"Vitamin R goes straight to the head. Ruby will teach you to express your ideas through a computer. You will be writing stories for a machine. The language will become a tool for you to better connect your mind to the world."
Slate compiles the mystery of _why. (
Previously).
posted by oulipian
on Mar 15, 2012 -
78 comments
#JonathanFranzenHates: "Twitter is unspeakably irritating. Twitter stands for everything I oppose… it’s hard to cite facts or create an argument in 140 characters… it’s like if Kafka had decided to make a video semaphoring The Metamorphosis. Or it’s like writing a novel without the letter ‘P’… It’s the ultimate irresponsible medium."
[Via: Slate.com] More [Via: The Guardian]
posted by Fizz
on Mar 7, 2012 -
155 comments
Jason Zinoman, author of the newly-published
Shock Value, a study of horror films from the late 1960s/early 1970s, presents a four-part essay in which he diagnoses the ills of the modern horror film and presents a few solutions. (
1 2 3 4)
[more inside]
posted by kittens for breakfast
on Jul 8, 2011 -
39 comments
A visitor to the Rotten Tomatoes site can check out the data for individual Hollywood careers—that's how Tabarrok came up with the Shyamalan graph—but there's no easy way for users to measure industrywide trends or to compare different actors and directors side-by-side. To that end, Rotten Tomatoes kindly let Slate analyze the scores in its enormous database and create an interactive tool so our readers might do the same.
posted by Trurl
on Jun 7, 2011 -
69 comments
Lester Bangs, the late, great early-rock critic, once said he dreamed of having a basement with every album ever released in it. That's a fantasy shared by many music fans—and, mutatis mutandis, film buffs as well. We all know the Internet has made available a lot of things that were previously hard to get. Recently, though, there are indications of something even more enticing, almost paradisiacal, something that might have made Bangs put down the cough syrup and sit up straight:
that almost everything is available.
posted by octothorpe
on Apr 21, 2011 -
137 comments
National Smile Week is celebrated in the second week of August, but it's not too late to start smiling. Perhaps you can get some inspiration from
this gallery. My favorite, so far I think, is
number 21 (NSFWish).
posted by lauratheexplorer
on Aug 30, 2010 -
11 comments
Not Sarah Palin's Friends. Slate's script kiddies snag Sarah Palin's Facebook comments stream before its edited by Team Palin. Not a hack, per se, because it was publicly available on Facebook for minutes at a time, but interesting.
The deletions amount to a real-time look at how much effort and care Palin puts into protecting her public image. It's not just the number of posts that are screened out that gives some indication of how seriously Palin's team is monitoring things.
posted by Cool Papa Bell
on Aug 3, 2010 -
79 comments
Blogging the Periodic Table: Wild, weird, wonderful stories about the elements that make up our universe. All month at slate, Sam Kean has been blogging about the periodic table, in conjunction with his new book,
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements. Elements covered so far include:
Antimony: It might have killed mozart.
Hydrogen: Where it all started.
Selenium: Is It To Blame for Custer's Defeat at Little Bighorn? Vanadium: Sperm, beware.
Copernicium: How elements get their names.
Nitrogen and Phosphorus: The Future of Toilet Design Hangs in the Balance.
Lithium: Why It Makes Such Great Batteries.
Rare Earths: They're Neither Rare nor Earths. But They Could Save the Planet.
Ytterby: The Tiny Swedish Island That Gave the Periodic Table Four Different Elements.
Strontium: Element Tourists, Sodium Partiers, and Other Periodic Table Eccentrics.
Gallium: It Proved That Dmitri Mendeleev, Father of the Periodic Table, Wasn't a Crackpot.
The Noble Gases: What a Bunch of Snobs.
Promethium: Uranium Stole Its Fire.
Thorium: The Nuclear Fuel of the Future? Palladium: The Cold Fusion Fanatics Can't Get Enough of the Stuff.
Cobalt: It Makes the Dirtiest of Dirty Bombs.
Hafnium: Building the Doomsday Device of Tomorrow.
Radium: Cures Gout! (Warning: Also Causes Cancer.).
Aluminum: It Used To Be More Precious Than Gold.
posted by Fizz
on Aug 1, 2010 -
33 comments
Because they have their own minor-league spelling bee circuit. Having a qualifying spelling bee league that is, at times, tougher than the actual competition is what results in the extreme over-representation of Indian kids (1% in population, 11% in the spelling bee) at the national-level Scripps spelling bee. Where else have you seen such a phenomenon?
posted by vidur
on Jun 2, 2010 -
15 comments
Ten days ago, Slate Magazine conducted
an experiment modeled on the
Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984: they asked readers to look at eight photographs of notable political moments from the past decade and share their memories about each. Over 5,000 people participated in the first three days, but what they didn’t know was that four of the pictures were significantly doctored, and one was totally fabricated.
[more inside]
posted by mondaygreens
on May 28, 2010 -
67 comments
In
Sizing Up Sperm, people dressed in all white literally act out the role of sperm in the race to become one with the egg, running through valleys, squeezing through spirals, battling Leukocytes and much more. The results are stunning and the program airs this Sunday, March 14 on National Geographic. It just so happens that Slate also got in on the ejaculation meme, and delivered an article on a story of sperm donors and DNA tracing in
Are Sperm Donors Really Anonymous Anymore? [
via]
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Mar 13, 2010 -
26 comments
The Aught-O-Matic. Slate's interactive guide to the critically recognized best movies of the decade, aggregating the results from several "best of the decade" lists. It's still in the process of being updated.
posted by Sticherbeast
on Dec 17, 2009 -
26 comments
