Tufts University officially banned students from having sex in residence hall room when a roommate is present.
posted by RussHy on Jan 8, 2010 - 83 comments

Craig Ferguson explains the Jonas Brothers. [more inside]
posted by everichon on Jul 23, 2009 - 120 comments

100 days. 100 places. 100 dances.
posted by heeeraldo on Feb 18, 2009 - 26 comments

Easy access to the internet and simplified technology for recording songs and videos might do great things for the future of pop music. Or it might be like this. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Jan 21, 2009 - 109 comments

A recent LA Times Piece bemoans the lack of freedom today's children enjoy. Given the rise of such articles, is this a shared consensus? Judging by the reaction's to Lenore Skenazy's child rearing practices, maybe not. The explosive popularity of The Dangerous Books for boys suggests there is a real movement to get kids outside. The New York Times and Reason magazine aren't so impressed. The American Enterprise Institute and Rush Limbaugh seem to think it's a Boy/Girl problem. Gever Tulley (TED talk video) of The Tinkering School thinks a little bit of danger is good; he lets kids play with power tools. (Youtube Videos) [more inside]
posted by Telf on Aug 25, 2008 - 61 comments

Welcome to Mosaic Communications Corporation! It was 1994, and the World Wide Web as we know it today was about to be born. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee on Mar 31, 2008 - 32 comments

Juvenile? Awesome? Awesomely juvenile? The kids of Gizmodo bring some TV-B-Gones to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. This is what happened. [more inside]
posted by bicyclefish on Jan 10, 2008 - 85 comments

Here are some ways to shrink your unnatural water- and gas-guzzling lawn and plant something that is beautiful and requires no water usage, no mowing, and is more likely to attract more interesting wildlife. With this much lawn in the U.S., and incessant water shortages, and other water issues and wars in our present and looming in the future, why not go native? Naturally, there are objections, since local ordinances often don't allow for natural prairie lawns, and the neighborhood stick-up-butt committees are quick to remove things they consider eyesores. What is your lawn worth to you?
posted by taursir on Sep 9, 2007 - 64 comments

...Rembrandt's last self-portrait, for instance, shows an old man having a good laugh at the ways of the world, even as he is about to leave the stage. The Western world may be ageing, then, but, far from this amounting to a 'dying of the light', a case can be made for the very opposite, certainly where Bob Dylan's renaissance as an artist is concerned. Neither should age be confounded with a heavier tread. For while a perception and characterisation of the surreal nature of much of human life was a defining quality of Bob Dylan's first golden creative period in the 1960s, it's also a delightful characteristic of his artistic renaissance in the 'noughties' of the new millennium.

Bob Dylan and the ageing of the West
In other news, May 24th is International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day

Of course, he was 23 in 1965, the year when he recorded Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, but, gosh darn it, he's still writing songs and touring and he still isn't dead yet..."
posted by y2karl on May 24, 2007 - 38 comments

"Not everybody's a critic." Richard Schickel bitchslaps the blogosphere (in response to this) and not for the first time. The blogosphere slaps back. (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole on May 21, 2007 - 49 comments

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another.

So goes the common wisdom but things in fact are more complex.
Say Everything
posted by y2karl on Feb 17, 2007 - 94 comments

Don't they teach these kids anything in school ? History ? Punctuation ? And what's that smell ? - Conservative Adam Yoshida steps in it, inadvertently calls for reversal of 1965 Civil Rights bill, arguing for the disenfranchisement of 20% of the voting public through the reinstitution of poll tests (outlawed in 1965). Plus, his punctuation is awful ! : " we should consider maintaining (or even increasing) their benefits while, at the exact same time, making it harder for them to vote (I recommend modern and simple literacy tests for this purpose.

From my extensive time spent examining present and future members of our underclass, I'mquite convinced that a series of simple language and math questions would be enough to discourage them from voting). "
posted by troutfishing on Oct 21, 2004 - 23 comments