The problem of beer. "Since beer bottles are not (usually) pathological or “wild” spheres, but smooth manifolds, they separate 3-space into two non-communicating regions: inside, containing beer, and outside, containing you. This state must not remain."
posted by MuadDib on Nov 27, 2010 - 54 comments

The Great Rock n Roll Swindler has died. Allen Klein, who once managed both the Rolling Stones and The Beatles, died in New York on Saturday, aged 77, after battling Alzheimer's disease. [more inside]
posted by punkfloyd on Jul 7, 2009 - 26 comments

"In fact, while transactional credit provision is a perfectly good business, it might be reasonable for the state to offer basic transactional credit as a public good." Blogger Steve Randy Waldman has an idea that's so crazy it might work. He buried it in a nice wonky, obscure post about transactional and revolving credit, but now has been linked by Ezra Klein at his new WaPo blog. Will Metafilter heads explode?
posted by emjaybee on May 25, 2009 - 27 comments

"Like the dotcom bubble, the disaster bubble is inflating in an ad-hoc and chaotic fashion." Journalist Naomi Klein discusses how corporations and governments are working together more closely than ever, using the mandate of catastrophe — whether natural or man-made — to further concentrate power in fewer hands, with less oversight: from illegal sales of American police technology to China to avert hypothetical tragedies during the Beijing Olympics, to the privatization of water supplies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 17, 2008 - 50 comments

China's All-Seeing Eye. Naomi Klein's piece in the May 29th edition of Rolling Stone details how China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state with the help of U.S. defense contractors. And it's a growth market!
posted by The Card Cheat on May 16, 2008 - 50 comments

shock doctrine at work
Fisk documents the dismantling of Iraqi culture - Klein exposes the history behind the destruction.
posted by specialk420 on Sep 17, 2007 - 40 comments

Photographs of Manhattan 1964-1969 By Irwin Klein. Immigrants, storefronts, gangs, mafiosi, street scenes. More Klein here. My fave. First link via
posted by CunningLinguist on Apr 18, 2007 - 19 comments

Calvin Klein is releasing a new fragrance for our "technosexual" generation: A typical line from the press materials for CK in2u goes like this: “She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.
posted by monaco on Mar 8, 2007 - 65 comments

He liked blue. In fact, he patented his own blue. He like to claim that he could fly unaided. There was a movie. In it, he colored naked women blue and had them make a painting. The film treated this comically, and he was crushed. Two weeks after the film opened, he died of a heart attack.
posted by Astro Zombie on Feb 10, 2006 - 23 comments

Just what exactly was Calvin Klein, the Fashion Designer, saying To Latrell Sprewell, the Basketball Player? [Photo and more inside.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo on Apr 6, 2003 - 11 comments

After getting the inside story (ha?) on the inventor of everyone's favorite non-orientable surface, the Klein Bottle; and perhaps playing a few games inside of one, you can check out a few 3-dimensional immersions of klein bottles: in Lego, knitted fabric, paper, or glass.
posted by kidsplateusa on Oct 30, 2000 - 5 comments