One user's great post is another user's meh.... November 6, 2005 4:24 AM Subscribe
I really don't care to see a FPP about what you vaguely remember your friend told you today. The Wikipedia links don't help, thanks.
Expect a paper on it to be released in approximately three months with all the details.
Which is when the FPP should have happened, or at least when New Scentist or somebody else publishes an article. "My friend the unnamed authority" is not the best of the web, and the links contain nothing on the research that is supposedly the main point of the post.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:33 AM on November 6, 2005
Which is when the FPP should have happened, or at least when New Scentist or somebody else publishes an article. "My friend the unnamed authority" is not the best of the web, and the links contain nothing on the research that is supposedly the main point of the post.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:33 AM on November 6, 2005
If only you'd held off for 10 minutes you could have called this out instead. Quiet sundays don't necessarily need noise.
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:40 AM on November 6, 2005
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:40 AM on November 6, 2005
I really don't care to see a comment that screeches GYOFBFW. The six exclamation points don't help.
posted by jack_mo at 7:10 AM on November 6, 2005
posted by jack_mo at 7:10 AM on November 6, 2005
The origin of Metafilter?! I heard from an authority in the World Wide Web today that a group of researchers funded by the Media Lab and NASA believe they've discovered the origin of Metafilter, and with that, the origin of blogging. This new discovery grew out of the Media Lab's mission to study the composition of new media. Specifically, they started investigating a kind of community that forms in layers, with each layer slighly offset from the previous one in a helix shape. Significantly, the thickness of these layers corresponds with the thickness of each member in a thread. It turns out that the individual building blocks of a thread are capable of bonding when exposed to witty snarks. Over time, some of these snarks could fold and bond to themselves, forming a new community. Snarks, the initial bonding material, would eventually be replaced by a more socially sophisticated substance, creating the community we now observe in Metafilter
Expect a paper on it to be released in approximately three months with all the details.
posted by googly at 7:15 AM on November 6, 2005
Expect a paper on it to be released in approximately three months with all the details.
posted by googly at 7:15 AM on November 6, 2005
I've flagged Googly's comment and moved on. Flagged as fantastic!
posted by klangklangston at 7:23 AM on November 6, 2005
posted by klangklangston at 7:23 AM on November 6, 2005
What googly said. And I guess I have something of an "ulterior motive" to the callout, as insomnia_lj seems to conduct himself as if he has special priviliges (that whole "I get inside info from my friends about Iraq" thing). Metafilter is for links, not for double-posting livejournal entries you made earlier in the day.
I love a good science post as much as anyone, but listing the potential ingredients in a chemical reaction is not a reason to post without a single real link.
posted by rxrfrx at 7:29 AM on November 6, 2005
I love a good science post as much as anyone, but listing the potential ingredients in a chemical reaction is not a reason to post without a single real link.
posted by rxrfrx at 7:29 AM on November 6, 2005
Quite - that's why we can flag stuff with 'it breaks the guidelines'.
posted by jack_mo at 7:37 AM on November 6, 2005
posted by jack_mo at 7:37 AM on November 6, 2005
Great googly moogly!
Best. MetaTalk. Sarcasm. Ever.
I kiss you.
posted by loquacious at 7:45 AM on November 6, 2005
Best. MetaTalk. Sarcasm. Ever.
I kiss you.
posted by loquacious at 7:45 AM on November 6, 2005
from which we infer loquacious's nationality to be american.
posted by andrew cooke at 8:29 AM on November 6, 2005
posted by andrew cooke at 8:29 AM on November 6, 2005
If he were a Brit, he would have called sarcasm "irony".
posted by Bugbread at 8:46 AM on November 6, 2005
posted by Bugbread at 8:46 AM on November 6, 2005
Please note... I am not a molecular biologist. I heard the science of this explained once with no notes, and I can't remember all the details
Ha. Too funny. LJ.
Look at the bright side. It wasn't about some hurricane just starting to form.
posted by justgary at 9:29 AM on November 6, 2005
Ha. Too funny. LJ.
Look at the bright side. It wasn't about some hurricane just starting to form.
posted by justgary at 9:29 AM on November 6, 2005
I'm not sure it warranted a callout, but yeah...
posted by cribcage at 11:02 AM on November 6, 2005
Expect a paper on it to be released in approximately three months with all the details....that's a red flag.
posted by cribcage at 11:02 AM on November 6, 2005
I didn't understand what the problem with this was until I realized that all but one of the links was to the wikipedia article for a term, and the other one was just a link to the deep impact site.
man. there was likely a good post to make about this, but this wasn't it. I don't know if it should be deleted or not, but it does smell like more of insomnia's self promotion.
posted by shmegegge at 3:23 PM on November 6, 2005
man. there was likely a good post to make about this, but this wasn't it. I don't know if it should be deleted or not, but it does smell like more of insomnia's self promotion.
posted by shmegegge at 3:23 PM on November 6, 2005
Sometimes it's difficult to keep one's self from posting for the sake of the possibly great discussion. Best of the Web? Not really.
posted by snsranch at 4:11 PM on November 6, 2005
posted by snsranch at 4:11 PM on November 6, 2005
Most people would post this kind of thing to their blog, but he knows he can't link to it then.
posted by smackfu at 6:28 PM on November 6, 2005
posted by smackfu at 6:28 PM on November 6, 2005
The post certainly didn't link to the best of the web. The wikipedia article I skimmed was riddled with misused terminology ('base-pair' for 'dinucleotide', for instance) and was clearly not to be trusted as authoritative.
The content of the FPP was also misremembered and poorly understood by the author, to the extent that I took away completely the wrong impression of what the science was. "a kind of carbon that forms in layers" is not the same thing at all as a stack of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Until washburn and insomnia_lj posted links to actual useful articles, I was thinking that this was a way in which graphite might act as a substrate for RNA assembly, which I now see is clearly not the case.
If those links had been in the original FPP then it would have been less terrible.
Er, what I'm saying is that this post was not only vague, it was misleading, and even if accurate, it would still have not contained any links to the best of the web.
The luck dragon movie was a far better post.
posted by nowonmai at 6:34 PM on November 6, 2005
The content of the FPP was also misremembered and poorly understood by the author, to the extent that I took away completely the wrong impression of what the science was. "a kind of carbon that forms in layers" is not the same thing at all as a stack of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Until washburn and insomnia_lj posted links to actual useful articles, I was thinking that this was a way in which graphite might act as a substrate for RNA assembly, which I now see is clearly not the case.
If those links had been in the original FPP then it would have been less terrible.
Er, what I'm saying is that this post was not only vague, it was misleading, and even if accurate, it would still have not contained any links to the best of the web.
The luck dragon movie was a far better post.
posted by nowonmai at 6:34 PM on November 6, 2005
Oh, sorry, one more thing. If ever I'm in a hot-tub with any of you folks, and I happen to describe any of my unpublished work, please do me the courtesy of not posting it on the fucking internet!
posted by nowonmai at 6:37 PM on November 6, 2005
posted by nowonmai at 6:37 PM on November 6, 2005
Most people would post this kind of thing to their blog, but he knows he can't link to it then.
Well, he did make virtually the same post on his blog a few hours prior to posting the FPP on MeFi.
If his latest comment in the thread ("We were soaking in the large outdoor hottub at Kiva, and I said something to the effect of...") isn't worthy of the admonition "GYOBFW," then I don't know what is. Of course, he has his own blog, so posting this chatty noise to MeFi seems a little bit like self-aggrandizement to me.
posted by the_bone at 6:48 PM on November 6, 2005
Well, he did make virtually the same post on his blog a few hours prior to posting the FPP on MeFi.
If his latest comment in the thread ("We were soaking in the large outdoor hottub at Kiva, and I said something to the effect of...") isn't worthy of the admonition "GYOBFW," then I don't know what is. Of course, he has his own blog, so posting this chatty noise to MeFi seems a little bit like self-aggrandizement to me.
posted by the_bone at 6:48 PM on November 6, 2005
Did insomnia_lj get permission from Nick Platts before mis-representing his results in public?
Or is it generally understood that anything anyone says in the presence of insomnia_lj can be re-produced (after being filtered through the twin filters of mis-remembering and mis-understanding) on his blog and here?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:34 PM on November 6, 2005
Or is it generally understood that anything anyone says in the presence of insomnia_lj can be re-produced (after being filtered through the twin filters of mis-remembering and mis-understanding) on his blog and here?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:34 PM on November 6, 2005
Feh. I was sitting in the sauna last night with some guy...Dobson something or other who says this material origin of life stuff is all bullshit.
Expect to see a sermon on it in the next week or so.
posted by felix betachat at 2:07 AM on November 7, 2005
Expect to see a sermon on it in the next week or so.
posted by felix betachat at 2:07 AM on November 7, 2005
Blah. The thread should still be deleted, just so casual readers don't stumble upon it in the future. It currently looks like this:
I_LJ: My friend told me this thing once. I know that MeFi posts are link-based, but I'm just going to link to wikipedia and shit. If you are imaginative, you could think that I'm describing a really interesting possibility where a carbon matrix forms a nonbiological catalyst for ribonucleotide formation and RNA polymerization in an early atomosphere... but actually that's not what I'm attempting to describe at all. I posted this to LJ but it didn't get many comments.
Some other guys: Man, I'm glad you posted this. Science is complicated and I think RNA is a total mystery, despite the data and recent advances that I've probably failed to consider.
Bevets: BEVETS!
*sigh*
posted by rxrfrx at 4:42 AM on November 7, 2005
I_LJ: My friend told me this thing once. I know that MeFi posts are link-based, but I'm just going to link to wikipedia and shit. If you are imaginative, you could think that I'm describing a really interesting possibility where a carbon matrix forms a nonbiological catalyst for ribonucleotide formation and RNA polymerization in an early atomosphere... but actually that's not what I'm attempting to describe at all. I posted this to LJ but it didn't get many comments.
Some other guys: Man, I'm glad you posted this. Science is complicated and I think RNA is a total mystery, despite the data and recent advances that I've probably failed to consider.
Bevets: BEVETS!
*sigh*
posted by rxrfrx at 4:42 AM on November 7, 2005
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who is tired of and annoyed by insomnia's constant recycled lj crap that is always tinged with the "I'm the bringer of the truth from lj wherein the truth resides."
posted by dios at 9:18 AM on November 7, 2005
posted by dios at 9:18 AM on November 7, 2005
Rxrfrx: The Bevets: BEVETS! bit made me laugh out loud, a rarity.
posted by klangklangston at 10:37 AM on November 7, 2005
posted by klangklangston at 10:37 AM on November 7, 2005
It was basically name dropping. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
posted by raedyn at 11:23 AM on November 7, 2005
posted by raedyn at 11:23 AM on November 7, 2005
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
But no, not a great FPP. I'm sure lj will be the first to leap on with the journals when/if they're published, so I don't see the point in this unofficial edition.
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:20 AM on November 6, 2005