MetaFilter

Do Most People Even Know What They're Eating? Pork is served as veal; tilapia as red snapper and who knows what goes into sausages and other processed meat and fish products? You don't have to be an observant Jew or Muslim to be worried. How many years have those chicken pieces been frozen? How much pork and beef have been added to them? As food is increasingly disguised (fish fingers, chicken nuggets, beefburgers) to hide its origins, feeding on hypocritical popular revulsion with animals' existence, death - and carcasses! - aren't consumers setting themselves up for an ever greater measure of food fraud? That is, if they still care. (And no, it's not just an American phenomenon.) [Via The Daily Gullet. ]
posted on Jan-23-04 at 8:04 PM

Don't Miss Bobby Gillespie's Fantasy Festival On Saturday And Sunday! It's on BBC's rather good Radio 6. Just a heads-up to admirers of Primal Scream's constantly astonishing vocalist and producer - and, yes, the Rolling Stones are in. Strangely out are other Great Scots like Ivor Cutler and Roddy Frame, to mention only other undisputed geniuses. As a bonus, here's The Scotsman's very intelligent list of the 100 Best Scottish Albums. And don't mention Postcard Records! Ah, the "Sound of Young Scotland"... some dead; some turning 40. What and who are the new Scottish talents? *sigh*
posted on Jan-21-04 at 3:23 PM

Is It Politically Incorrect To Decry The Eating And Killing Of Civet Cats? Is Western consciousness of hypocrisy (due to the enormous number of animals we kill for food) preventing us from criticizing countries, like China, where practically all animals are eaten? Is sentimentality and the protection of animals we regard as cute better than having no qualms at all? I'm sure that the ratio of animals killed-per-capita is higher in the West than in China. Is there any moral difference? Probably not. Why, then, is it so shocking?
posted on Jan-19-04 at 6:22 PM

Are You A Metrosexual? Don't worry if, despite scholars in Michigan voting it one of 2003's most over-used and useless words, you don't know what it is - you might still be! (For men only, unfortunately. What would the female equivalent be?)
posted on Jan-18-04 at 2:15 PM

Just How Influential Is America? Mark Rice-Oxley, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, argues that, 2000 years from now, Disney will probably be more remembered than Plato. Really? [More inside. Via Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted on Jan-16-04 at 8:57 PM

Trusting The Redcoats: How many independent-minded Americans actually rely on the BBC (specially the World Service) for accurate coverage of American politics? Not to mention The Guardian. Is it a strictly an elitist, liberal/left-wing phenomenon? What does it mean? What does it say about better-informed liberal newspapers and media of the U.S.? If so, why aren't like-minded Europeans just as cosmopolitan and, say, pay the same attention to news sources like The New York Times, NPR and others, rather than stolidly sticking to their own national staples?
posted on Jan-14-04 at 9:52 PM

Could This Be The Renaissance Of The Three-Martini Lunch? Do business and alcohol mix? Do business and pleasure? Must we be all be utterly sober when we do deals? Or work? Is a little lubrication slowly replacing mineral water and political correctness? Surely it's not only writers who gain from the odd whisky and soda or gin and tonic? Have you ever done any worthwhile work while under the influence? Please feel free to choose your drug of choice. Tobacco, amphetamines and benzodiazepines included. [Via eGullet's recent thread, started by Beans.]
posted on Jan-11-04 at 9:28 PM

Fish, Glorious Fish: They're all here. In fact, I'm having great trouble stifling my natural instinct to call it the most useful, wonderful website in the world. Unless you don't like fish. And even then...
posted on Jan-7-04 at 1:10 AM

A View From The Bridge: Or Death Of A Salesman, perhaps? Hey, even The Crucible, at a stretch! Arthur Miller on Cuba, Castro and the U.S. embargo. Honesty and clarity refreshingly transcend the usual socialist/liberal/conservative divide. Or, at the very least, a damn good read from one of our (i.e. the world's) greatest dramatists. [Via Arts & Letters Daily. Click here for the text-only version. ]
posted on Jan-5-04 at 9:33 PM

How I Met And Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: Have you ever wondered what a favourite writer really looked like? Is there any relationship between an artist's face and their art? Hemingway looks like his prose; Ezra Pound like his poetry; Picasso is a dead ringer for his paintings but, say, John Updike doesn't resemble his fiction; T.S.Eliot looks like a bank clerk and Matisse was nothing like his works. How superficial can you get? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted on Jan-2-04 at 10:06 AM

Hangover Heaven By The Sea: In 1969, Canadian Montenegran Walter Chell invented the Caesar Cocktail as the perfect reflection of (and introduction to) Italian food, by mixing tomato juice, clam juice and oregano with Brazilian lime juice and Russian vodka. Canada, Montenegro, Italy, Russia, Brazil, California: is this the perfect multi-ethnic hangover-buster or what? [More inside.]
posted on Jan-1-04 at 9:08 AM

Just Another Twig On The Evolutionary Bush: Beards and moustaches are out; even goatees are the butt of jokes; eyebrows are being plucked into Rotring-size oblivion; female pubic hair has forever renounced natural - even tropical - splendour, to be replaced by ridiculous geometric designs... Have we perhaps taken this naked ape thing too damn far? [For the record, I am gratefully in favour of all these trends, except for the pubic hair. As a Lusitanian, I deplore that the good name of Brazil has come to be associated with such a travesty.]
posted on Dec-29-03 at 1:34 PM

Martin Beck's Last Ten Years: How interesting to be able to look at a painter's work year by year: patterns and even stories seem to develop, disappear and change before (and after) our eyes. Are there any other good chronologically-arranged artist's websites out there? Or do painters habitually avoid them to prevent the detection of similarities and obsessions?
posted on Dec-26-03 at 3:36 AM

Take This Honour And Shove It Up Your Arse: Some, like JG Ballard and Benjamin Zephaniah, want the UK Honours System abolished; others want it reformed; diehards want it left as it is. The recent leaking of a distinguished list of refuseniks, coming just after Sir Mick Jagger got his ya-yas out in Buckingham Palace, reminds us of Groucho Marx's famous comment that he'd never join a club that would take members like him. It's certainly an archaic and complicated system but, it seems to me, no more open to abuse than other countries' systems. And, arguably, no less ridiculous or hypocritical either. But is it (symbolically, culturally, whatever) useful enough nowadays, simple political expediency apart, to be worth hanging on to?
posted on Dec-22-03 at 11:29 PM

Why Are Love And Lust Always Talked About As Opposites? Even a much-respected philosopher like Simon Blackburn makes this essentially epistemological mistake. The horrific modern expression "in lust" is a further example. How can you lust after someone without loving them a little (or a lot) too? Or vice-(and the word vice is well applied)-versa? [More inside.]
posted on Dec-20-03 at 8:11 PM

Punk-Tuation: Is It The New Anarchy Or Boring Old Fascism All Over Again? How anal serious about apostrophes are you? Just how far would you go for a perfect semi-colon? Do you regularly reach for heart pills before you read MetaFilter? Take comfort in this: Lynne Trusse's wildly popular Eats Shoots And Leaves is this year's surprise bestseller in Britain. And I've limited myself to the MeFi-adored Guardian, just to make my (as it were) point. So... how important is punctuation to you? My own suspicion is that punctuation is the new spelling. It is important. (And, lest this seem carefree and frivolous, let me confess right away that MetaFilter may well be the worst offender, in this regard, ever to have blessedly existed.)
posted on Dec-19-03 at 3:37 AM

Reasons To Be Cheerful: Go on, give us one. If a curmudgeonly, pessimistic, reactionary old prison doctor like Theodore Dalyrymple can do it, so can we. It's a great little article, btw, but its title is even better. The late, great, crippled Ian Dury sang about them and comedian Dave Gorman built an Edinburgh Festival show around it. So be a sport and let us have one good reason of your own - preferably to do with something ahead of us or just now coming into its own or still stubbornly with us, despite the pricks and kicks. No nostalgia allowed! [It's the holidays, after all. Cynicism is for the rest of the year. I greedily bag AskMetaFilter, thank you very much.]
posted on Dec-17-03 at 4:19 AM

The Walrus: Does Canada Finally Have Its Quality Magazine? It's always been a mystery why Canada, with its appreciable intellectual weight, cultural sympathies and significant middlebrow readership, doesn't have a general magazine to rival with, say, Harper's, The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Well, The Walrus looks good - at least online. Is this it? Or am I unfairly overlooking other Canadian publications?
posted on Dec-14-03 at 5:28 AM

Whodunit? Who wrote it? Who'd have thunk it? Bastulli.com is a great little website for all those who love a good mystery, whether ancient or modern. ( My favourites, btw, are Dorothy L. Sayers and Patricia Highsmith. This last website - Stop! You're Killing Me!" - is also well worth investigating.)
posted on Dec-10-03 at 4:36 AM

Where Would You Send Someone You Love For Christmas? If you had unlimited funds, what would be your Hannukah or Christmas present for someone you thought really deserved one? For instance, our genial host and the owner of MetaFilter, Matt Haughey. A lot of us are presently engaged in clubbing in to offer him a short visit to Iceland. y6y6y6 has even set up a website to solicit funds and suggestions, following enormous interest on MetaTalk. Well-known weblogs like boing boing and anildash are chipping in too. isn't it time we showed our appreciation? (Matt, please don't read or delete this!)
posted on Dec-8-03 at 2:00 AM

Are You A Balanced Individual? Can You Handle Life's Topsy-Turvy Leanings? I doubt it. (Via Bifurcated Rivets. File under "No Good Can Come Out Of This".)
posted on Dec-3-03 at 5:19 AM

One Nation Under God(s): George W.Bush unwittingly restarted an old theological debate. Is the God that the Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Or to be more accurate; notwithstanding the different forms of worship and beliefs, is it the same God in different guises? Fundamentalists in all three monotheistic faiths tend to disagree. For other believers - to ruthlessly simplify - God is necessarily one. Either way it's still a fascinating question (possibly not only for religious folk) and has important consequences in an increasingly divided and antagonistic world. What's it be? One God or one's God?
posted on Dec-2-03 at 3:38 AM

Euro 2004: Now We Know Who Is Going To Play Who are we any wiser? Bets are on and early predictions from the bravest punters are welcome. Who's going to disappoint? Who's going to surprise? Who will win, dammit?!
posted on Dec-1-03 at 2:07 AM

Sign Language, The Easy Hungabunga Huggerbugger Boogerhunger Hoogerbrugge Way: Type a letter. Any letter. Or better still, a brilliant epigram by your good self. And see it finally make sense! [A few letters produce pleasantly rude results. Shockwave req. Via Bifurcated Rivets.]
posted on Nov-27-03 at 2:16 PM

Why Books Will Always Be With Us... along with almost everything else. Umberto Eco goes all encyclopedic on us (but in a nice way!) summing up (and reopening) the themes of a lifetime of reading, writing and watching. Though I'm sure what he says about the Web and electronic media will be picked to bits here, I'd say that would be a perfect vindication of this extraordinary exercise in common sense. [Via Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted on Nov-26-03 at 6:39 AM

Why Isn't Judee Sill's Beautiful Music More Well Known? Everyone has a favourite musician who, for some reason, remains unknown and unfairly overlooked. My choice for a much-deserved and long overdue revival is the silky-voiced, eccentric, tragic, ethereal and ultimately mysterious Judee Sill, one of the great Seventies singer-songwriters. Who would you nominate? (Here are a few mp3s of demos and unreleased recordings which will give you an idea of her beautiful voice and highly-strung delivery and, hopefully, lead you to explore her two main albums.)
posted on Nov-24-03 at 8:14 PM

Hello, My Name Is Mike And I Have A Dream! How very unusual! Who the hell would want a thing like that? Talk to me about it, Mike...[In other news, PayPal dream projects get way out of hand. Flash or Quicktime required for all links except the last, which is a road test.]
posted on Nov-23-03 at 5:33 PM

Oh fuck! Are you interested? Let me guess: you're 18 to 34 years old, right? Oh it's a dandy little word, for sure. But is it enough? Here's yet another brilliant marketing idea dreamt up by the 35-50 thoroughly fucked-up Texan reader-research crowd! [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted on Nov-22-03 at 2:17 PM

Pssst! Wanna Buy A Reliable, Second-Hand Car? You could do worse than start with Honest John, a plain-speaking, fiercely independent Cockney motor car wonk who'll see you right, no problem. If you're obsessive about reliability, i.e. don't have the time or inclination to look after your wheels and just want the damn thing to get you from A to B and back again, check out the often surprising Reliability Index for the most and least trustworthy automobiles. [Eurocentric warning! Btw, what are the most reliable independent car guides - preferably free and online - in the U.S, Canada, etc?]
posted on Nov-20-03 at 2:42 PM

Spot The Essential, Seminal, How-Could-These-Imbeciles-Have-Forgotten? Popular Song: A well-made list, specially if it's authoritative and includes no less than 500 songs, is just asking to be cruelly inspected for omissions, ridiculed for certain inclusions and generally derided. This one is, admittedly, a toughy. But perhaps way too US-centric and too Rockist. I mean, honestly, sometimes you Yanks act as if you'd invented Pop music! ;) (Via the newly-discovered Rivurcated Bifets.)
posted on Nov-19-03 at 12:03 PM

Where Are You? Are You Sure? Are cell phones robbing us of our sense of place? (More inside.)
posted on Nov-17-03 at 8:34 PM

Republican Dolls, Dons, Dens And Dubyas: Come back Barbie and Ken - all is forgiven! (Via Bifurcated Rivets.)
posted on Nov-15-03 at 3:23 PM

Is David Lynch Really The Best Director In The World? The Guardian, along with many other Europeans, seems to think so, in an impressive but very subjective (not to say that dreaded word quirky) list of the best 40 film directors. (More inside.)
posted on Nov-14-03 at 8:00 AM

Are You Just A Little Nerdito, A Regular Nerd Or Full-Blown-Ambulance-Case Nerd Well, take the test and find out! (Via LinkFilter. Oh and perhaps someone will kindly take the time to explain to us strangers the nuances that distinguish nerds from wonks, pointy-heads, wusses and geeks?)
posted on Nov-13-03 at 6:12 AM

Are You, Deep Down, Secretly, Between-You-And-Me, Proud Of Your Country? Even if you're not Canadian? Because a lot of people in the world, no matter how badly run their country might be, seem to be just that. Isn't it weird, though - and, well, stupid - to be proud of something that just happened to happen to us and that we've done nothing to deserve, whether for good or for bad? A more telling question that occurs is: what nationality would you choose to be, if you couldn't be the one you are? Here's the menu.
posted on Nov-11-03 at 6:54 AM

That's What Friends Are For: Laughing, getting drunk together, telling all...and making celebratory, determinedly silly websites like this one. Generally, private jokes are painfully unfunny but, when the vicarious instinct kicks in, other people's gregarious joie de vivre is contagious, touching - and great fun.
posted on Nov-9-03 at 6:50 PM

Cyber-Coolies? Huh? Is There A New Globalization-Savvy Racism In the Air? I admit I was discomfited by this article - it seemed sly paternalistic and colonialist at best; racist if you read between the lines. Are these sort of attitudes going to ruin what the global telecommunications revolution has achieved? (Via should-know-better Arts and Letters Daily.)
posted on Nov-6-03 at 10:55 AM

Wannabe Vegetarians Or Hypocritical Carnivores? Do you enjoy eating meat but hate the way it reaches your table? (More inside.)
posted on Nov-5-03 at 9:09 AM

Poor, Much-Maligned Alcohol Gets A Good Word: It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place/Except you and me,/So set 'em' up Joe, I got a little story/ I think you should know... And the story is something, if you're a drinker, you probably already know. (I was so surprised by this article I wondered if it was sponsored by the booze industry. But then I mixed myself another drink; read the wonderfully-named, probably Guinness - and poteen-fuelled - Dublin Principles and drank its health anyway!)
posted on Nov-3-03 at 6:07 PM

Is The Blood Red Water For Real? A discussion on egullet, of all places, suggests at least one of these shocking pictures (inside) has been retouched. A more interesting question is: is it OK to "enhance" real evidence, if the salient facts are true? Or even, more radically, if the cause is just and dedicated to save lives or relieve suffering?
posted on Nov-1-03 at 8:30 AM

Food, Glorious Food - Of The Real Kind! What pumpkins? Forget about the pumpkins. What you really need is to get your lips round some courges d'hiver, you Yankee varmint philistines! (More inside.)
posted on Oct-31-03 at 5:08 AM

All The Nudes That Are Fit To Print: It's no exaggeration to say La Repubblica is Italy's finest newspaper. It's liberal, modern, intelligent and independent. Along with Spain's El Pais; France's Libération and Le Monde; the UK's Guardian; Germany's Die Zeit and Portugal's Público, it's one of the mainstays of the European Left and Centre-Left. And yet its website offers calendars in the, er, Pirelli tradition of time-keeping. Imagine the New York Times being similarly... liberal. Can soft prOn and serious reporting live together? Is it an Italian thing? The only other example I can think of is Spain's Interviú, a magazine which in its heyday mixed superb (again, left-leaning) investigative journalism with politically incorrect - and photographically retouched - tits and ass. (NSFW, obviously, unless you're somewhere in Southern Europe or Louisiana.)
posted on Oct-29-03 at 11:08 PM

The Interactive Buzzword-Compliant Semantic Symbiosis Systemization : w00t! What's not to hate? (Other words I truly hate are fancy; delusional; slag; uber; natty and solace.)
posted on Oct-28-03 at 9:11 PM

Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World, (You) Walk Into Mine: In Lisbon, it would have to be Lux for fun or The Ritz for serious drinking. But in all the towns in all the world, only Harry's Bar in Venice, despite the carping, would do. Listen to Hemingway! (More inside.)
posted on Oct-26-03 at 7:25 PM

What's The Best Excuse When You're Caught Reading MetaFilter... when you're supposed to be working? (More inside.)
posted on Oct-25-03 at 4:34 PM

A Fresh, Clean Sheet Of Paper: Is anything you can't make love to, eat or sip, more sensual and inviting? In the age of the Internet, fine paper - specially if it's handmade - seems to become ever more precious. Writing or sketching on its slighly grainy texture, sliding ink along its invisible grooves (almost independently of the result...) is an extravagant indulgence; a romantic gesture; an almost guiltless pleasure. And something you can do yourself, satisfying that deep recycling urge, perhaps. A quick tour around some of the outstanding manufacturers and dealers - Fabriano; Canson; Pineider and Twinrocker, for example - will silkily reassure those of us whose pens trembled and blotted with the first mentions of a paperless future. Will it ever come? Unlike so many things in life, the rarer it gets, the better and, paradoxically, the more individual (nice set of paper links here) it becomes. (*imagines a complete multi-handwritten version of MetaFilter on good paper of all sizes and types and instantly snaps out of the daydream, as it reminds him too damn much of his attic*)
posted on Oct-24-03 at 2:11 AM

May 411 quasi-evil Karls dirty dance with Pez dispensers after applying Preparation H to your withered mailman: The Arabian Insult Generator. Though no match for the immortal "May you have an interesting life" (is it Chinese or Jewish?), here is a worthy self-generating collection of curses. (Click "Refresh" for a new batch..)
posted on Oct-22-03 at 11:37 PM

A Nittle Light Music: A little record label called Morpheus, considerably less soporific than the name implies, specializes in late night music, with many engaging mp3 samples. Though, somehow, they don't seem, in their soft prettiness, to hit the slightly anguished, melancholy spot of the truly nocturnal listener. I might as well come out and say it: what's your night music of choice? (My man is the composer Harold Arlen, who wrote Blues In The Night; "Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe"; "Last Night When We Were Young"; "It's Only A Paper Moon"; "When the Sun Comes Out"; to mention but a few. Oh - and, of course, Sinatra's first 12-inch LP, In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning... /small>)
posted on Oct-21-03 at 7:47 PM

Public Faces In Private Places may not be as wise or nice as private faces in public faces but, in the case of Jane Bown's portraits, I'm sure even W.H. Auden would have gladly opened an exception. It's an outstanding collection and it's fun to identify the faces, as their names only appear when you click to enlarge them. (It's a pity the photographs in the first link are so tiny, but blowing them up only makes it worse. )
posted on Oct-20-03 at 4:09 AM

Forget British. Define English. The perennial ex-pat and honorary Yank Christopher Hitchens may not be the best Englishman to define it - though his embarrassingly reactionary brother Peter is even less suited - but at least he has a go. For everyone else in the world, there are the Scottish, the Welsh, even the Northern Irish - all strong nationalities in their own right, each one older and more culturally solid than the slightly French, slightly German and slightly Dutch English. So why persist, in this post-imperialist day and age, in the myth of the Brit? If it is a myth. Americans, whether from the U.S. or Canada, certainly continue to buy into it. Or is it, for the rest of the world, too dangerous for the English - with devolution raging - to find their own, muddied identity? Think of those football hooligans and their grotesque politics, St.George face-masks and flags. (Via Arts And Letters Daily.)
posted on Oct-17-03 at 12:31 AM