MetaFilter posts tagged with richard

A really big circular slice of a building that moves. Yes.

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:17:35 -0800

Haven't we all, at one time or another, wanted to carve an enormous circle into an industrial building facade and have it rotate in three dimensions? Of course we have. But Richard Wilson did it. That's right, he actually did it. Wiki page on sculptor Richard Wilson, who also happened to be a founding member of the Bow Gamelan Ensemble.

It's very fancy on old Delancey Street, you know.

miss lynnster — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:10:58 -0800

11,000 Manhattan street corners.

The Year of Parker

dortmunder — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:59:55 -0800

He is a man with one name. He is a thief and a killer, and the protagonist of 24 hard boiled novels written by prolific author Donald Westlake (previously) under the pseudonym Richard Stark. He is Parker, and he is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. His first adventures, long out of print, are being reissued by the University of Chicago Press. While the first three, The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit, were published without forwards, the second batch of books featured a forward by John Banville, which originally appeared in Slate. (This article was also referenced in the Westlake obit post, but is included here for the sake of completeness). The third set of reprints, coming in August, will have a forward by noted writer and critic Luc Sante. It will presumably come from his 1985 essay “The Gentrification of Crime,” for the New York Review of Books, which is not available online in its entirety. You can read an excerpt, however (scroll down to the Westlake heading). Not only are the Parker books being reprinted, but the first novel, The Hunter, which served as the basis for the movies Point Blank and Payback, has been adapted as a graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke. Initial reviews are positive. Cooke has said he has plans to give the graphic novel treatment to the first four Parker novels. While the aforementioned Point Blank and Payback are the most well known film versions of Parker novels, there are many more. The first was Made in U.S.A. directed by Godard. It was a loose adaptation of The Jugger where Parker was played by actress Anna Karina. Due to the fact that Godard never bothered to acquire the rights to the book, the film did not receive an American release until this year. For those who can’t get enough, the definitive site for all things Stark is The Violent World of Parker, which has an exhaustive list of novels and adaptations. Additional Links: An interview with Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker An interview with Donald Westlake

The Blind Watchmaker applet

technically yours — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:01:41 -0800

This is a fun little atheistic distraction: The interactive Blind Watchmaker applet demonstrates how random mutation followed by non-random selection can lead to interesting, complex forms. The Blind Watchmaker algorithm was conceived by Richard Dawkins and is described in his book of the same name. The resultant forms (which can begin to look like plants and bugs) are called "biomorphs," visual representations of a set of genes. A little background, thanks to Wikipedia: "Dawkins makes reference to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley, arguing more than fifty years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker."

RIP Donald Westlake

ed — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:57:03 -0800

Donald Westlake is dead. This prolific novelist wrote more than 100 books and several screenplays under many names, creating one of the most memorable comic caper series and hard violent fiction under his psuedonym, Richard Stark. John Banville called Stark and Georges Simenon "two of the greatest writers of the 20th century."

To Roll, To Crease, To Fold...

chuckdarwin — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:46:48 -0800

Richard Serra: Man of Steel. ...to store, to bend, to shorten, to twist, to dapple, to crumple, to shave, to tear, to chip, to split, to cut, to sever, to drop, to remove, to simplify, to differ, to disarrange, to open, to mix, to splash, to knot, to spill, to droop, to flow, to curve, to lift, to inlay, to impress, to fire, to flood, to smear, to rotate, to swirl, to support, to hook, to suspend, to spread, to hang, to collect, of tension, of gravity, of entropy, of nature, of grouping, of layering, of felting, to grasp, to tighten, to bundle, to heap, to gather, to scatter, to arrange, to repair, to discard, to pair, to distribute, to surfeit, to compliment, to enclose, to surround, to encircle, to hole, to cover, to wrap, to dig, to tie, to bind, to weave, to join, to match, to laminate, to bond, to hinge, to mark, to expand, to dilute, to light, to modulate, to distil, of waves, of electromagnetic, of inertia, of ionization, of polarization, of refraction, of tides, of reflection, of equilibrium, of symmetry, of friction, to stretch, to bounce, to erase, to spray, to systematize, to refer, to force, of mapping, of location, of context, of time, of carbonization, to continue

Touching Strangers

chunking express — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:11:12 -0800

"When my friend Richard Renaldi showed me the first images from the new series Touching Strangers I was just amazed. Asking two complete strangers to not only pose with each other, but to also touch each other while doing that... And this in a culture whose discomfort with touching someone you don't know, or touching something that someone else might have touched still baffles me, even after having spent almost ten years in it!" - A Conversation with Richard Renaldi about 'Touching Strangers' via my 2 second shelf life

Richard Wilkinson's illustrations

nthdegx — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:27:14 -0800

Richard Wilkinson's illustrations - modern, melancholy pictures with a subdued palette but vivid identity.

You know what I do to squealers

Astro Zombie — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:47:30 -0800

Richard Widmark, who created a villain in his first movie role who was so repellent and frightening that the actor became a star overnight, died Monday at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 93. Rest in peace, Richard. Fans of his work, here is the entirety of one of the many terrific thrillers he starred in, Panic in the Streets.

The most banal, grotesque, ironic, twisted, or perverse creations of the capitalist marketplace.

sushiwiththejury — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:57:14 -0800

The Museum Of Weird Consumer Culture.
Richard Wilk's homepage. Wilk's book, Home Cooking in the Global Village, is online and free.

Richard Thompson and his exquisite songs.

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:44:03 -0800

Singer/songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire Richard Thompson: songs of bittersweet longing, sublime eloquence, dark exuberance and ominous allusion. Richard Thompson has a dedicated following, and consequently there are a lot of Thompson clips on YouTube. I selected these four to post here, though, because as TV spots (BBC) their quality is excellent, and because they showcase his acoustic guitar playing. Not that I don't love his electric guitar work: in fact I I am a huge fan of his electric aesthetic, particularly his soloing, but I think his acoustic guitar accompaniment is the perfect foil for his voice. I think he's one of our finest living songwriters, actually, and I hope you enjoy these clips. There's one more from the same BBC performances, Vincent Black Lightning 1952, which I certainly would've included in the FPP, but for the fact that it would've been a double, from none other than the esteemed and now-seemingly-departed vronsky. Here's hoping you'll come riding back to MeFi, vron!

A soldier speaks out

A189Nut — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:07:56 -0800

Chief of the General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt has given an interview to the Daily Mail in which he says that the presence of British troops makes the security problems in Iraq worse . The General won the MC aged 22 in an action in Northern Ireland, so he presumably knows a thing or two about insurgency, never mind courage. Mr Blair has agreed...

the guns of august....redux

jouke — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 02:39:50 -0800

Richard Holbrooke delivers an analysis and forecast of how the current situation could trigger a chain reaction that would lead to world war. He refers to Barbara Tuchmans Guns of August, apparently a political science classic, that has been mentioned here on mefi. Here's the article in dutch with an appropriate picture of the murder of archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Richard Simmons on "Whose Line"

Saucy Intruder — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 10:49:02 -0800

Richard Simmons visits "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (youtube) Drew Carey falls out of his chair; audience members literally roll in the aisle; Wayne Brady regresses into infancy. It's that sort of funny.

The God Delusion

econous — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 01:14:42 -0800

Part One of the Channel4 program where Richard Dawkins challenges faith calling it 'a process of non-thinking'. [~48 mins] Part Two: The Virus of Faith. [~48 mins]

Richard Pryor has died

Saucy Intruder — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:14:59 -0800

According to his official website, comedian Richard Pryor has died at the age of 65. More coverage at Fark and updates at Wikipedia.

Smalley dead at 62

lalochezia — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 08:06:02 -0800

Richard Smalley , Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of C60 (buckminsterfullerene) passed away yesterday. He was 62 years old. RIP.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap

braun_richard — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 14:33:05 -0800

Why I bought a typewriter on ebay. Nate, a writer, tells why...well, the link is self-explanatory. A follow-up to an earlier post.