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John Siracusa's review of Snow Leopard is an instant classic, as James Fallows sez: "an impressive piece of technical writing." Altho, "apparently OS X doesn't support huge pages." Apple's example, btw, may have wider industry implications/applications.
comment posted at 11:56 AM on Sep-5-09
comment posted at 12:00 PM on Sep-5-09

Next Tuesday, Sept. 8, speaking at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. President Obama will address the youth of America during a live television broadcast urging them to stay in school. Some school districts, bowing to parent pressure, have decided not to show the speech during school.
comment posted at 8:01 PM on Sep-4-09

FILM FORUM with Beavis and Butthead - The boys reappear after twelve years to shill for Mike Judge's new film, Extract, opening today. Is there a future for Beavis and Butthead? Mike Judge speculates.
comment posted at 11:27 AM on Sep-4-09

Alternative wine closures are being resisted. Alcoa's new glass stopper with Dupont's vinyl ring costs nearly the same as a cork (50¢ to 70¢ each), but requires new bottling machines. Although cheaper screw caps also prevent undesirable compounds from tainting wine, and eliminates the need for horizontal storage, they change the purist aspect of the bottle and are not biodegradable. Naturalists point out the problem of having cork forests disappear in the Mediterranean region from low demand.
comment posted at 10:44 AM on Sep-1-09

Lizzie Miller is a "plus" size model and a photo of her, sized only 3 inches, is making (some) waves in the fashion world and general media.
comment posted at 3:00 PM on Aug-29-09

Adam Goldstein, AKA DJ AM, found dead in Manhattan. Celebrity DJ survived a plane crash last year and may have died of a drug overdose.
comment posted at 12:23 AM on Aug-29-09

One in 8 Million "New York is a city of characters. On the subway and in its streets, from the intensity of Midtown to the intimacy of neighborhood blocks, is a 305-square-mile parade of people with something to say. This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions. A new story will be added weekly." A photo and audio series from the New York Times.
comment posted at 12:02 PM on Aug-23-09

Why you shouldn't text while driving (NSFW, dramatic reenactment of a car accident)
comment posted at 9:07 AM on Aug-18-09

Kevin Smith on patronizing a strip club
comment posted at 12:35 AM on Aug-9-09

Writer, director, producer John Hughes has passed away. Responsible for hilarious Vacations, quirky boyfriends, Ferris' Day Off, a young boy being left Home Alone and the Shermer IL multiverse. If you liked films in the 80s, you liked John Hughes.
comment posted at 5:37 PM on Aug-6-09

Pitcher Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox has thrown a perfect game. A tremendous sporting achievement; this has happened only 19 times in the history of major league baseball. Buehrle is the 17th pitcher in the modern era (since 1900) and the first since Randy Johnson in 2004.
comment posted at 7:50 PM on Jul-23-09

This is how to start a wedding. Totally and utterly SYTLy, but still the best thing I've seen this week.
comment posted at 7:45 PM on Jul-23-09

Tim Hortons, the perennially popular Canadian donut chain, is coming to New York, taking over 13 Dunkin Donuts locations in what some are calling the Doughnut Wars. There seems to be some controversy over the precise reason for the change. Want to know where to get a Double Double in the Big Apple? There's a Google Map! And, Monday morning, FREE COFFEE.
comment posted at 2:14 PM on Jul-11-09

The 10 smartest and stupidest iPhone apps , according to British technology website The Register. The smartest apps include things like personal databases, information tools and music streaming and identification apps. The stupid section is a morass of farts, poop, pickup lines and badly rendered, vaguely creepy pictures of girls. Idiocracy, it seems, has come early to the App Store.
comment posted at 5:58 PM on Jul-9-09

Google Chrome OS: Google says it will release a new operating system, built around its Chrome browser, which will be open source and will initially be targeted at netbooks. Shipment is expected second half of 2010. No response yet from Microsoft.
comment posted at 4:19 PM on Jul-8-09

A new stadium, paid for with public money, that is far too expensive (even after prices were slashed) for most members of the public to visit, especially during a recession. Bomber Bucks. $5 bottles of water and $48 for a lousy steak. Have the New York Yankees finally pushed their fans too far?
comment posted at 10:43 AM on May-23-09

Maybe Apple had never actually listened to the song Closer before approving the Nine Inch Nails iphone app, but Trent Reznor Twitted today that Apple pulled the NIN application from the store due to objectionable content. The objectionable content referenced is "The Downward Spiral."
comment posted at 11:42 AM on May-3-09

A recent Nielsen study which has been circulating the web indicated that 60% of Twitter users quit the social networking site after just one month--music to many Mefite's ears. But as one reporter noted, the study didn't take into account any of the third-party applications, (like Tweetdeck) through which many users access their Twitter feeds. Just three days later, Nielsen responds with a revised study purportedly them into account.
comment posted at 10:42 AM on May-1-09

US Pole Dance Championships 2009 (no nudity, but possibly NSFW) It’s significant to understand that pole dancing is not stripping. This misconception prevents pole dancing from becoming something every woman should be able to enjoy. Pole dancing is a sensual athletic dance form that demands coordination, flexibility and physical strength. Like the Jane Fonda workout combined with Cirque du Soleil.
comment posted at 3:32 PM on Apr-20-09

Baby Got Book. "I like big Bibles and I cannot lie." [SLYT]
comment posted at 5:31 PM on Apr-3-09

Apparently there's at least a 51% chance of God's existence. It starts out 50/50, like with pets. You have, say, either a dog or a cat. It's a 50/50 chance that it's one or the other, just like it's 50/50 that there's a God or not. Well, we exist. You exist. The earth exists. That nudges it up to 51%. If I understand this youtube gentleman. Hilarious exercise in smug delivery of ironclad logic.
comment posted at 9:56 AM on Apr-2-09

Why I'm Alone: "People ask me why I'm still alone, and why I don't seek to date much, eight years after my husband died. I thought about it the other day, and came up with a few of the reasons."
comment posted at 11:12 PM on Apr-1-09

FoxNews copy-n-pastes Focus on the Family propaganda as news. Longtime MeFi user owillis caught the fact that FoxNews took the press release of a supposedly independent student pro-life group called Live Action/Live Action Films and essentially reprinted it verbatim. Bad journalism, sure... but how does this little student group afford to send its people across the country to try to entrap Planned Parenthood workers, and how do they get big-name attention on FoxNews and other major conservative media sources? Well, it turns out that Live Action was rather quietly founded by Stephen Reed, who is a key surrogate of James Dobson/ Focus on the Family/ the Family Research Council... and the media sources in question have close ties to Dobson and a longstanding history of parroting his talking points.
comment posted at 7:53 AM on Mar-19-09

LET IT DIE: Douglas Rushkoff on the Economy.
comment posted at 12:37 PM on Mar-18-09

The Saddest Cat in the World by Maria Konstantinov
comment posted at 11:55 AM on Mar-15-09

What the Hashtag?! is a Twitter wiki (a twiki?) that explains most of those inscrutable acronyms and helps users find the sweetest tweets on any given topic. If you set up the TwitterBot, you can investigate hashtags on the fly. For other topics, though, you may wish to tweet your local librarian.
comment posted at 8:15 PM on Mar-14-09

Google introduces phone service. At the moment, the service is restricted but it should be publicly available within weeks. List of features and how they work here. Click on "Place calls" to see how basic calls would work. Highlights include free phone calls within the U.S. and reportedly lower-than-Skype rates for international calls.
comment posted at 3:13 PM on Mar-13-09

O.J. Simpson has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for armed robbery. Simpson will remain in custody if he appeals. He may be eligible for parole in six years. An L.A. Times timeline of Simpson's legal history.
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Dec-5-08
comment posted at 12:06 PM on Dec-5-08

Shaquille O'Neil's Twitter.<
comment posted at 6:07 PM on Dec-3-08

Of what purpose is a lap dance? Is it about alcohol and leisure? Is it an exercise in objectification? Is it a question that requires a lap-dancing body (phwoar!) to decide? Or Parliament? Should someone hold a seance and ask Paul Raymond? (previously)
comment posted at 9:13 AM on Nov-26-08

Alone Together. In American lore, the small town is the archetypal community, a state of grace from which city dwellers have fallen.

Yet the picture of cities—and New York in particular—that has been emerging from the work of social scientists is that the people living in them are actually less lonely. Rather than driving people apart, large population centers pull them together, and as a rule tend to possess greater community virtues than smaller ones.
comment posted at 4:46 PM on Nov-25-08

Despite the much-maligned economy, people are seemingly starting the holiday season early this year in Loveland, Colorado by "paying it forward" for strangers' coffee at a Starbucks drive-through. This has happened in 2006 and similar events were debated last year on the blue, which led me to believe it was not a real phenomenon. CNN has the video version of the first link with interviews of those involved. Maybe it's not a PR stunt after all.
comment posted at 10:23 PM on Nov-26-08

Attention world: We're back baby! USA! USA! USA! USA!
comment posted at 12:22 AM on Nov-5-08

The Wait is over. Microsoft brings Seinfeld and Gates together. The verdict?. Meh. (Previously).
comment posted at 7:40 PM on Sep-6-08

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Bernie Mac has died. Bernie Mac most recently seen at a Obam campaign event and King of Comedy has died at 50-years old. Known for his tv show based on his own life as caretaker of his sister's kids. .
comment posted at 10:55 AM on Aug-9-08

Paris Responds John thought he would be clever and use Paris in his campaign ad... Paris one-ups him with an even BETTER ad..(slyt) maybe NSFW if females in bathing suits are frowned upon..
comment posted at 8:36 AM on Aug-6-08

Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here "Over the past few days we’ve been transitioning Delicious over to our new platform, quietly starting with RSS feeds and APIs. Today we’re taking the final step and flipping the switch on the new web site".
comment posted at 7:09 PM on Jul-31-08

Amy Winehouse has Emphysema. The 24 year old artist, whose career has netted multiple awards but has often been overshadowed by her drug use, now faces a lung condition that can be slowed but never reversed, with effects ranging from shortness of breath to cyanosis and heart faliure.
comment posted at 9:38 AM on Jun-23-08

Tights Are Not Pants. It's time to stop the madness.
comment posted at 1:44 PM on May-31-08

"So I hit up a garage sale over the weekend and bought a genuine, working-condition Atari 2600, with a huge stack of games nearly mint in their boxes, for a song. I thought I’d scan the box covers and give you all a look back into the fun of yesteryear."
comment posted at 2:32 PM on Apr-22-08

Charlton Heston has died at age 84.
comment posted at 9:53 AM on Apr-6-08

Where has all the pubic hair gone? After sweating through the [eight-year-old girl's] eyebrow wax, Engle [...] was directed to give her pint-size client a … bikini wax. “But … there’s nothing there, right?” I ask Engle. “I mean, at eight? Am I forgetting something?” “Nope,” she says. “There’s not. Doesn’t matter. That’s when the mothers are starting them these days.”
comment posted at 9:54 AM on Apr-4-08

Obama's Gettysburg Address. Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (text)
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Mar-18-08

RIP William F. Buckley, Jr. Like him or hate him, agree or disagree, there's no doubt that he was articulate, entertaining, and influential.
comment posted at 11:21 AM on Feb-27-08

Heath Ledger found dead in Manhattan apartment.
comment posted at 4:08 PM on Jan-22-08

"I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)" Blogger Andrew Olmsted was killed in Iraq yesterday. He had been guest-posting at Obsidian Wings as G'Kar. hilzoy of ObWi has cross-posted his final message there as well.
comment posted at 6:45 PM on Jan-4-08

Netflix is dead. ...or so claims Robert Scoble (others disagree). Wal-Mart couldn't do it, Amazon couldn't do it; has Verisign produced a Netflix killer?
comment posted at 10:23 PM on Jan-11-07

Appalachian State University is HOT HOT HOT (A YouTube link).
comment posted at 11:25 PM on Jan-10-07