In 1969, Italian animator
Osvaldo Cavandoli and voice performer
Carlo Bonomi created "Agostino
Lagostina", an animated pitchman for the Lagostina line of cookware. This "
sharp little man with a
truly expressive nose" evolved into "La Linea", one of the most viewed animated characters in the world. In the
jazzy series of 225 cartoons that bore his name, La Linea took on a role similar to that of Daffy Duck in Chuck Jones's famous
"Duck Amuck" meta-animation, aware of his status as an animated character and asking Cavandoli to draw things into the frame for him. Those who grew up in the 1980s will remember these shorts from their frequent appearances on
The Great Space Coaster...though La Linea's offshoots,
"Eroslinea" and
"Sexilinea" [those last two NSFW; boobies] did not see broadcast in that venue.
[more inside]
posted by pxe2000
on Aug 8, 2008 -
15 comments
The Wikipedia List of Unusual Articles. Including popular favorites such as
Raining Animals,
Penis Panic,
The Utah Teapot,
The Jesus Nut,
The Mexican Perforation, and
The Liver-Eating Johnson. But wait, there's more!
Sweater Curse! Turtles All The Way Down! Acoustic Kitty! (Seriously, WTF CIA?) The
Ding Hai Effect.
Blue Peacock, the Chicken Powered Nuclear Bomb. Chess-Related Deaths,
ETAOIN SHRDLU,
Alien Hand Syndrome,
Colors of Noise,
Drake's Plate of Brass, and
Mole Day. Click now and they'll also include
List of Songs in English Labled the Worst Ever and the
List of Songs Whose Title Constitutes The Entire Lyrics free of charge!! Had enough? Succumb to the
Flynn Effect but watch out for
Exploding Head Syndrome!
posted by loquacious
on Jan 29, 2007 -
49 comments
-cognition,
-data,
-del.icio.us,
-ethics,
-fiction,
-film,
-filter,
-gaming,
-joke,
-language,
-mathematics,
-meta,
-music,
-physics,
-sports,
-talk,
-television,
-verse
posted by themadjuggler
on Dec 31, 2006 -
45 comments
Dapper: The Data Mapper A
recently launched service that allows users to extract data from any website into XML, and transform or build applications and mashups with that data.
Described by it's creators as a way to, "easily build an API for any website... through a visual and intuitive process". Plagiarism Today, meanwhile, has
cause for concern, "Dapper is a scraper. Nothing more... now the technologically impaired can scrape content from any site... the potential danger [is] very, very real".
posted by MetaMonkey
on Sep 5, 2006 -
31 comments
Gregory Chaitin's Meta Math! The Quest For Omega
"Okay, what I was able to find, or construct, is a funny area of pure mathematics where things are true for no reason, they're true by accident... It's a place where God plays dice with mathematical truth. It consists of mathematical facts which are so delicately balanced between being true or false that we're never going to know, and so you might as well toss a coin." From
Paradoxes of Randomness.
"In my opinion, Omega suggests that even though maths and physics are different, perhaps they are not as different as most people think. To put it bluntly, if the incompleteness phenomenon discovered by Gödel in 1931 is really serious — and I believe that Turing's work and my own work suggest that incompleteness is much more serious than people think — then perhaps mathematics should be pursued somewhat more in the spirit of experimental science rather than always demanding proofs for everything." From
Omega and why maths has no Theory Of Everythings.
[
previously,
see also,
via]
posted by MetaMonkey
on Apr 13, 2006 -
17 comments
Finally the NYT offers up an analysis of its pre-war coverage. "But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge."
posted by raaka
on May 26, 2004 -
35 comments
The Virtual MetaBanquet: Eat, Drink And Be Merry! Any class which includes A.M.Bowie's stimulating "Thinking With Drinking" paper in the bibliography, has to be worth taking but John Porter's
The Ancient Symposium/Convivium course description is full of wonderful links to all that is classical wining, dining, conviviality, friendship and other forms of philosophical and physical cheer. Brush up on your Plato and Xenophon!
...Which, together with the
Cooks' Thesaurus linked yesterday by
plep led me to imagine a glorious
Sunday MetaFilter Banquet...[
More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Mar 29, 2003 -
11 comments
I'm mo' "meta" than you! This USA Today puff piece is claiming that "meta" is the new "cool." What are your thoughts on this? Do any of you use "meta" in conversation or writing without a noun following it? (when you're not referring to the abbreviation for MetaTalk, obviously...)
posted by popvulture
on Jan 28, 2003 -
64 comments
meta-run-for-your-money? I have had a bizzare 15 minutes contemplating and ranting about this very thing (reading news twice at two different sites) at this mefi
link. I better get to work. I'm hooked. A bloggolidator?
posted by kremb
on Mar 15, 2002 -
2 comments
A little humor found in the deep recesses of our profile data. Seems Rodii has a sense of humor [caveat: I'm not promising "LOL", but it certainly left me with a "
"]
posted by silusGROK
on Mar 9, 2001 -
14 comments
MetaTalk is now live. I've been talking about it for a while, and now it's here. The addition of it and the
Changelog does crowd up the menus a bit more, but a redesign is in the works so consider this a temporary inconvenience
posted by mathowie
on Mar 3, 2000 -
1 comment
