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Library of Congress' Science Tracer Bullets - research guides that help you locate information on science and technology subjects.
posted to MetaTalk by carsonb at 1:45 PM on July 11, 2011

I refer to these as WTIIF - What The Internet Is For.

PacMan Dossier.
Yarchive.
dedicated to the knitting of the authentic Doctor Who scarf.
RatBehavior.org.
Peacoat dating.
A history of Argentinian public transport tickets.
Alan Cooper's All About Homonyms.
The Soda Can Library.
Internet Pinball Serial Number Database
a four-way listing of railway... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by zamboni at 12:40 PM on September 7, 2010 marked best answer

I call them WTIIF - What The Internet Is For, and there were a bunch of them in this AskMe.
posted to MetaTalk by zamboni at 1:09 PM on July 11, 2011

magnificentobsession
posted to MetaTalk by MrMoonPie at 1:09 PM on July 11, 2011

Thanks for this, I think it's quite good. He gets the tone right: equal parts absurdity and despair.

My wife and I have been going through this for over a year. And it's one of the most difficult things I've ever been through. It's just really brutal: the hope and expectation, the repeated devastation, the odds (which are not good), the silent recriminations and arguments over whether this or that decision was the right one. When we started I had a sort of naive... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by OmieWise at 10:41 AM on July 11, 2011

"Go to church. Say your prayers. Tithe! Tithe!"

----Deathtöngue
posted to MetaFilter by Runes at 6:52 AM on July 11, 2011

Green beans! Toss lightly in olive oil and dash of salt and bake for 10 minutes at 400-ish. Bring them out and douse them in a combo of sesame oil, garlic, honey and a ton of ginger. Put back in the oven and cook until they are nearly blackened. Spicy!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 2:49 PM on July 10, 2011 marked best answer

> As others observed, "Little Shop of Horrors" is what sold the tickets.

I've seen this comment quite a bit. What are you basing it on? This is an old, old show that most theatre-goers have already seen.

You know, a lot of people look forward to watching the "Charlie Brown Christmas" special or "It's A Wonderful Life" every year, even though it's something they've already seen. Lots of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 11:00 AM on July 1, 2011

My lady is in the SF Theater scene and knows folks on that production.

First, Nick is a guy who no one would give a job to in Bay Area theater so he started his own company. That should be your first hint.

Second, He could have requested the license required to make creative modifications. There are some hoops you have to jump through but its not impossible. He didn't.

Third, Nick doesn't do original work, Box Car does... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MiltonRandKalman at 9:09 AM on July 1, 2011

We're just curious to see the hammer come down in real-time. I'm sure the novelty will wear off -- at least i bet the mods hope so.

But for now, Big Red Box!
posted to MetaFilter by Devils Rancher at 8:29 PM on June 30, 2011

Take it seriously. That doesn't mean go to the Doctor, unless taking it seriously warrants that as a response (if you need the assistance of a Doctor, by all means go). Even if it's just ennui, ennui can lead a depressive person back to those dark places if they are not careful. It's worth being careful.

Here's how it works for me. I think of depression as being like the way alcoholism is popularly understood. Being a recovering depressive is a bit like being a... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by gauche at 8:46 PM on June 26, 2011

Effects, CGI or otherwise, are not the problem with bad movies today, or ever. The problem with bad movies is storylines and characters that just don't work. If you then put in effects to try to make up for the lack, you end up with horrible movies like Transformers 2 and the recent remakes of perfectly good movies that someone, somewhere decided would just be better for the improved technology. And they suck.

But I'd argue that King King was one of the few that did it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by misha at 12:40 PM on June 20, 2011

(I majored in Mjean Unemkployment, incidentally.)
posted to MetaFilter by Sys Rq at 1:30 PM on June 21, 2011

Gives me hope for The Art of Computer Programming getting finished.

Knuth has a habit of inventing systems to overcome difficulties with his projects- TeX, METAFONT, etc. My current theory as to why TAoCP is taking so long, is that Knuth is busy inventing strong AI. KnuthBot 3.1415 will be churning out new fascicles before we know it!
posted to MetaFilter by zamboni at 6:13 AM on June 13, 2011

I remember talking to a friend after seeing Saving Private Ryan.

"Why didn't they bomb the beach before going in?" she asked.
"They did. For hours and hours. But you can't do it too much."
"Why?"
"Because the way to defend a beach invasion is to try and slow them down as much as possible on the beach, but still allow them to land. Then you smash their weakened force with fast-moving armor on the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Cool Papa Bell at 9:11 AM on June 6, 2011

How bout a SFW montage of non-pornographic introductory scenes from pornographic movies?
posted to MetaFilter by gman at 12:51 PM on May 29, 2011

Oh, man. Law and Order is responsible for my parents' marital happiness. For as long as I can remember, my parents have watched Law and Order. Every Wednesday at 9, we kids had to be in bed before the first DUH DUH. It was their thing. It was comforting, in a way.

And then, recently, my mom and I were talking, and I mentioned how devoted she and my father were to Law and Order. "What?" she said, confused.

"Every Wednesday, you know.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by punchtothehead at 3:54 PM on May 27, 2011

Look, your opinion on this matter is simply an extension of your own racism. If you can't see it, it's because you're so embedded in your own privilege. Privilege is a concept you will never understand on account of your privilege. On the other hand, my personal view on the subject is much more nuanced. I am obviously a better person than you. Please take this into account when addressing me. You racist.
posted to MetaFilter by seanyboy at 9:19 AM on May 24, 2011

rocket88:

Yeah...poor choice of words on my part. Not useless, but not indicative of anything more than personal bias.

Personally, I disagree. I think studies like this can reveal social trends, which one might maintain are composed of discrete personal biases, but they manifest in aggregate as broader social phenomena like racism.
posted to MetaFilter by clockzero at 9:16 AM on May 24, 2011

Computer Modern is indeed a drain on the soul, but LaTeX users should not despair; modern font-handling is a snap. My god, the day I got XeTeX going and started cranking out docs in Garamond using the memoir package was a wonderful, wonderful day.

LaTeX stopped looking old-fashioned a long time ago, thank heavens.
posted to MetaFilter by waxbanks at 6:34 PM on May 21, 2011

The minimum rate any contractor should charge per hour is 35 dollars no matter what service you provide, no questions. That is the minimum hourly rate. Go up from there.

35 dollars an hour after taxes, periods of no work, looking for work and tracking your billable hours (hours not spent pulling your hair out researching a problem that you did not initially count on when bidding the hours the project will take) will, on average yield 10 dollars an hour into your bank... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by roboton666 at 3:31 PM on May 17, 2011

It had its interesting parts but for the most part I found it a slow, aimless examination of some despicable people.

The show is the slowest burn in the history of tv. the first three seasons have been a first act, a shiver before the plunge. We've seen the First Wife, the First (real) Job in the society of the post-war fifties and early sixties. We've seen how comfortable Don is as a creature of those times, and how poorly Peggy, a creature of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bonehead at 9:06 AM on April 1, 2011

I feel like I should do a side by side comparison of Babydoll to Beatrix Kiddo.

What does the character want?

Beatrix: Revenge on her former lover and teacher and anyone involved in her attempted murder/planned destruction her her life.

Baby: To not be in a mental institution.

Do they get what they want?

Beatrix: Oh yeah.

Babydoll: Only in dreams.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Whelk at 3:24 PM on March 28, 2011

I was just talking to my sister back home a little while ago, and she was worried about me not being able to fly out of here for a trip home on Thursday. While Sendai and the immediate area are going to be a long time recovering, I told her I thought Tokyo and the Kanto area would likely be back to normal by Tuesday at the latest, because this is what Japan does. It has a problem, then it fixes it so people can get back to work.

As I was telling her this, the doorbell... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 7:28 PM on March 11, 2011

he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.

Oh sure, he's happy -- but their parents? Feh. All the way over on Hawaii he as to live? America's not good enough for him? We never see the grandkids, he doesn't write, he can't pick up a phone and call, with the long distance?

And only $120,000... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by PlusDistance at 7:06 AM on March 9, 2011

Roll 1d10:
1. Government extends Patriot Act provisions, citing threats of cyberterrorism.
3. Anonymous declares war on Facebook.
2. Jon Stewart declares war on The Onion.
4. Spontaneous economic collapse. Anonymous claims victory in its war on America.
5. Anonymous declares war on itself.
6. Widespread legalization of marijuana. Anonymous claims victory in war on drugs, declares war on snack foods.
7. MPAA... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by NMcCoy at 12:19 AM on March 9, 2011

Authors should view this as an opportunity to reach a wider audience. The real money is in touring and t-shirt sales.
posted to MetaFilter by Ad hominem at 10:37 PM on February 21, 2011

Alas, I haven’t read it

If only I could go back in time and do the same for this article.
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 8:39 AM on February 16, 2011

Craig Finn continually gives the impression that he simply can't believe he's up on stage fronting such an amazing band.

...That's my favorite part.
posted to MetaFilter by NoraReed at 3:32 AM on February 4, 2011

Make no mistake: Sony is pissed about this, because all PS3s everywhere are absolutely, irrevocably compromised. The boot signing key has been released, and the complementary public key is burned into the ROM of all existing consoles. This means that anyone, anywhere, can write any firmware they like, and make it look as though it has been 'blessed' by Sony.

All the other keys have been compromised too, but the loss of the boot key means that they... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 12:20 AM on January 12, 2011

I think that when anti-racism activists say "conversation" they mean "discussion where people who are marginalized by the racist power structure are given a voice that may, at this one place and time, be protected, and may actually be permitted to be louder than the voices of the dominant majority in that structure."

But individual White people are no more the heads of some Lernaean power structure than individual Asians are the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by kid ichorous at 3:51 AM on January 11, 2011

I say we ban them within 1,000 feet of anyone.
posted to MetaFilter by theredpen at 10:27 AM on January 11, 2011

Sure it goes goes swimmingly until your daughter gets picked to play the swan queen.
posted to MetaFilter by The Whelk at 8:04 AM on January 9, 2011

Miko > It may take some time to find [helpful professionals], but they exist.

That's the crux of the problem — even in therapy-tractable cases, it's not uncommon for finding real help to take a long time, a lot of effort and expense, and a number of therapist-patient mismatches. How many sick people with any kind of malady are equipped to do this for themselves for years without effective palliative care, or even unequivocal... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hat at 10:32 PM on January 5, 2011

Man, did I used to drink a lot of Dr Pepper. And then my students in a university course I taught commented on it one day before class. The comments were then followed by another student asking whether I liked it better from a can or from a bottle. As I was about to answer, another student asked, "There's a difference?" "Of course there is," I responded before going on to teach them instead about Latin gerunds. But the next day when I got to class, there was a 20-ounce... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zeugitai_guy at 2:22 PM on January 4, 2011

New Kids on the Backstreet Boys is a serious and legitimate thing that is actually happening?

That seems problematic from the standpoint of cardinality alone; one New Kid would have no Backstreet Boy on which to be. Perhaps the most effective solution would be a layer of New Kids with Backstreet Boys on them in the manner of stacked firewood.
posted to MetaFilter by Wolfdog at 12:35 PM on January 1, 2011

To get all the way back to something that Sterling talked about and something that I see here regarding the supposed "defense of the status quo":

Democracy, to me, is not an absolute virtue. Democracy is like capitalism, a system that works in some broad ways, but that has to be very much contained in order to keep it functioning in the broad public interest.

Now, the easy thing to do is just disagree right there, to sling some utopian... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by klangklangston at 2:40 PM on December 23, 2010

This is one of the more nuanced commentaries on the whole affair that I've seen so far, and rather close to my own position. It has indeed been a long time coming; I met Sterling socially around 1991 because I had encountered his name while learning about public key cryptography, and it so happened he was coming to London to do a book signing.

At the time, a guy called Phil Zimmerman had just published an algorithm for something called Pretty Good Privacy, which gave... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by anigbrowl at 11:51 PM on December 22, 2010

Meanwhile there is not one wikileaks thread open that is dedicated to discussing the actual leaks. And due to wiki-fatigue any thread started for this purpose would most likely be D.O.A. Everyone needs to take a lesson in how media manipulation works because in the case of wikileaks we have an excellent example. U.S. government +1, Wikileaks 0. Well played really.

Joe Beese is a sleeper agent.

The first response is that it... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by klangklangston at 12:15 AM on December 21, 2010

Which is to say that when your style is to be ironic to the point where you're making fun of the "alt" people who are being ironic to make fun of the "bro" people who are being ironic to make fun of the "poor" people (who are in theory too undereducated to be self aware to make fun of anyone other than other races and sexualities) it's easy to become lost in a dismal post-modern swamp of triple-meanings. At what point are you your own person instead of a cultural... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by codacorolla at 2:17 PM on December 9, 2010

Odd the things one comes across on the blue.

Adam Sandler, the owner of the bingo hall of the article, was once my building manager and his actions had an unexpected impact on my life. To a large extent, I think I'm responsible for the fact he left the building managing business and took over his dad's bingo hall.

Hassan, the man, at that time in 1992, who was the super of the building I live in here in Hell's Kitchen, went to be the manager of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nickyskye at 6:25 PM on November 28, 2010

I love bingo. My mom's whole family are horrible addicts, and going with my mom to late-night bingo was the only time I was ever allowed to stay up past midnight when I was little. My little brother and I used to sit under the tables and create pictures with all the different colored bingo daubers. For the longest time my brother could only count up to 75 because that was as high as the bingo numbers went. I won $200 on one of the electronic machines when I was in sixth grade and used the money... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lilac girl at 3:59 PM on November 28, 2010

On BART, a real San Franciscan doesn't use the emergency intercom -- they just tweet @SFBART. The Foursquare mayor for the nearest station is then notified via SMS, and can then use discretion as to whether or not to use the Emergency Brake app for their iPhone to stop the train. Alas, the train is unlikely to actually stop, since AT&T's network sucks.
posted to MetaFilter by eschatfische at 11:12 AM on January 31, 2010

Confession time.

Something similar happened to me when I was doing a course in thermodynamics as part of my engineering degree. I had aced the mid-term exams and several assignments, and I was at the top of my class. The professor (say, Prof. TD) was a great teacher, and I had a fantastic rapport with him.

With 60% of the assessment done, there were only two evaluations left before the final grades: a programming assignment... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vidur at 10:43 PM on November 18, 2010

I would say that my use of the site has not changed dramatically since before the introduction of that proposed change (which I opted out of). Except that I am, as ever, still trying to moderate my own comments and behavior wherever possible so as to spare the mods any more work than necessary.

Also, if 500 people favorite this comment, I'll eat a bedbug. And film it.
posted to MetaTalk by hermitosis at 10:19 AM on November 1, 2010

I can't decide if the people who run Wikileaks actually think that they're in a fucking spy novel, or if they do ridiculous things like this to make their readers think that they are on the edge of some massive dark conspiracy that they might just catch the most fleeting glimpse at if they just pay close attention to the Machiavellian moves of Wikileak's supercyberespionastic hyperoperators.
posted to MetaFilter by dudekiller at 7:58 AM on October 21, 2010

One of the effects of this set of facts is that you don't actually have to earn all that much to be considered "rich."

The income quintiles really aren't all that spread out. Sure, if you're making $160,000 you're making more than 95% of the population. But the richest 1% of the population--and you only need to earn a little more than $250,000 to be in the top 1% of incomes in the US--own 43% of non-housing assets. That means that the 2d-20th percentile control... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by valkyryn at 10:35 AM on September 29, 2010

This is not true. In general, take-off takes more runway length than landing.

Not *always* true, but mostly true, unless you have mid-air refueling, because otherwise, a plane will always be lighter when it lands then when it takes off -- the fuel burn ensures that.

The takeoff distance is based on three factors -- air density, engine setting, and takeoff weight. Air density is why Denver has such long runways. We'll assume... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eriko at 8:38 PM on August 27, 2010

I just finished my dissertation on Internet topology analysis [PDF], especially as it relates to network neutrality. This is going to look like a derail, but I think it will come back at the end.

The basic idea is that we can well-map the idea of "network neutrality" to a concern about centralization of power on the Internet - if 99% of global Internet traffic flowed to, from, and through just one ISP, then it's not really "the Internet", it's a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by pmb at 8:30 AM on August 5, 2010

This is all Microsoft's fault. It's a sort of progress. You see, five or so years ago when everybody was still using XP they were hard pressed to be able to fully utilize their high speed pipes over internet level latency. This is because their TCP stacks sucked, and they were tuned for low-latency LANs and not for high-speed high-latency internet links. This is know as the Bandwidth Delay Product problem.

If you have fat pipes and high delay you need large transmit... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zengargoyle at 7:39 AM on August 5, 2010