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We were those poor tourists who could only take a couple of glimpses of the hall when we visited in the fall of 2009. The consolation prize was this shot.
posted to MetaFilter by of strange foe at 8:23 AM on March 30, 2011

Stunning.

It's also pretty close to the picture in my head of my ideal home. Just that room. Roaring open fire, nice armchairs, bed and kitchenette hidden behind false bookcases, but yeah, almost there.
posted to MetaFilter by spectrevsrector at 6:38 AM on March 30, 2011

While it feels good to rage against the machine and point fingers at 'the Man,' such behavior is counter productive. It promotes imbecility by demoting personal responsibility. The number one cause of incarceration is bad decisions. While injustice exists and should be fought, the real foe is imbecility.

We live in a Democracy and the means you - the people - make and can change the law. Your vote = my vote. Freedom means responsibility for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by astrobiophysican at 10:07 PM on March 28, 2011

Huh. That epidose was directed by Richard "Moss from IT Crowd" Ayoade.
posted to MetaFilter by robocop is bleeding at 11:40 AM on March 28, 2011

It's like good grief without the good.
posted to MetaFilter by dances_with_sneetches at 8:31 AM on March 28, 2011

Peanuts is really pretty dark to begin with

I remember reading a Sunday Peanuts strip, years ago, when Snoopy's brother, who lives out in the desert, is (as usual) talking to a cactus. He says "People ask me why I live out here," then goes on to narrate how he chased a cat out into the street where it was hit by a car, and he moved to the desert where that would never happen again. He ends the narration with "...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 8:22 AM on March 28, 2011

These don't subvert the message of the strip, they emphasize it.
posted to MetaFilter by theodolite at 8:06 AM on March 28, 2011

nanger: for all the outrage, even after that poor woman burst in to tell the media about being raped by Qaddafi's men, I find it very difficult to jump on the bandwagon of dropping more bombs and hoping that it changes things. The fact is, there are tens of thousands of people in prison right now in Iraq, many of whom who have been raped and tortured, and you don't hear a peep about it unless you go searching. There are US armed military squads crushing opposition movements in Syria, Saudi... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by notion at 10:40 PM on March 27, 2011

10. Liberals cheerfully joining in on bashing people who oppose the war, decrying their lack of concern for the humanitarian justifications for dropping bombs on people.

I agree with almost everything on that list (still not sure on the facile "oil" thing), but this the big one. We're dropping bombs from planes. Bombs don't "protect." Bombs kill people indiscriminately. Just like they do when our drones drop them on Pakistan (500... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by drjimmy11 at 9:01 PM on March 27, 2011

Top Ten Ways Libya 2011 IS like Iraq 2003:

1. Significant oil reserves.
2. Long vilified bad guy with formerly polite relationships with the US.
3. Vast military superiority on one side of the conflict.
4. Broad centrist political support for the military action.
5. Small international coalition.
6. Lack of coherent mission. (Protect civilians? No regime change. Wait, regime change! No.)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by furiousxgeorge at 8:26 PM on March 27, 2011

"Whenever we have a common resource we always over-exploit it until, as a society, we put regulations in place for managing it. In cases where we didn’t (Easter Island comes to mind), we use up the resource completely with catastrophic results."

Easter Island would have some forest right now if the natives practiced some free market principles. The dwindling supply of forest would have forced the price of trees up, making giant statue building too expensive.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by otto42 at 6:10 PM on March 26, 2011

This is good stuff. I liked this, because it's coming from a different angle toward something I say often:

Even though companies are accruing the risk of a large future liability, they don’t have to account for this risk in their balance sheet. That’s because while future generations have a stake in this situation, they don’t have a voice now. Nobody’s appointed to represent their interests. That’s why the free market continues to be hacked, at their expense.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 6:06 PM on March 26, 2011

Well, OK.

I was expecting him to die a slow and horrible AIDS-related death at the end. Missed opportunity? Honestly, I sort of think so. They're basically saying "here, watch 2 minutes of this really funny/weird cartoon, and by the way when you're done laughing at the antics of this promiscuous cat, be sure to wear a condom".

It feels like the entertainment-to-message ratio is quite a bit off in this one.
posted to MetaFilter by HostBryan at 6:14 AM on March 25, 2011

I think that we need to be extremely careful about how we handle any kind of research that suggests sexual preference could be tied to any kind of deficiency or hormonal abnormality.

Why? Everything people do is mediated by hormones and neurotransmitters. Every psychological tendency, whether it be sex drive, or mood, or intellectual curiosity or wanderlust or whatever is going to probably be connected to differences in their levels or how their... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by empath at 12:08 PM on March 23, 2011

This isn't quantifiable or anything, but to my eyes and ears, these players (is it because they're girls?) seem to be in calm and complete control of the instrument, and their own emotions. That's not to say that they're showing the fun of playing (Desiree Bassett!!), but the whole thing looks so elegant and beautiful in its terrifying splendour! MY GOD! When boys do this they're often all about "the show" (long metal man hair flip this, and wank off the neck that), but these players... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kneecapped at 5:10 PM on March 18, 2011

Not as dramatic, but we had a waterspout in San Francisco today.
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 7:56 PM on March 18, 2011

...but someone gets in right before the doors shut and instinctively I turn to say hello. It's the actor Charlie Sheen, who lives in the penthouse, and as a courtesy, without asking him, I press the PH button and he nods thank you and keeps his eyes fixed on the numbers lighting up above the door in rapid succession. He is much shorter in person and he's wearing the same pair of black Wayfarers I have on. He's dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, an Armani jacket.

To... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by tumid dahlia at 3:52 AM on March 17, 2011

Are they your genes or your parent's genes?
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 7:52 AM on March 13, 2011

There are many of us who get the morning paper mostly because of the comics, the local news and the op-eds. Mostly the comics. It's been a tradition for me for a half an century. At five, the language of Pogo was difficult, but I loved it.

Unfortunately, many newspapers drop the best comics, which, frankly, appeal to their better-paid demographic, for the most part. Irony, etc.

I don't have the time to look up all my favorite comics online.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kozad at 9:21 PM on March 11, 2011

Good lord, it's like these people were made in a test tube over in the Metafilter Labs, as some sort of thread-based bioweapon.
posted to MetaFilter by hincandenza at 5:27 PM on March 11, 2011

Hope you're OK, Flapjax.
posted to MetaFilter by nicolin at 2:38 AM on March 11, 2011

If a journalist intended to write a balanced article, turned in this article, and an editor said "please balance out these quotes, the article seems one-sided", and the journalist was unable to find any quotes to do so, shouldn't the journalist have just said as much in the article? So as not to seem either lazy or unskilled?

And if a journalist wanted to train a sharper lens on the imbalance of opinion in a town that seems to be at best attempting to create... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ersatzkat at 4:27 AM on March 10, 2011

That Mother Jones article was the motherfucking real talk.

This is the point at which, as the writer's editor, I would send him an email. "Dear James," it would say. "Thanks for getting this in! I have some concerns that we've only got quotes from people who are worried about the suspects ('The arrests have left many wondering who will be taken into custody next') and think the girl was asking for it, especially since, even... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the_bone at 11:46 PM on March 9, 2011

craichead: the east coast squishes you both in mind and body. It's the lack of space.

Welcome to the good part of the country.

i kid!
posted to MetaFilter by leotrotsky at 8:50 PM on March 8, 2011

I had a deck built in Windsor, Ontario, and I haven't looked back since. It's a huge expanse of treated gopher wood, stretching off toward the horizon. I told all my friends: "COME, VIEW MY DECKING, YOU DECKLESS PIPSQUEKS, AND DESPAIR!" And when they came, I laughed at their stupidity in not choosing a similar, deck-centric existence. "FOOLS!" I cried, in capslock. "DID NOT THE LORD SAY UNTO THEE, BUILD UNTO ME A GIANT DECK IN WINDSOR, ONTARIO, AND YAY LET IT... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the quidnunc kid at 1:36 PM on March 5, 2011

A crappy science writer who never talks about science to review another crappy science writer who never talks about science. That's fair, I guess.
posted to MetaFilter by shii at 3:25 AM on March 5, 2011

I still get 35% of the juke box and crushed ice racket.
posted to MetaFilter by clavdivs at 4:58 PM on March 3, 2011

You people realize that the CSM is backed by a cult that makes Scientology look almost sane by comparison?
posted to MetaFilter by Yakuman at 4:49 PM on March 2, 2011

I'll be the digital curmudgeon here.

I just don't care enough to support failed business models. I recognize that the reporting of the NYT or the CSM is superior to that of the blogs and news.google.com, yet I can read between the lines, I can follow-up on interesting stories which have far more in-depth information than any mainstream media outlet would have (currently).

Regardless, that's what I read. I have no incentive to pay a dime for pay... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Invoke at 1:37 PM on March 2, 2011

Even if jury nullification were the purest quackery, and had never been used for anything but unmitigated evil; isn't it just a tiny bit frightening that you can be arrested for talking about it in front of a courthouse?
posted to MetaFilter by steambadger at 2:20 PM on March 1, 2011

We don't have to worry about the state abusing its power to destroy people who inconvenience it as long as they only do it to old crackpots.
posted to MetaFilter by Joe Beese at 1:50 PM on March 1, 2011

I consider this link obligatory.

"Shareholder value" doesn't mean "short-term stock performance".
posted to MetaFilter by kenko at 3:55 PM on February 28, 2011

I bet there is a movie about an aging benshi who finds it increasingly difficult to find work as talking pictures take over. Maybe he even befriends a young girl who sets her mind on keep the trade alive despite meeting resistance from her family and the public. All of this told as a story within a story where the young girl, now an old woman in modern Japan, shares her life's story with her grandchild. Would so crowd fund this.
posted to MetaFilter by Foci for Analysis at 4:49 PM on February 27, 2011

I've been rereading the original 14 Oz books in the past couple of weeks. I'd read a couple of them out of order growing up and loved them. I also saw Return to Oz for the first time in the past year. I was really surprised to find out that it's a very faithful adaptation of the 3rd Oz book, creepiness and all. They get weirder as you go, but they maintain the charm of the original. Still, you've got to wonder just what L. Frank Baum was on when he wrote them...
posted to MetaFilter by Fuego at 9:12 PM on February 26, 2011

/prepares indignation grenade

"John Shade"

/carefully reinserts pin
posted to MetaFilter by Celsius1414 at 2:52 PM on February 22, 2011

That panorama of Paris is so lovely you'd almost forget that each and every one of those streets is covered in dog poop, cigarette butts, and human urine (yeah, yeah, "city of love" me all you want, you haven't had to live in this bitch for three years).
posted to MetaFilter by Mooseli at 2:30 AM on February 22, 2011

I forgot to include "loading and unloading equipment". I once played with a keyboardist that had a full Hammond B-3 - with the big-ass Leslie cabinet, no less. What a beast that was. Sounded freakin' great, though....
posted to MetaFilter by Greg_Ace at 1:47 PM on February 19, 2011

One time, at band camp...

There's the story of Duke Ellington in the 1960s, begging an Atlanta promoter for ten dollars in advance of the show, and being turned down.

"The Real Frank Zappa" bio, Zappa writes that he decided to disband the Mothers when he saw Duke Ellington "begging for a ten-dollar advance." I have a hard time believing that story. Did you see that happen?

Don... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hal9k at 7:37 AM on February 19, 2011

My worst gig was on a boat running a bunch of Yalies up the Connecticut River for a party. It was a stormy night.. a dark and stormy night. The boat was fairly good-sized, with a metal deck, and the guy in charge of entertainment wanted us to set up on the bare metal deck in the open. If we had done that, we'd have been either 1) blown overboard by the storm, or 2) electrocuted by our own instruments on the deck. I simply refused to set up there. I didn't argue, I didn't say a thing. I simply... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 7:57 AM on February 19, 2011

Great content, what there is of it, but the interface blows.
posted to MetaFilter by tommasz at 6:14 AM on February 19, 2011

Holy SHIT! Thanks to this site, I now know that it was BERNARD PURDIE who drummed on "Hang On Sloopy"! Whoa! Thank you!
posted to MetaFilter by flapjax at midnite at 5:43 AM on February 19, 2011

It would have been funnier with spit-takes.
posted to MetaFilter by JeffK at 1:49 PM on February 16, 2011

I'm going to spend every day, for a year, trying to do something meaningful with my life. I'm going to love my wife, and work hard at my job; I'm going to be loyal to my new friends and stay in touch with the friends I've left behind. I will be slow to anger and quick to forgive.

Hard to make a gimmicky blog about that, though.
posted to MetaFilter by IjonTichy at 8:48 AM on February 12, 2011

This is fun to read, but it reminds me of an analogy that I used to make for computer users.

Back when automobiles were newer than they are today, people used to have to carry tools with them to do maintenance and adjustments to the engine regularly, even during daily use. And in older cars, they'd even have to wear special clothes because the engine would throw oil and stuff while driving. It was messy, and difficult, and required a lot of user knowhow to keep things... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 7:07 AM on February 12, 2011

Personally, I would hope that if they do make a movie of the musical, that it would be animated. I could see the live action being a horrible schlock-fest on par with that horrible Alice In Wonderland. Beautiful to look at, but utterly soulless. Moving the story into animation would allow for "special effects" to happen all the time without it feeling false. And there's a long history of animated musicals being huge successes.

The real pitfall of filming... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 12:30 PM on February 10, 2011

Can we vote for neither??
posted to MetaFilter by spicynuts at 12:04 PM on February 10, 2011

Shorter version:

Mike Mignola to BLDBLOG: "I'm a one-trick pony, but it's a really, really good trick."

I wish he WOULD draw a shopping mall. Shopping malls are creepy. My visual imagination would be stimulated by a Mike-Mignola-drawn shopping mall. But no, he's gonna draw another crumbling ruin and then dip the page in black ink. And that's one reason I stopped buying Hellboy. It's the same thing over and over again. It's visually... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by BitterOldPunk at 12:14 PM on February 9, 2011

This might be the best use of HD video yet.
posted to MetaFilter by ORthey at 7:20 AM on February 8, 2011

Self-deception is the grease in the friction of all interactions, the rose tint on every mirror, and the secret prize at the bottom of every cereal box luring us out of bed in the morning. Even a mild deficit of it can reduce its host to shivering under the shadow of inevitable death while questioning the wisdom of so much as greeting a stranger in the street.

This is why I have developed the Psychoanalytic Bomb. Detonation over a target area renders the inhabitants... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by adipocere at 6:27 AM on February 6, 2011

I miss repression.
posted to MetaFilter by thinkpiece at 5:13 AM on February 6, 2011