Wired profiles pediatrician Paul Offit, co-creator of the RotaTeq rotavirus vaccine and a primary target of the anti-vaccination movement. Dr. Offit published a book,“Autism’s False Prophets” in 2008 but didn't tour, because he had received too many death threats. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 28, 2009 - 136 comments

Saturday Night Live comedic actress Victoria Jackson (whose website, upon entering, acoustically informs you of her non-bimbohood) appears on Sean Hannity's show with a rather large amount of enthusiasm and a torrent of very enthusiastically stated, if somewhat stream-of-consciousness, insights (YouTube, transcript).
posted by WCityMike on Jun 9, 2009 - 75 comments

Infinite Summer - "The Challenge: Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009" [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on May 21, 2009 - 118 comments

...[Change of scene. We are looking out of a car window; it is raining, or has recently rained. Shops go by.] I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets! There wasn't a street--there wasn't a building--that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There I was buying a suit with my father. There I was having an ice-cream soda after school. When I finally came in, Debby was home from work. And I told her everything about my dinner with André

And here is Sergio Leone and the Inside Fly Rule's meditation on the only possible other candidate for Best.Movie.Ever. [more inside]
posted by y2karl on Apr 3, 2009 - 52 comments

Note, too, that “interesting” first appears just two years after “bore.” 1768. Mark this, two years after. Can this be so? From "The Pale King," David Foster Wallace's last, unfinished novel, parts of which, it turns out, we have already seen.
posted by oldleada on Mar 1, 2009 - 21 comments

My Christmas message? There's probably no God.
posted by chuckdarwin on Dec 28, 2008 - 165 comments

Mike Wallace interviews Rod Serling in 1959, discussing timidity and censorship in television programming, and Serling's upcoming series The Twilight Zone. Part one. Part two. Part three. (TouTube links)
posted by Astro Zombie on Nov 14, 2008 - 13 comments

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone (warning: long article; could make you cry)
posted by Baldons on Nov 1, 2008 - 70 comments

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about. First reported by an anonymous tip to a blog, the Los Angeles Times has confirmed that David Foster Wallace has hung himself.
posted by gerryblog on Sep 13, 2008 - 483 comments

"My name is Mike Wallace. The cigarette is Philip Morris." Before there was 60 Minutes, there was The Mike Wallace Interview. Thirty minutes with Steve Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Kirk Douglas, Pearl Buck, and Salvador Dali, to name just a few.
posted by steef on Apr 4, 2008 - 16 comments

"Good People": A new short story by David Foster Wallace. New to Wallace? Like "Good People"? Read "Incarnations of Burned Children", a story with a similar sense of tension and dread. Want more? Okay.
posted by HerArchitectLover on Jan 31, 2007 - 25 comments

Keith Olbermann's Edward R. Murrow^* moment: A Textbook Definition of Cowardice. MSNBC's host excoriates Bush, FOX News host Chris Wallace, and the media for its response to former president Clinton's "tantrum" [still being discussed here]. Note: Don't just read the transcript. Watch the video, because Olbermann's use of visuals adds greatly to the power of his presentation. No matter which side of the red/blue-state divide you're on, students of politics and media will be reviewing this clip for years to come as a little cultural watershed -- if only a consummate example of "Democrat" anger^TM.
posted by digaman on Sep 26, 2006 - 169 comments

The David Foster Wallace Bibliography (in BibTex format) is ridiculously complete. The site also includes a zip file of DFW's essays and mp3s of a round table discussion. [via]
posted by painquale on Jan 10, 2006 - 55 comments

Classic Aardman (of Wallace and Gromit fame) animation stuff up in flames
posted by magullo on Oct 11, 2005 - 21 comments

New Wallace and Gromit movie ~ "Cracking Contraptions" from Atom Films and Shockwave... but $9.95 to download it? Oh, I don't think so! I guess I don't expect them to give it away for free, but who thought up this hair-brained scheme? I bet that dodgey lodger, the Penguin, is behind it somehow.
posted by crunchland on Feb 24, 2003 - 12 comments

Wallace and Gromit fans can now download one of ten short films from the BBC website. There are low (1.38 meg), medium (2.59 meg) and high (4.3 meg) quality versions available. To save, right click on the links and select "save as".
posted by ralawrence on Oct 15, 2002 - 17 comments