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Tom Bissell recounts how he was addicted to video games and cocaine and how beautiful he finds computer games. Tom Bissell, who was profiled by Poets & Writers three years ago when his writing career seemed like it could only go up, has written books and articles for such magazines as The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Believer, among others. For the last three years he's spent his writing time on Grand Theft Auto IV and other games. The Observer convened a number of games journalists and industry folk to converse about video games in connection to Bissell's essay. Earthworm Jim designer Dave Perry gave a TED talk a few years ago about the increasing aesthetic value of games which included a video by a college student Michael Highland called As Real as Your Life, which presents his thoughts about what it's like to have grown up on computer games. [Tom Bissell previously on MeFi]
comment posted at 3:54 AM on Mar-22-10

Andy Grauland scours Google Maps for stunning natural imagery. The 19-year old Dane has close to two dozen extracts on his site. Take a look at places where no street view exists, and feel free to zoom/pan. (via, see also (previously))
comment posted at 4:33 PM on Mar-20-10

Builders/owners of eco-friendly homes can't refinance in the new, tighter credit market simply because there is a lack of appraisals for comparable homes. I've long been a fan of unusual homes, especially artsy/organic-looking ones. A common theme is "off the grid" energy-efficiency and natural climate control. Sometimes, they are extremely creative, totally trippy, or even oddly pretty . And sometimes, they are absolutely stunning.
comment posted at 4:42 AM on Mar-20-10

Bedrooms of the Fallen, from war photographer Ashley Gilbertson. Via the NYT Lens Blog: War Memorials With Neatly Made Beds. (Slideshow: The Shrine Down The Hall)
comment posted at 12:51 PM on Mar-19-10

Move over Jedward. Ireland's most watched YouTube video is of family trio Crystal Swing - the wonderful Mary, Dervela and Derek. You may have seen them on Ellen's Paddy's Day show or RTE's The Late Late Show.
comment posted at 7:05 PM on Mar-18-10

Click here? Was structuralism, the big idea of Claude Lévi-Strauss, more cult than science? Apostolos Doxiadis, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna – the team behind the bestselling graphic novel Logicomix – investigate.
comment posted at 9:47 AM on Mar-18-10

"When you see a wildlife photo or film that looks too good to be true, it probably is." Audubon Magazine's Ted Williams investigates game farms and the widespread use of captive animals in wildlife photography. (via)
comment posted at 8:47 AM on Mar-18-10

"Chris Supranowitz is a researcher at The Insitute of Optics at the University of Rochester. Along with a number of other spectacular studies (such as quantum optics, trapping of atoms, dark states and entanglement), Chris has decided to look at the relatively boring grooves of a vinyl record using the institute’s electron microscope." More complete study here.
comment posted at 9:12 AM on Mar-17-10

Excessive cardio is linked with heart disease, according to some recent studies examining marathon runners and markers for coronary risk
comment posted at 2:01 PM on Mar-16-10

Irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you. 'Your chair is your enemy. It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death.' 'Several strands of evidence suggest that there’s a “physiology of inactivity”: that when you spend long periods sitting, your body actually does things that are bad for you.'
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Mar-15-10

The Heavy performing on Late Night, with "an unprecedented encore by request from Dave." (second video courtesy CBS, including off-air encore)
comment posted at 7:32 AM on Mar-14-10

Beheaded Vikings found at Olympic site. Last year workmen for the 2012 Olympics sailing venue in southern England came upon a grisly discovery: fifty-one men had been severely injured, most of them beheaded, and tossed into a mass grave.
comment posted at 7:53 AM on Mar-14-10

Reginald Robinson won a MacArthur Fellowship grant in 2004 for his original ragtime compositions, but has found it difficult to reach the public. "Even with the MacArthur 'genius' title … I'm invisible."
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The Grateful Dead is officially history: they're the subject of a new exhibit at the New York Historical Society. Ironically, though, it's the Dead’s influence on the business world that may turn out to be one of the most significant parts of its legacy. Without intending to—while intending, in fact, to do just the opposite—the band pioneered ideas and practices that were subsequently embraced by corporate America. Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead.
comment posted at 4:41 AM on Mar-11-10
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What If Everybody in Canada Flushed At Once? The water utility in Edmonton, EPCOR, published a graph of water consumption last week. By now you’ve probably heard that up to 80% of Canadians were watching the Olympics gold medal hockey game between Canada and the USA. So, it stands to reason that they’d all go pee between periods. More from The Globe and Mail.
comment posted at 2:56 PM on Mar-10-10

Mimi. Carmen. Violetta. Cio-Cio San. Tosca. Lucia di Lammermoor. Manon. Anna Nicole.
comment posted at 3:01 PM on Mar-10-10

Rage on the Right. The Year in Hate and Extremism. Hate groups are growing. Protecting the US president has presented the secret service with the greatest challenge in its history. A brief review of Terror From the Right 1995 - 2009
comment posted at 2:38 PM on Mar-8-10

Like books? Like meaty posts with lots of links? If you're a reader who loves, as Sonya Chung puts it, "gorging [yourself] on all this content" you're going to love the Omnivore, a blog at Bookforum. Some posts are all over the place; their links seemingly unrelated. Others stick closely to a topic. All are fascinating.
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After the publication of The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp talked about his life in a short documentary (1970) by Denis Mitchell. Part two, part three. Crisp previously and previousler.
comment posted at 7:17 AM on Mar-7-10

Posts in recent days have thoughtfully considered alternative energy sources, but the idly curious might wonder about other utility posts... you know, the ones alongside the road. Here's a diagram of what all those lines are for, plus a link to the unofficial utility pole page. "How can birds sit safely on power lines ?" you might ask. In fact, avian mortality has been a serious problem for quite some time. Solutions do exist, and efforts are underway to address the issue.
comment posted at 1:41 PM on Mar-5-10

In Publishing: The Revolutionary Future, Jason Epstein posits "The resistance today by publishers to the onrushing digital future does not arise from fear of disruptive literacy, but from the understandable fear of their own obsolescence and the complexity of the digital transformation that awaits them... The unprecedented ability of this technology to offer a vast new multilingual marketplace a practically limitless choice of titles will displace the Gutenberg system with or without the cooperation of its current executives."
comment posted at 7:39 PM on Mar-3-10

The Pleasure of Flinching. "In the viral video realm, amateur Iraq war footage ranks just behind pornography, celebrities’ drunken exploits, and shark attacks. Do these videos represent what Sontag called our 'right to view,' or are they a porn medium made from leftovers of a world filming its self-destruction?" [Via]
comment posted at 12:49 PM on Feb-27-10

Last spring Young Jean Lee, an American playwright and director, spoke plainly on the state of American theatre to the Nation. She described it as "our most backward art form."
comment posted at 10:15 AM on Feb-26-10
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Feb-26-10

What are your pop-culture rules? That is, the up-front guidelines that will prevent you from seeing/reading/listening to something, or that will guarantee that you’ll see/read/listen to it even if reviews or word of mouth or past experience with the creators have been negative?

'If it features superheroes, I’m generally there', “The Robins Williams Rule”, 'I just cannot bring myself to purchase new hardcover books', 'anything with a trailer that utilizes the record-scratching sound', 'I will see or read literally anything featuring dinosaurs'. The AV Club writers & readers hold forth. I'm sure nobody on Metafilter would live by such restrictions...
comment posted at 4:46 AM on Feb-26-10

The G-Cans (warning: mind-blowing photos inside) water collecting system in Kasukabe City, Japan is a massive underground silo network (more photos) in the greater Tokyo area designed to control flooding (note: this site is in Japanese with English tour link) from typhoons.
comment posted at 8:35 AM on Feb-24-10

About 8 years ago, U.S. Representative James Traficant (D-Ohio) was sentenced to 8 years in jail for kickbacks, fraud, bribery, and racketeering. He was tightly connected with the Youngstown Ohio Mafia. At the time, he was only the second Congressman since the Civil War to be expelled by his peers from the institution in a vote of 420:1. The fascinating story of the Youngstown Mafia - and Traficant's rise and fall - is told by David Grann (of Lost City of Z and The New Yorker) in a 2000 article called "Crimetown, U.S.A.". Traficant was released from prison on September 2, 2009 to a hometown hero welcome. On February 23, 2010, Traficant announced he will running for Congress as an Independent.
comment posted at 8:03 PM on Feb-23-10

It's true! IHOP is serving FREE PANCAKES TODAY to celebrate International Pancake Day. But wait... aren't they a week late? Who cares - I'll be glad to celebrate this day twice. [Previously: 2009 2008 2007 2006 . . . MetaFilter loves pancakes amirite?]
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Feb-23-10

Ladies and Gentlemen, the amazing voice of Luc Arbogast. Here's another video of his impressive singing, if you can manage to ignore the dodgy camera work and annoying tourists.
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Let Me Show You Vermont. Sketches and other imagery of small-town Vermont from Susan Abbott.
comment posted at 2:04 PM on Feb-22-10

Controversial Auction Sells Warhols From Polaroid’s Collection
comment posted at 4:57 AM on Feb-22-10

Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, according to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. Meet the Flinstones.
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comment posted at 4:29 PM on Feb-22-10

Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, other authors give their own lists of personal dos and don'ts (Part 1, Part 2).
comment posted at 6:53 AM on Feb-20-10

Gorgeous new covers for Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon by design student Jim Tierney.
comment posted at 4:55 AM on Feb-19-10

Past solutions for The Vagrancy Problem focused on labour houses and farm colonies to strip the highways of "the homeless and confirmed idlers."^[pdf] But times have changed and society has progressed.
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Feb-18-10

"Half a million dirty Britons wash their bed sheets only three times a year, a survey discloses laying bare the disgusting bedroom habits of the nation. One in six people also admitted waiting at least a month before washing their bed sheets." "Londoners have the dirtiest bed sheets in the country."
comment posted at 3:39 PM on Feb-17-10

Abbey Road the famous recording studios are up for sale! After losing their headline acts Radiohead and The Rolling Stones the troubled record company has posted losses of £1.75bn Former bond-trader Guy Hands has been running EMI since 2007
comment posted at 1:49 PM on Feb-16-10

The Bolt Who Screwed Christmas is the last movie narrated by Jonathan Harris (Lost in Space). A short animated parody of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Voices also include Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and Bill Mumy, also from Lost in Space. Nominated for a number of awards at the L.A. Reel Film Festival. Posted here at Meta because this is the only movie trailer you'll ever watch with what seems to be a naked woman (at 24 secs in this link) in a relationship with a bolt. A unique wtf moment in movie making!
comment posted at 4:55 AM on Feb-16-10

Broadway, block by block, 1899. (SLNYPL) "A 19th century version of Google's Street View, allowing us to flip through the images block by block, passing parks, churches, novelty stores, furriers, glaziers, and other businesses of the city's past."
comment posted at 10:33 AM on Feb-15-10

BBC Interview with Phil Jones, victim of the Climategate Scandal.
comment posted at 10:48 AM on Feb-15-10

At the American Farm School historical records they have a large collection of postcards. In amongst them are these small sketches of local traders.
comment posted at 4:31 AM on Feb-13-10