As George Carlin once said, "it is an infinitely more interesting news story for a team to repeatedly fail at the highest level than it is for them to finally win." After ten years and over 1,500 episodes, last night's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (the US version) featured its very first Top Prize Loser. Ken Basin, of Los Angeles, incorrectly guessed that LBJ prefered Yoo-Hoo over Fresca, and walked away with $25,000 instead of $1,000,000. [more inside]
posted by Damn That Television on Aug 24, 2009 - 81 comments

Look around you. On the train platform, at the bus stop, in the car pool lane: these days someone there is probably faking it, maintaining a job routine without having a job to go to.
posted by plexi on Apr 8, 2009 - 49 comments

Flight No. 3407 crashes in Buffalo, New York. This, after the flight that landed in the Hudson, and all the people were saved. The Plane crash on YouTube as of now.
posted by hadjiboy on Feb 12, 2009 - 111 comments

There are lots of people who post weight loss videos on Youtube. But none of them faced as many challenges as Jeremy did. Morbidly obese, and bedridden, we watched while he struggled to walk again and defeat obesity. Despite those that were rude to him, nobody seemed to have as much spirit and drive as Jeremy did. Even Jeremy's last video was filled with optimism. But even though so many of us struggle against obesity, some of us lose the fight. Even though Jeremy has passed, Roberta's videos dealing with his loss remind us how fortunate we really are.
posted by smoothvirus on Jan 29, 2008 - 15 comments

Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we're wrong.
posted by miss lynnster on Sep 25, 2007 - 125 comments

Please Columbia Don't Kill My Wife
posted by Rubbstone on Sep 3, 2007 - 19 comments

Sad -- such a sweet-looking kid, the smile on the face of a future suicide. Sad -- "If she only knew then how things would turn out…" Sad -- "I chose to kill her." Sad -- "You could see her personality break through the coma." Life is dukkha, said the Buddha -- a Pali term that means something like "suffering" or "the incapability of satisfaction." (Or as Mick Jagger put it, "I can't get no...") Here's the tangible evidence.
posted by digaman on May 3, 2006 - 39 comments

Death (?) of a Small-Press Legend The link points to a page dedicated to Bill-Dale Marcinko, one-time gonzo Rutgers University newspaper editor, small press publisher and a character it seems no one who knew could ever stop thinking about. Marcinko, who had been supporting himself selling CDs on eBay, apparently died in a house fire when firemen were held back by cardboard boxes full of his collections. Still, he did fake his death several times before. His friends, most of whom haven't spoken to him in years, are hoping this is just a more elaborate prank. Clifford Meth's tribute page celebrates Bill-Dale and his work, including AFTA zine, described as perhaps "the first comics 'zine distributed to book and comic shops that combined comedy, politics and reviews on books, films, and comics. It was very much an underground version of Crawdaddy, though with vastly personal content." (via Mike Appelstein, a contributor to the Rutgers Livingston Medium)
posted by Scram on Dec 9, 2005 - 1 comment

family at war an excellent documentary of a family who lost their son in iraq - particularly moving is the soldiers determined, soft-spoken mother who is examining the reasons for her loss.
posted by specialk420 on Nov 14, 2005 - 8 comments

LossofPrivacyFilter: 1) Patriot Act Expansion Bill Approved in Secret , which now provides a new ‘administrative subpoena’ authority (that) would let the FBI write and approve its own search orders for intelligence investigations, without prior judicial approval. ...Flying in the face of the Fourth Amendment, this power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent. ..., and from the Justice Department: 2) Most health care employees can't be prosecuted for stealing personal data, and finally, 3) Citibank admits losing 4 million customer files.
These 3 examples all within the past few days--any others i missed?
posted by amberglow on Jun 8, 2005 - 31 comments

Public Lives: Freddie Mercury, Arthur Ashe, Rock Hudson, Brad Davis, Perry Ellis, Eazy E, Michel Foucault, Amanada 'Miss Kitty' Blake, Roy Cohn, Halston, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rudolf Nureyev, Anthony Perkins, Willi Smith, Liberace, Ricky Wilson. Private lives: Gail Farrow, T Billy, Bob BJ Johnson, Nkoosi Johnson, Terry McCormick, Catherine Margaret Cory. Public or private, we've all had losses. Is there anyone you are remembering today?
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 1, 2003 - 43 comments

Ever dream your teeth fell out?? I did. I used to think it was because some of mine really did once (through violence, not poor dental hygiene). Turns out everybody dreams this.
posted by luser on Nov 8, 2002 - 59 comments

There's a guy with an "immensely detailed, three-dimensional, interactive, constantly updated map of New York City," which "could provide the DNA for a re-created city" if something happened to destroy New York. Besides the nitpicking (do you want to recreate every awning and kiosk?), there's the big question: does it make sense to try to recreate in detail something that's gone? Or as the article puts it, "At what point do we accept the reality of loss?" And if a city were destroyed so utterly it couldn't be recreated, would its surviving inhabitants wander the world endlessly, keeping their lost home alive in their hearts and customs, like R.A. Lafferty's Angelenos?
posted by languagehat on Aug 14, 2002 - 25 comments