MetaFilter

After seven-year-old pilot Jessica Dubroff died while trying to set a record Joan Ryan penned an interesting article about such young record-seekers and their parents.

I hope Abby returns from the sea safe and sound.
posted to MetaFilter by Oriole Adams at 1:35 PM on June 10, 2010

So basically I say the exact same thing Alvy said in less words and I'm the one taking the heat?

I would disagree with that first part.

there would be a huge danger of them killing the thousands of other people also on the road.

Thousands? But point taken.

Is dying (if this is the outcome) very young doing something you love better than a longer,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Alvy Ampersand at 11:30 AM on June 10, 2010

Why hasn't some enterprising kid, supported of course by their proud and nuturing parents, ever attempted to go for a Youngest To Drive a Semi Truck Across Their Respective Country Record?

Oh, wait, that would be illegal and dangerous and irresponsible.
posted to MetaFilter by Alvy Ampersand at 11:20 AM on June 10, 2010

Can't believe they obviously spent so much money on developing the product, and then on the main product page on their website - surely a key way of communicating what this product is and how it works - it says, amongst other things, ";(re) configered windows", "emergancy exits" and "system ,based on unique". Very reassuring.
posted to MetaFilter by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 3:08 AM on June 10, 2010

I love the youtube comment "lol americans relax take it easy"

Indeed.
posted to MetaFilter by symbioid at 11:30 PM on June 9, 2010

Terrorist 1: So, is the SWAT team in the elevator pod thingy?

Terrorist 2: Yep

Terrorist 1: Blow up the cables then.

SWAT Team:
posted to MetaFilter by sideshow at 9:56 PM on June 9, 2010

(My childhood home was at 6:56 in the first video).
posted to MetaFilter by HLD at 11:12 AM on June 9, 2010

Nice timing. My wife and I were downtown last night listening to Allen Toussaint talk about how much he admired Fats, whose records he sometimes played piano on when Domino had to be elsewhere. Then this afternoon she was scoffing when I was listening to Ricky. I always thought the guy made great records, with top-notch musicians — the first guy he hired for his band was guitarist James Burton, who even lived in his house for two years.

I can easily ignore the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by LeLiLo at 1:10 AM on June 7, 2010

Man, this just about kills me. It's documentaries like these that give an entire state a bad name and dehumanize very real tragedies like the recent coal mining disaster near Charleston. I hate how this family stands in for an entire state and is obviously a sensationalist 'hey, look at these freaks!' type production. There's a lot of other places that have problems with prescription drug abuse and people shooting things with guns, but usually we associate those things with poverty and not a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ajarbaday at 4:12 PM on June 6, 2010

Unemployment is above 20 percent and our streets are filled

Not to be grouchy/reactionary but why don't they all get together and file a class action suit against the UAW or something...
posted to MetaFilter by sammyo at 7:28 AM on June 6, 2010

The reworking is really neat, never saw that one before. I wish we would build more damn robots to land places, forget the manned program.
posted to MetaFilter by furiousxgeorge at 9:27 PM on June 5, 2010

Not to minimize the need for ditch-diggers and elevator operators, but...

These same math whizzes look at you funny when you buy $6.25 worth of stuff and hand the cashier a ten, a one, and a quarter.

Dilution of higher education? No, a real college degree will still mean the same as it ever did. I'd call it "Destruction of APU's credibility" instead, proving them as just another online diploma mill.

Now, in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by pla at 5:54 AM on June 5, 2010

I for one am glad every time that douche bag planet gets sucker punched by an asteroid. Jupiter has been acting like a big shot for too long now showing off it's massive gravitational field. So its got a big red spot. Big fucking deal. We have a big black spot that's getting bigger every day.
posted to MetaFilter by digsrus at 11:28 AM on June 4, 2010

A quick comparison.

An even quicker comparison:      . O
posted to MetaFilter by blue_beetle at 10:53 AM on June 4, 2010

brokkr: "A quick comparison."

Why is Jupiter staring at Earth like that? We didn't steal his belt.
posted to MetaFilter by Splunge at 10:02 AM on June 4, 2010

three blind mice: "Way to go Jupiter. Your enormous size and awesome gravitational pull acts like asteroid flypaper. "

But you say surely there is somewhere in the solar system a planet big enough to cover Jupiter. Let us put the so-called Red Planet into place... Look! Ha ha ha! God of war? God of jokes! Mars looks like a tiny pimple on the vast beautiful face of mother Jupiter! Ha ha ha!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Joe Beese at 8:38 AM on June 4, 2010

I thought this was just kind of weird and avant-gardish for the sake of being weird and avant-gard. As a kid, I hated that kind of thing. There were elements in it that I really liked, though. I thought the horse was rendered in a particularly beautiful, almost Picasso-ish way, for example. I am surprised I didn't turn it off before that point, though.

If the battle is UPA vs. Warner Brothers, obviously this cartoon... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by norm at 12:41 PM on June 4, 2010

For the record: that drummer is drumming the shit out of those drums and knows what he is doing. These guys seem to be a very self-aware, schtick-friendly bunch—see this slapstick take on Wipeout from the same gig.

If you watch his sticking close, he's being pretty fastidious about doing constant unnecessary stick work just because he can, playing off either end of the stick on alternating strikes, pulling off slowmo robot stuff with his arms that screams "I know... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 12:45 PM on June 3, 2010

Heaven forbid someone enjoy playing music
posted to MetaFilter by Think_Long at 12:39 PM on June 3, 2010

Intriguing possibility, but it seems unlikely to me too. The Utterly Wilde site mentions the Hyde and Ellmann biographies, but the Ellmann biography does not mention the supposed recording at all.

The Feuilleton site says that several Wilde biographies mention the supposed recording but I've never seen any other mention of it other than the Hyde biography.

The Feuilleton site also says that Wilde mentioned the Exposition several times in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blucevalo at 9:42 PM on June 2, 2010

Is bullfighting appreciably more brutal towards the animal than tactics at modern slaughterhouses? We are a bloody, vicious species in an even more vicious world.
posted to MetaFilter by incessant at 9:52 PM on June 2, 2010

He's gored through his chin, not his throat, which is why he's not dead. Still though, Go Bulls!
posted to MetaFilter by w0mbat at 9:34 PM on June 2, 2010

NetZapper: Seriously, who the fuck grows up in the US without that they've at least played a couple games of pseudo-baseball?

ifds, sn9: Things you need to play baseball:

1. A baseball
2. Glove(s)
3. A place to throw a ball where it's not going to break something or hit someone else in the head
4. Other people who care about baseball enough to show it to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by three blind mice at 4:01 AM on May 29, 2010

It's interesting how the Scandinavian penal system, with its relatively comfortable facilities, contrasts with the Anglo-Calvinist ideology that prison should above all things be a place of punishment and making it too comfortable would introduce that greatest of all sins, moral hazard. In the Anglosphere, rehabilitation is a nice theory, but not something one can believe in, and it'd be immoral to fail in one's duty of punishing evildoers in the name of it.

Though, on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by acb at 3:13 AM on May 27, 2010

He was abandoned on a door step in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan...

He ended up with the perfect name for a TV pitchman, too. One wonders what line of work he'd have gone into if he'd been left on the doorstep of, say, the Kleinschmidts.
posted to MetaFilter by Atom Eyes at 1:46 PM on May 26, 2010

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

*hugs faze*
posted to MetaTalk by loquacious at 3:35 PM on May 20, 2010

OK, Richard Beck officially gets crossed off my list of "cool people named Beck" for this tripe.

The only names left on the list now are "Jeff" and " ."
posted to MetaFilter by Joey Michaels at 2:56 AM on May 25, 2010

aand even with no Iranian response, the United States is likely to begin significant defensive deployments to the region

"Even with no Iranian response" the United States has already deployed 150,000 soldiers and a trillion dollars of war material on one border of Iran, another 50,000 soldiers and a few hundred billion of war material on another border, and filled the Persian Gulf with U.S. warships.

If I was an... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by three blind mice at 3:37 AM on May 25, 2010

Oh, those exuberant film puppies. Here's a good way to beat that out of your system:

1) Drive to Best Buy.
2) Locate several of those "six horror films for six bucks" DVD sets.
3) Sit down and watch them, one after another.
4) Try not to despair for humanity.
5) Realize that these films wouldn't even make the MST3K cut in terms of having anything to lampoon. Hobgoblins is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by adipocere at 5:21 PM on May 23, 2010

I see the plan -- the low-cal options are so nasty that, if weight loss is the goal, the best option for getting buzzed is spinning rapidly and smashing your head into a wall. At least the only unpleasant taste in your mouth will be your own blood. And you can't get cheaper than that!
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 11:40 PM on May 23, 2010

Aha! Whenever I heard "The Name Game" on the radio I wondered why, of all the names in the world, Shirley chose "Lincoln" as her second name to futz with (especially when all the other names in the song are more plain/mainstream, like Mary and Fred and Arnold). Lincoln Chase was her manager/producer.
posted to MetaFilter by Oriole Adams at 9:25 AM on May 22, 2010

As much as I can't stand Kenny G, this takedown is sort of like bringing a machine gun to kill an ant. I have a feeling that Satchmo himself would not give a flying crap what Kenny G did to his music.
posted to MetaFilter by blucevalo at 11:55 AM on May 20, 2010

Purely personally, Gopnik's probably the only New Yorker writer I would trust with such an article, and definitely one of the only writers who I would click through to read. He's got a great history of presenting a well-thought out look at things, and I've particularly enjoyed his take on Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. Okay, back to the article.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by redsparkler at 11:39 AM on May 20, 2010

Obligatory disclaimer: it's understood that, yes, there are children being commercially sexually exploited in the U.S., and it's probably not as rare as we'd like to think. But I'm already seeing a red flag here. From Dan Rather's article:

The most conservative estimates are that at least 10,000 American children are being victimized. Many experts say they believe it's closer to 30,000 or more.

And the Oregonian (second link):... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:53 AM on May 19, 2010

I wonder how many other stars and starlets were on their way up when Beatlemania changed the pop music game.

Lesley Gore, Gene Pitney, Roy Orbison, Dion, Fats Domino, Rick Nelson, Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, Brenda Lee, the Everlys, Chubby Checker, Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs (who will always have the ignominious distinction of having the final #1 rock-oriented hit before the first Beatles #1, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," landed) and on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by blucevalo at 1:39 PM on May 17, 2010

You should leave AF Hall as expeditiously as possible under any circumstances. The threatening Lippold sculpture (affectionately known as 'Dynamited Lumberyard') threatens all who subnavigate it with coppery crushification.

I was an usher there in the 1960s, soon after it was built. Here's the secret story of how the first ushers were hired:
Two notices were put up on bulletin boards, one at CCNY and one at Manhattan College of Music, to the effect that (as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hexatron at 6:53 PM on May 13, 2010

Just enough time for a photo-op and then he spent the rest of the time across the river? The gorilla loves him, ambled through the jungle to try to get some more time with him, and he's just staying on the other side of the river?

If that gorilla loved me, I would invite him and his wives back to Boston with me. And then we would RULE my neighborhood because no one around here is hard enough to fuck with a gorilla. Talk about missed opportunities.
posted to MetaFilter by Mayor Curley at 11:47 AM on May 13, 2010

I know you're supposed to listen to the message, and not criticize the messenger, and I love Dan Akroyd, but his delivery in everything he's trying to say just screams "Paranoid UFO nut." If he would just take a couple deep breaths and realize he's got a few main points to make, he'd come off a good deal less crazy-cat-ladyish. Instead (like a good number of people trying to prove that THE MAN is behind some sort of conspiracy) he rushes his words, stumbling over them, trying to cram... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 3:06 AM on May 13, 2010

Most of the earth really is covered in water, and people forget the scale that implies.

Near where I live most of the earth is covered in hay.
posted to MetaFilter by Brian B. at 12:55 PM on May 8, 2010

I just watched it all as well. Fascinating.

One thing I would think would be self-evident: you can't fake it, not for long. Either making cars is viable or it isn't, but you can't just dump some gov't bux in every once in awhile and hope it takes this time.

Detroit should be doing whatever it can to leverage what it does have going on. I did like how it ended on a hopeful note, however minor.
posted to MetaFilter by maxwelton at 1:47 AM on May 8, 2010

"Try telling people you live in Detroit."

When I was in Europe, I was wearing my Tigers hat for most of it, and had no luck in trying to explain "Ann Arbor," but everyone knew Detroit and assumed that I was a super-badass Techno murderer with an amazing car and Stevie Wonder's home phone number. It was sweet and I was entirely content to coast on that rep.
posted to MetaFilter by klangklangston at 8:50 PM on May 7, 2010

Will Detroit ever stop dying and finally be dead? Stay tuned for the next incisive investigative report we're frantically trying to wrap up before public interest has moved on to some other symbol of America's decline!

Sorry to snark. This is better than a lot of coverage I've seen. But I'm getting tired of people looking at me like I told them I've got cancer when all I said was that I live in Michigan.
posted to MetaFilter by ardgedee at 7:16 PM on May 7, 2010

What's wrong with not being sexy?

I WOULDN'T KNOW, DARLING

(takes puff from cigarette in cigarette holder; crosses legs; winks; winks the other eye; winks both eyes in rapid, asynchronous succession)
posted to MetaFilter by Sticherbeast at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2010

I am pleased to see that southern california remains, as always, awesome.
posted to MetaFilter by flaterik at 11:41 AM on May 7, 2010

Oh, so you're going with the "no h in neanderthal" spelling. Just gotta start a fight, do you?

Grog, get him.
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 12:43 PM on May 6, 2010

"Even scenes from his comedy tour that should have shown O'Brien employing success as the best revenge had a sad quality to them. Listening to the comedian perform songs recounting his struggle, I was reminded of Jason Segel's pathetic character in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," singing silly ditties to deal with the pain of getting dumped.

But the worst part of it all was that O'Brien picked the wrong show for making his return to TV. Watching O'Brien... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by iviken at 2:34 AM on May 3, 2010

ROTFL Faze. I'm pretty sure a food we've been eating for most of our evolution isn't poisonous. The truth is that diseases of civilization like heart disease and diabetes are absent in hunter-gatherers whether they eat mostly yams (Kitavans) or mostly meat (Inuit). Humans evolved eating meat and it makes no sense that it would kill us.

As for the common myth that we didn't, do a quick search on Google Scholar and see how many hundreds of anthropology articles are about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by melissam at 6:38 AM on May 1, 2010

The Original Black Hole Trailer is the Best Trailer Ever Made. Ever.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 4:36 PM on April 29, 2010

If I buy food grown locally it's because I want to support local producers. I don't give a rat's arse about saving the rest of the world.
posted to MetaFilter by HTuttle at 12:24 PM on April 28, 2010

I respect the Marvel offerings, but suspect I would enjoy the DC madness more. The ridiculous always tickles me.
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 12:05 PM on April 28, 2010