MetaFilter posts tagged with guardian

Boys zone

Artw — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:20:20 -0800

"60% of men trim their pubes. What, really?"

Bullshit Easier To Swallow In Pill Form

christonabike — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:17:15 -0800

Vitamin purveyor Matthias Rath^ has dropped his libel case against Ben Goldacre^ and the Guardian. Goldacre's take. Background: Goldacre originally wrote about Rath in two consecutive columns in January 2007 (1 2) and was barred from discussing the case until now (including in his recent book.) Rath previously successfully sued the British Medical Journal for libel and has a history of litigation. Rath was also ordered to stop defamatory remarks against the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS treatment organization, and has had multiple conflicts with their leader Zackie Achmat. Goldacre's book was covered recently, but this story isn't really related.

RocknRolla: It's Ova

mippy — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:45:54 -0800

Peter Bradshaw pwns the new Guy Ritchie film. I mean, doing yet anotha stinka of a drama about the mee-lee-a of the ersatz London gangsta?

Medicalisation

homunculus — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:45:44 -0800

The Medicalisation of Everyday Life. "As the pace of medical innovation slows to a crawl, how do drug companies stay in profit? By 'discovering' new illnesses to fit existing products." An extract from Ben Goldacre's new book, Bad Science. [Via]

Immediate prospects for the electric car

rongorongo — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:43:59 -0800

Two takes on the immediate future of the electric car: we are either "Going Nowhere Fast" (if you ask a petrolhead from Top Gear magazine) or we are witnessing "The End of the Petrolhead" (if you ask The Economist). A bestiary of current and planned models includes TeslaMotors (now in production), Fisker Automotive (who are being sued by Teslamotors), the GM Volt (due 2010), The Lighting Car Company, the plug in Prius, the GWiz (now slightly less squishy apparently), the Corbin Sparrow, a few (vapory?) models from Zap! and the wondrous Sinclair C5.

"the precious jewels of Jao-chou"

paduasoy — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:13:30 -0800

In 2006 in the Fitzwilliam Museum three enormous porcelain vases from seventeenth or eighteenth century China were smashed by a museum visitor who fell down the stairs. This presentation "follows the vases' progress from scattered fragments to their redisplay in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The site includes slideshows, film clips of the conservation process and a timelapse of one of the vases under reconstruction". Also: interview with the visitor who smashed the vases - My precious vase hell; two versions of a picture of the visitor sitting among the shards, Daily Mail and Times; information about the man's arrest (he was released without charge); the lack of insurance; the columnist Craig Brown on the affair; and an article on the reconstruction. And here're are translations of three letters written by Père Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles about porcelain manufacture in China around the same time the vases were made.

Rethinking aid donations

insatiablehee — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:45:30 -0800

40% of Afghan aid returns to donor countries. In today's guardian, it has been reported that 40% of the money promised/delivered to aid Afghan has been spent on "corporate profits and consultancy fees" and that "Much of the money earmarked for aid is diverted to political or military purposes." It make one think about the realities and purposes of aids especially when one considers the conditionality the aids entail, such as world bank's conventionalities which includes liberalisation and privatization of public goods etc in addition to the amount of tax deduction companies and individuals get. These problems have been addressed, such as UK charity organisation asking their government to withhold money from the world bank until it changes the conventionalities of funds, which unfortunately did not succeed. Last year UK's development secretary, Douglas Alexander handed £2bn-plus to the institutions no strings attached.

1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die

rongorongo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:25:17 -0800

1,000 Albums to hear before you die compiled from The Guardian's assorted music reviewers (assisted by readers who then told them which ones they missed). You won't want to be planning to expire any time too soon with these to get through.

Meet your new weblog overlords

Flashman — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:33:28 -0800

The world's 50 most powerful blogs via'The Guardian'; (YT).

Queue for the soup kitchen may start here

ClanvidHorse — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:03:16 -0800

"What we are now seeing is the break up of Bretton Woods mark 2." The Guardian's economics editor, Larry Elliot, on growing fears of a global depression. [single link op-ed alert]