"This was meant as a Christmas present for two girls I know who are 5 and 7, but I don't think I'll give it to them actually. It turned out a bit too
evil-demon-pig-from-hell-y for that. Now it's sitting on a shelf threatening me with its existence. I'm not quite sure what I should do with it."
posted by griphus
on Dec 24, 2011 -
69 comments
An Era in Ideas. "To mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks,
The Chronicle Review asked a group of influential thinkers to reflect on some of the themes that were raised by those events and to meditate on their meaning, then and now. The result is a portrait of the culture and ideas of a decade born in trauma, but also the beginning of a new century, with all its possibilities and problems."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Aug 13, 2011 -
11 comments
"What do we see when we look straight at the sun and then close our eyes? That's right, a bright moving disk that lasts several seconds. Every child knows this afterimage effect. We use the afterimage effect for a completely new brand experience, for the first advertising commercial that doesn't use a directly visible logo, but by doing so generates a more intensive connection to the target group. We developed a cinema ad for BMW motorcycles that turns spectators into astonished fans.
It does this by using an afterimage of the brand to literally get inside people's heads."
posted by grouse
on Dec 18, 2010 -
55 comments
A brilliant farce (or is it)
The Antichrist Conspiracy,
Get ready to dig deep into the world wide web of conspiracy. Learn about the Luciferians, the Freemasons, and the Metafilter-moderator-cabal who together with the dark lord of hell and Yonkers is trying to harvest your organs for Satan.
[more inside]
posted by nola
on Jan 17, 2010 -
52 comments
The diagnosis was only the first shock. The second came a few weeks later, in an Aug. 5 letter from Pat's health-insurance company. For six years — since losing the last job he had that provided medical coverage — Pat had been faithfully paying premiums to Assurant Health, buying a series of six-month medical policies, one after the other, always hoping he would soon find a job that would include health coverage. Until that happened, "unexpected illnesses and accidents happen every day, and the resulting medical bills can be disastrous," Assurant's website warned. "Safeguard your financial future with Short Term Medical temporary insurance. It provides the peace of mind and health care access you need at a price you can afford."
[But] diagnosing and treating an illness may not fall neatly into six-month increments. While Pat had been continuously covered since 2002 by the same company, Assurant Health, each successive policy treated him as a brand-new customer. In looking back over Pat's medical records, the company noticed test results from December, eight months earlier. Though Pat's doctors didn't determine the precise cause of the problem until the following July, his kidney disease was nonetheless judged a "pre-existing condition" — meaning his insurance wouldn't cover it, since he was now under a different six-month policy from the one he had when he got those first tests..... I tried to talk to Assurant for this story. Its only response was a written statement from Scott Krienke, senior vice president for product lines: "Due to privacy regulations, we cannot discuss the specifics of any of our customers' coverage."
posted by orthogonality
on Mar 6, 2009 -
243 comments
The Milgram Experiment Today? "Students commonly assume that, even if
Milgram’s famous experiment sheds important light on the power of situation today, were his experiment precisely reproduced today, it would not generate comparable results. To oversimplify the argument behind that claim: The power of white lab coats just ain’t what it used to be. Of course, that assertion has been difficult to challenge given that the option of replicating the Milgram experiment has been presumptively unavailable — indeed, it has been the paradigmatic example of why psychology experiments must be reviewed by institutional review boards ('IRBs'). Who would even attempt to challenge that presumption? The answer:
Jerry Burger, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University. With some slight modifications, Burger manage to obtain permission to replicate Milgram’s experiment — and the results may surprise you."
[Via MindHacks]
posted by homunculus
on Jun 19, 2008 -
60 comments
Questioning the banality of evil. "There is a widespread consensus amongst psychologists that tyranny triumphs either because ordinary people blindly follow orders or else because they mindlessly conform to powerful roles. However, recent evidence concerning historical events challenges these views. In particular, studies of the Nazi regime reveal that its functionaries engaged actively and creatively with their tasks. Re-examination of classic social psychological studies points to the same dynamics at work. This article summarises these developments and lays out the case for an updated social psychology of tyranny that explains both the influence of tyrannical leaders and the active contributions of their followers."
[Via Mind Hacks.]
posted by homunculus
on Jan 2, 2008 -
107 comments
Evil Villain Now Hiring I was looking for jobs this morning on craigslist, when I found this unique job opportunity. I have to say though I had no idea there were hollowed out active volcanoes in Maine.
posted by jackdirt
on Sep 14, 2006 -
34 comments
Sony steps in it again. In the midst of the uproar about the
Sony rootkit previously mentioned
here, J. Alex Haldeman found a
second sneaky piece of work in Sony CD's.
It's pretty clear now that the only safe way to listen to music from Sony is to steal it. [
via]
posted by pjern
on Nov 12, 2005 -
72 comments
Do you play Sony DRM-protected CD's on your computer? If so, you might be wide open in terms of security. It seems that
Sony is installing an almost-impossible to find rootkit on the computers of purchasers of their music. Their
EULA doesn't mention the fact that their "small, proprietary" program goes much too far, managing to bypass security software, firewalls, etc. You might want to do
this, anyway.
posted by pjern
on Oct 31, 2005 -
60 comments
The Crazy Frog / Axel F Song (previously mentioned on the
Blue) is about to make history by being the first ringtone / pop music crossover to successfully invade the British charts. How successful? A little band named
Coldplay also have a new single out; as it stands,
Crazy Frog is outselling their effort by a factor of 4 to 1.
People, this is serious. Prepare for some major league irritation to descend upon us. The success of this single will only spawn a legion of imitators, and that can only lead to the dark side. As
Malcolm McLaren, ex Sex Pistols manager puts it: "Listen to this song and you can hear the death knell of the traditional music industry."
posted by LondonYank
on May 28, 2005 -
40 comments
Did the new Pope swing the Presidential election last year? After brown-nosing the Vatican on the grounds of being pro-life President Bush convinced then-Cardinal Ratzinger to work on the American Catholic Church on his behalf. Ratzinger's response?
This memo where Ratzi claimed that anyone (especially a Catholic politician - like Kerry) who campaigned and voted pro-choice was not only on the side of
evil but was unworthy of receiving Communion and Americans probably shouldn't vote for him. According to Salon, this was perhaps what was behind Bush's 6 point increase in Catholic support from 2000, and the difference in the 2004 election.
posted by tsarfan
on Apr 21, 2005 -
48 comments
The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent
askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)
posted by andrew cooke
on Oct 1, 2004 -
17 comments
The world's
ten worst dictators -- this year anyway. Saddam, who was No. 3 Worst last year, has dropped off the list. Charles Taylor of Liberia (No. 4), also out of power and gone. Moammar Gadhafi (previously No. 8) and Belarus' Alexander Lukashenko (No. 10) also miss the new A list not because, according to the compilers, "they have improved but because other dictators have gotten worse."
posted by jfuller
on Sep 1, 2004 -
20 comments
Becoming Evil : Boston WTKK-FM radio's Jay Severin advocates genocide of American-Muslims - this is the advocacy of domestic terrorism. And not the mere targeting of civilians but the murder of over three million men, women, and children.
Why shouldn't Jay Severin be arrested and charged, under the Patriot Act, with aiding and abetting US domestic terrorist groups which advocate such violence? [Scroll down towards the bottom of the Globe story for a transcript of the quote in context.]
James Waller has studied the process by which individuals and society come to commit mass atrocities , and says of his theories:
"...[the] explanation simply allows us to understand the conditions under which many of us could be transformed into killing machines. When we understand the ordinariness of extraordinary evil, we will be less surprised by evil, less likely to be unwitting contributors to evil, and perhaps better equipped to forestall evil."
Hesiod Lists some of WTTK's advertisers : Purina, Hilton Resorts, 99 Restaurant and Pub, A.T. & T. Wireless. Still,
Orcinus is my favorite "rise of
extremist terrorist hate speech in America" news source. Germany has laws against such hate speech - which it believes to be so dangerous as to
override free speech considerations - But we've got the USA PATRIOT Act, right?
posted by troutfishing
on Apr 27, 2004 -
104 comments
