• The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Actually, I think that line of thought is overly simplistic, and is in fact part of the overall snowjob the giant media corporations are giving us - 'don't blame us! We're just delivering what the consumer wants!' First of all, they're honestly not in business to give people, in any broad sense of the word, what they want. They're in business to identify markets for advertisers and sell access to the markets to the advertisers, which means, right off the bat, lopping off giant sectors of the population who are inferior buyers of things. No reason to program to people who are poor, don't do a lot of national-brand shopping, don't replace clothing or durable goods before they need to, or (like many of us) are just getting by with housing and living expenses and medical and retirement and really don't do that much spending. If you believe this TIME poll, about 48% of Americans watch under 10 hours of TV a week (there's your Daily Show/Colbert allowance right there). So we're now down to programming philosophies that direct themselves at only about half the potential American audience. Television relies heavily on the Neilsen sampling system to get information about what its audiences watch, and that system is flawed as a measure of "what people want." It doesn't use random or representative sampling. Instead, it pre-selects households that fit demographic models advertisers are interested in reaching, invites them to take part, and only collects their data if they accept the deal - which includes keeping a diary of everything you watch and/or allowing your TVs to be digitally monitored, and participating in longer survey calls when asked. Not everyone even in their pre-selected pool wants to do this. The people who advertisers want to reach (high- and middle-income families, retired seniors, young people who drink and eat out, buy makeup and cologne and clothing) are not necessarily the best representatives for the taste of the wider public, and the subset of people willing to give the networks feedback on programming even less so. The final flaw in the "give the people what they want" argument is that it doesn't even work. If this is what the people want, why is television viewing, and particularly network news, at the bottom of a drastic, two-decade decline? Because most of us are now getting our news and entertainment elsewhere. I feel pretty sure that as a nation, our taste overall is actually a lot better than Applebee's and L'Oreal and Coors Light think it is.
  • I just threw up in my mouth a little.
  • Interestingly, according to The Ten Cent Plague, the clinic in Harlem was where he did his first studies into the effects of comics on children. The socioeconomic background of the children he was studying was never mentioned, and it was acompanied by pictures of very white, very middle class children. Fish was some kind of nightmare on legs, and defending him must have been very weird and very controversial. TTCP suggetsts that he was kind of an opportunist and a careerist, adn looked out for opportunities to promote himslef like that. I suspect that he wasn't quite the two-dimensional total dick that people might think him to be, but that he was still pretty dickish in some ways.
  • /bacon trend
  • and there is no liberal equivalent to Fox News. Although there probably should be. There can't be. Being a conservative is about put to rest any lingering doubts you might have about your impulses, and being okay with, essentially, not giving a shit and "looking out for number one". This means that you can find comfort in a news medium that gives you messages that it's not only okay to be self-centered and xenophobic, people that think otherwise are fools. To be liberal (hopefully) means to embark on a life of constantly questioning and challenging your underlying assumptions and belief frameworks. That's why, at it's core, the Daily Show isn't really comedy, it plays as some combination of tragedy and farce.
  • I had a huge ebay problem recently which was only resolved after I posted this on Huffington Evil bots (I later learned their lines are written by ex-prosecutors) simply wouldn't believe that I was the real me, not a scammer, and I couldn't reach a real person. When I finally did, that person decided I was a liar because I didn't use my brother's birthday (which the person who'd faked my account had) and sent me back to the bots. What was really annoying was that most of my commenters refused to believe I was dealing with the real ebay and hadn't been "phished." After my post, I heard from ebay's PR people and a customer service person put me on the list of the 10 customers a day who get called by their CEO. I did actually talk to him and he apologized and said he would fix the problem. I am now back on ebay-- but someone else still might get caught in that catch-22 if they haven't fixed it systemically. I think it's very smart that he calls 10 customers with issues a day-- perhaps they will realize they have a problem and at the very least, hire some humans to deal with problems that the bots clearly can't fix. But it was distressing to learn I could only get help because I am a reasonably successful journalist.
  • White's point is less web v. print, and more book review v. lit crit. it's great to have someone review a book and tell me whether to bother with it. But sometimes, it's nice to read someone's crackpot, or brilliant, analysis of a book's plot. Whether or not celebrity coverage and film reviews are pushing crit out of mainstream publications (article length, deadlines, and pay rates probably have more to do with it), I'm the jerk who would kind of miss the latter. Now, there are a zillion reasons to ignore New York Press. But Armond White isn't one of them.* Despite the pretension (apercu? really??), and the controversy for the sake of controversy, White is good at what he does: He makes people think about a given film in a new light—even if I usually hate stuff he praises, or enjoy things that he pans. Finally, White's a nice guy. If he smiles at you at a premiere, honest to god, it's probably because he's happy to see you. *Feel free to ignore it anyway. I do!
  • It's very fortunate for these boys that their crime is only a misdemeanor. Apparently their home-schooling forgot to include lessons on the realities of Texas prison. I recall a time when, to shock adults, all a teenager had to do was drop one nice little F-bomb at the dinner table. ::sigh:: What have we wrought?
  • Would it have killed the New Yorker to run one or two photos after the lead? It is an article about photographs after all. Otherwise an interesting find.
  • and of course my third 'more inside' link should go here. sorry for the double.
  • Brocktoon, newspapers would use considerable more ink for one, but the idea is kinda silly. There is additive (transmitted) and subtractive (reflective) color models. What works for one, light text on dark background for instance, would be pretty bad on the other.
  • I'd say eBay stopped being useful the second someone came up with an automated auction sniping system. Suddenly, no good deals any more. It's less of a hassle to just find what you are looking for and buy it from Amazon; at least that way you know it's not a scam and what it will cost you. I never used eBay for anything. Used to look at it to see what was there, but never had a reason to buy anything. Now I'm glad I didn't.
  • We shall see, tkolar. At the moment I see one potential candidate who isn't deserving of the same kind of scorn and loathing with which every other candidate and American president in living memory should in a perfect world have been heaped, one of them who doesn't appear to be the same kind of pandering powerhungry piece of shit we've gotten so used to. I see people who seem to actually passionately believe that the systemic rot in the American system will magically disappear if they elect yet another politician cut from the same old filthy threadworn cloth. I find it puzzling. But yeah, I also see people who, like me, have the slimmest spark of hope left. But even I don't think that throwing out the Republicans in favor of the Democrats, or electing someone who say they will end the current war (or one of the wars, anyway), means a goddamn thing without some kind of fundamental change in the way things are done, the way politics is conducted, the media's endless thud-dullardry, the dominance of money, and a real will amongst the majority of the American people to do more than flop helplessly back and forth between RED and BLUE, when both sides in the artificial war of all against all have amply demonstrated that they have failed their citizenry. Even if Mr Obama does win the election, I still, cynically perhaps, wonder if he is the man he portrays himself to be, and if he actually is, how much he can do to turn things around. We shall see.
  • I spent a ton of time reading Designing The News, which is completely great... Is that dude's beard for reals? It looks like it was drawn with the spray can in MS Paint.
  • I'm all for people not breaking the law, but we've been following the same course of action for decades and we still don't seem to get that it isn't going to accomplish anything. Well, except for us ending up with more people in prison, which isn't exactly what we should be aiming for.
  • Man, there are half a dozen outbreaks in New Jersey. Even mother nature makes fun of that state.
  • elite snipers, they like the elite republican guard? Like, really, really elite for the purposes of heightening your anger and hatred of them?
  • I think we've lost sight of what news is. News doesn't take a side. That's propaganda. The Daily Show makes fun of everyone, and then it ridicules itself. If Fox News ever ridiculed itself, it would confuse it viewers and then lose them. That is if the viewers ever figured out that's what was happening.
  • I wish my city had better public transport. The government is pouring billions into the current system, which has been sorely underfunded for decades. And still it's not right. Stupid decisions and lack of foresight will ensure Dublin remains clogged long after I retire. They hold public consultations but I doubt they listen. Transport 21 is the Irish government's page, part information resource, part patting themselves on the back for being so good at this public transport thingy. Irish Rail Users disagree. Of course, the overcrowded and pitiful rail network means many just don't have a choice. Those who don't use rail, use the horror that is the M50. (Apologies for boring everybody with this comment, but once I get started on a public transport rant......)
  • Yes. I say yes. But with reservations.
  • Artw: you're probably already be aware of this, but McCarthyite is the word you were looking for...
  • pot heads have been doing this for years. yep those are the tacky skull bongs I was thinking about. So it's really not a huge leap to see where the inspiration came from. Lets ban skull shaped bongs, they are influencing our kids!!!!!!!
  • P.S. God... I am a nerd.
  • Bacon is the new pirates. (Pirates were the new ninjas. Ninjas, monkeys: monkeys, robots. Someday, robots will be the new bacon)
  • I have discovered that one of the few redeeming things about getting old is that you don't spend money on Mother's Day. No flowers for the grave, eh?
  • Forbidden Planet was ahead of its time in so many ways.
  • Vergès' most (in)famous clients have been terrorists, Nazis and deposed dictators (or their henchmen) and he's always been very talkative about defending them (or marrying them...), on the rhetorical basis that whatever his clients had done, someone else (colonial powers, Israel, imperialists, allied forces in WWII etc.) had done worse and got away with it. However his real bread and butter come from current dictators - he sued Amnesty International on behalf of a few of them - and that's something he doesn't talk much about. They pay for the fine wine and cigars after all. I saw him at a book signing a couple of years ago. It was a very public event, with perhaps 50 authors, many of them TV celebrities that had long lines of people waiting for an autograph. Vergès was standing all alone at his table, his trademark "evil" charm turned off, glaring haughtily across the room and otherwise looking formidably fit for a wine-drinking, cigar-smoking 81-year old. I couldn't bring myself to talk to him though, even in such banal circumstances he was a scary piece of work.
  • Or do you mean that CC licenses aren't worth the paper they're written on, practically speaking? In which case I'm inclined to agree. Yes. I think the problem is that most people believe that if they don't mention a CC license or whatever, that means anyone can take their work. But it doesn't at all - at least not in most western countries. You automatically own the rights to what you create. It seems to me that if you want to get paid if someone uses your work, you are better off leaving it unlicensed. If anyone wants a pic off my site, I ask them to contact me and if it's non commercial, they can use it for free. If it's commercial I might ask for a fee. And if they were going to take it without asking, they'd do that regardless.
  • Woo hoo!! Go Badgers!
  • If I wasn't going to get cremated that would so be going on my headstone LordSludge.
  • Is digging up a corpse, decapitating it, and smoking marijuana in the skull any weirder than pumping out all the fluids, replacing with formaldehyde, putting makeup and clothes on it and burying it in ritualistic fashion while pretending the body has some spiritual connection to the person it used to be? I'd say yes, but barely.
  • Following on from what Kiabobkirk said, I remember reading a spectacular quote from one of Thompson's press-gallery contemporaries on the fatal flaw of "objective" journalism. (Can't remember who it was or where, but it was probably one of the excellent oral-history sections of E. Jean Carroll's otherwise godawful Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of HST.) Anyway, this guy who gave the quote was a foreign correspondent during the Korean War, and when journalism students and the press itself started asking him what this newfangled "gonzo" journalism was in the early '70s, he told an anecdote about some chief of staff's inspection of the front lines in the late stages of the Korean stalemate. It was common knowledge among the reporters on the ground that infantry solidiers had been given orders not to fire on individual enemy troops but only on clusters of them in order to conserve ammunition, which was at crisis levels of scarcity. But in that era, journalists weren't allowed to count random anonymous solidiers as "credible sources." So the four-star general shows up, conducts his inspection of the troops, holds a press conference. Announces that contrary to "rumours," there is no ammunition shortage among US troops in Korea. The reporter telling the anecdote then dutifully reported: "Gen. Bigshot announced today in Pusan that, after a full inspection of the troops yada yada, he has determined that there is no ammo shortage in Korea." File that sucker, it's absolutely dead accurate by the rules of so-called objective journalism. So, this reporter would explain, the difference between objective journalism and what Hunter Thompson was doing was that Hunter would've reported the same scene like this: "Gen. Bigshot announced today that there is no ammo shortage in Korea. And he's a fucking liar." Alas, the good Doctor remained only an outlier in the halls of big-time journalism, and the gaping holes in the establishment approach have proven fertile ground indeed for the Rovian/ExxonMobilian school of media spin. The standard "balanced' approach to reporting on climate change, for example, has been manipulated masterfully by a handful of scientists and astroturf organizations bought and paid for by ExxonMobil to create the appearance of widespread skepticism where none exists; indeed I'd argue this assinine "balance" convention in mainstream journalism is second only to the efforts of the affected industries themselves in contributing to the delay of American action on climate change by more than a decade. (See Ross Gelbspan's exhaustive, exhausting studies of this phenomenon, The Heat Is On and Boiling Point, for more info.)
  • Hasn't it always been the duty of the Court Jester to tell the Emperor that he's not wearing any clothes? Jon Stewart naked? Link plz.
  • The best purpose of a movie reviewer is to prepare the would be movie goer with the right mind set so that they may best enjoy the movie. Everything else is just opinion, which should be left to the entire audience, and not just an elite few.
  • Where's the beef?
  • The United States had a new menace, they said, one whose name started with "c" and whose first syllable rhymed with "bomb." Comm-unism?
  • On a technical note, skulls are full of holes, particularly kids' skulls where the bones haven't quite fused, right? IANA doctor nor a child molester/serial killer (I swear the clown suit is just for a hobby) so I'm not intimately knowledgeable about children's skulls, but I would think that you would have to constantly be filling leaks for this to work. Perhaps they built some sort of chamber and then placed it inside the skull?
  • Channel 62! Home of old reruns, religious fanatics, and The Scene! (My mom helped run one of the religious fanatic shows, and eventually hosted her own show for a short time.) At my high school, Cass Tech in Detroit, I would often overhear kids asking, "You on The Scene last time?" or, "You gonna be on The Scene, man?" My whiteboy brain interpreted "on the scene" as meaning being wherever it was that the cool kids were hanging out that week. Finally someone asked me if I was going to be on The Scene. I asked what that meant, and it was finally explained to me. I burst out laughing! But asker was serious. My school friends somehow thought I bore a passing resemblance to John Travolta, and Saturday Night Fever was a huge hit, so the idea that I would be there was not out of the question. To them. Of course I could never dance a step, and "a passing resemblance to John Travlta" only meant that I was white and skinny, and had dark hair that was kinda stacked up and combed back, but it was closer to a bushy jewfro than to the slick 'do Travolta sported. Ahhh, yes, The Scene. Thanks for the post.
  • Those dove campaigns always rubbed me the wrong way. How dare a company position itself as a purveyor of holistic natural healthy beauty when it is in the same corporate family as AXE body spray. It's nothing more than a marketing strategy.
  • Sorry Frasermoo - Don't understand about flipping this house??
  • Well, I don't know about anyone else, but the customer support responses received by dude trying to sell on ebay sound exactly like the customer service response I get at other online sites - especially tech support tickets. The customer service reps appear to be pressured to answer X number of queries per hour. They skim, see one or two key words, and kick out canned response Y. Case "resolved." Boss happy. Except, of course, the customer at the other end is saying WTF? And he/she generates a response or another ticket. And another, and another, and another... and gets increasingly frustrated. Meanwhile, supervisors see increasing number of tickets or query volumes and say to the reps: Work faster! Which means the quality of the responses gets even worse... and so it goes. This is why we don't allow the use of canned esponses at our company.
  • Beautiful pictures. I went and saw Kilauea in 1997, I wish my pictures were that good!
  • I'm salivating.
  • I think the study misses out on the fact that TDS is a structural parody of network news. When Stewart goes off on what drink to have with a pancake-on-a-stick he's parodying all the irrelevant lead stories that typical network news starts off with. So his lack of coverage on a nation-wide ice storm is, in fact, a comment on his option that that's not really news. His parody of the mainstream media goes beyond what the report measures.
  • Did you mean: serif
  • I only give my meatwater to my closest friends.
  • Violence is down because there are fewer to kill. Violence is down because those doing the violence get the choose the time and place of their violence.
  • In my youth I was obsessed with being an artist for Mad Magazine to the point that I wrote a fan letter to William Gaines telling him of my aspirations - I was especially inspired by the role of free speech advocate that EC Comics played in the 50's. He wrote me a very nice letter of encouragement in return on Mad Magazine letterhead. I carried that letter around with me in my wallet for years and the LIKE AN IDIOT... I decided that it was one of the things I needed to purge in a move. Because, you know, letters are heavy. Also, I made the mistake of viewing modern art and deciding I wanted to be a painter instead of an illustrator, which is why I'm a web developer today. Totally makes sense.
  • No I haven't. You're also quite deliberately missing my point, which is sort of par for the course around here, I guess.
  • If you didn't immediately notice how pale and flabby both of the fighters are, this is a sure indication that you need to get the fuck outside and get some exercise. That said I've got 10 bucks on the fat guy. Speaking from experience fat provides a protective layer, and adds heft to your strike when you fall over on someone.
  • Errr...scratch that last sentence. It should read: Just saying it's not funny doesn't explain why Stewart can mine comedy from Hurricane Katrina (linked previously), or why the The Onion felt that they were able to put up 9/11 stories about two weeks after that tragedy.
  • Watched the whole 6 minutes, a few minor laughs....would not Chuckleberry Handshake again. MYSTERY MEAT TORPEDO effective, but unsatisfying...
  • I just love the cognitive dissonance between "Our children are our biggest asset" and "75 SDSU students ... have been arrested."
  • Ahem. I believe I speak for many here when I say.. DO NOT WANT
  • Is it disturbing that "banana gangbang" sounds so intriguing?
  • This is my surprised face. But with fewer lines, and stronger looking cheekbones.
  • Where's comic sans?
  • Potuguese thieving Toronto scumbags!!! (only posted to wind up my Portuguese friend in Toronto)
  • MetaFilter: UNLEASH THE GNOMES!
  • Uh, weird. I just posted a link to my own pictures of the same thing.
  • The three boys, all home-schooled... So, what we're looking for here is a factor that might have contributed to poor social skills. CLEARLY, the causative factor MUST be Marijuana.
  • tkolar over Exchequer by single decker tordedo wrecker in round frecker.
  • On first read, I thought it said "Metawater," and I assumed it was what one was left with after straining regular water through MetaFilter.
  • After the grandchildren finished singing You Are My Sunshine we played The Cattle Call at my fathers funeral. Dad was a cowboy who grew up on a dryland farm in Colorado.
  • used to? They still do. It is also the tv station that is the influence for Videodrone, for that very reason.
  • When I finally got around to watching Forbidden Planet, one thing that amazed me was how many of the sounds were identical or similar to Star Trek (original) sounds.
  • I stopped using my account when I had a seller give me shit for posting negative feedback for an obvious screwup. Own up to a screwup and promise to do better, don't get all defensive like "You ruined my home business with a negative feedback blip." The effort people put into having spotless reputations is really disturbing. And then my account got hacked and ran up a bill that I didn't see until collection agencies called on Christmas. D:
  • Pot a what? time for bed. epic fail.
  • I only hope That when I'm dead Somebody here Makes a bong from my head.
  • By the way, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been arrested, according to media reports quoting the country's defence ministry.
  • Second best awesome volcano pictures of the day!
  • I'm partial to The New Dance Show, myself.
  • That made my day. Thank you, 1f2frfbf. (Very Seussian name, by the way.)
  • People who do not watch this video really don't know what they're missing. People who do not have their testicles detached in a freak tractor pull accident also do not know what they're missing, but that really isn't a good reason to experience it. My annoyance with this post started with having to look at the tags for any context whatsoever, and then wondering why the first minute of a video in a "comedy" post was so decidedly unfunny. People seem to be saying it becomes funnier as it goes on. If that's the case, this post is a fine example of how the "mystery meat" approach can completely torpedo an FPP.
  • I thought he was about to swallow that harmonica!
  • Granted, it was about three years ago, but I bought a laptop from eBay without a problem. Also granted, it may well have been from one of the power sellers to whom eBay gives special treatment; I don't remember at this point. But it does seem the real issue here is bad customer service, which...uhh...seems to be the case with damn near every online vendor. I think the only way Netflix's could be worse would be if clicking on the "customer support" button got you rickrolled.
  • The teens first came to police's attention during a vehicle burglary investigation. While being questioned, Jones told of desecrating the gravesite a month or two ago. Adkins said he believes the tale was intended to distract police from the vehicle break-in. SMART
  • Sys Rq: Sorry, mate, but he's Amreican now. He's like the anti-Crowded House.
  • liberals tend to believe more in transparency while conservatives use misdirection to thrive on voter ignorance. how true
  • Personally, I love the picture of those two stoners trying to disguise themselves in suits in the hope that it makes them look respectable. Guys, your smiles are just too damn wide for those suits to look credible. Nice try though.
  • Well some liberals, like Stewart, Franken, Colbert, Maher, Garofalo, and Matt Taibbi, have a sense of mischief and humor, whereas Fox News "commentators" are mostly humorless reactionary blowhards. Liberal humor made its way through the backdoor of the mainstream media because the right had spent so many years and so much money more or less successfully barricading the front door. The biggest lie ever sold is that the media in this country is liberal. It is in fact instinctively status quo and corporatist, and there is no liberal equivalent to Fox News. Although there probably should be.
  • man, it took me way too long to realize this was a joke. that was pretty great.
  • Pot doesn't smoke people. People smoke people, with pot.
  • notreally - Stewart, Colbert and peers require a certain amount of 'buy-in'. That buy-in is easier for some, harder for others. I find it difficult to 'buy-in' to something like 'Flip-this-house' whereas I have peers who can easily shell out the time.
  • Plus, let's not forget their value as instruments of passive-aggression.
  • Meh, smoking weed out of a skull? It's been done. Snort your father's ashes, now that's something to brag about.
  • Great stuff. I particularly like the Seed Conference site.
  • You can make your life a whole lot easier by stipulating that you will only ship to buyers in your home country or the EU or wherever. I recently sold a desktop to a very nice man who lived about 5 miles away.
  • What exactly is a Masters Degree in Homeland Security, please?
  • Violence is down because there are fewer to kill.
  • That's just awful writing, right there. Yet so smugly pleased with itself. Like all cable news.
  • I wonder how many times a fake laptop was bought with a stolen credit card on ebay, shipped to a non-existent address.
  • On first read, I thought it said "Metawater..." That would be bean flavored.
  • Oh, and happy mother's day to her if she's real. I've only met a few people that never had one.
  • notreally: Flip This House is a show on A&E about buying, renovating, and re-selling houses for a profit.
  • Dude.. that was my skull!
  • Honestly, why are people citing Stewart's "Bow Tie" moment as one of his best? It seemed to me like one of his worst moments Taken on it's face it seems like a cheap personal jab. What is important and potent about it is that addresses the Kabuki nature of shows like Hardball. It's all just theater and the bow tie comment was meant to illustrate that, methinks.
  • Who the hell hates orchids? Everyone likes orchids. uandt, are you sure your mother is - well - your biological mother and not just a reptilian alien replacement in a uandt-mother skin to get you to imprint on her? I understand one way to check is to surprise them with a quick HARD punch to the nose and see if a forked tongue comes out of their mouth by accident. Let us know what happens, okay? Oh, and happy mother's day to her if she's real.
  • Speaking of meatwater, I just filtered my first batch of bacon-vodka last night. I can confirm that is indeed a breakfast of champions.
  • dabitch means this one: One student arrested was a cocaine dealer on campus who was just one month away from obtaining his Masters Degree in Homeland Security and also worked as a student Community Service Officer on campus and reported to the campus police.
  • The article A Few Thoughts About eBay's Decline is more than three years old. Not exactly braking news.
  • You know, if there was only some sort of pseudo-journalistic left-leaning website that articles like this could be posted and discussed on.
  • "Police made three trips to the heavily wooded, snake-infested graveyard" in search of the desecrated headless corpse of a child in a now-unmarked grave. If this isn't the opening scene to any bad Sci-Fi horror movie, I don't know what is.
  • Yeah, it's a bit much to say that buying and selling laptops on Ebay is impossible, since the author only tried to sell one laptop. It's not a scientific study. But EBay is clearly flawed if they have so much trouble that they can't even afford to properly deal with it when people do run into issues. On the other hand, clearly they've made a decision to cater to power-sellers who sell lots of crap. It's not a "Long Tail" thing anymore where everyone buys from everyone. All their advertising focuses on buying stuff rather then selling. One thing we do know is that their dispute resolution system is heavily tilted towards buyers. It's easy to buy something on ebay, get it, and do a chargeback through paypal even if you got what you were supposed too. So I think the lesson here is that if you want to sell something on ebay, sell it through an eBay consignment company (like the one that girl ran in The 40 Year Old Virgin). My impression is that eBay just dosn't give a damn about small sellers (not that I have any first hand experience) Paypal also sucks.
  • Metafilter: A high-efficiency survival beverage.
  • It takes a long time to become an obvious parody. I almost didn't stick with it. I'm glad i did.
  • I love articles like this. It's so easy to think that the only varieties of fruits and vegetables are the mediocre ones found in grocery stores, which are chosen for their ability to withstand shipping and handling. I read somewhere that a grocery store produce buyer said the only complaints he ever received for tomatoes were for color, never for flavor. They could be flavorless or mealy as long as they were red. I think that's changed in a minuscule way with the popularity of heirloom tomatoes.
  • Gasp! William Gaines & the legend of EC Comics
  • I guess he likes b&w photography... Too bad, I thought that a lot of those could've used some color.
  • There is no other place that I knew with certainty I could get a Justin Timberlake doll to build a SOUTHLAND TALES action figure set. Or cans of OK Cola to be a Dan Clowes completist. Or an ancient pocket watch made in my father-in-law's home town. Or hysterically janky Juicy Couture knock-offs from Taiwan. It's the world's coolest, most obscure junk sale, not Fry's Electronics. The value is in the long tail, not the big ticket. And yes, their customer service, their fees and paypal all suck it hard.
  • Things I would never buy on eBay: 1. Anything worth more than $200 2. Anything described as "untested" 3. Anything without photos, or with stock photos, or just one photo 4. Anything from anyone with less than 100 positive feedbacks as seller, including many for similar items 5. Anything from anyone with less than 95% positive feedback 6. Anything requiring a bank transfer. 7. Anything shipped via FedEx. I still buy a lot of stuff on eBay, but given Rule #4, I wouldn't expect to be able to sell much.
  • I can't hear you, I've got a banana in my...
  • When I read some wiseguy's comment once that only humans would find giving the sexual organs of other species to be a romantic gesture, it occurred to me that we better hope like hell, if we ever meet aliens, that they don't find us pretty.... I don't share either of those images around Mother's Day, however. (well, except on MeFi, but you people don't count. :-) ) I just shut up and buy flowers like a good consumer.
  • STEWART: How old are you? CARLSON: Thirty-five. STEWART: And you wear a bow tie. Video of the exchange (and more).
  • Oh, jamaro! WHY did you you have to invoke THAT book?!?! (and with it, the wretched half-a**ed attempts at making it into a film). Though 'tis definitely true, those flowers do seem to bring out some of the worst human behavior, betrayal and murder for starters ... and then there's the ecological rape that has occurred when the locals learn that the crazy Anglos will pay for "those plants" and they proceed to uproot all of them that they can find. And that's for the reputable buyer/collectors! Yes, I grow. Got one in spike even now. We try to grow localized species whenever possible, or primary hybrids. But we've cut down the size of our collection considerably. They are amazing plants and I always get a kick out of telling people about seeing blooming examples of the four major Cypripedium of North America, in the space of week, in lower Michigan. Their first response is usually, "Orchids? In Michigan?!" ... oh, yeah!
  • BTW, the Hadjus book is a good read, but I'd actually recommend Men of Tomorrow (Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book) over it slightly.
  • This paper has introduced the term "newshole" to me, for which I am grateful.
  • COMCAST. OMG.
  • Not fond of Ebay nor Paypal. Does anyone know about this? I only joined to get the $25 sign up fee but if it turns into a competitor for PayPal, go for it. Just don't fall down on customer service like Ebay and PayPal. More about them here.
  • I have trouble understanding why people need to watch cable news. There are better alternatives, surely? As an Australian, when I flick past Fox or CNN, it does my head in very quickly. I don't even have to hear what they're discussing - just a bunch of people yelling at each other with things scrolling across the screen. Fat, ugly, bitter old white men and manicured, botoxed bimbos posing as journalists. I have to turn back to the Cooking Channel within seconds. But I don't miss it. There's a whole internets of news out there. And radio - you guys have, like, news updates on your radio, don't you? What are people getting from cable news that they can't get elsewhere, in terms of actual news content?
  • I was going to post the same thing about the lack of color, though I'm not completely positive that it would have improved the photos much. While there are a few that I thought were interesting, I wasn't particularly struck that the photographer has much of a sense of composition, so despite the spectacular setting and the events depicted, I'm sort of underwhelmed.
  • Lot of heads in sand upthread. This ones for you Dassein
  • Because arresting a few people and confiscating their drugs is, of course, going to magically make all the rest of the drugs disappear. Yeah, not arresting people and not confiscating their drugs is so much more effective at removing drugs from the environment than arresting people and confiscating their drugs. Also, I eat when I'm full and sleep when I wake up. It's crazy, man!
  • elite
  • tkolar, you've no doubt spent more than 6 minutes complaining about the post. You should have just watched it, hated it, and shutted the fuck up. If that's the case, this post is a fine example of how the "mystery meat" approach can completely torpedo an FPP. For you.
  • There are moments we remember, or maybe we just think we do. As soon as I hear a song the memories just come flooding back. I remember riding on a Greyhound from Jacksonville to Fitzgerald as a boy with Ella’s version of Misty Blue running through my head. I remember parking in a field in Illinois as a teenager with Michelle in the back seat listening to Willie croon You Don’t Know Me. Tonight, I will pour then raise a glass of Scotch and turn up Make the World Go Away. Thanks Eddy For those three and many more. '
  • The server is dead. How do we make sure it stays dead?
  • Seriously. Having John McCain nearly walk off the show last night (or was that the night before?) after saying "will you denounce George Bush?" was a whole lot better. Wait... what? Seriously? I missed this... yet another reason to hate exams.
  • The sound of sci fi... it blew me away when I was young. .
  • I liked the Ricki Lake version better.
  • I don't know what the fuck this shitstick is talking about. I guess with my "mendacious, pseudo-serious, sometimes immoral" leanings toward film academy, I sometimes get too "meta" on humble film critics, who are altruistically out to share their stupidity like so much chickenfeed. KAEL <> SONTAG EBERT Whoever whoever else . . . * <- this shitstick</>
  • Potsy writes "I bet dollars to donuts the guy, despite his righteous anger over his 'stolen' photos, has a hard drive filled with downloaded music / movies / whatever." He probably also has a card which gives him access to an exclusive club where he can read tons of books, rent CDs and DVDs, all without paying a dime. The nerve!
  • Ornate Instinct: I think future historians will look back on our period and see it as a time of tremendous backlash among ordinary Americans towards a mainstream media that has become more co-opted now than ever before. I prefer your optimistic outlook to my own speculation: that the ratings of the worse perpetrators of lazy journalism and regurgited talking points show ordinary Americans are far from lashing back. Further, "equal and opposite reaction[s]" prevail in matters of power almost as much as in physics. Assume for a moment that Americans get more and more of their news from reliable sources such as online or in a shift back to print media. Further assume we more often think critically about news, the state of affairs and our "representative" government. Imagine even the most unlikely event, rational public dialog has a resurgence. I expect this would be met with a more powerful corporate and power-elite response. It may need to be subtle propaganda, or it may be as unabashed as the fearmongering, secrecy, and media influence we see today. It would take a revolution and are we a revolutionary people? Work 8 hrs a day, lunch for 1, commute for 1, watch TV between 4.5 and 5.3, and sleep for 8. I'm not sure we have time to change the country.
  • Pecinpah makes a good case. Mathis round 1 by liver triangle.
  • taz This is the guy who takes it upon himself to school us about our world and how we ought to live in it? what a terribly judgemental, incosiderable and frankly stupid comment. are you advocating only those of a certain beauty are supposed to do certain jobs? what kind of job would someone looking like this be suitable for?
  • This just in... The Project for Comparative Fruit Studies finds several distinctions between apples and oranges.
  • This might sound awful, but I have to admit, when I read this my first thought was "why does anyone care?" It was an 87 year old school, who's going to miss it, really? I mean its a bit gross, but really it's just running up against a societal taboo that makes no real sense. The whole reverence for the dead thing the human race seems to have is just pointless, I never understood it. Please, I hope that when I die, people find something as creative and useful to do with my leftover meat and bone bits as to make a bong out of them.
  • I'm sorry but that first article is completely one-sided on the issue and stems from one anecdotal case, and the second is completely worthless: "I wonder if it's greed"... and "it's too difficult to use" - what kind of criticisms are these?
  • "A bunch of upper class white kids" is the only reason this is news.
  • Ahem.. and I'm talking to the photo guy in that second line, and you in the first, I'm on a roll lately with my grammar and communication skilz!
  • Thanks for posting this. If this story was truly "Canadian", it would have ended 9 months sooner with the news director at City apologizing profusely and giving the guy a box of Timbits. Not very Canadian to try and disavow wrongdoing and give the guy the runaround, IMO.
  • I support ending the WOD but I think anti-WOD folks need a hell of a better poster child than 75 people with $60 grand, a half-dozen firearms, and two kilos of coke in their bedroom. I'd say that they make an ideal poster children for an anti-war on drugs campaign. The policy that busted them also enables them to accumulate huge sums of money, as well as necessitate the introduction of weapons to defend those huge ill-gotten sums. A bunch of upper class white kids dragged into the underbelly of the US drug market that is created by War on Drugs, sounds like Oprah's couch talk to me. I have a feeling that when presented correctly, this case has potential eye/wallet opening potential.
  • Just saw this here. Glad you posted it; here are two songs I like by him: Texarkana Baby I Walk Alone From the first link I just posted: Folksy yet sophisticated, he became a pioneer of "The Nashville Sound," also called "countrypolitan," a mixture of country and pop styles. His crossover success paved the way for later singers such as Kenny Rogers. "I sing a little country, I sing a little pop and I sing a little folk, and it all goes together," he said in 1970.... ....The late Dinah Shore once described his voice as like "warm butter and syrup being poured over wonderful buttermilk pancakes." In the 1960s he revitalized his career by performing pop that had as much in common with Tony Bennett as it did with Hank Williams (I've said it before I'll say it: American popular music is far less compartmentalized than is often recognized) , but it was invariably well-crafted and good, and he and Chet Atkins changed Nashville's approach to music.
  • Its too bad they couldn't make the would-be thief say sorry as well :(
  • Krinklyfig: They look like the kinda dudes who get older, but the girls stay the saaaame aaaaage. Amirite?
  • I'd say yes, but barely. Paging ColdChef...
  • Indeed, on many occasions, the top story in the national news media was quite different from the leading content on The Daily Show. On January 15, for instance, most mainstream news shows led with the story of severe weather and ice storms causing havoc across much of the nation. Stewart began his show by pondering what drink would be best to wash down a Jimmy Dean pancake and sausage on a stick. “On a stick, of course, because anybody eating chocolate chip pancakes and sausage is clearly on the go,” Stewart joked. (He decided on Gatorade A.M.). And that's why I love you, Jon.
  • and the arms. so skinny the arms. with no joints at the elbow. it's weird.
  • Locuacious is right. Boucher in round 2 by suffocation.
  • [Here's a serious attempt at translation, minus the tone.] Zombie Language Those that have been bitten on the MMORPG Urban Dead (previously) are zombies. Zombies can use eight letters: a, b, g, h, m, n, r, z. Zombies need to talk, so they write Zamgrh, a language with a dictionary, a grammar, & translators. Will barbecue sauce go with brains? [Google cache on translators, still has live links, though I don't see one that did this all properly.]
  • Oh, and heart, too. Lotsa heart...
  • Well, I didn't read this, I must admit. For one thing, it's a pdf; for another, the idea that the Daily Show can be praised by a media organization by comparing it to Bill O'Reilly's "No Spin Zone" is too depressing to consider at length. Ok I did read some of this. Enough to determine that the creepy "No Spin Zone" reference is real and occurs on page 15.
  • It's not that stories about disasters and tragedies aren't, uh, "newsworthy" as far as The Daily Show is concerned—if this study had been done in 2005, they would have come to a significantly different conclusion. It's that stories about disasters and tragedies lack any sort of moral component. It isn't a great insight to say that satire, especially Stewart's brand of it, is essentially a form of moralism. But it does tell you why a story like the Virginia Tech shootings gets so few mentions while Hurricane Katrina gets so many: there isn't much about a story like Virginia Tech to moralize about (with the noted exception of the insipid press coverage), whereas everything about Katrina—FEMA, the sordid details of the administration's reaction, the racial inequity suddenly bared for all to see—invited outrage.
  • The game itself appears to be incredibly dull. Anyone care to explain how it is made interesting?
  • One of the top google image hits for "yhbc" is my favorite Wonder Woman panel. I'm so proud.
  • XQUZYPHYR writes "Poor, crack-addicted runaways forced into prostitution or other crimes are 'dragged into the underbelly' of the US drug market. These were assholes who didn't want to get jobs and the reason the aforementioned poor souls 'dragged into the underbelly' exist, like the two students their product killed, is because of fuckers like them." I don't think that sympathy or lack thereof for victims or perps makes for very good policy or law. It's not really about that. The real point is that the War on Drugs allows for these situations to arise. Sure, these kids were opportunists and fairly blatant to the point of asking to get busted. I don't care about them so much. I do care that our policies and laws are cultivating this sort of thing.
  • Three blind mice, your proposal of submission reminds me of that post about homosexual couples having to watch what they do in public constantly. It is what it is, but it is not acceptable. It is what it is, but it is not acceptable. I have a bit too much respect for the rights of homosexuals to compare (let alone equate) my filthy desire to get stoned with their quest for basic civil rights. Large scale dealing out of a frat house - out of any fixed location - is stupid. You know it, I know it, and those frat boys should have known it. I got no sympathy at all for 'em.
  • [insert head shop joke here]
  • .
  • I was listening to "Cattle Call" just the other day and remarking to myself how cool it was that he was still alive. Oh well. Rest in peace, buddy.
  • Personally I am flabbergasted by US cable news, it is completely unwatchable. I like the Daily Show though, but get depressed when I realize it is done for comedy. It would be nice to have some serious in-depth interviews done by Stewart, I think that his ability to strike at the truth is refreshing. As for the CBC, well the CBC News channel does feature BBC World News twice a day. And CBC Radio 1 has some fantastic news coverage, especially As It Happens at 18h30 EST. Also, I read the Al-Jazeera website, but have never seen their news videos. Lastly, while I like Democracy Now, it's like taking depression pills - and finding further reading on a lot of what they report can be very difficult at times.
  • Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite herb, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me in his sack a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My smoke rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have carb'd I know not how oft. Where be your shake now? your bowl? your flame? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own coughing? Quite chap- fall'n? Now get you to my lady's dealer, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, pass it.
  • To be truly high efficiency, you would need to add some carbs; perhaps a little flour or corn starch. Also some fat, for a lot of calories in just a little space. Butter, bacon fat or just the drippings off of that roast you cooked last night would work. Voila! Anything else is just broth.
  • It must be tough if you're an honest Nigerian, trying to get anything mail-order.
  • This is almost certainly an art project. Can you imagine the flavors? It says right on the first link that it's a photographer's marketing "leave behind". Yes, it's a joke. That said, I too read it as "metawater", but my first question was "it's what water drinks?"
  • Boucher has heart, but Mathis is for real. It's gonna be a war.
  • The biggest lie ever sold is that the media in this country is liberal. It is in fact instinctively status quo and corporatist, and there is no liberal equivalent to Fox News. I like to take any opportunity (as I have several times previously on Metafilter) to pimp Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? ornate insect's two sentences quoted above serve as a fairly good thesis statement for the book. Alterman is thorough, clear, and convincing.
  • I read that as "Operation Sudden Fail." Which, you know, kind of makes sense if it's the War on Drugs you're talking about.
  • Keith Richards glowers at the screen "Amatuers" best part: "He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it," Adkins said. "So I knew there was some truth to the story." hahahahahahh! guilty,Guilty, GUILTY!
  • I don't think it's elitist to expect film criticism to be well written and delivered from someone who knows film history beyond the last five years. Actually, I think we're moving into an era where possessing any knowledge of a subject beyond the absolute rudimentary knowledge is going to be considered elitist. The prevailing attitude among my high school students (and this is different from even five years ago) is "why should I have to know anything about a subject to have an opinion on it." Perhaps we are moving into the post-quality era.
  • Hasn't it always been the duty of the Court Jester to tell the Emperor that he's not wearing any clothes? Your cliche speaks wisely!
  • Aww. This is making me miss my stay with the Beloit College Study Abroad Program. Of course, you guys making me log in for the sake of nostalgia also made me reactivate my character, which of course means she's already dead. Thanks.
  • Oooo, I love orchids (well, maybe not those ubiquitous white or purple Phalaenopsis pancakes-onna-stick) but my big trick is to adopt orchids from people who are about to discard theirs after the bloom is gone. Seems like everyone has a clay pot with two leathery leaves hanging out of that that they've given up on. I stick them on a bottom shelf in my mini-greenhouse, water them when I remember to, and bring them into the house when they grow a new flowering stem. I've had friends over who have said, "Hey, I had an orchid last year that looked sort of like that one," (Um, that *is* your orchid). It's a madness. The book The Orchid Thief only hints at the insanity orchids can bring on to the unsuspecting.
  • Isn't there a Denis Leary joke about making a bong out of someone's head? "They say marijuana leads to other drugs. No it doesn't, it leads to fucking carpentry. That's the problem, folks. People getting high going, "Wow man, this box would make an excellent bong! *snort* This guy's head would make an excellent bong! *snort*" Relax! That's why I stopped doing drugs in the first place. Not because I didn't like 'em, but because I didn't want to build anything, ok?"
  • Couldn't they find an apple?
  • Three blind mice, your proposal of submission reminds me of that post about homosexual couples having to watch what they do in public constantly. It is what it is, but it is not acceptable.
  • The CNN article mentions Mad magazine and Bill Gaines, briefly, at the end of the article. Gaines has said, of course, that the whole 50s comics scare (which basically shut down his company, EC Comics) was really a blessing in disguise, as it inspired him (out of necessity) to create the very lucrative Mad.
  • (Goddamn my prose is tortured all to fuck these days. 'What's up with me?' I ask myself, and I answer back: 'Fucked if I know!')
  • Fuck Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney. Fuck America. No need to pass the buck.
  • ♪
  • (On non-preview: Okay, fine. Everybody else already linked it. Anyway, it's still all jokes.)
  • I'm in the apparently fast-shrinking and somehow blessed group who have never had a problem on ebay. I've bought cameras, movies, books, an iPod, movie posters, etc., over the past ten years without a glitch. I also sold a bunch of stuff; no problems there either.
  • I've never been an eBay seller, so can't comment on the experience - but as a buyer eBay has been very useful to me and it'll be a shame if it goes down the tubes. What eBay is great for - as some others have mentioned - is esoterica. For example, things like bike parts - I have a very nice bike built out out of parts from eBay (plus some hand-downs from other bikes) where I was pretty specific about what I wanted and was able to get it.
  • Somewhere out there someone is typing, "I guess he made the world go away".
  • Fuck America. We were already fucked when Bush won the first time and have been bending over for the last 8 years for more. Frankly, my arsehole is a bit sore so I wouldn't mind some Democratic lube. Yes, because Hillary leading you in a war against Iran will be such a nice follow-up...
  • It's Now Completely Impossible To Sell a Laptop on eBay That sounds like one of Roast Beef's t-shirts, hanging in the closet between It Is Impossible To Have A Good Day and I'm That Guy Who Sucks (Plus I Got Depression)
  • Oliver Cromwell, anyone?
  • Make sure and click on the "80's legends the Funkateers" link in the "Previously" post.
  • This is almost certainly an art project. Can you imagine the flavors? bleeeeeachhhh! And I like meat!
  • In fact, we DO have citizen journalism. What the hell is Talking Points Memo if not that? Saying that 99% of it is crap means nothing. Sturgeon's Law accounts for nearly 9/10s of that, and the remainer the fact that the stuff is so cheap to produce that the bad guys produce a lot of it too. But if you look around, you can find the important work being done. The question is, being on the internet, does it count? Kind of a vicious cycle there, I recognize, but boy there are a lot of those these days. The reason the Daily Show gets lauded so much is because it IS on the big exclusive (as exclusive as basic cable gets anyway) TV network, so it's "real."
  • We had some people over to our house and one guy really wanted to watch this match with a guy named Jason "Mayhem" Miller, so we did. The fight somehow managed to be both gory and boring at the same time, but that Miller guy was hilarious (intentionally, I think) in the interviews.
  • I can't wait for the next, shocking exposé on how Coke isn't really 'it', or on how I'm not actually lovin' McDonalds. Advertising isn't 100% true? Oh.My.God. Okay the cynical/jaded/sarcastic thing here and in other post threads is getting old. Bully for you for not being taken in/being shocked/being beyond outraged/etc. Now could we perhaps talk about some other aspect of the story? And for the wisenheimer who's going to make a crack about the 'is getting old' remark above and mentioning something about it needing to be Photoshopped, fuhgeddabout.
  • I've already written most of what I want to say here, in the thread about the Moyers/Stewart interview about a year ago, but it's absolutely true that newsmedia in America is hopelessly broken. Actual Journalism went out the window a long time ago. I don't really hate Ted Turner, because I doubt he could've predicted it, but creating the 24-Hour News Channel is really what killed everything, as far as I can tell. I'm sure there was a time, when CNN was the only game in town and I was too young to be paying attention, when CNN really did focus on actual news, absent the omnipresent political spin on everything. But competition brings quests for ratings which bring lowest-common-denominator stories and fear of any substance which might make the viewer change the channel. I don't know if it was Attwater and Scaife or just a natural progression or some combination of the two which led to every single news story in the U.S. needing to be viewed in political terms, but it's where we are now. People view something like the Polygamist ranch in Texas or the Florida girl getting beaten and don't know how to respond to it, on a human level, so the news outlets bring in their liberal guy and their conservative guy so that you can know, within talking points, which side you're supposed to be on. It's not about providing balance, but providing the laziest, and t.v.-friendliest approximation of context. But then, as the news continued to devolve into commercial product, aimed only to titillate and softy reaffirm one's beliefs, that the context became king, without any context itself. This is why we only hear about how a candidate's economic plan is polling, and not the details or likely effects. Which begs the question: how are you supposed to actually know what voters think of a plan if you're not bothering to tell them what it is? Now we're left with "news" that's so worthless as to simply be noise. If a network gets a "get," say, like an exclusive interview with Sec. Rice, then the only concern is to ask shallow but provocative questions and then cut her off if she talks beyond the soundbite, because they need that footage to be run on the other networks with their logo clogging up the bottom corner of the screen. The pdf makes a good point about TDS's audience being well-informed, and how that's necessary for the jokes to land. This is very true, and probably why Jon Stewart is so well respected not just as a comedian, but as a journaslit as well, no matter how much he tries to shrug of that label. (given the state of journalism, I wouldn't want it either.) Stewart makes jokes, but respects his audience enough not to pander, which is something I'm not sure a single other cable or network star has managed. For the record, my newspaper of choice is the New York Daily News. It's not as intellectual as the Times or the Washington Post, but it doesn't hide its agenda either, which is populist, as opposed to the New York Post's screeching right-wing propaganda. I dissagree with it about half the time, but I also know where it stands, and when it says something I hate, it backs itself up with the reasons why. I don't need my news to be free of agenda or editorials. I need it to be free of bullshit.
  • ...Everywhere
  • They're also not very funny. You're missing the point. Plus, I don't think that stopped Stewart from covering Katrina (linked previously), or The Onion from putting up 9/11 stories about two weeks after that tragedy.
  • And I thought it was funny too.
  • saying 95% of web design is about typography is like saying 95% of auto design is about the steering wheel.
  • >> That said I've got 10 bucks on the fat guy. Speaking from experience fat provides a protective layer, and adds heft to your strike when you fall over on someone. > Locuacious is right. Boucher in round 2 by suffocation. Suffocation? Ya noob, that technique's called a front sacrifice smother wrap. You probably wouldn't know a rear naked choked chicken from a triple decker pecker wrecker.
  • In the region, and damned tasty if you a. like heirloom apples and b. like booze made from heirloom apples: Poverty Lane Orchards in Lebanon, NH. Their Kingston Black single-apple cider is to die for, and all the other varieties are pretty fantabulous, too.
  • "For nine consecutive months, the internet giant has seen declines in traffic, year over year." WTF, how does something decline for 9 months over years? I don't get it. Biz-speak is biz-arre, but I think this means that for 9 consecutive months they've had their traffic decline compared to the same month one year ago.
  • Mr Moon Pie: I was there in late March, and you could drive to within a mile of the new lava - the state highway agency opens up the road from 2pm to 8pm and manage the parking etc. It is pretty freaky driving over a lava flow I must say, even if it is twenty years old (we actually stopped short and walked about two miles, the lineup for parking was pretty long.) My own pictures are here. We were at Kalapana, at the eastern edge of the lava flow, earlier in the day - there was a local guy there selling pictures he'd taken from his boat, crazily close up - we bought a couple. Some real lava-porn in full color (unlike the posted pictures :))
  • I haven't read about this extensively, but whenever I hear about the "drug bust" at SDSU, I want to know what drugs we're talking about. Did they confiscate commercial quantities of non-pot drugs?
  • Sigh. I miss living there. : kicks ground Stupid Philadelphia. No volcanoes or nothin'.
  • Abu Ghraib, I thought? Nope. Fucking comic books. Broken country, man. Broken country. One of the most disturbing elements of 1950s America was the population's failure to be horrified by human rights abuses that would occur 50 years in the future.
  • From the Houston Chronicle. Eponysterical.
  • A+++ post would read again
  • Never mind the 1950s. What about the 1850s!
  • An online magazine I used to write for did this (and the image they used belonged to someone who had previously written for them, of all the dumbass moves). It was one of the factors in my departure, because their response was just so limp. It was kind of an "I'm sorry you're mad" apology, which sucked.
  • I suspect that one reason people are so skeptical of the value of criticism is that one rarely encounters good criticism. This is not to say that good criticism was more common in the past; good works float to the top in time. Film criticism isn't my specialty, but if you need to be convinced of the value of criticism and are looking for something accessible, Orwell writing on Wodehouse is a good start. It shows the marks of something that's only possible with considerable experience and research.
  • Part one.
  • I feel like sticking poor Faith Hill's horrifying fake alien arm up his ass and spinning him around until his bogus locater is re-calibrated. Thank you, taz. (Golf clap)
  • I've never bought anything on eBay, and 90% of the times that I've looked at it, it's because Boing Boing or some other blog mentioned that someone was selling Captain Kirk's chair or their virginity or something stunt-like on it. The one exception was when I was looking for a decent used car recently, and looked at the local listings on eBay as one of my options. The only car within my area that was anywhere near my price range (actually, a couple grand above it) was this hideous riced-out acid green Honda. I ended up getting a nice bargain from the local classifieds.
  • Thanks for this; I never knew they worked with John Cage, and the claim that they were ignored by avante-garde music historians for so long is sad. That 2nd-to-last link also does a great job of describing what was so amazing about the Forbidden Planet soundtrack: ...the scoring of Forbidden Planet breaks down the traditional line between music and sound effects since the Barrons' electronic material is used for both. This not only creates a new type of unity in the film sound world, but also allows for a continuum between these two areas that the Barrons exploit in various ways. At some points it's actually impossible to say whether or not what you're hearing is music, sound effect, or both. In doing this, they foreshadowed by decades the now common role of the sound designer in modern film and video.
  • Well this a disconcerting thread. I just dipped my toe in the ebay waters to sell a couple of wardrobes. I think one is sold (because ebay sent me an email telling me it was), but I'm not sure how to proceed from there. Yes, to sourwookie saying that the interface is obscure… it's been a learning experience.
  • I have no idea what this guy's point is.
  • If you wnat to push an agenda based on mudslinging, oversimplification, guilt by associated imagery and inflammatory soundbites it certainly makes your job easier, yes.
  • I read that as "Operation Sudden Fail." Which, you know, kind of makes sense if it's the War on Drugs you're talking about. Me too. But the war on drugs isn't an example of "sudden fail"; it's consistent, regular, and all-the-time fail.
  • I agree agress, like the sunrise photo or the time lapse one at night, color could be awesome. Also, a quick letter: Dear Josef Hoflehner, I oft complain about photography sites, and yours is no exception, I do appreciate the ease of navigation, thank you for doing that right, but I would like to see your art in all its detail without squinting at a 397x397 photo trying to make up some detail. With the advent of these nifty LCD monitors and a majority of users with screen resolution greater than 1024x768, I expect photos at least this size if not larger. Large photos are impressive, especially skillfully shot ones such as yours. I understand the fear of theft or people using them as desktop backgrounds! (OH NOES! Protect the bits.) Maybe a watermark is the answer, but that is a whole 'nother conversation. Sincerely, Concerned Photography Admirer
  • Hey Vindaloo, I don't remember the Denis Leary reference, but I do remember in the writings oh Hunter S. Thompson, that he wouldn't believe his friend and attorney was really dead until he could use his skull as a bong.
  • Well, heh, I hate to say it, but many writers and designers are a little bit technically illiterate and don't even realize they have an option. How many people know about Word's "light on dark" visual option, for example? I'd also say programmers are less likely to be tradition-bound than this particular group. I know of writers, for example, who still use WordStar (for DOS!) and swear that it's better than anything created since—and who seem completely ignorant of the many editors which have WordStar emulation modes.
  • I was mostly with him until he said that War of the Worlds was one of, "The most powerful, politically and morally engaged recent films..." Seriously, War of the Worlds (and it was the newer one, I thought maybe he meant the really old one) is not engaging or political at all. The book is (depending on your viewpoint) but the movie? Come on. Then again, I guess I'm just one of those uneducated morons, and I'm the reason movie reviews suck these days.
  • What is the DEA doing focusing on such a small-time operation? Why are they literally making a federal case out of it?
  • Colbert is still smarter and funnier. I suspect this is because Colbert's show is a finely focused parody of a very certain type of talking-head show and doesn't deviate from that central conceit, whereas TDS is more free-range with it's humor. Colbert is sit-com to TDS's ensemble variety show. TDS is also at the mercy of any given day's events.
  • Unicorn on the cob: Don't you mean MeatLifter??
  • The United States had a new menace, they said, one whose name started with "c" and whose first syllable rhymed with "bomb." Comb. Rnr, not comics.
  • so there's a 97 year old body sitting in an abandoned graveyard that's been soaking in rainwater pretty much the whole time. The cops can't even find the casket, let alone the "skull-bong". I definitely believe the home-schooled stoner car thief's story here- he seems completely credible. On the plus side, this happened in Texas; aren't the relatives of the child allowed to shoot the stoners?
  • I find it interesting that there are only two theories put forth for why the Daily Show is 'tougher' on Republicans: 1) Jon Stewart and the writers are liberals, or 2) Jon Stewart and the writers are anti-establishment. How about: 3) the viewers want to finally have some actual news given to them, rather than being inundated with politicians in power hammering pre-arranged talking points? Or even, 4) Dick Cheney is Satan and Bush is his sockpuppet?
  • (stares at the fpp for a few minutes incomprehendingly. moves on)
  • Can somebody convince me in the comments why this isn't a worthless link to some Ultimate fighting bullshit?
  • the job function he serves Did you watch the film? I think you're laboring along the line that he's a lawyer who just happens to have terrorists as clients, along with the occasional tabloid case (Barbie, Sobhraj) and the actual bill-paying clients he picks up in Africa. My view is that he's a terrorist who happens to be a lawyer. Whether he materially participated in the crimes or not is irrelevant. He headed up their legal wing and was smart enough not to get caught at it.
  • Great comment, Justinian. But I don't blame journalists themselves -- it's really about corporate control. Newsrooms have been getting gutted for a long time, and at this point, there are too many journalists working in them who have no experience from before the 1990s and poor training. The good ones have left for other careers or simply been rendered powerless, and their editors, who at one time would have aggressively defended the size of the news hole and given them the time and support needed to do serious newsgathering and investigation, have been stripped of their teeth and claws (and budgets) when it comes to fighting the revenue-generating profit centers like advertising and the ownership's shareholders. The people making the decisions in news organizations have changed in the last 20 years, and we can see the result.
  • jack_mo, I don't have a study to cite, but just a suggestion. The people who look at a computer monitor most steadily (for hours at a time) are programmers. Look at the way they generally set up their editors (myself included). Couldn't that be a hangover from old monitors too, now done out of habit? I know a few programmers who opt for light on dark, in any case. And everyone I know who spends their working day writing words (or doing layout) rather than code, many of whom spend as much time looking at a screen as coders, works dark on light. That the two groups who probably spend most time staring at a screen generally opt for opposite colourschemes makes me wonder if a part of it is habit/tradition, or the way apps are traditionally designed for a given group. Like I said above, in the longest discussion of the issue I could find online the preference split was about 50/50 - it'd be interesting to know if that split was programmer vs. writer/designer. Whatever, in the absence of studies to cite, I just find it odd that people always state as fact that light on dark is more readable when so many people report that the opposite is true. Perhaps I should email unpopular usability guru Jakob Nielsen and ask him to do a study. (You're dead right about the contrast though: high contrast light on dark doesn't give me as much of a headache as MetaFilter-style.)
  • Awesome
    Thank you, signal, for a truly great post.
    Inspiring
    I have a lot of reading and a lot of work to do.
  • Just to input here, I did not mean post the above quote alone as the specific moment of that interchange that was it's crowning glory, though it was a pretty good zinger, I really meant to emphasize the entire transcript of the exchange, which is a truly proper vivisection of the horrible monster that are/were shows like Crossfire.
  • If only the dude from Into the Wild had known this, history might have been changed.
  • I guess even CityTV employees are confused by the "this photo is public" label. Flickr should really change those default labels so they say, like, "this photo MAY NOT be used" or something. Preferably in red. And blinking.
  • Hasn't it always been the duty of the Court Jester to tell the Emperor that he's not wearing any clothes?
  • I have great memories of going apple-picking when I was growing up in New England, where the farms would also sell apple jellies, juice and donuts and you could make crisp and pie and cobbler or any number of delicious things. Bacon enthusiasts are missing out.
  • This is why I don't read the New York Press. The in-house idea seems to be that elitism is shit and that pandering is shit and that all art ever made is one or the other EXCEPT for several extremely bizarre examples that seem to be pulled out of their ass. Is most film criticism shit? Yes. Was it better in the 'golden day of movie-going?' I doubt we'll know, as we don't live in it (as it's been described), nor have we ever single film review written during it on the internet and ready for our perusal.
  • Destroy the brain.
  • eBay still can be useful, but like most things on the Internet that have been around for a while, (no, not YOU Metafilter!) the initial sense of community, of camaraderie, of "fun" has faded away. Not that long ago, most eBay sellers used to send a friendly e-mail to let buyers know an item had shipped. That rarely happens now. The whole "level of discourse" has dropped on the site, and most sellers just seem irritated if you try to contact them about anything. I think the changing seller attitudes are just a reflection of the overall declining culture of the site now. I think you'll see smaller, more specialized auction sites start to fill the void. This for example is a site set up exclusively to sell video games. It's like-minded folks who are knowledgeable about what they are buying/selling and there is that "sense of community" that used to live on eBay but has since moved to Nigeria.
  • no offence, but guns aren't exactly rare in american society. the fact they they got over $100,000 worth of drugs and only a few handguns to show for it says something about the college environment. just because i don't like the WOD doesn't mean i want to buddy up with coke dealers, either. get a grip.
  • Listen to Jesus, Jimmy.... Don't use skulls to smoke the reefer! Seriously though, I blame Halo. "What, no confetti?!? At least we can still get high."
  • Lung cancer, heart attack, diabetes, drug overdose Choke on a chicken bone, hit by a lightning bolt Spider bite, airplane crash Car wreck, a cap in your ass
  • They obviously did it because they were home-schooled.
  • Fuck America. No need to pass the buck. Really?
  • Smashing Magazine has an impressive collection of typographic posters , typography in motion and big typography that designers and enthusiast should check out. Also noteworthy: Web Style Guide: Typography.
  • oh, and the bacon achievers anthem via MST3K: ♬ When you want / the flavor of bacon / in a dip ♬
  • I had the privilege of meeting Bebe Barron during the mid-'80s while I was researching an article about Forbidden Planet. She was gracious, beautiful, and utterly charming. As I recall, she didn't really want to discuss the soundtrack, preferring to leave it to her ex-husband, Louis, to establish the oral history. But she was adamant that she be recognized as a 50/50 creative partner. Last I heard she was collaborating on music with David Javelosa, a composer and teacher in Los Angeles. RIP Bebe.
  • Well, it's lovely to see a frat get burned, but this likely means that more non-students have started selling on campus, i.e. more guns.
  • It isn't impossible -- I just sold a laptop on eBay about two weeks ago. I was very pleased with the transaction and the price I got. I put very plainly in the listing that I would only ship within the US and that I would not end the auction early. That one simple sentence turns away out about 98% of the scammers.
  • I think film critics should be at least readable ... so two thumbs down for this guy.
  • If you happen to have a pimple on your face at the time of the photo, I'll take it out, because that is not how you normally look. Except...if you have a pimple on your face, then it's kinda likely that you normally have pimples occasionally. Which is how you normally look. The photoshop efforts I like the best are the ones where they try to make a fake celebrity couple on the front page of gossip magazines. Take a stock photo of Celebrity 1 with soft light coming from the left, take a grainy papparazi flash photograph of Celebrity 2 and paste it on top, declare them to be a couple!
  • Who the hell wastes bacon (or bacon flavor) on pets? That's just shameful.
  • The three boys, all home-schooled There's your blame right there... I can remember being specifically told at school a) don't do drugs b) don't desecrate graves c) don't combine the two... Of course proper a drug-fiend, like Marilyn Manson, would smoke the actual skull... not pussy around turning it into a bong.
  • BTW, the retoucher's name is Pascal Dangin.
  • Com-puters
  • People ask if I would defend Hitler. I'd even defend Bush, but only if he agrees to plead guilty.
  • I once smoked from a human skull with Varg Vikernes in a forest clearing under a full Norwegian moon while Bathory's "Under the Black Mark" played from Euronymous's still blood spattered old boombox. Everything was cool, you know, just sort of kult and necro until Varg told me the weed was heavily dusted with powdered goat penis, at which point he unleashed the gnomes and things kind of went downhill.
  • Guess what the world standard is. Guess. Come on. That's right, Sunshine. It's the BBfuckingC... and even it has gone downhill. It may be the BBfuckingC to you. But along with Der Spiegel, AlJazeera and the India Times, it is (for me) an important alternate source of perspective relative to the mainstream media. 'Sunshine' - LOL
  • Like others have said, Ebay is still a perfectly good place to buy and sell small, inexpensive items and niche stuff. I sell 10+ CDs a week there, and have had only a few problems, all of which were easily resolved with the customer. I buy Warhammer minis, books, and music there all the time, too. For larger and more expensive items, it takes some work to weed out the scams, but it's still quite possible to buy and sell electronics there. The ever-increasing fees are annoying, but IMHO they're more than worth the exposure for stuff that not everyone is selling. The problem this guy had is that he was trying to sell a laptop (i.e. something that everyone is selling), and he was expecting to be able to get good money for it while also spending zero time and effort on the auction. Ebay doesn't work that way; whether or not that means it is "broken" depends entirely on one's expectations.
  • David Hadju was recently interviewed by (mefi's own) Sound of Young America. I haven't read his book, but it sounds pretty interesting; among other things it dates the moral panic arising over comics back to their early origins in the late 30's, well before Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent.
  • To respond to the earlier point about how being blatant about your bias makes the news better and easier to understand, I think this Hunter S. Thompson quote sums it up well: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful." Objective journalism does have blatant blindspots. One of them is that reporting involves more than rehashing. I remember hearing a story on NPR in 2004 that compared what Kerry and Bush were saying about their education proposals. They sounded pretty identical. But then the article went on to actually talk about their track records, and Bush had failed to fund every educational mandate he'd bragged about, they'd all fallen below expectations because of it, and at the end of his first four years in office there were fewer scholarships than when he started. Kerry, however, had voted regularly for educational programs that had worked. I did some looking around, and I barely found any other sources that mentioned this history; everyone else just told us what they were saying, which wasn't helpful because at least one person's words weren't going to correspond to reality. Another one of the biggest problems is that the sound bite culture forces people to re-tell a story rather than show it, which necessarily confuses editorializing with reporting. If you show an entire speech, then you show their actual words. If you tell people what someone else said, you slant that to your interpretation of what they said - which is often unfair. This is actually very key, because it creates a media perception of (for example) political candidates that they then have no way of responding to, and enough people vote on the strength of personalities alone that it can determine elections. In 2000 how was Al Gore going to prove that he wasn't "wooden" when he had no effective way of reaching the masses except the way that was creating the problem in the first place? When I actually heard him speak, I had a very different perspective on him than what I kept hearing over and over again in both reports AND editorials. I think the problem in American journalism is that the speed we demand of news organizations is completely out of relationship to the speed at which news actually occurs, which leaves reporters unable to follow a story from start to finish, investigate it, and make conclusions. Instead, they have to use things every day as they happen, which doesn't leave room for reflection and which almost necessitates over-emphasizing first person (and thus obviously self-motivated) quotes... and then because it's supposed to be objective, and because we see the words coming out of people's mouths, a lot of people just confuse that with what actually happened, as opposed to "this is what one person said happened, because they want something from you." If you go out and call someone a swine, you might get closer to the truth, but you'll definitely do a better job of alerting people that this is just an interpretation of reality, not an undeniable fact.
  • Does Weekend Update count as news? Because Amy Poehler is actually hotter than the female newsreaders on Fox.
  • Joey: I'd rephrase that as the 'post-competence era'.
  • I guess film criticism is also about what we bring to it, which is why I am always banging on about current critics who have little knowledge and no appreciation for where the art form has been before. Essentially, nobody ever needs to read a film review. You can pick and choose what you see based on a preference for genre, director, writer, actor, trailer. The best film critic for me can put a film in context - how does it fit into the genre; how does it fit into the director's oeuvre; has this kind of story been done before - better or worse. Now this doesn't necessarily tell me about the film itself; a review, any review from Kenny or Ebert or Joe Morgenstern or Richard Corliss or Aint-It-Cool-News, is ultimately one person's opinion. But I respect the opinion of a critic who can craft a sentence and tell me about their experience. Great film criticism is enlightening, even if you don't necessarily agree with the author's view of the film - because it might tell you something about them or how they relate it to other works. When I admire a film critic, like Kenny or Ebert (or in Australia, David Stratton), it's because I understand where they are coming from. Having read many, many of their reviews, I know how to gauge their opinion. A lot of film criticism today has no style and no sense of context - the review might as well be written in a vacuum; if I can't learn about the author a little, how can I possibly know how to take the review? Clearly we don't all need film critics (see: most weekends' box office), but some of them love the job they can do. A film critic I trust can introduce me to films I would never have watched or appreciate a film I didn't like (or didn't get) or reveal to me an angle from which I have never approached a film before. Or they can have me nodding along with them, thinking "hey, see I'm not crazy - someone else loved this film too!" Actually, I think we're moving into an era where possessing any knowledge of a subject beyond the absolute rudimentary knowledge is going to be considered elitist. Yes, just ask Hillary who seems to be appending the term "elitist" to everything she doesn't like. But that's another thread altogether.
  • It's worth noting that this is a uniquely American view. Most Western European news providers ... Not to mention certain Australian ones.
  • One of the most disturbing elements of 1950s America was the population's failure to be horrified by human rights abuses that would occur 50 years in the future. Heh. I meant what merited a place on CNN's home page. But that too, sure. :)
  • The Styledash article (linked to "fake") is basically a bunch of speculation since they couldn't reach Dove or the supposed retoucher but ran the story anyway. I dunno. I certainly didn't expect the photos to have been run without any polishing. I think this is making a mountain of a mole-hill.
  • I am sick of delmoi. Nothing I've not seen before, and the vapid comments are repeated a million times over. Plus "delmoi" has become one of the biggest 'comment whoring' cliches out there. Now if DU would comment we'd have the bifecta.
  • Colbert is still smarter and funnier.
  • My parents were huge fans and, for the four years we lived overseas while Dad served a French base posting with the RCAF, the Loew-Opta stereo was pretty well our only electronic entertainment and Eddy Arnold albums were a regular play. I can still manage a passable recollection of the lyrics to "The Red-Headed Stranger". "Don't cross him; don't boss him He's wild in his sorrow. He's ridin' and hidin' his pain. Don't fight him; don't spite him Just wait 'til tomorrow And maybe he'll ride on again." But the yellow-haired woman who "cast greedy eyes on the bay" didn't listen; they never do.
  • it is nice to hear a story like this NOT taking place in Florida, however. That teacher teaches where I went to high school and I'm pretty sure I could find that graveyard without much trouble. Go hometown loonies!!!
  • I agree with dirtynumbangelboy. We only pay lawyers because we want them to express our version of the truth because if we represented ourselves we'd look stupid or like an obssessive nut. However, if Jacques Vergès was my lawyer I'd guess my case was probably doomed.
  • Well, you know, someone has to do something vaguely like journalism on American TV, and it sure as hell isn't any of the cable news channels or even (ha ha) network news.
  • The Daily Show is toothless since Ben Karlin's departure.
  • i know this, btw, because i knew some kids in high school who dug up a grave to get the skull. they told me firsthand and i saw the pictures. caskets from 80 years were usually made of wood--most of them caved-in under the weight of six-feet of dirt before the grave was even completely covered over.
  • Typography and Metafilter. Don't you see what you've done? YOU FOOL!!!!!
  • Book of Joe: Every now and then, but as infrequently as possible, perhaps once a year, I buy something on eBay that I can't find anywhere else. ... And every time I do, I'm reminded of why I repeat this behavior as infrequently as possible. eBay's "Buy It Now" feature is the Bizarro World equivalent of Amazon's One-Click. It involves innumerable screens, clicks and pages, confusing instructions, a terrible interface and, worst of all, the need to invoke PayPal as part of the process. It is no surprise to me that eBay is fading.
  • Dammit all. The apple tree won't be fruiting for another four months, and I want apples now! But all I have are these persimmons, and I hate the blasted things.
  • Why would these elite American soldiers kill an unarmed prisoner in cold blood? The answer: pressure from their commanding officers to pump up a statistic straight out of America's last long war against an intractable insurgency. Bullshit. Of all the reasons men do horrible things in war, I refuse to believe that "padding the numbers" accounts for them committing a crime for which they may well spend the rest of their lives in prison.
  • .
  • Huh? How about RCI? "Radio Canada International produces daily and weekly programs in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic and Portuguese. A wide variety of programs produced by CBC/Radio-Canada are also available. " RCI sounds good, but is it terrestrial? It seems to be just shortwave and online, like BBC World. I don't think it could get the kind of penetration terrestrial radio could, because people don't have internet and/or shortwave in their cars, kitchens, etc. Also, I have to admit that I wouldn't listen to a radio station which kept switching language. When I listen to the radio, I want to be able to switch it on and know that I could understand the program. From what I've observed, that's how a lot of people use radio - it's used differently from TV (and often when people are doing other things, like driving or chores). I supose it changes language to serve different communities, but by doing so it excludes other Canadians from news from that region. There is a TV station in Toronto that is multilingual and shows wonderful world programming, but then excludes all people not of the specific community because that programming is not subtitled. One of the few exceptions is (was?) their South Asian news program, which happened in English (as the common language across South Asia). What I would like to see change in news reporting in Canada and Britain are the basic focusses of the news. I'd like world news to be as convenient and as ever present (on the regular radio waves, on nightly newscasts) as national or regional news. World news is already out there for people who want to seek it out, but most people won't. I just think it should be there whether we want it or not, like how American news is in Canada whether we like it or not. It would be a hump - most of us (including myself) wouldn't really understand what was going in in something like, say, Indian parliamentary elections. But it matters, and we need to learn it.
  • as someone who has had to do this sort of thing from time to time, I want to know so much more about his techniques. He must have so many secrets. There are way too many crap photoshop books out there and this guy sounds like the real deal.
  • Mhhr?
  • Another god damn Apple fpp?! I'm sick of it! oh... wait.
  • First day in Malton
  • At least now he'll never go short of water. Cool water.
  • An old related blog post.
  • IT'S BACON! BACONBACONBACON
  • Unless you actually read the article. I did read the article. I also read the followup article. And after reading both, that analogy stood before me like a shining beacon in pitch black night. When driving a car, you are in constant contact with the steering wheel. It is your primary interface with the car. If your hands are not on the wheel...you are not driving. It's that fundamental to the entire driving experience, yet still not 95% of auto design. Same goes for typography.
  • You can't ask that only the obviously innocent be defended. That would turn our trial-based justice system into a farce.
  • From my childhood I remember Winesap and Black Twig. More recently, a neighbor had a tree in her backyard of Kings -- huge apples specifically meant for baking. Last week, in the supermarket, I saw Grapples. That is, apples of some variety or other that had been injected with grape juice for flavor. I do not lie.
  • Oh don't get me wrong, it seems pretty clear that this guy isn't someone you'd want over for a nice dinner. (An interesting dinner, on the other hand...) I guess what I'm saying is that even though he may well be an apologist for every tinpot dictator and crazy-eyed idealist with a stick of dynamite, the job function he serves is very, very important, and it's essential that a zealous defence is available to everyone, regardless of what they've done.
  • I just closed my eBay store after 2+ years. Mostly because I'm working full time now and the time invested in eBay was no longer worth the money I was making off it, but also because it's terrible and getting worse. This thread seems to be more about scammers than anything else, but they consistently raise and raise and raise all kinds of fees (Monthly store fees! Listing Fees! Final Value Fees! Paypal fees! Paypal withdrawal fees! Let's not forget the terrible exchange rate Paypal uses for Canadians!) But recent changes like sellers no longer being able to leave negative or neutral feedback, or in some cases being forced to only accept Paypal, some people having Paypal hold their money until the buyer leaves positive feedback, and a ridiculous Best Match system that only serves to make it that much harder for smaller sellers. Ebay is terrible these days (maybe it's always been, but it's getting worse and worse) but they're still the only game in town. I've been quietly begging for Google to resurrect their Auctions plans, but no sign of that for the longest time, so I've given up hope. FWIW, I've never been scammed (except possibly with a giant $100 graphic novel that never arrived, but the reputable seller was quick to offer a refund), but I still know enough not to buy or sell even something as small as an iPod on eBay, forget about larger electronics.
  • Okay, krautland - it's ouroboros of hypocrisy. How should I have put it? Despite being a hag, I don't think that he's in any position to declare me (and a lot of other people) bogus for thinking that his art can be harmful. He makes a lot of money from making people feel bad about themselves; it's in his best interest to promote the sort of advertising that requires his services. But he's a lot like the man behind the curtain... not at all impressive when you actually get a look at him, yet wielding this power to make other people feel diminished. If I point out that out, I'm taking away his freedom of speech? Or I shouldn't point it out because I'm ugly? And I wasn't even very antipathetic against him until I came across that quote, but that was just galling. I won't try to defend what I said any more. It's okay with me if you think I shouldn't have mentioned his looks, because maybe I shouldn't have. Really, I mean that. But to me, it will feel better the next time I look at another ad featuring another perfect beauty to remember the guy behind the curtain.
  • Ebay's still great for cheap stuff from Asia (eg 20 unusual tiny batteries for a few quid) and bulky local stuff (nobody will try to get you to ship a second-hand sofa to Nigeria). I've also bought numerous used guitars on ebay, and I've always had good luck with those. I wouldn't buy electronics though.
  • kaibutsu, those photos are ridiculous. the mountain erupted in a LIGHTNING STORM?? killer pictures.
  • The saddest part is that I don't think Carlson et al disagreed with him... they just didn't get it. Begala was ever worse about it because he seemed to think Stewart was there only to assail Carlson. I don't think he quite understood what was happening. There was a time when I had some respect for him but I cannot, for the life of me, remember why. When he went off on his "Obama's support only comes from African Americans and eggheads" thing on Tuesday night, I wrote him off completely. It's funny that some people in the business of politics think they deserve a pass merely because they are Democrats, when a lot of those jerks are even more cynical and worse for America than a lot of Republicans. At least with most republicans, you know exactly where they stand, so there's no risk of them selling you out.
  • Back on topic: that Seed Conference site really is lovely. I wonder if it'll usher in a fad for using Times New Roman? (Or is it part of an existing trend? I don't really keep up with this stuff anymore.)
  • Who was it that said they used to get out of chores as a kid (picking up dog poop) by dabbing bacon grease on it? Just a joke I'm sure but still...ew.
  • Who would let their photos be used as an example? Remember the Jezebel Faith Hill cover? That was a huge embarrassment for the magazine, which is why Jezebel had to put out the open offer of $10k for an un-retouched cover in the first place.
  • I only give my meatwater to my closest friends. - Meatbomb but your meat shrapnel, you're happy to spread it around?
  • it seems to me that this may have been syndicated to at least one other michigan station for a bit - i swear i saw it on ch 47 in lansing once - either that, or reception was really, really good
  • If it's well-done parody shouldn't it be, well, funny? This seems to lack any humor. Roping? Roping is funny?
  • Nice title. Really brings up the tone.
  • I'll admit it -- I get most of my news from Comedy Central and HBO. What's terrible about this is that it's becoming less and less indicative of a problem with me and rather increasingly of a problem with the actual news programs. Take, for example, CNN Headline News: Created specifically as a venue for hard news, that viewers could flip to at any time to see the major stories of the day, it's now just Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck spewing bullshit at the top of their lungs, or some inane blather about Hannah Montana. When comedians take journalism more seriously than journalists do, something is seriously broken.
  • Take, for example, CNN Headline News: Created specifically as a venue for hard news, that viewers could flip to at any time to see the major stories of the day, it's now just Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck spewing bullshit at the top of their lungs, or some inane blather about Hannah Montana. Recently I was asked about my favorite cable news channel in a poll. I haven't really watched cable news in over a year, so I just spouted "Uh, Headline News, I guess". Later I actually spent some time watching Headline News, and discovered that it had somehow been overthrown by right-wing talk radio hosts and had very few, uh, headlines.
  • Keeping a human skull for bong (or other) purposes
  • But his companions, fearful of the repercussions of a drug bust, waited until it was too late to call for help. Drug policies built on fear and draconian penalties aimed at the end user have some real problems. On the other hand. because cocaine was so freely available to Lenny Bias his sudden death from it (given his underlying medical condition) was more or less inevitable. You only need to see once what a snort does to your EKG to understand why people with heart problems shouldn't be messing with the stuff. * to Lenny. I was a big fan. Look I am as pro-drug as the next stoner, but it ain't for everyone. There is a culture. Respect it and you'll get along fine, flaunt it and you get another kind of medicine.
  • Bee wop a ninna granah
  • Braking news?
  • I think what's interesting, though, is not White's point - which I actually disagree with - but the fact that while most film criticism is shit, it seems to be getting worse with the proliferation of online bloggers/reviewers and the squeezing out of film critics from major publications. I don't think it's elitist to expect film criticism to be well written and delivered from someone who knows film history beyond the last five years. This doesn't mean it was better in the so-called "golden days" but that the films of that era aren't being regarded by the new wave of film critics, who are the mutant children of Aint-It-Cool-News, whose entire film history begins (and sometimes ends) with Star Wars. That's why I linked to critic Glenn Kenny's response to White's article and to articles about other critics being let go, because they all seem to be a symptom of the same thing - saturation of the marketplace. (And a possible oncoming recession could be partly to blame.) Meanwhile, Kenny has set up his own blog - Some Came Running - and hopefully that will follow in the style of his Premiere.com blog. Cross fingers that someone, somewhere sees this injustice and he continues to write erudite, knowledgeable film reviews
  • The fact that the "Project for Excellence in Journalism" is even bothering to compare the Daily Show to the major news networks should be the cause for somber reflection at all those major news networks. It will not be. While that article repeatedly says that TDS is an entertainment program with journalism-like qualities, it never gets around to mentioning that the same is true of CNN/Fox/MSNBC/etc. The fact that the article is actually putting those networks into the separate category of serious journalism is probably a cause for relief, or even celebration, in those quarters.
  • I like meat. I also like consuming lots of liquid. That said, I think I'd prefer them to remain separate.
  • I have a bit too much respect for the rights of homosexuals to compare (let alone equate) my filthy desire to get stoned with their quest for basic civil rights. My friend, your desire to experience pleasure with your body and mind is not filthy. It is a tribute to our oppression that you even say (think?) so. Notice that there is also no shortage of people that would consider homosexuals "filthy". This is not by accident. It is not that i do not have the respect. It is that i have the perspective: we are talking about the same right. The right to be judged on the consequences of our actions and not something else.
  • When comedians take journalism more seriously than journalists do, something is seriously broken. I think you hit the nail on the head here, and b/c comedy, especially the highly ironic comedy practiced on shows like Stewart or Maher, is less threatening than investigative journalism (or at least than the idea of investigative journalism), it has been allowed as a place where something like unpatronizing truth occasionaly seeps through. It's a backdoor way for the people to actually not be condescended to or sold snakeoil, and it's emerged unconsciously in pop culture to fill a real information gap.
  • Here are some badass photos of an eruption in Chile...
  • they smoke the pot in the skull? So, like, they're really really small?
  • Would reinstating the Fairness Doctrine help?
  • This is cool, but right off the bat, when did reverse type become completely acceptable, especially when it comes to user interface? My old stand by is that if reverse type was easy to read, then newspapers would use it.
  • Fantastic! Thanks.
  • How do these highly designed sites deal with users who don't use the font size they specify? I read a lot of sites with the font size increased considerably, and for many of them, the site design ends up looking like garbage. Do designers take this into account when designing pages? (It's not that the sites can't implement the larger type size, but that the design elements stop making sense when the type is large. For example, here on the blue, the links to Metafilter, AskMetafilter, etc. that are in yellowish run into the yellowish band at the top of the page, making it harder to read those links. Not a big deal here, but similar problems mess up other sites considerably.)
  • I recall a time when, to shock adults, all a teenager had to do was drop one nice little F-bomb at the dinner table. ::sigh:: What have we wrought? "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" Plato agrees.
  • Coincidently, I got this movie from Netflix last week and after watching it, rated it one star. It's nothing more than a self-serving propaganda piece for a guy who was basically a spokester for 1970's terrorists and present-day asshats. I guess there's a fine line between being an idealist and an apologist, with a little lawyering in between.
  • p.s. I totally agree with Jon when he said that those twats were hurting America. No one watches American news coverage anywhere else in the world. No one (well, maybe some sad twat ex-pat Bush voters in London who work for the gubmint). Guess what the world standard is. Guess. Come on. That's right, Sunshine. It's the BBfuckingC... and even it has gone downhill.
  • Is Meatwater Cocktail redundant?
  • IndpMed: I would just like to chime in and point out that online isn't a complete solution either. Big media dominates both in direct page hits, and indirectly through blog links. A grass roots solution will require "citizen journalists" to get off their ass and actually go to the weekly civic meetings, or pour through the primary literature journals.
  • My mother would never forgive me for giving her an orchid for Mother's Day. She likes gaudy, shiny, totally over-the-top crap.
  • "But the boys told conflicting stories about whether they actually severed the head — so police aren't sure if that gruesome detail really happened." A minor detail towards the end of the article.
  • Effigy2000: "Surprise, surprise. A once decent service made a whole bunch of money, got way too big and bloated and is now essentially worthless. . Microsoft, Yahoo, Google... the list goes on. It happens all the time and will keep on happening. The fact that Nigerian scammers helped speed up that decline is by the by. I don't think Google is worthless, yet. They haven't completely destroyed the utility of their services. They've actually improved things, and their search results are far better than other corporations. I'm not a huge Google fan, but lumping them in with Yahoo and Microsoft makes your comment seem a little ill-informed. re:EBay. I've used it over the last couple of years to sell computer stuff and I've been happy with the result. I've only dealt with the EBay UK and France hubs, so maybe that's a factor.
  • (I'm not adding anything, I'd just like to say that this is an absolutely excellent discussion and if I had the time I'd favourite pretty much every comment. Sidebar time, anyone?)
  • pssst guys it's (well-done) parody
  • Operation Adjective Noun
  • While I love constructing words using Death Rattle (Barhah! Banana gangbang!), this is really not how you want to make a MeFi post.
  • It all depends how good the designer is leahwrenn. If you take mefi for example, Matt could probably make the top menu have a repeating background so if you increase your text size the menu background adjusts accordingly. Much like the way that the bottom links stay in the dark blue footer. Realistically though you have to just design for a standard and hope the layout degrades "gracefully" as they say.
  • I'm getting sick of design. Those pages are all pretty, but nothing I haven't seen a million times before. Plus 'lists' have become the one of the biggest 'traffic whoring' cliches out there these days.
  • As far as the second linked article, the rising fees and constant nickle-and-diming thing aren't symptoms of ebay being greedy, it's really just because they're a publicly traded company and have to show constant growth or their stock tanks. They can do it by raising fees (easy) or increasing the customer base (much harder). It's a shame though, as there are some basic features that (IIRC) should be free, like the ability to start auctions at any time.