MetaFilter

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy isn't sounding too flash. "This is a terrible, terrible film and it makes me want to weep." At least we enjoyed the trailer!
comment posted at 12:44 AM on Apr-10-05

And you thought Hootie had sold out already. Onion hula-hoops, burgers growing on trees, and lots of suggestive sauce licking. [via]
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Apr-7-05

The Long Emergency is coming, according to James Howard Kunstler. Welcome to the new agrarian future. Buy 40 acres, a mule, and maybe some stock in the railroads.
comment posted at 10:52 PM on Apr-7-05

THIS IS FUN TO MAKE A BLOG ON THE COMPUTER WEBSITE.
comment posted at 1:45 AM on Apr-7-05

Poultry Internet!? YES! Though poultry have been known to have high levels of cognition and feeling many of us with busy lifestyles have a hard time fulfilling their needs. And some poor souls can't even be near poultry as a result of allergies. What to do? Why not a cybernetics system allowing for network-enabled remote haptic stimulation and feedback of poultry? Confused? Well, there's "The Office System where user fondles with the doll." and then that hooks up to "The pet (rooster) with pet dress." hopefully recapturing "our sense of togetherness with our animal friends, just like times gone by on the prairie, village, or jungle.". A bit of oddity brought to you by the Singapore Mixed-Reality Lab, who actually do a lot of cool stuff like AR human pacman; and they've got the videos to prove it.
comment posted at 5:55 PM on Apr-6-05

Google wants your porn Google co-founder Larry Page has announced that the company wants the public to send in its homemade videos - and he doesn't mind how mucky they are. "There might be an adult section, or something like that. I don't think that is going to be a big issue,"
comment posted at 5:43 PM on Apr-6-05

Watch as the GOP eats its own! Thrill as the media is fed more and more damaging info! Stare in Awe at the inside information calculated to get rid of him! Marvel at the downfall (and eventual Gingrichian comeback?) of Representative DeLay!
comment posted at 1:52 AM on Apr-6-05

Hunter S. Thompson's ashes WILL be blasted from a cannon mounted inside a 53-foot-high sculpture of the journalist's "gonzo fist" emblem. You can see Hunter & Ralph Steadman plan these details in the BBC documentary Fear & Loathing in Gonzovision.
comment posted at 1:54 AM on Apr-6-05

Confessions of an EBay opium addict - Like anyone trolling the Internet at 4 a.m., I had been looking for some kind of temporary drug fix. I found it on eBay under Crafts>Floral Supplies>Flowers, Foliage>Dried. (via Alternet)
comment posted at 1:48 AM on Apr-6-05
comment posted at 10:30 PM on Apr-7-05

British band Coldplay revealed the artwork to their new album X and Y. It's cryptic cover has the record company bosses hoping for public intrigue. No clues from the thread at the official forum. I know it's viral marketing, but what could it mean?
comment posted at 4:58 AM on Apr-5-05
comment posted at 4:58 AM on Apr-5-05

Thomas L. Friedman, award winning NY Times columnist and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes, and From Beirut to Jerusalem, will publish his fourth book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, this week. An article adopted from the book, "It’s a Flat World After All", was printed in the NY Times Magazine today:

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met 'Indians' and came home and reported to his king and queen: 'The world is round.' I set off for India 512 years later. I knew just which direction I was going. I went east. I had Lufthansa business class, and I came home and reported only to my wife and only in a whisper: 'The world is flat.'
comment posted at 2:34 AM on Apr-4-05

Canada's seal hunt started yesterday and though I wondered if the numbers on the Protect Seals site were accurate, this somewhat gory and disturbing slideshow at Yahoo/AP news seems to support the high numbers of slaughter. There doesn't seem to be much you can do to stop seal clubbing in 2005, just boycotting Canadian seafood and calling congressfolks. Shame to see up to 300k seals killed for some fur coats -- seems so last century.
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Mar-30-05
comment posted at 9:57 PM on Mar-30-05

Sails to harness Vox Populi winds : "Technology is changing politics" [ not to mention journalism ] intones the well connected Personal Democracy Forum, and everybody's leaping into the "Blogging vs. Journalism" fray. Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media, has quit his job after receiving seed money from Mitch Kapor and from Omidyar Networks, to found the for-profit "Grassroots Media Inc." : Gillmor's got a hand, as well, in the noble and name studded OurMedia.org : "We'll host your media forever — for free.....Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads"

Meanwhile, SusanG - in her most recent recently released investigative piece into the Jeff Gannon/fake journalism scandal notes her research group's effort "now encompasses so much more than Gannon" and announces future stories will post under the organizational name of ePluribus Media

"We're the People ! No you're not, we're the People ! No way ! We're the...."
comment posted at 1:24 AM on Mar-29-05

Paul Hester, Aussie drummer of such antipodean bands as Split Enz and Crowded House (as well as occasional television performer), has committed suicide at 46.
comment posted at 4:45 PM on Mar-28-05

"I'm going to just come right out and say this... I've been trying to avoid this, to avoid telling this, because if you know this you'll fucking hate me or at least think less of me... I know I'm not a slut, I mean, maybe I am, perhaps I am! but does that matter? ... I've become a prostitute." [nsfw]
comment posted at 1:46 AM on Mar-26-05

What's a namber? A namber is a word that acts as a mnemonic for a number. For example, 65 is drum, and 181 is push. A namber address uses an arbitrarily-chosen list of nambers to represent each of the numbers from 0 to 255 in order to assemble four words to represent any IP address. Metafilter.com's namber is earth.frog.brown.tooth, and mysteryrobot.com conveniently provides translation and forwarding to the real IP address.
comment posted at 10:23 PM on Mar-22-05

...The rumors are true. Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr & Ludicorp. What does this mean? Well, Flickr will continue to be a seperate entity, but Yahoo! Photos will be getting those shiny Flickr geegaws. AND "Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon." (i can't wait!) The Flickr community's reactions seem positive.
comment posted at 1:30 AM on Mar-21-05

Poguetry: "The Parting Glass: An Annotated Pogues Lyrics Page".
comment posted at 8:44 PM on Mar-17-05

Billy Bragg videos from 1991 I'm not much one for music videos, but Billy's "Sexuality" with Kirsty MacColl was one of my favorites back in the day. Sometime in the late 90's, I just assumed I'd never see it again. But ask and the Internet provides. There is also "You Woke Up My Neighborhood," with Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. I hadn't seen that one before, but it's wonderful, too.

Also enjoy a greyer Billy playing at a fairly recent Strummerville benefit. first link may be dodgy in firefox. Worked once for me but not on subsequent viewings.
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Mar-15-05
comment posted at 6:38 PM on Mar-15-05

six-legged walking machine, exciting video footage, unlikely future designs
comment posted at 7:14 PM on Mar-15-05

Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste its my first post, go easy on me.
comment posted at 10:13 PM on Mar-14-05

Man takes apart Google's cookie - Google bites man.
comment posted at 10:21 PM on Mar-9-05

North Korea sets BoingBoing up the bomb. All their base are belong to BoingBoing. via joi ito.
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Mar-7-05

The End Of Sexual Taboos: Erotic and Pornographic Cinema. Not safe for work.
comment posted at 6:34 PM on Feb-27-05

Google Movies - search for movies using the new "movie:" method, see showtimes and get directions to theaters near you (with Google Maps, of course!), read a summation of critics' reviews (ala RottenTomatoes), and get more information on the cast (via links to IMDb).
comment posted at 10:16 PM on Feb-23-05
comment posted at 1:15 AM on Feb-24-05

Dynamic map of Switzerland. Google Maps isn't the only mapping service using Ajax: map.search.ch, which does the same thing for Switzerland, launched last October.
comment posted at 4:57 PM on Feb-23-05

Lifehacker is a fairly new addition to the Gawker Media family of blogs, publishers of another personal favorite in the Gizmodo gadget blog. Lifehacker posts articles on how to do all sorts of things better/quicker/cooler/cheaper:

• How to make a "life poster" with Photoshop
• how to opt out of credit card junk mail
• free Hubble Space Telescope wallpaper images
• get thumbnail screenshots with your google search results using firefox
• How to cut vegetables (previously posted here)

In its three short weeks of life, Lifehacker has given me good tips at a shockingly high frequency. Of course, the whole thing comes full circle with their frequent Ask Metafilter Roundup posts.
comment posted at 4:22 PM on Feb-23-05

Otis Granville Clark is a wonder. At 102, the former butler of Joan Crawford - who served Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin - still drives, lives on his own and twice a week attends church in his home city of Tulsa, Oklahoma... Today his blue eyes have gone milky but they still sparkle, his wiry frame remains agile, and his most painful memories are still fresh - even after 83 years. Coiled on the edge of an understuffed sofa, Clark leans back and screws his eyes tight to summon up "that day". It remains the most vivid of his life... Historians call the firestorm that convulsed Tulsa from the evening of May 31 into the afternoon of June 1 the single worst event in the history of American race relations. To most Tulsans it is simply "the riot". But the carnage had nothing in common with the mass protests of Chicago, Detroit and Newark in the 1960s or the urban violence that laid siege to Los Angeles in 1992 after the white police officers who assaulted Rodney King were acquitted. The 1921 Tulsa race riot owes its name to an older American tradition, to the days when white mobs, with the consent of local authorities, dared to rid themselves of their black neighbours. The endeavour was an opportunity "to run the Negro out of Tulsa". Burnt Offerings
.See also The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 or the tale of the lost city or another The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. See also Frequently Asked Questions from the Tulsa Reparations Coalition. Previous post by allaboutgeorge re: Tulsa Race Riot Reparations on March 1, 2001 .
comment posted at 6:20 PM on Feb-22-05
comment posted at 6:29 PM on Feb-22-05

Kottke.org! Time was that you could get the crap kicked out of you for posting kottke.org to MeFi. Three and a quarter years later, what's changed? Jason's decided to make a living off this blog ... but without running advertising. Good luck, says I.
comment posted at 7:21 PM on Feb-22-05
comment posted at 3:27 PM on Feb-23-05

Hunter S Thompson commits suicide. Goodbye, the king of Gonzo Journalism. A timeline of his life is here. And some more here and of course here.
comment posted at 9:41 PM on Feb-20-05

Canadian involvement in torture research
Britain, the US and Canada had begun talking about psychological warfare together at least as early as June 1951, when Sir Henry Tizard, the Ministry of Defence's senior scientist, met Canadian scientists and Cyril Haskins, the senior CIA researcher, in Montreal. Among the Canadians was Donald Hebb of McGill University, who was looking for funds to research "sensory deprivation" - blocking out sight, sound and touch to affect people's personality and sense of identity. Early photographs show volunteers, goggled and muffled, looking eerily similar to prisoners arriving at Guantánamo.
comment posted at 5:33 PM on Feb-20-05

A parent's primer to computer slang
comment posted at 1:50 AM on Feb-17-05

'Yep, life'll burst that self-esteem bubble' says USA Today This article can't seem to decide whether it wants to discuss Gen Xers or Millenials. And it quotes Neil Howe (Of The Fourth Turning) toward the end, about the characteristics of Millenials (people born after 1982). What may be the most interesting aspect of this article is that the author seems uncomfortable speaking negatively about the millenials. The writer is hesitant to criticize the Millenials, and so she initially suggests that the cry babies finishing college who are now entering the workforce were born in the 70s and early 80s. Of course, if that were true, those recent college grads would be in their late twenties to mid-thirties. And I particularly like that improved self esteem is bad because it leads to "enhanced initiative, which boosts confidence, and increased happiness."
comment posted at 10:38 PM on Feb-16-05

Internet Explorer 7 announced We've heard about it for a while and it's been discussed here before. Will the new version of I.E. be able to hold its own against open source browsers like Firefox?
comment posted at 5:48 PM on Feb-15-05

whoa again. Amazon introduced "Search inside the book" a while ago, but now the searchmasters are doing it.
comment posted at 3:36 PM on Feb-14-05

Thundercats: The Movie. Nameless Entertainment's blockbuster is a one hour forty eight minute adventure based on a certain 80's cartoon. The prize winning movie was praised by Alex Ross and Kevin Smith at a convention.
(link is an mpg, noose is in the closet)
comment posted at 7:07 PM on Feb-13-05

Mozilla not fit for general use yet there are a number of glaring problems with the browser that simply make it a no-go for lots of home and office use. Some of these bugs have been open since 2002.
Some as simple as printing not working on many websites created with 3rd party website building tools, yet some mozilla developers expect you to change your code so it works in mozilla while others claim anyone working on printing engine were with netscape and now no longer are contactable. Where does this leave mozilla? I know of atleast one office that had to change back to internet explorer so they could print from websites correctly. How many others are there? Why is there so much hype about mozilla/firefox being so great yet it has some really critical problems like dataloss when printing? How do we address this? How do we resource the programmers needed to fix this?
comment posted at 3:56 AM on Feb-12-05

incredibly weird military recruitment drive/sermon/men's night out thing in a Baptist Church ... Every word of this might be true, but it was also part of a “The lord will protect you in the military” themed sermon. I have never had both respect and disgust for a single individual with such volume in my life. When I asked him for a picture with him holding the same bible he is in the sermon picture I think my attitude came off as “fan boy”. ... (might be slow-loading--tons of pics)
comment posted at 4:17 AM on Feb-12-05

For me smoked reindeer heart and fermented herring are delicacies, on the other side of the world thousand year eggs and chicken feet are the gems. What are your local foods that may seem strange to others? Would you like some weasel coffee, or civet coffee after dinner?
comment posted at 3:04 AM on Feb-12-05

LokiTorrent was a popular spot to get movies and they even put up a fight against the recent crackdown, raising thousands in a legal defense fund. Today, it seems the MPAA won, forcing the owner to shut down. That's understandable and I'm not surprised, but they've gone a bit further than I expected, turning the site into a big scary ad against filesharing and warning that you're next. Even worse, the old owner is turning the logs over to the MPAA, for them to go after folks.
comment posted at 7:41 AM on Feb-11-05

Google blogger fired. Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid (but oh-so-inane) comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company. Do no evil. Blog no evil. And so forth.
comment posted at 8:03 PM on Feb-8-05

Now With 42% More Death Wish! Tipping out the contents of the plastic wrapper onto my rice seemed to make a noise that sounded almost like colooostommy baaaag but I ignored it and took a bite. Rather good.
comment posted at 6:56 PM on Feb-8-05

Alcohol and the State of the Union. The most painless - or painful - way to get through the State of the Union address. I know, it was briefly discussed two years ago, but I thought we could all use a refresher. Hey, I clicked on that link and ended up playing the game. It was much more fun than undiluted politics. This one is harder, you have to wear costumes; and last years is a little better written, but just not as concise and to the point. Cheers!
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Feb-2-05