-06

Pastor to Candidate: Prove You're Not Gay. The Religious Right and the Ohio GOP team up to address the important issues of the day.
comment posted at 8:01 AM on Aug-1-06

CleanFlicks closes up shop and liquidates as Hollywood wins content-rights battle. Should a rental store have the right to remove offensive material before renting the DVD out to its customers?
comment posted at 7:49 AM on Aug-1-06

New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 has been under construction since 1970 and completion is expected in 2020. (Be sure to click the sidebars.) City Water Tunnels Nos. 1 and 2 have been operating continuously since 1917 and 1936, and currently cannot be shut down for repair without disrupting the city's water supply. Popular Mechanics and BLDBLOG have articles, Newsday has photos, and 60 Minutes has an article with video. Local paper The Villager covers the construction of one of the many shafts that connect to the tunnel. It has inspired a one-woman show. The Sandhog Project covers the workers, called "Sandhogs," with photos, sound, and video. Over twenty sandhogs died building the tunnel.
comment posted at 5:59 PM on Jul-30-06

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the operating room: surgical fires. Virtually all operating room fires ignite on or in the patient. These fires typically result in little damage to equipment, cause considerable injury to patients, and are a complete surprise to the staff.
comment posted at 5:48 PM on Jul-30-06

U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Jul-29-06
comment posted at 12:53 PM on Jul-29-06

Anthony Bourdain, chef, writer, and TV traveler, writes about his experience in Beirut and his escape to the USS Nashville. Via. Previously.
comment posted at 1:51 PM on Jul-29-06

Blasphemy on a train. We've talked all about the movie epic of our generation, Snakes on a Plane, before, but now that its within a month of opening, most of us can't even sleep at night. What to do? Placate your anxieties with the direct-to-DVD low budget rip-off from The Asylum. What better testament to capitalism than a company like this succeed riding on the coat-tails of real movies about codes, pirates, and gorillas.
comment posted at 10:19 AM on Jul-28-06

Who's on first? The classic sketch from Abbott and Costello available for all to see on youtube. Many others have done the sketch since, or a variation of it, such as Slappy the Squirrel, Yoda and JarJar and World of Warcraft.Previously discussed
comment posted at 10:23 AM on Jul-28-06

The year is 1909, the man is Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.
comment posted at 10:32 AM on Jul-28-06
comment posted at 10:36 AM on Jul-28-06

# ^ ! & *
comment posted at 6:56 AM on Jul-26-06

"I'm Gay"
comment posted at 7:04 AM on Jul-26-06

I've really been enjoying Ken Jennings' weblog, especially his hilarious, satirical Dear Jeopardy letter (with later faux-correction (bottom)]. But some people don't get it. Michael Starr of the New York Post wrote at length this morning that Jennings is biting the hand that fed him. It gets worse: AP has picked up the story, which is where I first saw it: as a headline - 'Jeopardy' Champ Ken Jennings Blasts Show - on U.S. News & World Report. Ken has a response. Mine is disbelief...
comment posted at 9:22 PM on Jul-25-06
comment posted at 10:04 PM on Jul-25-06