The Producer Cites Religious Controversy. The Director points to a recessionary trend against "serious" movies. A new film about Charles Darwin's life ("Creation") is reportedly having difficulty finding a US distributor. ( Creation: IMDB / Official Site / Trailer / Spoiler-laden review from Roger Ebert / LA Times review // Darwin: Previously on MeFi).
posted by zarq on Sep 13, 2009 - 70 comments

FRONTLINE: Ghana - Digital Dumping Ground On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the biggest fallouts? Identity Theft.
posted by Christ, what an asshole on Jun 26, 2009 - 16 comments

iD Software has been acquired by ZeniMax media. (Reports here, here, and many other places.) John Romero, the co-founder of the company, had some initial concerns but seems to have cheered up. No doubt a wide variety of retrospectives, histories, opinions and flames will rise from this most infamously-independent of game studios joining forces/merging/being swallowed by another, younger one. (ZeniMax was founded in 1999, iD in 1991.) With iD releasing games with years-long gaps between them, younger readers might not have grown up playing this company's output, but if you've ever run down a hallway with a gun bouncing earnestly before you and looking through a heads-up display, iD has touched your life too. Masters of Doom is an excellent history of the company in book form, assuming you still read.
posted by jscott on Jun 24, 2009 - 56 comments

Charles Pierce, author of the 2005 essay "Greetings from Idiot America" decrying the rise of faith-based anti-intellectualism, has expanded his rant into a full length book: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. (via) [more inside]
posted by zarq on May 12, 2009 - 65 comments

A visit to id Software, 1993. A must watch for anyone who's ever played Doom.
posted by WolfDaddy on Apr 6, 2009 - 49 comments

Prepare to feel old: Quake III Arena came out nearly ten years ago. Prepare to feel young again: Quake Live can be played in your browser for free. The long-anticipated beta opened to the public yesterday. John Carmack says that they hope to be improving and polishing the game for the next decade. [more inside]
posted by Plutor on Feb 25, 2009 - 50 comments

DOOM is a 3D adventure game with arcade-style elements. It was programmed for computers running DOS Flash 10. Here's the plot: your character is a Space Marine on the planet Mars, who uses guns his fist, and even a chainsaw to kill monsters from another dimension.
posted by Smart Dalek on Dec 4, 2008 - 85 comments

"You cannot overestimate how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down.", argues psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, part of a growing "non-material neuroscience" movement, an approach that evokes Cartesian dualism - the belief that the mind is not linked to the body, taking on the qualities of a soul. However growing the movement might be, others argue that the end of materialism is far from nigh. (via)
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Oct 30, 2008 - 263 comments

Guess who's censoring references to evolution out of David Attenborough documentaries? That's right, the Dutch. See the differences; here's a detailed write-up by a Dutch biologist and documentary enthusiast comparing the two versions side-by-side (in Dutch).
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 28, 2007 - 41 comments

Grandma's Kitchen (youtube), the Roller Toaster, the water-less washing machine, the sculptures of Gwon Osong, a crucifix-shaped mp3 player... some of the people and things found on CubeMe, a blog about "wonderful stuff".
posted by dobbs on Dec 20, 2006 - 13 comments

The design challenge. After some work on genetic algorithms was accused of having 'frontloaded' solutions, Dave Thomas issued the challenge - human design vs his mutating code to find Steiner Trees^. If the answer is frontloaded, it should be derivable. And now the results are in.
posted by Sparx on Aug 21, 2006 - 7 comments

Science is better: An enormous scientific study has conclusively demonstrated that "diet had no effect" on rates of women getting cancer or heart disease. Because the study investigated the efficacy of overall low fat diets, rather than the more recently developed hypothesis that saturated fats are the only pernicious kind, some leading medical researchers accept these findings but still think there MAY be a direct link between certain diets and major health problems in women, but (and here's the money shot) "if they did a study like that and it was negative, then I'd have to give up my cherished hypotheses for data." Now that, my friends, is a heartwarming example of one of the pinnacles of human creativity, the scientific method, which is under so much attack these days. . .
posted by twsf on Feb 7, 2006 - 29 comments

Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a Registered Traveler, and fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed here].
posted by digaman on Jan 25, 2006 - 52 comments

Don't mess with Kansas. Professor at the University of Kansas decides to offer this course, is beaten by unknown assailants, withdraws the course. Add "no sense of humor" to what's the matter with Kansas? [more inside]
posted by Dormant Gorilla on Dec 6, 2005 - 118 comments

Newsfilter: Vatican rejects Intelligent Design. The Vatican has stated that Intelligent Design is not, in their opinion, science and they do not support it. Their announcement is a part of the effort to end the "mutual prejudice" between science and evolution.
posted by delmoi on Nov 7, 2005 - 98 comments

That would explain the $3000 dollar curry on my mastercard statement. Some Indian call centres are making a bit the side. Seems a fairly obvious scenario in retrospect.
posted by strawberryviagra on Aug 14, 2005 - 20 comments

Why "Intelligent Design" Isn't. The New Yorker takes an informative look at the "factual" basis for so-called "Intelligent Design" theory, while an all too infrequent victory is won in Georgia.
posted by scrim on May 25, 2005 - 196 comments

How "Real ID" Act will affect you [CNET]
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service.
posted by dand on May 6, 2005 - 94 comments

I knew it would be proven one day...
posted by trinarian on Jan 24, 2005 - 36 comments

How strongly do you believe in your candidate, or hate the other? Would you purposely vote twice? How do you feel about a federal voter id card? And would you have a problem with indelible ink?
posted by tomplus2 on Nov 2, 2004 - 20 comments

I feel safer already! A US requirement for foreign visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed is being expanded to include citizens from America's closest allies, starting September 30th.
posted by johnnydark on Apr 2, 2004 - 22 comments

How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism: IDs and the illusion of security IDs and the illusion of security Bruce Schneier at sfgate.com writes about why ID checks are ineffective.
posted by tbc on Feb 3, 2004 - 18 comments

"Feminism" isn't the problem , it's Woman's Super Ego that's the problem. "...there comes a time in every relationship when a woman has to be tender and empathetic. If she can't or won't do that, it doesn't matter if she has the face of Helen of Troy with George Eliot's mind."
posted by vito90 on Feb 6, 2003 - 55 comments

Muslim woman to challenge ban on veil in driver's license photo Another example of how the fundamental structure of American society is built upon Christian monothestic values. Should she be accomodated and if so what does that do to the relevance of picture IDs? Further, what if it's against someone's religion to even have their picture taken at all?
posted by fooljay on Jun 28, 2002 - 65 comments

Oppose a National ID card , this article tells the many reasons and abuses of freedom that will take place.
posted by Budge on Feb 6, 2002 - 32 comments

No more false IDs on Metafilter! Now researchers in Italy have developed a program that can spot enough subtle differences between two authors' works to attribute authorship.
posted by rushmc on Feb 2, 2002 - 14 comments

Intelligent Design - Natural Selection guided by God? Is every facet of evolution guided by God then? What about fashion or politics?
posted by hellinskira on Dec 18, 2001 - 77 comments

XP demonstrates "Intelligent design." You mean they didn't evolve it with genetic algorithms? Boy, I could swear the past versions were composed of randomly generated code fragments. (Do read the original article.)
posted by badstone on Nov 14, 2001 - 7 comments

Larry my man, you tell 'em! If this article doesn't make you puke, then September 11th was someone's birthday and they did ATTEND their party. Er....the subject matter of the article is Smart Cards.
posted by HoldenCaulfield on Oct 17, 2001 - 7 comments

Okay, you are now officially allowed to be scared. Larry Ellison is not only calling for a national ID card, he wants it to be Oracle-based.
posted by aaron on Sep 22, 2001 - 31 comments

Gephardt wants Congress to consider a national ID card. As far as I can see, no bills have been introduced yet. The following quote from Gephardt makes it sound as though he has this in mind for everyone, not just foreigners in the US on Visas: "What kind of identity cards would we make citizens and others carry? Would they carry more information?"
posted by Potsy on Sep 18, 2001 - 28 comments

Three and a half years of effort and what do they get? By all accounts, a real dog. Romero's ass is grass, folks.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jun 2, 2000 - 1 comment

Apple is apparently tidying up their corporate image even more while riding the wave of Jobs. They'll be eliminating the 'computer' part of the company name and will standardize on a series of 3D-ish solid color logos. The logos themselves, look as if they were stamped out of jello if you ask me. The next question is, of course, how long until Apple gets feeling retro about their identity, and starts using the old rainbow logo again. Anyone remember their 70's corporate typeface? Motter Tektura
posted by grant on Dec 31, 1999 - 1 comment