Truth's Caper : essay by Simon Blackburn on Sokal's Hoax.
posted on Aug 18, 2008 - View this thread

The Kindergarchy: An essay on modern parenting.
posted on Jul 31, 2008 - View this thread

The End Of The World As We Know It. If you want to imagine the catastrophe - how you would cope, what would you do to save yourself and your family - where do you turn for advice?... The idea of dying together, all of us, in some ways seems less appalling than the thought of going alone. Via.
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread

How I Want To Be Remembered by Jack Handey. He was fabulously wealthy, but he would pretend to be broke, and often tried to borrow cigarettes and money from people. Little did they know that those who gave him stuff would later be rewarded in his will, with jewels and antigravity helmets. You may know Jack Handey from his Deep Thoughts which first gained fame on as filler between sketches on Saturday Night Live. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker (scroll down this page for his other essays).
posted on Mar 31, 2008 - View this thread

An essay by Bill Lawrence, creator of "Scrubs," on why he writes. It's part of a series: "Why We Write."
posted on Mar 16, 2008 - View this thread

English As A Second Language: "In which our heroine helps a Japanese friend find where the Goonies lived. Sort of." A recent essay from Emily's World, a biweekly column written by Emily Maloney, at The Smart Set.
posted on Mar 15, 2008 - View this thread

"The Worst Addiction of Them All", by Kurt Vonnegut, 1983. A classic and prescient essay on addiction to war.
posted on Feb 1, 2008 - View this thread

"Reflections on White Privilege" by Tad Lawrence, dean of faculty, Cambridge School of Weston "That white Americans would send cards such as the ones I will show you for the most ordinary of purposes indicates the frightening extent to which they had internalized, accepted and condoned the presentation of African Americans that were the public face of the cards they sent."
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

Unqualified Reservations is a fascinating ongoing commentary on society and governance in postmodernity. He's currently on about the pwning of Richard Dawkins, after writing about Mediocracy and Official Journalism. It might be best to first read his earlier posts in which he defines the self-invented terminology he's fond of using, like: Formalism, The Iron Polygon, Universalism, Neocameralism, and The Rotary System.
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

Errol Morris, documentary filmmaker, talking pictures in the N.Y.Times. The comments are not bad either. (previously)
posted on Jul 20, 2007 - View this thread

Matt Nicholson's Breast Punishment Primer discusses the history of tit torture, the anatomy of breasts and the motivation for torturing one (or two), and various manners in which one might torture a tit. That and tit torture trivia. All links NSFW.
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

"Some legal experts said the charge against Allen Lee is troubling because it was over an essay that even police admit contained no direct threats against anyone at the school." Newsfilter: A high school senior is arrested for a "disturbing" essay in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting.
posted on Apr 26, 2007 - View this thread

Mysterious number 6174. An excellent recreational math article.
posted on Jan 13, 2007 - View this thread

No language, just sound: How writer Ned Raggett came to ignore the lyrics.
posted on Sep 6, 2006 - View this thread

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. An essay by Jaron Lanier.
posted on Aug 15, 2006 - View this thread

Queen Street: Thematic Preview - "Queen Street is one of Toronto's oldest, longest, and most varied routes. It began in 1793 as a line on a map, running dead straight for ten miles, in modern measure some 16 kilometres. It is the spine, the high street, the main street of many distinct, and quite different, neighbourhoods. The street's fine grain is a cavalcade of urban variety, where the grain is broken by parks, institutions, industry. Queen Street is a promenade of public life, one you can stroll for 16 kilometres. I have, all of it, often camera in hand: I wanted others to see it, to know something of its life. And its gifts — meant to be shared. Here I'll share with you some of what I have seen along, and just off, Queen Street."
posted on Aug 3, 2006 - View this thread

Ever Wonder? "[H]oping to push existing boundaries, this paper will put the accumulated knowledge of two animals to the ultimate test, in an attempt to answer the age-old question of who would win in a fight between a penguin and a lemur. Courtesy of MeFi's own Milkman Dan.
posted on Jul 28, 2006 - View this thread

Auden and Christianity "The notion that religious faith and serious thought are mutually exclusive categories always struck Auden as risible and unintelligible. But he would have bristled at an effort to separate out his religious beliefs and restate them as systematic propositions, or examine them independently or thematically, rather than see them as players in his rich and various inner symbolic drama."
posted on May 26, 2006 - View this thread

Camille Paglia How should the humanities be taught, and how should scholars in the humanities be trained? These pivotal questions confront universities today amid signs of spreading agreement that the three-decade era of poststructuralism and postmodernism is over.
posted on Apr 29, 2006 - View this thread

The Chernobyl Legacy
posted on Apr 25, 2006 - View this thread

In Praise of Loopholes, simply put, is a great story and an example of fine writing you can only find online. (From our own shadowkeeper).
posted on Apr 25, 2006 - View this thread

Debris. The terminus of ballistic arches. A photo-essay by Jonas Bendiksen of a different kind of space junk: Proton rocket stages peppering the Khazak countryside discarded from Baikonur Cosmodrome launches.
posted on Apr 12, 2006 - View this thread

President Jonah --an essay/history lesson/bible lesson/etc by Gore Vidal. ...We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define ...
posted on Jan 28, 2006 - View this thread

Your Guess Is as Good as Mine --by Kurt Vonnegut (it's an excerpt from his new book)
posted on Dec 12, 2005 - View this thread

How to learn about difficult things
posted on Oct 26, 2005 - View this thread

Submitted for your approval. Very cool essay from Jonathan Lethem on the life of Rod Serling.
posted on Aug 15, 2005 - View this thread

Planes, Trains, and Plantains, or the Greatest Essay Ever Written.
posted on Jan 14, 2005 - View this thread

Do you want to be a writer? "Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?... Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too -- the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that." Luminous and wise writing advice from Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, one of the most beautiful books written in the last hundred years (published when Dillard was 29). As a writer myself, I am often asked by younger folk how to become one. Dillard says best what I would tell them.
posted on Jan 10, 2005 - View this thread

A Picture of the Future, You're not in It An address to the John F. Kennedy School of Government...September 11th, 2011
posted on Jan 9, 2005 - View this thread

A right that ends in sorrow , aka the difficulty of standing up for something that really sucks. (via Amy Sullivan)
posted on Dec 16, 2004 - View this thread

Nominations for the best software essays of 2004. There's lots of reading here, pardners, and much of it is great.
posted on Dec 3, 2004 - View this thread

The Iraq problem solved. George Saunders has got it all figured out. (from the New Yorker natch.)
posted on Nov 30, 2004 - View this thread

"Ironic Detachment as an Escape from Routine" by Christopher Lasch ; Compared to What by Eugene McDaniels as performed by Les McCann ; What Is Cynical Reason? Peter Sloterdijk Explains ; Rainer Maria Rilke on Being and the Transitory ; Albert Einstein on Intellectuals and the Masses, Specialization and the Division of Labor, and the Quality of Life ; T.W. Adorno on Zen Buddhism ; Temporarily Humboldt County and Pondering the Spirit World with Seinfeld--just a taste of The Autodidact Project by Ralph Dumain (Librarian-Archivist-Information Specialist Researcher-Scholar) Can you dig it?
posted on Nov 16, 2004 - View this thread

How it is that we have come to invade iraq Zen teacher Sevan Ross, on the reasons for our invasion of Iraq.
posted on Nov 8, 2004 - View this thread

Web of Influence Every day, millions of online diarists, or “bloggers,” share their opinions with a global audience. Drawing upon the content of the international media and the World Wide Web, they weave together an elaborate network with agenda-setting power on issues ranging from human rights in China to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. What began as a hobby is evolving into a new medium that is changing the landscape for journalists and policymakers alike. Hmm. Big Talk or should I get a clue & with the program ? Decisions, decisions....
posted on Nov 4, 2004 - View this thread

The Great Bear in Maine.
posted on Oct 28, 2004 - View this thread

An unusually long article about ketchup. Fascinating, I swear.
posted on Oct 16, 2004 - View this thread

Western dominance, Islamist terror, and the Arab imagination, by Sadik J. Al-Azm, emeritus professor at the University of Damascus. (via Aldaily)
posted on Oct 15, 2004 - View this thread

Essay on the meanings and significance of Blade Runner. Interesting insights on particular scenes and quotes and how they are more relevant today than ever.
posted on Sep 13, 2004 - View this thread

Oh Rob! What it was like to be in the studio audience of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Nice essay from Mark Evanier.
posted on Aug 5, 2004 - View this thread

Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Lamentations of the Father. Something to give all parents a chuckle.
posted on Jul 14, 2004 - View this thread

So You Think You Might Be A Writer? Just because you write? An astute essay by Joseph Epstein poses the uncomfortable question: are you weird enough? There's something very unnatural and unhealthy about writing (as opposed to reading, for instance) - but what is it? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted on Apr 19, 2004 - View this thread

Snark. In the newest issue of Bookforum, critic Sven Birkerts ruminates on what he considers to be the regrettable rise of the snarky book review, taking as his starting example Dale Peck's hatchet job on Rick Moody, written in 2002. "Psychologically [the literary] landscape [is one that is] subtly demoralized by the slash-and-burn of bottom-line economics; the modernist/humanist assumption of art and social criticism marching forward, leading the way, has not recovered from the wholesale flight of academia into theory; the publishing world remains tyrannized in acquisition, marketing, and sales by the mentality of the blockbuster; the confident authority of print journalism has been challenged by the proliferation of online alternatives. [...] All of this leads, and not all that circuitously, to the question of snark, the spirit of negativity, the personal animus pushing ahead of the intellectual or critical agenda. Snark is, I believe, prompted by the terrible vacuum feeling of not mattering, not connecting, not being heard; it is fueled by rage at the same."
posted on Apr 4, 2004 - View this thread

America's Anti-family Experiment. Orson Scott Card weighs in on how same sex marraiges are destroying America. Presented purely for your edification.
posted on Feb 26, 2004 - View this thread

Can't Get No Satisfaction - This unassuming essay (it's in a state of half-decay with missing figures) is a fascinating (and accessible) overview of phase transitions in NP systems (it explains those terms). In other words: complex physical systems and difficult problems in computing are related. The seminal paper is here, and this is a list of other essays by the same author (links at foot of page).
posted on Feb 5, 2004 - View this thread

How I Sent My Father to Heaven. A Hindu funeral. 'My non-believing heart had melted and I once again saluted my father's dedication to my mother. '
New content on The Call of Yama, a page about death and dying in Hinduism (and part of Kamat's Potpourri, a huge personal site devoted to Indian culture, history, art and scenery).
posted on Dec 10, 2003 - View this thread

The Abduction of Modernity. "Western thinkers, many of whom cannot speak or read any non-Western language, are held back in their analysis of modern civilization by the assumption that modernity is an exclusive characteristic of the West. At a time when the sole superpower is resurrecting the practice of imposing national will by military might, Henry C K Liu examines this assumption in a series of articles." Part 1: The race toward barbarism, Part 2: That old time religion, Part 3: Rule of law vs Confucianism, Part 4: Taoism and modernity, Part 5: The Enlightenment and modernity, Part 6a: Imperialism as modernity, Part 6b: Imperialism and fragmentation, Part 6c: Imperialism resisted.
posted on Oct 15, 2003 - View this thread

How Important Is Religious Belief In The Definition Of Our Personality? I would say not at all, but Bernard Lewis's essay gave me pause. Bringing it all back home and wondering about MetaFilter's religious breakdown, does the fact that there are far more atheists, Jews (like me) and Mormons here than in the Western population at large, make any difference? Christians get a hard time here, in my opinion. Is it because, as Lewis says: "Tolerance was a much more difficult question for Christians"? Atheists, Jews and Buddhists seem to have a disproportionately large influence. Whereas Muslims, sadly, hardly get a look-in. What does this mean? That is, if it means anything?
posted on Apr 18, 2003 - View this thread

"This war's musical outcry is no different from those of the past, with one gleaming caveat. Whatever your feelings on folk music, most of the new protest songs concerning the war in Iraq -- how to put this maturely -- suck fetid donkey biscuits. This is the worst dreck ever to to be digitized 'n' downloaded."
posted on Apr 8, 2003 - View this thread

The troll gap - Despite heroic American efforts such as the "Kick/nuke their ass and take the gas" troll, "Each year, the Institute for Comparative Troll Studies publishes a report on the state of trolling vis a vis national security of the United States. This year, the outlook is not good..."(via Kuro5hin)
posted on Feb 25, 2003 - View this thread