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Drafts and collaborations

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This is a sanctioned section (per Adrian) for sharing your ideas for new posts, saving links and content in a draft form, and for collaborating on ideas with other MeFites. At first, this will be one page, but that may change if this section gets significant use. Feel free to add an idea, provide additional material, or comment on the drafted content!


Draft and Collaborations

Have an idea? Create a new header! Wish to comment or collaborate? Join in! Please sign your work, so everyone knows who was involved. If you're not sure about the wiki formatting, visit the Editing help page on this wiki. But if you have a question on the merit of a topic, please discuss this with the original poster directly. And remember, if it's about something you made or are directly involved with, submit it to Projects, not here.


Please Note: External links will require an extra step to prove you aren't a robot.

Also Note: there is a small collection of pre-written celebrity obituaries. New pre-written obituaries should have their own pages.


Idea 1: Obit for Sargent Shriver

Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. died on January 18, 2011, and this MetaTalk request was made, deemed an inappropriate use of MetaTalk, and the push to make this Wiki section.

filthy light thief 18:07, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The first leader of the Peace Corps under President Kennedy, R. Sargent Shriver was the driving force behind many Johnson-era "War on Poverty" programs in the 1960's and 70's that provided assistance to the poor, including the Peace Corps, the Jobs Corps and Head Start. By "blackballing" Shriver from politics, the Kennedy family may have even accidentally thrown the 1968 Presidential election to Richard Nixon. Shriver passed away earlier this month at the age of 95. Bono and Stevie Wonder performed at his funeral. --Jon 19:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

See also: American Idealist, the story of Sargent Shriver, which has a photo gallery and a collection of clips.

filthy light thief 21:24, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 2: Thomas Bowdler

The source of the term bowdlerise (or bowdlerize), referring to censorship to remove offensive material, Thomas Bowdler edited Shakespeare (The Family Shakespeare, in Ten Volumes; in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family) and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

filthy light thief 18:07, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 3: Descartes Skull

There are 4 or 5 skulls or skull fragments that have been credited as Descartes' skull, with the inscribed skull the one most commonly considered to be the real one. Tip of the cap to cjorgensen for the original intrigue.

filthy light thief 18:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 5: Richard Potter, Magician

Richard Potter, born in 1783, was a magician, one of the first black illusionists in America. Potter was born in New Hampshire, the son of an English baronet and an African servant woman. He was educated in Europe before beginning his 25-year career as a performer in post-Revolutionary America. Potter has been credited as America’s first successful stage magician, hypnotist, and ventriloquist. I'd love to see a post on him, but all I've been able to find are brief biographical sketches like this one. If anyone can find better links, it would be great!

ocherdraco 21:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, MagicPedia's biography is shorter, but they have a broadside of "Mr. Potter, the American Ventriloquist." But for much joy, I just came across Robert Olson, who "spent the past 30 years studying and recreating Potter’s magic" --Filthy light thief (talk) 20:20, 11 October 2013 (UTC)


Idea 6: The Garman Sisters

I'm doing some work with the Garman-Ryan collection and I would feel a bit grubby and self-linky making an FPP on the Garman sisters. Somebody should make one though, because... well, LOOK! Art, romance, drama, infidelity, gunfights, runaways, lesbianism, literati and dead herons! (And that's just in a sketchy 300 word wikipedia article! Think what a properly researched FPP could unearth!) They're basically like the Mitford sisters, only even more batshitinsane!

The Latin Mouse 22:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm working on this one. Collecting links now.
ocherdraco 15:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I've collected a bunch of links and raw material, and later this evening I'll start drafting an actual post. This is the first time I've drafted a post this way. I often work from the same amount of raw material, but I've never gathered it together like this before: usually, I just have a bunch of tabs open and work from there. I'm rather surprised at how much there is!
ocherdraco 18:50, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Draft Post: The Garman Sisters

TK —ocherdraco 18:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Notes and Links: The Garman Sisters

Good summary of the four primary Garmans and why they're intriguing:

"When a woman comes along and captures the eye of an artist, we call her a muse. There were nine muses, and there were nine Garman siblings—seven sisters plus two brothers—who together set European avant-garde circles spinning in the middle of the 20th century... Mary once claimed that she and her husband, poet Roy Campbell, were the first hippies: Peripatetic and non-monogamous, they at one point lived happily in a menage a quatre with a pair of sisters. Kathleen became the mistress of Jacob Epstein - whose wife drew a pistol and shot her in a pique of jealousy (she was injured but not seriously).
"Mary later fell in love with Vita Sackville-West, who also bedded Virginia Woolf. Vita and Mary's affair inspired "Orlando," Woolf's delightful pseudo-biography of a philandering, gender-bending 400-year-old aristocrat...
"If the other siblings' love affairs sometimes seemed too idyllic to be convincing—free love, with its ostensible lack of jealousy, is seldom compelling as theater - Lorna's were more complicated. Her wealth enhanced the drama; she would race to assignations in her Bentley, a sealskin coat on her shoulders and gifts filling her arms. An affair with poet Laurie Lee became so serious that Lorna left her husband&mash;only to sulk back later, four months pregnant with Lee's child. Wishart agreed to raise the baby as his own on the condition that Lorna stop seeing Lee. Lorna secretly continued the affair, then dropped Lee for the young artist Lucian Freud.
"The fling with Freud was shorter but equally intense—Lorna inspired a number of Freud's breakthrough paintings. When she broke off with him, inevitably, Freud went into a Heathcliffian rage, riding an enormous white horse at breakneck speed toward her sitting-room window. He later remarked, "She was a muse, a true muse in the best possible way." (Lorna's presence seems to have been so unforgettable that two of her lovers, Lee and Freud, settled for imitation versions of her: Both ended up marrying her nieces. This isn't the only quasi-incestuous Garman dalliance: Mary bedded her brother Douglas's ex-wife.)" —Chris Schmidt, "Real Bright Young Things," The New York Sun (review of The Rare and the Beautiful)
Links about all the Garmans, or for The Rare and the Beautiful
Links for Kathleen Garman, Lady Epstein
Links for Mary Garman Campbell
  • Biographical sketch at Spartacus Educational.
  • Simkin, John. "Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and Mary Garman." The Education Forum, November 7, 2010.
  • Scruton, Roger. "A Dark Horse," The American Spectator, October 2009. Article explores the conservative ideological reaction Mary's husband Roy Campbell had to the Bloomsbury group, with whom he and Mary socialized. (Note: This link is very politically biased—needs careful framing if included so as not to derail discussion.)
  • Biographical sketch of Roy Campbell at Counter-Currents.(Note: This link is very politically biased—needs careful framing if included so as not to derail discussion.)
  • Kramer, Hilton. The New Criterion Reader: the first five years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.) Description of the Campbells' relationship.
  • "Love in a Hut." Essay on the Campbells' time in the Llyn Peninsula of Wales, with many juicy quotes from Campbell about their relationship:
    • "When I saw her I experienced, for one of the few times in my life, the electric thrill of falling in love at first sight. But she is the only woman for whom I have felt this Dantesque sensation several times; when coming back on leave from active service, or after other separations abroad. She is also the only woman with whom I have found that jealousy or quarrels have mutually acted as a kind of aphrodisiac. I thought of nothing but of living and working for this woman (whom I knew to be mine, 'for better or worse', the minute I saw her)."
    • "Though we were very happy, my wife and I had some quarrels since my ideas of marriage are old-fashioned about wifely obedience and in many ways she regarded me as a mere child because of being hardly out of my teens. But any marriage in which a woman wears the pants is an unseemly farce. To shake up her illusions I hung her out of the fourth-floor window of our room so that she should have some respect for me. This worked wonders... It was five or six years before we broke each other in to our complete satisfaction and I wore the pants for good..."
Links for Douglas Garman

Links to clean up:

Links for Lorna Garman Wishart
"the woman who dominated his life for a decade: Lorna Wishart, bewitching wife of the rich Communist publisher Ernest Wishart. To impress Lorna, Laurie went back to Spain.
And it was Lorna who sent Laurie's poems to Stephen Spender. How else could the lad from Slad, without education or contacts, have got published in Horizon? When Lorna left him for Lucian Freud, in 1943, he was scarred for life. She had been his inspiration, his muse. Thirty years later, he no longer wrote poetry, but he was still dreaming of her."
Links for Kitty Garman Godley (Kathleen Garman's daughter)

Links to clean up: [6]


Idea 7: New Zealand "X-Files" Made Public

I found this info, but never cobbled anything together. There's probably enough here as-is, but I wanted more on the Kaikoura Lights (YT video).

filthy light thief 21:35, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 8: The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge

Possibly the oldest of the "science societies," founded in November 1660 (but with formation discussed 15 years earlier), granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London." Not to be confused with the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

filthy light thief 21:35, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 9: Memín Pinguín

From Wikipedia: "Memín Pinguín is a fictional character from Mexico. Stories featuring him, a very poor Cuban Mexican boy, first appeared in the 1940s and have remained in print since." Found via this comment by Dr. Curare on MetaFilter, specifically citing the 2005 controversy over a Memín stamp in Mexico.

filthy light thief 21:44, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 10: Tomoaki Hamatsu, aka Nasubi (Eggplant) - A Life out of Prizes

Nasubi (Eggplant) is the stage name of the (former?) comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu who gained fame as a long-term contestant on a bizarre reality game show, Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (translated as Forward! Signal Youth or Do not advance! Signal Youth). His particular ordeal was called a life out of prizes by Denpa Shōnen, which featured Nasubi as the sole contestant in a challenge to raise (and live off of) ¥1 million (about $10,000 USD) from magazine sweepstakes alone. (previously on MetaFilter). He survived the 15 month program, and was released as a celebrity, as his ordeal was televised and his diaries of survival had become best-selling books. Hamatsu turned away from comedy, and instead became a dramatic stage actor, starring in Densha Otoko (translated as Train Man, available in some forms online), and currently portrays the character Watcherman in Kamen Rider W. (NOTE: Nasubi episodes of Denpa Shōnen were on Hulu for a while, but no more)

filthy light thief 20:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC)


Idea 11: The inevitable Portal 2 post

Wherein we collect links to interesting portal 2 links on the internet:

[7] Rock Paper Shotgun's review


Idea 12: Vlogbrothers MegaPost

John Green is a young adult fiction author, whose published books have garnered the Printz Award, the Edgar (Allen Poe) Award, and the Corinne Award. His younger brother Hank Green is the founder of Ecogeek.com. Because John had spent much of his teenage years in boarding school, Hank and John realized they did not actually know one another. So John suggested they go one year without textual communication, instead making a youtube video every weekday (excluding holidays) for one year. This project was called Brotherhood 2.0. (MORE INSIDE)

Since then, John and Hank have developed quite the fanbase (called "nerdfighters"). They have founded the Project 4 Awesome, which raised xxxxxx, and Hank co-founded DFTBA Records, which soemthingsomethingsomething.

YEAR ONE (2007): BROTHERHOOD 2.0 -my idea here is 6 posts, 3 from john, 3 from Hank, from each year to help give people a feel for them.

YEAR TWO (2008): THE INAUGURAL TOUR DE NERDFIGHTING AND PAPER TOWNS

YEAR THREE (2009):

YEAR FOUR (2010):

YEAR FIVE (2011):


Idea 13: Richard Stallman Obit

Richard Mathew Stallman, aka RMS, writer of the first copyleft license; lead architect of the GNU project; programmer of GNU EMACS; free software advocate; surprisingly neo-luddite when privacy 1,2 is involved and celebrator of Grav-Mass has died. (Moved from Here.)


Idea 14: Up through Los Angeles came a bubblin' crude

http://thenewgay.net/2009/12/oil-in-la.html

bbc from 2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4520910.stm

new and old LA county seals: http://www.laalmanac.com/government/gl05.htm

an LA times article about development on Signal Hill (site of prominent derricks) from 1985: http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-30/news/hl-422_1_signal-hill-s-growth and from 2005: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/nov/28/local/me-oil28

the story of oil in CA: http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/signal_hill/signal_hill.html

'Oil!' was adapted into 'There Will Be Blood'. Upton Sinclair ran for governor of CA in the first modern political campaign: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/10/the-traumatic-birth-of-the-modern-and-vicious-political-campaign/

'things to do in la' has a pair of articles: http://www.thingstodoinlosangeles.com/urban-oil-wells-in-los-angeles/ http://www.thingstodoinlosangeles.com/urban-oil-wells-in-los-angeles-part-ii/

both are sourced from http://www.clui.org/newsletter/spring-2010/bus-tour-urban-crude and the overarching project here http://clui.org/page/urban-crude-oil-fields-los-angeles-basin

dramatic photo on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12567713@N00/1348021933/

re-abadoning oil wells in LA: http://blog.andersenenviro.com/andersen-environmental-assist-developers-locate-and-re-abandon-oil-well-in-the-city-of-los-angeles/

frack the border, cartels using oil/gas boom to move drugs: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/frack/

the most famous oil-related place in LA is the tar pits: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/la-brea-tar-pits/

Oil of L.A. - a Vice mini-documentary: http://www.vice.com/en_us/art-talk/oil-of-l-a--3

Oil runs deep in L.A.: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/19/travel/la-tr-laoil-20100718

Oil History (of Southern California): http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2007/03mar/oil_history.cfm

History of the petroleum industry in the United States, jump to CA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_petroleum_industry_in_the_United_States#California

Another history of oil in CA: http://nsioil.com/history/california/

Signal Hill used to be called Porcupine Hill because of all the oil wells: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scootermodster/6704806781/

Signal Hill - the Early Oil Years: http://books.google.com/books?id=SykklGpE29AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false

tmotat: first draft: Up through Los Angeles came a bubblin' crude

"The history of Los Angeles is thoroughly intertwined with the use and production of gasoline and oil. Everyone thinks of Los Angeles as the ultimate car

city, but the cities’ relationship with petroleum products is far more significant than just consumption. Los Angeles is located directly above huge oil

reserves and there is a lucrative and active oil industry here, an industry that prefers to remain largely hidden and unknown." Urban Oil Wells In Los

Angeles, <a href="http://www.thingstodoinlosangeles.com/urban-oil-wells-in-los-angeles/">Part I</a>, <a href="http://www.thingstodoinlosangeles.com/urban-

oil-wells-in-los-angeles-part-ii/">Part II</a>.

The LA Times writes <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/19/travel/la-tr-laoil-20100718">'Oil runs deep in L.A. history'</a>. VICE reports: <a

href="http://www.vice.com/en_us/art-talk/oil-of-l-a--3">The LA oil industry is still thriving, only its gone underground</a>. (Video)

Stephen Testa, executive officer of the State Mining and Geology Board of California, says, that “the great city of L.A. was built on oil --

not gold or the entertainment industry.”

Further, Testa, who has taught hazardous waste management, geology and mineralogy at California State University at Fullerton and petroleum environmental

engineering at the University of Southern California, says the discovery of the oilfields in Los Angeles was the <a

href="http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2007/03mar/oil_history.cfm">single most important moment</a> in <a href="http://nsioil.com/history/california/">the

history of petroleum</a> in <a

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_petroleum_industry_in_the_United_States#California">California.</a>

<a href="http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/signal_hill/signal_hill.html">The Story of Oil in California</a>

The first well to strike oil in Southern California was drilled in 1892 by Edward L. Doheny, an unsuccessful gold and silver prospector, and Charles A. Canfield, his old mining partner.

Upton SInclair wrote Oil!, which encompassed the Southern California oil boom and eventually <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/book-vs-film-oil,2188/">inspired</a> the movie <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzyDm-J065g">There Will Be Blood</a>.</a> Sinclair went on to run for Governor of California in what has been described at <a href="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/10/the-traumatic-birth-of-the-modern-and-vicious-political-campaign/">the first modern political campaign</a>. Oil is so important to Los Angeles <a href="http://www.laalmanac.com/government/gl05.htm">it was on the county seal.</a>

<a href="http://books.google.hr/books?id=SykklGpE29AC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA25&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Signal Hill</a> used to be called 'Porcupine Hill,' encrusted with <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/scootermodster/6704806781/">oil derricks</a>. As the oil drills <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-30/news/hl-422_1_signal-hill-s-growth">pulled out in the '80s</a>, condos and developmers moved in. With <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4520910.stm">improvements in drilling technology</a> and the rising prices of crude, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2005/nov/28/local/me-oil28">the rigs are back.</a>

The Center For Land Use Interpretation's <a href="http://clui.org/page/urban-crude-oil-fields-los-angeles-basin">Urban Crude</a> project hosted a <a href="http://www.clui.org/newsletter/spring-2010/bus-tour-urban-crude">bus tour</a> of various oil-related sites in the LA basin.

oil petroleum crudeoil la LA losangeles signalhill california californiahistory oildrilling oilwell oilrig derrick oilderrick extraction blackgold texastea


Idea 15: In which a Comprehensive Conservative Conspiracy is Revealed

Sharp Right: How a handful of conservative billionaires worked to co-opt academe - by Jane Mayer

An excellent and informative piece by investigative journalist Jane Mayer. The only reason I haven't created this FPP is because it is essentially a single-link Chronicle piece behind a paywall. If this story is published elsewhere or an intrepid user finds additional resources (e.g., excerpts from her Dark Money book) for a larger post, you are strongly encouraged to disseminate this information.

Completed Posts

Note: if you're moving a project from idea/draft to completed, please link to the MetaFilter thread, noting the poster and post date.


Prior to this wiki section, there was a MetaTalk post on October 7, 2005 with two collaborations noted in the comments:


Other pre-wiki collaborations:

Outdated or Unsupported Ideas

Please move the topic down into this section if the original idea was superseded or outdated by new information, or if the person who first posted the idea doesn't support it any more. Such ideas should remain for some while, in case people who browse this wiki section wonder where the topic went.

Idea 4: Liberated from iTunes

One man's strategy for freeing his music from DRM. Liberated from iTunes

I'm already getting a rep as an Apple Hater so I didn't think it'd be safe to post this myself, so if anyone wants to MeFi this, do so at your own peril.

oneswellfoop 20:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC) Moved by oneswellfoop 6:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

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