MetaFilter posts tagged with essay and essays

Titillating treasure trove of tit torture tidbits.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:54:37 -0800

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.

Dillard's How-To

digaman — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 06:35:53 -0800

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.

Only geeks read on Friday nights

bonaldi — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 08:44:34 -0800

Nominations for the best software essays of 2004. There's lots of reading here, pardners, and much of it is great.

The Autodidact Project & Selected Quotations Therefrom

y2karl — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:56:31 -0800

"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?

The Great Bear

homunculus — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:34:34 -0800

The Great Bear in Maine.

What Makes A Writer A Writer?

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:24:57 -0800

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.]

Can't Get No Satisfaction

andrew cooke — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 08:57:20 -0800

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).

The Abduction of Modernity

homunculus — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:19:09 -0800

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.

protocool — Thu, 30 May 2002 18:15:01 -0800

The "duh" in Fundamentalism: Jaime Wright's "The Philosophy Of The Bomb". Please scroll down to Essays, Rants, Etc...

RobertLoch — Mon, 22 Apr 2002 09:29:05 -0800

How much freedom should we trade for our security? That is the title of this years Economist/Shell essay competition. The winner will receive $20,000 as well as inclusion in The Economist: The World in 2003. The closing date is August 15. Anyone feel like entering? If I can learn to write English in time I may submit an essay that takes the form of a discussion between a 68 year old Japanese American ex-internee and a 7 year old Israeli girl.

vbfg — Mon, 17 Sep 2001 09:57:15 -0800

Here's an interesting take on the whole western ideals v eastern ideals idea. The collapse of the Soviet Union as harbinger of the collapse of the west? Well, maybe not from the perspective of your average neo-libertarian. From the perspective of someone who didn't buy into the Enlightenment, from where springs both liberal democracy and marxism, then it may just look like one process. Interesting article from the 'Other Side of the Hill'.

aaron — Sun, 16 Sep 2001 00:29:53 -0800

The Case for Rage and Retribution. An essay by Lance Morrow from the special all-attack issue of TIME. "What’s needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury — a ruthless indignation that doesn’t leak away in a week or two."

lia — Sun, 21 Jan 2001 10:44:49 -0800

"Every school has its story, every room its ghost."

Ian Dugay writes about the terrors of elementary school; his experience might be rather particular (if you read it, you'll understand that I don't mean that in a Columbine kind of way), but he can't be the only one with unpleasant memories -- how do you remember grade school?

Optamystic — Thu, 19 Oct 2000 11:59:24 -0800

Essay by Richard Dawkins (the scientist, not the game show host) on the supposed convergence on science and religion.

mathowie — Tue, 08 Feb 2000 13:01:03 -0800

Paul Ford's Ftrain has a great piece on Micrsoft Word, writing, and the web. His stream-of-consciousness essay has hilarious nuggets like the "computer science axiom 'all software expands until it can send mail.'" There's a couple illustrations worth noting: the first looks like Word with all the tool bar icons enabled, and the other is Word's paperclip assistant interfering with an especially private moment. Great stuff.