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When he rang the doorbell, Zia hadn't planned to step inside. He was there to pick up his fiancee who was babysitting, but she couldn't leave (the parents were running late) so Zia agreed to hang out for a bit. His fiancee said, "Let me introduce you to the kids" — the 2-year-old girl, the 7-year-old boy and, most important, squatting, with no shoes on, surrounded by ants on the back patio, the oldest — the 9-year-old — the one he would make world-famous on YouTube.

This is the boy he now calls "The Philosopher."
posted by These Birds of a Feather on Mar 29, 2013 - 31 comments

Eric Idle sings the theme song to Brian Cox's new series Wonders of Life: a remake of the Galaxy Song from The Meaning of Life. 'Nuff said.
posted by MartinWisse on Jan 11, 2013 - 11 comments

Psychology Today handles The Big Question: Why Are We Here?
posted by twoleftfeet on Dec 11, 2011 - 66 comments

How do we express what cannot be said?
posted by shivohum on Nov 7, 2010 - 44 comments

the worlds longest poem... I have a twitter account, I hate twitter... but this, somehow, this might define.... well...something..
posted by HuronBob on Aug 19, 2009 - 45 comments

Since the mid 1990s, Don Hertzfeldt has been making animated shorts by hand. To date, his 8 primary films have an apprioximate runtime of 75 minutes, and in total have won 117 awards, all shot on 16 or 35 milimeter film. (There is another 8 minutes or so that was part of the Animation Show (previously).) His recent films have been shot on the same camera rig that recorded It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966), as he noted in a 2007 interview (part of a Scene Unseen Podcast (direct link to the MP3)). Hertzfeltd is currently two thirds of the way through his most ambitious project to date, a trilogy of films which have been called "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey." (Video links inside) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on May 15, 2009 - 31 comments

What is the meaning of life? Answers range from pithy pseudo-psychological to the annoyingly flash based AND pseudo-psychological, the Christian, Muslim, and Sikh and other. Other people think they've figured it out, and their answer is different at least. Some people's answers just get strange and pseudo-scientific. And of course we can't forget Monty Python .
posted by sotonohito on Apr 23, 2006 - 45 comments

Lost Numbers. I won't get to see any of the second season of Lost until summer 2006 'cause I live in Ireland. I also didn't care enough about the first season to use the "numbers" as my lottery numbers. I should have, they (almost) came up in the National Lottery on November 19. I say almost, instead of 42 it was 24 (sorry Douglas).
posted by Elmore on Dec 16, 2005 - 31 comments

The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)
posted by andrew cooke on Oct 1, 2004 - 17 comments