MetaFilter posts by Slagman.
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241 titles on 282 disks, just $4,995 (after discount). It's the Criterion Collection Holiday 2004 Gift Set, exclusive from Amazon, all of the series' published DVD's through October*. One wonders who has the money for such a thing. (Not many -- current sales rank 26,154). Heck, for that kind of dough you can get one of these contraptions. Or, alternatively, you could feed 72 third world children for a year. Now, Criterion does great work, but as the comments point out, this supposedly complete collection does not include its out of print titles like John Woo's "The Killer" (current eBay bid: $148) and, sadly, the beloved This is Spinal Tap (High bid: $61). (At least it's a good investment). So, subtract the ones I already own and love, like The Third Man and some that are simply awful you could probably save scads with some selective shopping. Sure, it would be satisfying to own so much great film, but I find more and more I have no use for re-watching movies, unless I am joined in my satellite of love by some good companions. Anyway, happy consumer month!
posted on Dec-10-04 at 11:54 PM
Even paranoids have enemies... A Web site posing as nonpartisan that is funded by a GOP PR outfit and a Senate candidate urges people to call theaters to complain about their plans to show the Michael Moore film "Farenheit 9/11" when it opens. Some theater owners report death threats. The movie's infamous trailer has already been called one of the most effective anti-Bush campaign ads in circulation. So who is behind the censorship effort? Cosmic Iguana, "the voice of the evildoers", has some clues. Why, it's Howard Kaloogian, one of the men behind the Gray Davis recall, who also ran a successful campaign to kill an unfavorable CBS biopic of His Holiness the Gipper. Small world.
posted on Jun-13-04 at 5:12 PM
Boxing squirrels, the Kitten Princess of Winter, and the Birmingham Roller Diva with mouse skeleton are some of the odder exhibits in the Case of Curiosities. Taxidermy and assemblage inspired by fairy tales.
posted on May-15-04 at 10:13 PM
State of the Media Report 2004 by journalism.org, which seeks to improve news coverage in a more neutral fashion than those who cry bias from the left and right. The group offers advice for average citizens and others. The report focuses mainly on US media and identifies eight trends. The content analyses finds that newspapers have more lifestyle news than in the past, but less government and foreign affairs, even with wars abroad. More front page articles about issues, less on crime and disasters. Network news was heavy on foreign affairs, government, accidents, disaster, crime and health care. The cable networks had a lot of politics and Iraq stuff, but also a lot more celebrity/entertainment/lifestyle stuff than the big four. Local TV news treats crime as topic A. The magazine audience is aging, and total pages are declining, but some, like The Economist and the New Yorker, have found success in niches. Internet journalism is "still largely material from old media rather than something original." And it's still text-y. But it is clearly the future of journalism. But don't pronounce the dinosaurs dead yet. Radio once ruled, and in a way it still does: 94 percent still tune in to radio news at least once a week.
posted on Apr-1-04 at 11:01 PM
The Evil of Banality. "You should never, ever get on a plane with a born-again pilot." Recent entries in Slactivist's excellent line-by-line Christian deconstruction of a best-selling series that MeFi has discussed before. But this time it's really the end. Jesus is coming back, and it's front page news.
posted on Mar-29-04 at 6:38 AM
I thought this was an interesting review of this series from the New York Public Library. And here is some background information.
posted on Mar-26-04 at 8:45 PM
Bush lies about taxes
posted on Mar-24-04 at 5:40 AM
"We know one another, we Marvel boys." Jonathan Lethem, author of DC-referencing "Fortress of Solitude" ponders recent novels inspired by comic books and notes more allusions to the "iconographic" superheroes of DC even though Marvel, with its messy, never-ending, teen angst plots and imperfect schlub heroes, was always somehow cooler. Why? [Thx to Not the Beastmaster]
posted on Mar-22-04 at 11:15 PM
Archaeologists are denouncing plans for a tunnel under Stonehenge. It's not the idea of the tunnel itself that is drawing fire, so much as the execution. The govt seems to be doing it on the cheap, in a way that won't solve the problem of the modern world intruding on the prehistoric megalith.
posted on Mar-21-04 at 2:34 PM
"You've admitted what you are Fat Tony, now you're just haggling over the price." Thanks for the Churchill whore meme to RogerAiles, who flagged this comment by Justice Scalia: "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined." So, what is the going rate?
posted on Mar-20-04 at 12:18 PM
Vigilantes troll for pedophiles in chat rooms, set up meetings and videotape them. Then they out them at Perverted-Justice.com. The ensnared men sometimes exercise their "right of reply" to explain their actions. Huh.
posted on Mar-18-04 at 10:38 PM
An unusual solar object is the subject of a NASA news conference on Monday. The mothership? Or a 10th planet? Thanks to MemeFirst. (Related reading: Is Pluto really a planet?)
posted on Mar-14-04 at 1:59 PM
"The problem with this book is not that Jayson Blair told lies at the Times, but that his lies continue in this book. The book is a collection of patently ridiculous made-up fakery, with sexual escapades and other stuff that smacks of total fabrication. They are as absurd as the bogus positive reviews that Jayson slapped on a couple of days ago," an Amazon reviewer writes. After a grotesque publicity tour, with fawning interviews by Katie, Larry, Bill and Chris, war breaks out among average readers. Meanwhile, a new plagiarism charge, about the book itself.
posted on Mar-12-04 at 12:50 PM
Pickle's pickle. "The sergeant at arms is facing the oddly postmodern task of investigating a Senate leak of a report on the investigation of a Senate leak."
posted on Mar-10-04 at 11:06 PM
Buyer's Remorse? Mickey Kaus of Slate raises questions about Kerry as president, though as it looks like the Mass. senator has the nomination locked up. CNN reports that Edwards is dropping out tomorrow. And the polls aren't even closed yet in most states. CNN says the two men had a good talk by phone. Is this the Dems dream ticket? Meanwhile, Vermont screams for Dean.
posted on Mar-2-04 at 5:32 PM
Novels in 25 Words or Less: A contest at "I Love Books." Here's one entry: "I'm stupid, I'm smart, I'm wicked smart, I'm wicked wicked smart, I'm stupid again. And I have a mouse called Algernon." Some are funny, some are lame, some aren't novels. Give it a whirl.
posted on Feb-28-04 at 12:33 PM
"The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh." That's the money shot from this article in which Naomi Wolf, author of "The Beauty Myth" and former adviser to Al Gore on alpha male matters, decides 20 years later to accuse ailing Harold Bloom of sexually harassing her at Yale, when she was a senior. Why now? A stunt to put herself in the news? Or perhaps to breathe new life into a moribund city magazine. (While I'm at it, here's Google on the phrase: "boneless hand." Not alpha male at all).
posted on Feb-24-04 at 9:40 PM
Rejected 9/11 Memorial Designs are now online. All 5,201 of them. My favorite is the apple on a spike. Some question the taste of designs that use ghostly jet planes, pez dispenser-like structures or giant red question marks as motifs. Luminaries such as the inventor of the artificial heart and Marky Mark participated. Maybe there's an overlooked work of genius in here. Or maybe not.
posted on Feb-20-04 at 10:08 AM
Pro and con arguments about the iPod. The Pro argument: It changes our relationship to music. It creates an in-group marked by instantly recognizable white earbuds. The Con argument: It changes our relationship to music. It creates an in-group marked by instantly recognizable white earbuds.
posted on Feb-9-04 at 10:42 PM
Minne de vergine are rounded marzipan confections made by nuns in honor of St. Agatha, a Christian martyr who is the patron saint of bellmakers. Not safe for the Superbowl.
posted on Feb-8-04 at 9:20 PM
Al Sharpton... Republican stooge? A Village Voice investigation finds that his presidential campaign is being financed and staffed by Roger Stone, "the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount in 2000." Article details some interesting financing arrangements and reveals that Stone has bragged that he gave Sharpton the ax handle he waved at a NAACP meeting to denounce Democratic racism. Sharpton wants to teach the Democrats a lesson (as he did in helping to elect Republican Mike Bloomberg mayor of New York), and Republicans are anxious to help create a division with black voters. But black voters must have seen through him, refusing to give him the South Carolina victory he needed to speak for them at the convention.
posted on Feb-4-04 at 8:59 AM
Cure for Cancer: 72 hours of sex! A leading tantric sex guru who says he has counseled Whitney Houston, Princess Diana and Michael Jackson claims he "heals" women of terminal diseases such as cancer by sleeping with them -- 2,000 of them in 40 years, and his wife doesn't mind.
posted on Feb-2-04 at 8:29 PM
Farewell, Whole Earth magazine? A lament at worldchanging.com: "... spawn of the amazing Whole Earth Catalogs, source of the WELL, first to mention in print the Gaia Hypothesis, the Internet, Virtual Reality, the Singularity and Burning Man (or at least so the legend goes), the place where folks like Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold found their voices, and where a whole generation of young commune-kid geeks like myself learned to dream weird... " [via Smart Mobs]
posted on Jan-31-04 at 9:41 AM
A rant about a ranter who gets another 15 minutes starting on CNBC tonight. He was fired from Monday Night Football and his HBO show was finally canceled after the big-word, obscure reference shtick got tired. Much has been made of his post-9/11 ideological conversion, but there's a case to be made he's just showing true colors dating back to his SNL days. At least back then, this ranter says, he was willing to take on any authority figure, without fear or favor. But now he seems to be a lapdog of the power structure, a "Lenny Bruce in reverse." I still admit to a bit of warm feeling for the guy, maybe because it's still a little flattering to understand his references in this dumb-o-centric age. But he scares me a little, now.
posted on Jan-26-04 at 9:18 AM
New poll: Bush sinking, Kerry surging Overall, 52 percent of those polled by NEWSWEEK say they would not like to see Bush serve a second term, compared to 44 percent who want to see him win again...
posted on Jan-24-04 at 8:22 PM
The Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize goes to Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal (Faber & Faber). The winning passage, which described a woman as "endomorphically endowed," also included the sentence, "Your palms are holding her neck and thumbs are at her ears regulating the speed of her head as she swallows and then sucks up your machinery." Oh baby.
posted on Dec-4-03 at 7:58 AM
"I don't think I'd be disclosing any trade secrets if I told you that in order to sneak into something you have to have both momentum and an alibi. Momentum because stationery objects such as paintings and people are looked at; an alibi because you may get caught. I don't like to get caught because it forces you to use the alibi. I don't like to use alibis much because they are a variant of begging."
posted on Jun-3-03 at 7:33 AM
New FBI warning about imminent terrorist strike A bit more specific this time
posted on Feb-11-02 at 6:21 PM
Fantasy Space ...a laughable pseudointellectual discussion of an old, weird movie I first saw in high school when HBO was still Home Box Office.
posted on Jan-17-02 at 6:07 PM
posted on Dec-10-04 at 11:54 PM
Even paranoids have enemies... A Web site posing as nonpartisan that is funded by a GOP PR outfit and a Senate candidate urges people to call theaters to complain about their plans to show the Michael Moore film "Farenheit 9/11" when it opens. Some theater owners report death threats. The movie's infamous trailer has already been called one of the most effective anti-Bush campaign ads in circulation. So who is behind the censorship effort? Cosmic Iguana, "the voice of the evildoers", has some clues. Why, it's Howard Kaloogian, one of the men behind the Gray Davis recall, who also ran a successful campaign to kill an unfavorable CBS biopic of His Holiness the Gipper. Small world.
posted on Jun-13-04 at 5:12 PM
Boxing squirrels, the Kitten Princess of Winter, and the Birmingham Roller Diva with mouse skeleton are some of the odder exhibits in the Case of Curiosities. Taxidermy and assemblage inspired by fairy tales.
posted on May-15-04 at 10:13 PM
State of the Media Report 2004 by journalism.org, which seeks to improve news coverage in a more neutral fashion than those who cry bias from the left and right. The group offers advice for average citizens and others. The report focuses mainly on US media and identifies eight trends. The content analyses finds that newspapers have more lifestyle news than in the past, but less government and foreign affairs, even with wars abroad. More front page articles about issues, less on crime and disasters. Network news was heavy on foreign affairs, government, accidents, disaster, crime and health care. The cable networks had a lot of politics and Iraq stuff, but also a lot more celebrity/entertainment/lifestyle stuff than the big four. Local TV news treats crime as topic A. The magazine audience is aging, and total pages are declining, but some, like The Economist and the New Yorker, have found success in niches. Internet journalism is "still largely material from old media rather than something original." And it's still text-y. But it is clearly the future of journalism. But don't pronounce the dinosaurs dead yet. Radio once ruled, and in a way it still does: 94 percent still tune in to radio news at least once a week.
posted on Apr-1-04 at 11:01 PM
The Evil of Banality. "You should never, ever get on a plane with a born-again pilot." Recent entries in Slactivist's excellent line-by-line Christian deconstruction of a best-selling series that MeFi has discussed before. But this time it's really the end. Jesus is coming back, and it's front page news.
posted on Mar-29-04 at 6:38 AM
I thought this was an interesting review of this series from the New York Public Library. And here is some background information.
posted on Mar-26-04 at 8:45 PM
Bush lies about taxes
posted on Mar-24-04 at 5:40 AM
"We know one another, we Marvel boys." Jonathan Lethem, author of DC-referencing "Fortress of Solitude" ponders recent novels inspired by comic books and notes more allusions to the "iconographic" superheroes of DC even though Marvel, with its messy, never-ending, teen angst plots and imperfect schlub heroes, was always somehow cooler. Why? [Thx to Not the Beastmaster]
posted on Mar-22-04 at 11:15 PM
Archaeologists are denouncing plans for a tunnel under Stonehenge. It's not the idea of the tunnel itself that is drawing fire, so much as the execution. The govt seems to be doing it on the cheap, in a way that won't solve the problem of the modern world intruding on the prehistoric megalith.
posted on Mar-21-04 at 2:34 PM
"You've admitted what you are Fat Tony, now you're just haggling over the price." Thanks for the Churchill whore meme to RogerAiles, who flagged this comment by Justice Scalia: "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined." So, what is the going rate?
posted on Mar-20-04 at 12:18 PM
Vigilantes troll for pedophiles in chat rooms, set up meetings and videotape them. Then they out them at Perverted-Justice.com. The ensnared men sometimes exercise their "right of reply" to explain their actions. Huh.
posted on Mar-18-04 at 10:38 PM
An unusual solar object is the subject of a NASA news conference on Monday. The mothership? Or a 10th planet? Thanks to MemeFirst. (Related reading: Is Pluto really a planet?)
posted on Mar-14-04 at 1:59 PM
"The problem with this book is not that Jayson Blair told lies at the Times, but that his lies continue in this book. The book is a collection of patently ridiculous made-up fakery, with sexual escapades and other stuff that smacks of total fabrication. They are as absurd as the bogus positive reviews that Jayson slapped on a couple of days ago," an Amazon reviewer writes. After a grotesque publicity tour, with fawning interviews by Katie, Larry, Bill and Chris, war breaks out among average readers. Meanwhile, a new plagiarism charge, about the book itself.
posted on Mar-12-04 at 12:50 PM
Pickle's pickle. "The sergeant at arms is facing the oddly postmodern task of investigating a Senate leak of a report on the investigation of a Senate leak."
posted on Mar-10-04 at 11:06 PM
Buyer's Remorse? Mickey Kaus of Slate raises questions about Kerry as president, though as it looks like the Mass. senator has the nomination locked up. CNN reports that Edwards is dropping out tomorrow. And the polls aren't even closed yet in most states. CNN says the two men had a good talk by phone. Is this the Dems dream ticket? Meanwhile, Vermont screams for Dean.
posted on Mar-2-04 at 5:32 PM
Novels in 25 Words or Less: A contest at "I Love Books." Here's one entry: "I'm stupid, I'm smart, I'm wicked smart, I'm wicked wicked smart, I'm stupid again. And I have a mouse called Algernon." Some are funny, some are lame, some aren't novels. Give it a whirl.
posted on Feb-28-04 at 12:33 PM
"The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh." That's the money shot from this article in which Naomi Wolf, author of "The Beauty Myth" and former adviser to Al Gore on alpha male matters, decides 20 years later to accuse ailing Harold Bloom of sexually harassing her at Yale, when she was a senior. Why now? A stunt to put herself in the news? Or perhaps to breathe new life into a moribund city magazine. (While I'm at it, here's Google on the phrase: "boneless hand." Not alpha male at all).
posted on Feb-24-04 at 9:40 PM
Rejected 9/11 Memorial Designs are now online. All 5,201 of them. My favorite is the apple on a spike. Some question the taste of designs that use ghostly jet planes, pez dispenser-like structures or giant red question marks as motifs. Luminaries such as the inventor of the artificial heart and Marky Mark participated. Maybe there's an overlooked work of genius in here. Or maybe not.
posted on Feb-20-04 at 10:08 AM
Pro and con arguments about the iPod. The Pro argument: It changes our relationship to music. It creates an in-group marked by instantly recognizable white earbuds. The Con argument: It changes our relationship to music. It creates an in-group marked by instantly recognizable white earbuds.
posted on Feb-9-04 at 10:42 PM
Minne de vergine are rounded marzipan confections made by nuns in honor of St. Agatha, a Christian martyr who is the patron saint of bellmakers. Not safe for the Superbowl.
posted on Feb-8-04 at 9:20 PM
Al Sharpton... Republican stooge? A Village Voice investigation finds that his presidential campaign is being financed and staffed by Roger Stone, "the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount in 2000." Article details some interesting financing arrangements and reveals that Stone has bragged that he gave Sharpton the ax handle he waved at a NAACP meeting to denounce Democratic racism. Sharpton wants to teach the Democrats a lesson (as he did in helping to elect Republican Mike Bloomberg mayor of New York), and Republicans are anxious to help create a division with black voters. But black voters must have seen through him, refusing to give him the South Carolina victory he needed to speak for them at the convention.
posted on Feb-4-04 at 8:59 AM
Cure for Cancer: 72 hours of sex! A leading tantric sex guru who says he has counseled Whitney Houston, Princess Diana and Michael Jackson claims he "heals" women of terminal diseases such as cancer by sleeping with them -- 2,000 of them in 40 years, and his wife doesn't mind.
posted on Feb-2-04 at 8:29 PM
Farewell, Whole Earth magazine? A lament at worldchanging.com: "... spawn of the amazing Whole Earth Catalogs, source of the WELL, first to mention in print the Gaia Hypothesis, the Internet, Virtual Reality, the Singularity and Burning Man (or at least so the legend goes), the place where folks like Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold found their voices, and where a whole generation of young commune-kid geeks like myself learned to dream weird... " [via Smart Mobs]
posted on Jan-31-04 at 9:41 AM
A rant about a ranter who gets another 15 minutes starting on CNBC tonight. He was fired from Monday Night Football and his HBO show was finally canceled after the big-word, obscure reference shtick got tired. Much has been made of his post-9/11 ideological conversion, but there's a case to be made he's just showing true colors dating back to his SNL days. At least back then, this ranter says, he was willing to take on any authority figure, without fear or favor. But now he seems to be a lapdog of the power structure, a "Lenny Bruce in reverse." I still admit to a bit of warm feeling for the guy, maybe because it's still a little flattering to understand his references in this dumb-o-centric age. But he scares me a little, now.
posted on Jan-26-04 at 9:18 AM
New poll: Bush sinking, Kerry surging Overall, 52 percent of those polled by NEWSWEEK say they would not like to see Bush serve a second term, compared to 44 percent who want to see him win again...
posted on Jan-24-04 at 8:22 PM
The Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize goes to Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal (Faber & Faber). The winning passage, which described a woman as "endomorphically endowed," also included the sentence, "Your palms are holding her neck and thumbs are at her ears regulating the speed of her head as she swallows and then sucks up your machinery." Oh baby.
posted on Dec-4-03 at 7:58 AM
"I don't think I'd be disclosing any trade secrets if I told you that in order to sneak into something you have to have both momentum and an alibi. Momentum because stationery objects such as paintings and people are looked at; an alibi because you may get caught. I don't like to get caught because it forces you to use the alibi. I don't like to use alibis much because they are a variant of begging."
posted on Jun-3-03 at 7:33 AM
New FBI warning about imminent terrorist strike A bit more specific this time
posted on Feb-11-02 at 6:21 PM
Fantasy Space ...a laughable pseudointellectual discussion of an old, weird movie I first saw in high school when HBO was still Home Box Office.
posted on Jan-17-02 at 6:07 PM