AMC's Mad Men is the best show on telivision that no one is watching (now that The Wire has ended), it's the most adult, most stylish, best written show on television at the moment. And we say "adult" in the sense that it's subtle and complex, not in the "there's a lot of sex" sense (although there's plenty of sex).. Here is some outstanding in-depth analysis of the first episodes of season 3 (spoilers aplenty).
posted by Mick on Sep 2, 2009 - 153 comments

Japan -- Media Environment Open; State Looms Large (August 2009, PDF) [more inside]
posted by armage on Sep 1, 2009 - 8 comments

If you were a child of the '90's, then Regulate by Warren G and Nate Dogg was probably your jam. Here is a critical analysis of the song by comedian Sean Keane. If only all gangsta rap had such deep meaning.
posted by reenum on Jul 30, 2009 - 63 comments

"Shown backwards it is a heroic film about human experience: A man trapped in the logic of ghosts, trapped in a grayscale 2-D flat world, a photograph inside history, frozen in spectral finity: is unfrozen, and is lured outside of a maze where both his wife and son proceed to ‘undouble’ him and assist him in his war with his self and is finally able to drive away from the Overlook, from the lunarscape of this unreal summit and into a perfect mirror, earthmade."

An excerpt of a large-scale guide to the inner workings of The Shining. [more inside]
posted by jchgf on Apr 4, 2009 - 63 comments

They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money. "They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street." [spoiler inside] [more inside]
posted by dersins on Mar 10, 2009 - 38 comments

Some articles about Blade Runner
posted by nthdegx on Jan 29, 2009 - 59 comments

Driving Off the Map by James Clinton Howell is a formal analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2. If you played this game — even if you didn't like it (especially if you didn't like it) — you need to read this to learn what you actually played. If you've never played Metal Gear Solid, it's still an excellent example of serious video game scholarship.
posted by cthuljew on Dec 8, 2008 - 37 comments

What can one learn from the design choices of past games? John Harris discusses different game aspects, 20 games at a time, at Game Design Essentials. You can read on 20 Open World Games (where generally the player is left to his own devices to explore a large world), see your destroyed controllers in a new light with 20 Difficult Games or check out 20 Mysterious Games (that rely on algorithmically-generated content or emphasize secret-hunting), 20 Unusual Control Schemes and 20 Atari Games. What about roguelikes, you say? [more inside]
posted by ersatz on Sep 30, 2008 - 51 comments

Word Spectrum; SearchClock; Digg Rings; Bible Cross-references: the gorgeous analytical vizualizations of Chris Harrison. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Sep 18, 2008 - 17 comments

High performance kart racing is frequently misunderstood to be bumper-car-like "fun park" or "trailer park" karting in the US. [more inside]
posted by unpoppy on Jun 15, 2008 - 20 comments

The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations. For all your cartoon-related, obsessive and critical-thinking needs. Recent over-analyzations include Bestial Sexuality in He-Man and She-Ra, Evil Mickey Mouse and A Freudian Analysis of Beavis and Butthead. For quick fixes, check out the Mini-Analyzations.[Via].
posted by amyms on May 9, 2008 - 25 comments

An analysis of 376 recorded performances of Beethoven's Eroica (Symphony #3), broken down by such variables as the age of the conductor, length of the recording, and tempo variations. [more inside]
posted by pjern on Mar 14, 2008 - 25 comments

Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same motion picture soundtrack, reverse engineered. [more inside]
posted by melorama on Nov 17, 2007 - 58 comments

Dopey, Boozy, Smoky—and Stupid - Mark Kleiman of UCLA examines drug policy in general and offers some suggestions [via]
posted by daksya on Jan 30, 2007 - 49 comments

Now this is what you call an alpha nerd. I remember this guy from his inspiringly, excruciatingly detailed analysis of various routes he took into work, collecting data over a year.
posted by Mr. Gunn on Sep 21, 2006 - 36 comments

News Sniffer. It's a site dedicated to monitoring news articles and discussion threads at the BBC. For censored comments from BBC news threads: Watch Your Mouth. And now it has implementation that tracks changes in news articles, to see how things are edited: Revisionista. Here's a couple of examples.
posted by gsb on Sep 11, 2006 - 5 comments

Mona Lisa's voice finally heard. Even if you can't read Japanese, you can still click the buttons underneath each portrait to get playback. Works with Internet Explorer. Suzuki — a co-winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for promoting harmony between species by inventing the Bow-Lingual, a dog-to-human interpretation device — undertook the project as part of activities promoting the Japan release of the movie "The Da Vinci Code."
posted by nickyskye on Jun 3, 2006 - 16 comments

Beatlemaniac It took Alan W. Pollack 10 years to pick apart every Beatles song and describe in detail the mechanics behind the music.
posted by minkll on Mar 20, 2006 - 36 comments

Deaths from international terrorism compared with road crash deaths in OECD countries (Abstract). In a study published in the Journal Injury Prevention, researchers found that people in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are 390 times more likely to die in car crashes than in terrorist attacks. The conclusion of the Brief Report (PDF): "Policy makers need to be aware of this when allocating resources to preventing these two avoidable causes of mortality."
posted by mmahaffie on Dec 2, 2005 - 40 comments

A View from the Back of the Envelope - approximations and the fun behind them.
posted by Gyan on Oct 18, 2005 - 25 comments

Classic FM Radio Analysis scans play lists from various FM radio stations and allows you to make queries such as how often was Beethoven's Symphony #9 played, what are the most popular pieces played, who are the most popular composers, etc.
posted by RonZ on Aug 4, 2005 - 4 comments

Exploring enron -- A breathtaking web of conspiratorial email messages. How often did Jeff Skilling email Ken Lay? How often were those emails about company business? Internal alliances? The company's allegiance? The California energy crisis? Who else was talking about it? Who wasn't? Temptingly complete with software download and MySQL tables for your own tinfoil hat explorations.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 13, 2005 - 10 comments

Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler by Cornell University in 1943 has been released online. The analysis was comissioned by the predecessor to the CIA and declassified several years ago, according to The New York Times. This official analysis should be of interest to those who have been doing amateur analyses for years.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Mar 31, 2005 - 20 comments

Community Values, Corporate Profit and Pornography
"Popular culture isn't popular because members of the "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show" (to borrow a line from a campaign ad this year) are the only customers. It's because there is an unquenched thirst for it, and the corporate profiteers (who are members of and contributors to both political parties) see a nationwide market for it." What will we tell the children?
posted by nofundy on Dec 21, 2004 - 20 comments

Life imitates parody of life. Much like last night's Daily Show segment mocking the idea of pre-written post-debate analysis, here's the Associated Press' post-debate summary. And not a second too soon, what with the debate not starting for another five hours or so.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Sep 30, 2004 - 46 comments

Finally the NYT offers up an analysis of its pre-war coverage. "But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge."
posted by raaka on May 26, 2004 - 35 comments

Investigating the Renaissance. 'This interactive program demonstrates the ways in which computer technology can be harnessed to add to our knowledge about Renaissance paintings and how they were made.' Analysis of paintings using x-ray, infrared and ultraviolet technology.
posted by plep on Dec 23, 2003 - 3 comments

U.S.S. Enterprise analyzed. "For StarTrek [sic] fans we tested the USS Enterprise in our super-orbital expansion tube... We perform similar tests on other models investigating dissociation and ionisation processes which occur during atmospheric re-entry."
posted by tbc on Oct 28, 2003 - 10 comments

George W Bush analysed by psychologist Oliver James.
posted by Blue Stone on Sep 2, 2003 - 35 comments

Conservatism: resistance to change, simplistic black and white ethics, and the acceptance of inequality. In what's sure to be considered a controversial paper by many, Berkeley psychologists analyze conservatives to see what makes them tick. The criticisms have already begun. [official press release here]
posted by skallas on Jul 27, 2003 - 66 comments

People are talking. Now, someone's listening. Late-from-the-gate tech startup BuzzMetrics "analyzes, measures, monitors, & influences the unaided consumer discussions that naturally occur in online communities." If that's not spooky enough, they continue: "Some consumers have more influence over public opinion than others, but targeting them has always been extremely difficult." BuzzMetrics is happy to identify negative posters and research their posting histories, among other services. Does this toe an ethical line? Does it change how you post to online conversations? Oh, yeah -- they're hiring.
posted by busbyism on Oct 10, 2002 - 9 comments

A gaping but temporary hole has opened in the blogosphere. Will Vehrs claims that this week's PunditWatch will be the last of the venerated Sunday Morning political talkshow digests until November 5th--the weekend before the election. Who will step up to the plate at this critical juncture?       ...please?
posted by goethean on Sep 29, 2002 - 10 comments

The Football Prospectus is up and running. The good folks who work on the Baseball Prospectus have turned their attention to NFL. This is their inaugural effort. Their contrarian thinking and in-depth statistical analysis has (slowly) started to creep its way into MLB coverage. Can their unique take and historical perspective change football's conventional wisdom as well?
posted by herc on Aug 16, 2002 - 9 comments

Do you seem to feel anxious lately? Well answer a few questions, and Hello Kitty will provide a psychological analysis for you!
This is just a bit scary. The questions are a little bizarre, too.
posted by Su on Jul 22, 2002 - 18 comments

On Soul, Character and Calling: An Interview with James Hillman Therapy, or analysis, is not only something that analysts do to patients; it is a process that goes on intermittently in our individual soul-searching, our attempts at understanding our complexities, the critical attacks, prescriptions, and encouragements we give ourselves. We are all in therapy all the time insofar as we are involved in soul-making.
And here is a link to all things James Hillman. Having just picked up a copy of The Soul's Code, I thought I'd post something about Hillman here. Here's yet another interview. See what you think.
posted by y2karl on May 17, 2002 - 6 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

Propaganda analysis: A very interesting page on how to recognize and avoid emotionally-charged propaganda and political rhetoric. A broader question would be, how do you go about analyzing competing truth-claims made by environmentalists and anti-environmentalists, pro- and anti-gun control activists, Moonies, socialists, libertarians and capitalists? Are there any hard and fast rules you use to choose who and what to believe in a world of name calling and information glut?
posted by hanseugene on Jan 17, 2002 - 5 comments

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 by Slagman on Jan 17, 2002 - 9 comments

Search-indexing video footage? Dremedia's software can analyze video footage -- either raw or edited -- and not only identify nearly every word spoken but also differentiate between speakers and even understand when a scene changes.

And who said the gee-whiz startup was dead? Well, it is, but Futureboy still has rent to pay, I s'pose.
posted by scarabic on Jan 4, 2002 - 4 comments

"X-men: speed mutation" is a rich and fun analysis of issues of body, minority struggle, other-ness and the evolution of science fiction in the comic book and film idioms of the X-men. It may even argue that the X-men's overwhelming popularity is owed to something greater than stylized violence and skintight outfits: relevance as a cultural text.

"Immune systems are information systems. Biological space is pervaded and negotiated through exchanges of genetic data; biochemically, we are in a constant state of alienation from our "selves". ... The world of X-Men is inverted on its own processes and intertexts. Its gaze is focused on the technologies of the body and on the intersections between the body and the mind, the body and the self."
posted by scarabic on Nov 27, 2001 - 1 comment

Ok...now that '24' has aired... What do people think. Nice images, good story-line and good actors. The idea isn't new, but reminds me of a Nancy Drew episode.
***PLEASE NO SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!*** Not everyone has seen it yet.
posted by plemeljr on Nov 6, 2001 - 36 comments

But it is at times of bewilderment that the weapon of analysis and criticism comes into its own... If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind. Umberto Eco speaks in The Guardian.
posted by rushmc on Oct 15, 2001 - 11 comments

George W. Bush's Handwriting. handwriting analysis reveals: If you want something from George W. Bush, tell him how much you like what he's done so far. Tell him quickly. And don't try to push him around. You hear that Cheney?
posted by brucec on Jul 12, 2001 - 35 comments

Strategic Forecasters broke the story that the U.S. was spying on new Chinese Submarines a week ago. NPR just got the story out yesterday. They publish one free story a day. You have to pay to get the rest, but it's worth reading just for the one free forecast.
posted by Wong Fei-hung on Apr 10, 2001 - 2 comments

Global Trends 2015 A paper published “under authority of the Director of Central Intelligence.” In which, we find the CIA believes “US global influence [will] wane” and that countries which “fail to benefit from globalization, are prone to internal conflicts, and risk state failure.”

I can see Uncle Sam pointing and saying “Shapen up, or else.”
posted by capt.crackpipe on Jan 21, 2001 - 23 comments

Microsoft unsympathetic toward ending serial killings. "Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk held an extraordinary public meeting two months ago and asked the public for fresh tips. He even wrote to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, asking him to donate software to help analyze 10 years of homicide files; according to a sheriff's spokesman, Microsoft said no." => Lack of confidence in their software, or lack of a value system for MS?
posted by greyscale on Apr 23, 2000 - 5 comments

Are You 3000 Plus? Find out just how good your web writing is with this revolutionary online tool developed by the super-secret TSD Labs. Complex natural language analysis is performed to determine the complexity, readability, and likability of your writing.
posted by daveadams on Apr 2, 2000 - 5 comments