Furthermore, let’s remember that Alderaan isn’t gone. It’s just blown up. Suddenly all the metallic elements that were languishing away in the planetary core are floating around in the void, ripe for the plucking. And anyone who can plausibly claim to have owned them is dead. You can build a lot of Death Stars with that much tungsten. Well, not even a lot—but maybe one.

The Overthinking It Think Tank takes a look at “the economic calculus behind the Empire’s tactic of A) building a Death Star, B) intimidating planets into submission with the threat of destruction, and C) actually carrying through with said destruction if the planet doesn’t comply.”
posted to MetaFilter by kipmanley at 11:30 AM on April 29, 2011 (78 comments)

Jorge Luis Borges delivers the Norton lectures at Harvard, 1968: The Riddle of Poetry :: The Metaphor :: A Poet's Creed
posted to MetaFilter by puny human at 1:47 PM on April 28, 2011 (17 comments)

The Sakawa Boys: Inside the Bizarre Criminal World of Ghana’s Cyber-Juju Email Scam Gangs is a short documentary about Sakawa, the Nigerian mix of African black magic and Internet scamming that has grown into its own cultural phenomenon, complete with clothing brands, music, and "Nollywood" movies. Previously, we have seen I Go Chop Your Dollar, whose star was subsequently arrested. See also this (PDF alert!) academic paper on the subject
posted to MetaFilter by Obscure Reference at 11:12 AM on April 12, 2011 (14 comments)

The Xenotext Experiment is Christian Bök's [Previously],"nine-year long attempt to create an example of “living poetry.” I have been striving to write a short verse about language and genetics, whereupon I use a “chemical alphabet” to translate this poem into a sequence of DNA for subsequent implantation into the genome of a bacterium (in this case, a microbe called Deinococcus radiodurans—an extremophile, capable of surviving, without mutation, in even the most hostile milieus, including the vacuum of outer space)." [Via]
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 5:07 AM on April 4, 2011 (25 comments)

Short notice, I know, but two lights and I are going to a conference in San Francisco this weekend and will be around from Friday evening to Tuesday evening. (Related Ask.)
posted to MeFi IRL by supercres at 10:46 AM on March 30, 2011

Though Roald Dahl is better known in this day as the author of stories for children, he had a parallel career as the author of short stories with more adult, macabre sensibilities. Some of those stories became part of a short-run series to fill the slot of to not one but two ill-fated Jackie Gleason shows. But instead of another game show or talk show, CBS wanted something to pair with the Twilight Zone. That show was Way Out, though it didn't rate well and only ran for 14 episodes (and 5 episodes are on Archive.org). 18 years later, Dahl returned to TV with his sinister stories, but this time it was in the UK, where Tales of the Unexpected lasted 9 seasons, 112 episodes in total. You can view 23 or so episodes online, split into parts (YT Playlist).
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 2:56 PM on March 22, 2011 (27 comments)

Neal Adams is one of the greatest comic artists, best known for drawing the most reprinted comic sequence and revitalizing Batman after the campy Adam West show . Now, Neal Adams is returning to Batman with a 12 issue mini-series titled Odyssey and six issues in, some are already calling the story " without hyperbole... the most insane comic book we have ever read ." While some might be shocked that the famous Adams seems to have lost his way and is acting a little crazy, Metafilter readers probably should have seen this coming
posted to MetaFilter by jaybeans at 12:26 AM on March 20, 2011 (80 comments)

EVERYPONY MUST STAND -- OR EVERYPONY WILL PERISH IN THE THUNDER OF COSMIC HOOVES! - Great Comics That Never Happened presents Jack Kirby's My Little Pony.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:50 AM on March 16, 2011 (27 comments)

Zhuangzi as Philosopher Essay by Brook Ziporyn made available (there's also some other prefatory matter there) at the website of the publishers of his translation of the Zhuangzi, one of the seminal texts of Daoism, putatively authored by Zhuang Zhou in the fourth century BCE. Via, where there's plenty of other informed discussion on Zhuangzi, Daoism and other ancient Chinese thought.
posted to MetaFilter by Abiezer at 1:45 AM on March 14, 2011 (24 comments)

Warren Ellis impersonates Alan Moore (SLYT audio only)
posted to MetaFilter by fearfulsymmetry at 1:20 PM on March 10, 2011 (61 comments)

Large audio archive of Wallace Stevens reading from his poems. Other Stevens links: several poem texts with annotation; many more of the poems; his letters on Google Books (full view).
posted to MetaFilter by Paquda at 11:11 AM on February 15, 2011 (8 comments)

Descendents of early French Huguenots, the Ravenel family of South Carolina ranked among the most prominent members of the state's planter class. Arthur Ravenel, Jr. continued the Ravenel tradition of public service, serving in the South Carolina house and senate and then in the U.S. House of Representatives. He once referred to the NAACP as the "that organization known as the National Association for Retarded People" although he later apologized, but only to people with mental and physical challenges. He also once called for the military to shoot down any plane suspected of smuggling drugs. Arthur's son Thomas Ravenel had little contact with his father after his parent's divorce, became a self-made millionaire through real estate development, narrowly missed winning the Senate seat now held by Jim DeMint, was elected South Carolina Treasurer, was the subject of an investigation into his cocaine use (of which he was warned by his father), was indicted on a federal cocaine charge and resigned, and served 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy with intent to distribute cocaine. On Saturday, Thomas Ravenel took to the pages of the Charleston Post and Courier to call for an end to drug prohibition, hoping the celebrity of being a former rising star in the Republican Party who went to prison will help advance his position.
posted to MetaFilter by ND¢ at 7:43 PM on February 8, 2011 (51 comments)

Founded in 1985, the first year of Spin Magazine spilled ink on all sorts of great American fringe music. Swans, Sonic Youth, Jandek, Glenn Branca, Hüsker Dü, and Squirrel Bait. The magazine's entire run is available on Google Books.
posted to MetaFilter by porn in the woods at 11:03 AM on March 6, 2010 (39 comments)

Every Dr Who Opening Theme Every Dr Who Theme from 1963 to the present. [SLYT]
posted to MetaFilter by marienbad at 2:29 PM on July 21, 2010 (93 comments)

Tarkovsky films. All of them. Free. Online. via @brainygamer
posted to MetaFilter by juv3nal at 3:05 PM on July 13, 2010 (134 comments)

Model cities are useful to city planners and architects. But they're also beautiful.
posted to MetaFilter by emilyd22222 at 8:20 PM on March 4, 2010 (22 comments)

How Crucifucks frontman Doc Dart became a man named 26
posted to MetaFilter by generalist at 1:47 PM on February 23, 2010 (17 comments)

Sung in incoherent pseudo-English, Adriano Celentano's Prisencolinensinainciusol (1973) could be thought of as an early example of rap.
posted to MetaFilter by dunkadunc at 2:25 PM on October 22, 2009 (62 comments)

A reading by Wallace Shawn: "I like to be reminded of these poor people, the 'unobtrusives', and then, I like to be reminded of my lack of interest in them." [C-SPAN video player] (Previously: 1, 2)
posted to MetaFilter by benzenedream at 12:54 AM on December 23, 2009 (69 comments)

In 1827, a first-time author paid to have a small number of copies of his book Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian printed. When Edgar Allan Poe later reprinted the book under his own name, he apologized for its poor quality, but the first edition has become one of the most sought after rarities in book collecting. This week, one of the two copies in private hands sold for $662,500, but you can flip through this one for free.
posted to MetaFilter by Horace Rumpole at 9:06 AM on December 5, 2009 (5 comments)

Basic Sounds is a blog of art and technology blending. Lots of enhanced photos, art installations, modern sculpture, and A/V performance. Modern, abstract, hi-tech, and surreal. Lots of shiny pretty things to look at while you digest. Monthly archives go back to 2003. Nothing NSFW on the main link but I did come across a smattering of NSFW images in the archives.
posted to MetaFilter by Babblesort at 4:50 PM on November 26, 2009 (6 comments)

Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The <center> cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty.

posted to MetaFilter by spiderskull at 1:31 PM on November 15, 2009 (134 comments)

Some time ago, I did a post about parodies of "The Last Supper". Little did I know at the time that the Greatest Spoof Ever would feature MetaFilter's Own Jesus H. Shatner (although in retrospect, it seems obvious). Ladies and Gentlemen, a masterpiece by leonardo pjern, "The Last Round"
posted to MetaTalk by wendell at 12:03 AM on October 5, 2009 (116 comments)

Bay Area mefites - let's get the planning started for cortex's 9/29 visit!
posted to MetaTalk by gingerbeer at 10:08 AM on August 21, 2009 (128 comments)

Want to build a backup/storage/print server for a home network that the users will never have to be aware of
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ConstantineXVI at 7:04 AM on April 21, 2009 (13 comments)

If you're like me, you are not a top computer science researcher, and you haven't written a classic book about programming and made it available online for free. Let's review who we're not. We're neither Abelson nor Sussman, and we haven't written Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (previous proof). We're not part of TeachScheme and we had no hand in the writing of How to Design Programs (not even the second edition, natch). Shriram Krishnamurthi didn't need our help to write Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation. We wish we were Simon Peyton-Jones and had a hand in The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages.
posted to MetaFilter by Monday, stony Monday at 9:32 PM on April 1, 2009 (45 comments)

Classic Poetry Aloud: free recordings of 427 public domain poems.
posted to MetaFilter by Iridic at 10:39 AM on February 16, 2009 (8 comments)

By request, this has been played through this. Unmodified or post processed in anyway, it sounds a little like a bad dub. But I thought I would post it as an example for other folks to see what is possible.
posted to MeFi Music by mrzarquon at 11:43 PM on January 8, 2009 (106 comments)

Being Raymond Carver Often referred to as the American Chekhov, Raymond Carver was a master of the American short story.
posted to MetaFilter by timsteil at 8:20 PM on April 30, 2008 (29 comments)

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the
rest of his life.
Russell Edson is an American poet. More of his work here (beware popups). An appreciation.
posted to MetaFilter by generalist at 9:57 AM on October 11, 2008 (12 comments)

Massive Poetry Bailout in the works
posted to MetaFilter by philip-random at 3:11 PM on September 28, 2008 (52 comments)

Guitarfilter: Looking for the best online guitar instruction sites.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by kjl291 at 8:39 PM on September 10, 2008 (6 comments)

Who said structuralism was dead? John Curran posts Great Diagrams in Anthropology, Linguistics, and Social Theory - an illustrated assortment of sociology's greatest hits, arranged neatly for your viewing pleasure.
posted to MetaFilter by puckish at 1:39 PM on August 21, 2008 (15 comments)

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is so called because it asserts that what makes up a city is not so much its physical structure but the impression it imparts upon its visitors, the way its inhabitants move within, something unseen that hums between the cracks. This, however, has in no way dissuaded people from attempting to give form to his works. One such example is the Hotel Tressants, a building in Menorca, Spain containing 8 rooms named after and inspired by various cities from the novel. Meanwhile, artists offer illustrations^1,2,3, installations ^1,2,3,4,5, music^1,2,3,4,5,6 and dance, hypertexts^1,2, computer programs and animations, even View-Master slides, while intellectuals offer readings and commentary^1,2, lectures^1,2, and critical texts^1,2,3 sparked by the man and his writings. It has been dubbed "The Calvino Effect". Do you know of any more?
posted to MetaFilter by Lush at 2:28 PM on May 20, 2005 (37 comments)

AquaticNecromancyFilter: Combined, the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley employ about 3500 uniformed police officers. Do they outnumber the army that could be raised by dark magic from the floor of the San Francisco Bay? Approximately how many entire sets of human skeletal remains are there in that body of water, considering disasters, shipwrecks, bridge jumpers, tidal movement of sediment, etc.?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:51 PM on August 13, 2008 (21 comments)

Help me have an adventure!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 12:42 PM on August 4, 2008 (23 comments)

I need to wrap a bicycle frame with a specifically colored tape.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wfrgms at 10:27 PM on May 25, 2007 (6 comments)

Tell me about Network Attached Storage ( NAS )? In particular what current manufactuers should I avoid for a typical 1 terabyte (or greater) RAID array? I'm also interested in general information and pitfalls for NAS devices and implementations.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by loquacious at 4:53 AM on August 10, 2008 (13 comments)

Please recommend me some good commentary on Shakespeare's sonnets and tell me why you like it.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by sleevener at 7:13 PM on August 9, 2008 (7 comments)

Calvin and Jobs.
via Dark Roasted Blend, by way of Gizmodo.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:07 AM on August 7, 2008 (43 comments)

What is the closet thing to MetaFilter, but about books and/or writing?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Darth Fedor at 9:03 PM on August 4, 2008 (24 comments)

Where to start with David Byrne's post-Heads work?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by clcapps at 1:18 PM on August 4, 2008 (23 comments)

The Comic Bardo Thodol, or: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Tibetan Book of the Dead but were afraid to not read in a streamlined comic context. [via mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 6:34 AM on July 23, 2008 (22 comments)

Correlative Analytics -- or as O'Reilly might term the Social Graph -- sort of mirrors the debate on 'brute force' algorithmic proofs (that are "true for no reason," cf.) in which "computers can extract patterns in this ocean of data that no human could ever possibly detect. These patterns are correlations. They may or may not be causative, but we can learn new things. Therefore they accomplish what science does, although not in the traditional manner... In this part of science, we may get answers that work, but which we don't understand. Is this partial understanding? Or a different kind of understanding?" Of course, say some in the scientific community: hogwash; it's just a fabrication of scientifically/statistically illiterate pundits, like whilst new techniques in data analysis are being developed to help keep ahead of the deluge...
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 5:58 PM on July 21, 2008 (40 comments)

My favorite poet, Kay Ryan has been named United States Poet Laureate.
posted to MetaFilter by Peach at 1:31 PM on July 18, 2008 (39 comments)

Does anyone have any recommendations for an off-the-shelf NAS that can handle at least 1TB and may be expanded as needed? Drobo, Buffalo TeraStation, etc.?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by geoff. at 4:13 PM on January 19, 2008 (13 comments)

"'I am not a defendant,' Mitchell declared. 'I do not have attorneys.' The court 'lacks territorial jurisdiction over me,' he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve ... Judge Davis ordered the three defendants to be removed from the court, and turned to Gardner, who had, until then, remained quiet. But Gardner, too, intoned the same strange speech. 'I am Shawn Earl Gardner, live man, flesh and blood,' he proclaimed." Too Weird for the Wire: How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories to confound the Feds. [via]
posted to MetaFilter by nasreddin at 11:13 PM on July 15, 2008 (75 comments)

Car Stereo Recommendations: must have an aux input. Must have zen-like interface simplicity, and mostly pushbutton operation except for the few things for which knobs really make sense. A manual should be all but redundant for operation of this device. Would be nice if it has bluetooth built-in. Satellite radio is a plus. What am I looking for?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wildblueyonder at 2:30 PM on July 14, 2008 (5 comments)

The Worlds Best Books (1909), One Hundred Best Books (1916), One Thousand Books for a Village Library (1895), The Book Lover, a Guide to the Best Reading (1889), The Choice of Books (1905), A Thousand of the Best Novels (1919), Comfort Found in Good Old Books (1911), A Guide to the Best Historical Novels (1911), A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914), and lots more..
posted to MetaFilter by stbalbach at 7:12 PM on July 13, 2008 (15 comments)

The Gerd Arntz Web Archive collects graphics from the career of the man who - in creating over 4000 Isotypes for social scientist Otto Neurath in 1930s Red Vienna - can make a serious claim to be the inventor of the modern stick figure. He attacked the corruption of German society as the Nazis rose to power, then joined Neurath in an attempt to create a transnational visual language that bore later fruit in Otl Aicher's 1972 Olympic pictograms and the AIGA passenger/pedestrian symbol signs. [via Mark Larson and Austin Kleon]
posted to MetaFilter by mediareport at 4:35 PM on July 7, 2008 (9 comments)