How to be Free (And Save the World... Eventually)

[humor] Early Morning Puzzlements, Some Funny, Some Not (& Some Just Fell Off the Bed)

2005-03-25T05:29:00.003-08:00

One out of every four Americans is suffering from some sort of mental illness, says the authoritative anchorman on the telly. So, think of your three best friends. Are they mentally ill? No? Well then it must be you! And do you also suffer through puzzlements like those following, emailed from friends however AndyRooneyesque albeit, um, sane? And is it really five-thirty in the morn? Dear God.

1. Does a clean house indicate a broken computer inside?

2. Why are the colors of bubble-baths so various yet the bubbles are themselves invariably white?

3. Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?

4. Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?

5. On electric toasters, why the message 'one slice'? How many pieces of bread do people really gonna stuff in that slot?

6. Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?

7. Why is it that no plastic garbage bag will open from the end you first try?

8. How do those dead bugs get into those closed light fixtures?

9. Considering all the lint you get in your dryer, if you kept drying your clothes would they eventually just disappear?

10. When you're in the supermarket and someone rams your ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do you say, 'It's okay'? Well, it isn't really okay, so why don't you say, 'That hurt!'

11. Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?

12. Is it true that the only difference between a yard sale and a trash pickup is how close to the road the stuff is placed?

13. In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?

14. How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?

15. If at first you don't succeed, shouldn't you try doing it like your wife told you to do it? (Sorry, old joke. End of the list.) And, if at first you don't succeed, should thou never take up sky diving? (Okay, real end. Come back with answers, if you dare.)
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EDIT. Typos fixed, Q's trimmed & sharpened. And it appears Rooney was at origin. Not the skydiving though. (Not that mentally ill, thank you.)

[surf] The Commonly Confused, the Real Love, the Surplus, & the FOAF-a-Matic Too

2005-03-19T00:44:00.000-08:00

The surfing continues. That commonly-confused-words test I referenced in the last post is the all-time #1 most popular test on that "okcupid" website; over a thousand surfers have taken it yesterday. Well, looks like self-improvement is a most beloved pursuit -- well, good.

Take note, naysayers and mushyminds. Looking down the "ok" list of most-taken test (calling it the "cupid" list would sound silly, as well as inaccurate), I see a Google Speed Test: ooh, intriguing. Information and search engine watching are top interests for me presently, and a google test certainly gets my attention. Maybe I ought to start a sideblog on Google; that Google Speed Test would be posted there, plus all the weekly news alerts I requested in that area.

(Another coinage, 3/19/5. "Mushyminds" as one word. Cute. "Sideblog" as like a sidebar to my regular blog. A capillary to the main stream of this sallied consciousness. "A Sideblog on Google" from August Arrived: wouldn't you be intrigued? Even ye naysayers with mushyminds? *heehee* Anyway.)

But my mind is wandering already. Ought I download a personal picture to go with my test result, so other test-takers could see a kindred --um-- Google connoisseur, if there's such a thing. (Need the um to qualify my late-night silliness.) Compare silly mugs. Or not: anonymity has its advantages, why not stay discreet for now, rather than leap into unknown waters? Don't be stupid, Cupid. And I'm still a fillie, a fillie-pid. Okay, fillie-pid, let's go detached here. The Managing Editor (oh, remember that last gig? we need security to do our best) in me gives this sage advice: Play with pictorial, play with expectationb...

Now Mind is off on more tracks anew, about archetypes and stereotypes and reflexive "blinks," about age & gender, race & faith, knee-jerk portrayals in the media, in the movies and television; and about how I myself size up other people and their websites based on my reflexive "blinks," initial impressions that shape eventual verdict more than they oughta.

"Blink," by Malcolm Gladwell, is marinating the archetypes in my subconscious, now showing a tip or two as I blog an itinerant post.

That's really how you tease up the subconscious, by not actively searching your way there (you can't), but by floating off on silly pictures and sallied sideblogs and even on Google connoisseurs. I don't really know what I'm about to type next, and that's fine; I find such interesting sidestreets this way, it's all worthwhile in the end.

It's a way to expend my surplus energy while I'm on the net, and right now it's better to be by myself on a blog than get caught up in the snark of so many 'net forums I've checked out lately, in the childish putdowns and dismissals that seem common currency but yet diminish the mind and soul. If not immediately, then ultimately, eventually. I could almost say inevitably, but not quite.

My subconscious is reaching for something here, and as I type without purpose I think it knows something about love: that real love is derived from surplus energy, and it is derived from strength. False love, or bad love, on the other end, is derived from a sense of surfeit in energy; and it is derived from weakness. Real love proffers vitality; fake love sucks it away. And right now, blog-love proffers for me vitality; snark-love sucks it away. Avoid the snark, it diminishes the soul.

Went off the track again, sorry. Now back on: my latest discovery is this thing "FOAF-a-matic," found when I searched for a Similar Page to the Google Speed Test. (Right-click, get menu, scroll down to Similar Pages; the option appears with the Google toolbar. No toolbar, no Sim. Pgs., then. Wonder if this feature appears if I download toolbars for Yahoo or MSN? Would they conflict? And if they do, how resolve? Ayyy! Maybe that's why I resisted downloading the other two toolbars, nor yet others like the MyWay toolbar, even though they don't really take up much space. I just don't want any confusion here, potential hassles that these search providers don't know how to provide against.)

FOAF-a-matic is a simple Javascript application for creating your FOAF, which is short for "Friend-of-A-Friend." The function of FOAF is, I reckon, to facilitate social networking.

From its author, Leigh Dodds: "FOAF is a way to describe yourself -- your name, email address, and the people you're friends with -- using XML and RDF. This allows software to process these descriptions, perhaps as part of an automated search engine, to discover information about your and the communities of which you're a member. FOAF has the potential to drive many new interesting developments in online communities. Ben Hammersely's "Click to the Clique" article for the Guardian Unlimited website further explores these ideas.

The FOAF-a-Matic is being provided as a quick and easy way for you to create your own FOAF description. Simply work through the forms on this page and complete whichever details you'd like to add to your description. As a minimum you'll need to supply your name and email address, and similarly for any friends you might add. It's worth adding a few friends to your description (but feel free to add as many as you like) because then when FOAF harvesters index your FOAF description, they'll be able to tie you all together as a network of individuals.
Note: none of the information you enter in this page is used or stored in any way. The processing is entirely client-side, so your privacy is assured."

In addition to English, this form is available in eleven other languages: [Japanese] [French] [Spanish] [Danish] [Swedish] [Greek] [German] [Italian] [Korean] [Trad. Chinese] [Dutch]

More about FOAF in "XML Watch: Finding friends with XML and RDF" (from a developer at ibm.com), in the FOAF homepage, and at this FOAF vocabulary description. Also check FOAF Hackery.

I'm not sure how this would play out, and indeed the author himself is uncertain: "The 'discovery' aspect of FOAF (i.e. how FOAF compliant applications find your description) is still an area under discussion."

Here are three avenues for exploration he suggests. Please replace my [] with the angle-brackets <>, the latter I cannot produce in print here.

A.) Point the HTML Link tag to FOAF descriptions, the way bloggers point to their RSS feeds. Here's how it should look, but replace my [] with the angle-brackets <> : [link title="FOAF" href="foaf.rdf" type="application/rdf+xml" rel="meta"]

B.) Get referrals from a Friend. Have him point to it. A FOAF spider can then traverse all FOAF files. You can do this by making the following changes to your FOAF description:

1.) Alter the rdf:RDF element to add the RDF Schema namespace, as follows:
[rdf:rdf rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" rdf=http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#]

2.) You can then add links to other FOAF descriptions by adding one rdfs:seeAlso element for each additional file, as follows:
[rdfs:seealso rdf:resource="http://www.example.com/friends.xrdf"] [rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://www.ldodds.com/webwho.xrdf"/]

If your friends already have a FOAF description, then include it in the 'seeAlso' field given in the form above. You can also Refer a Friend to the FOAF-a-matic.

C.) Visit the FOAFWiki, and edit the FOAFBulletinBoard page and add your name and a link to your FOAF description.

The author adds, "Applying the magic of HTML Tidy and XSLT means that applications such as Edd Dumbill's FOAFbot can process this index. Visit the FOAFBot home page for information about how to see it in action. " Note this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Its author Dodds is now working on a FOAF-a-Matic Mark 2, a desktop application for creating and managing FOAF data, and maintains a mailing list. So if you've surfed beyond the commonly confused, yet enjoy a surplus of real love, you may wanna sign up for this FOAF thingamajig. And let me know how it turns out.

[test] The Commonly Confused Words Test

2005-03-18T23:58:00.000-08:00

Some blogger just exulted over his/her "English Genius" rating from taking this Commonly Confused Words Test from a site called okcupid.com, which I've never heard of -- but then there's a lot of good stuff on the net I've yet to find out about. Who knows, this may be one of them, hence this bookmark to come back to later.
From the intro: "Good communication is not necessarily about using an expansive vocabulary. It is about properly using the words and punctuation you already know.
The results of this test will reflect your level of appropriate word usage, with a little bonus test on commonly confused punctuation in one question. "

[blog] Apple Peels Itself with Blogger Lawsuit

2005-03-16T23:58:00.000-08:00

A company so high on its success may get arrogant and loses its shine, as is the case with computer-maker Apple. With its new lawsuit against bloggers, it is just "asking to be loathed and subverted," says the U.K.'s Guardian this morn (3/16).

Via Macworld UK: "The report points to the Cupertino computer maker's renowned secretiveness (it calls this 'corporate paranoia'). Apple's instinct favours 'opacity', it says, adding, 'none of this sits comfortably with those achingly hip, design-conscious products.'

Such criticism follows the decision by a Californian judge that supports Apple's attempt to force Apple Insider, PowerPage and Think Secret to reveal their sources. Sources (apparently numbered at 25 individuals), who have fed fillips of Apple's future plans to an excited audience of Mac users."

In addition, "Was Enron's off-balance sheet funding structure a "trade secret", for instance?" queries the Guardian report. No, of course not, and deep-pocketed corporations in America (and elsewhere) ought not suppress individual critics simply because they do not like their critical opinions. Apple enjoys such a beautiful shine; it would be a shame for this ignomous lawsuit to have that... peeled. (Sorry, couldn't resist. *Teehee*)

[verite] Nicole Richie is Not Stupid! & That was Not a Drug Deal! (So What's in the KissyPouch?)

2005-03-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

OK, so *This Set of Candid Photos* looks awfully -- shall we say -- suspect, soupçonneux, even méfiant. But it's mid-street in broad daylight! Dear Nicole, so sophisticated and worldly, réaliser, um, l'photographes, will go *snap-snap-snap* wherever she goes, eh?

May we presume, then, PorscheMan was just handing her his ancient Oriental remedy for overzealous weight-loss. (Well he does look chinoiserie in a silk 'Wood sort of way --Hollywood, that is, swimming pools, movie stars. The Beverly Hillbilly with the sorcerer's stone n' pouch. It's a prop for the next Simple Life. Right. And that's really a '86 Hyundai with a radical trim.) AncientRemedy also most efficacious for big-h addictions. Y'know, big-h and extreme weight-loss, they just go arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand. But let's not needle her, eh, shall we?

"Quote (from EZboard link):
What is Nicole Richie doing? This set of pictures displays suspicious behavior on a desolate street between Nicole and an unknown older man. After reaching into her bag while looking around for onlookers, he hands her a pouch. Following this, she quickly gives him a kiss and walks away. 03 14 05"
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EDIT. chinoiserie:: "reflecting Chinese artistic influence." Not just droll, but cut-on-the-bias silky droll. Nicole'd appreciate it, y'know. Pouched or not.
UPDATE. As of 2pm, the EZboard photos are down, reason unknown. If you can't see them there, try this gossip site Popdoh!, who says, "look at the Porsche. Who said crime doesn't pay?"

[character] James Bond the Certain Insider, Jason Bourne the Trudging Outsider

2005-03-14T23:58:00.000-08:00

James Bond and Jason Bourne seem like men cut from the same cloth, heroes adapted for the big screen from the same Cold War espionage genre novels, but they emerge very different characters, embodying contrary values systems.

James Bond is the consummate insider; he lives to serve "Queen and Country," he needs to protect the Powers that authorize him to kill and wreak havoc. Man in control, very safe with his emotions. "Shocking, very shocking." But nothing to let go there.

Jason Bourne, on the other hand, is very much an outsider; he's betrayed by those he served; he needs to question everything and everybody or he will not survive. He must also kill and wreak havoc, but now against the Powers that gave him target and objective. He's in turmoil almost always, man not in control, who needs to seek always. Bourne must find the hidden truth, the right answers. "What is Treadstone? Who is planning the missions now? What do you want with me?" I killed two people in Berlin? Very perplexing. Trudge and treachery, watching Marie die. Dilemmas and doubts in an agnostic universe. Are "they on to Neski?" Moral Genevas, conveying the uncertainties of our times.

Of the two, the latter appears to be more in tune with our times. A character study in self and authority.

My advice: Tear off the Bourne saga from its Robert Ludlum origins (in many ways already done), make it a long epic, a saga of many chapters. Get on the money train there.

[easter egg] "Bourne Supremacy" Alt. Ending/Berlin, Unref'd. Ask Bono, or Colin Powell?

2005-03-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

Where the heck is the easter egg to The Bourne Supremacy DVD? Anyone w. info on this, please let me know. There's a free Gmail acct invite for ya, if that helps! My search found just about nada. And am not waiting for the extended director's cut, or the eventual trilogy box-set! (Oh you know that's comin'!)

Only lead is from DVDtalk, reprinted entirely: "I don't know how to access it with a stand-alone player, but if you open the disc with the DVD shrink utility you will notice 60MB of unreferenced material. Then you can click on it to watch the alternate ending in Berlin. No reference of it when I did a google search."

There's an easter egg section at DVDtown, but it's empty. Comment section has 38 entries, but nothing about said egg.

A good tech comment from an user there (YCH): "though the colors on the DVD were consistent with what I saw in theatres, the transfer really is fuzzy. However, most scenes have high contrast and are jerky to boot, so it's not that noticeable to the regular eye. There are often halos around edges and most of the grainy film structure has been overfiltered and softened for the DVD release."

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Now that I'm posting, here something else: a ref on Malcolm Gladwell. Find it in Letters: Debut issue of 'Points'. From Dallas Morning News (subscription: gotta register, or use http://bugmenot.com/!): "... elitism, the Institute for Interesting People, salon discussions, public intellectuals like Virginia Postrel, the significance of Malcolm Gladwell's long hair ... "

Also of interest (yes I'm gettin' to Colin Powell of post title!): Bono the U2 lead-singer may be shortlisted to be the next head of the World Bank! "He's somebody I admire," says U.S. Tresury Secretary John Snow. Selection by White House by June. (AP, via "The Week.") Angelina Jolie is on "American Perspectives" (C-SPAN), and says of Bono: "Great guy, family man. Great passion to do great things."

But she is not seconding this idea of him being head banker, apparently. What she does say is this, tellingly: "I guess you could say it in this room (National Press Club) and it gets out there." How right she is. "So I'd say Colin Powell."

Hmm, Colin Powell to head the World Bank. Angelina has the right idea. But let's settle this in a fair, if not balanced fashion: whoever find the secret Bourne ending first, wins the post. Who's mo' intrepid with the easter eggs, Bono, or Colin, or ..even long-hair Malcolm?! *Blink, blink* The Bunny knows!
More on this later (on Ms. Jolie, not the Bunny).

[gmail] Free Gmail Accounts! (Free Free Free, We're So Free! Teehee!)

2005-03-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Google has seen fit to give me a big ol' bunch of Gmail invitations to hand out, a whole bushel full. They're free email accounts with one whole gigabyte (1 Gb) of storage per user! Man, I'm not sure if Google intended this, but I'd say you could configure it as a spare hard-disk drive, one that you could access anywhere on the net. Cool!

Anyway, I have about ~~forty to forty-five left~~ thirty-four to go, give me a holler, leave a working email address. I'll fill it out the same day, hopefully, and present to the good folks at Google, and you'll get a link to open your own shiny new Gmail account. Simple, except some paperwork for me; but I don't mind. You put up with my foolish ramblings, it's the least I can do. And I sure like feeling generous. Good deed for the week. Very shrewd marketing for the Google Team. Five exclamations they got out of me already. Six!

These invitations have been going around. The grizzled veterans who wanted a Gmail acct have pretty much all got them already, far as I can tell. Certainly the sharpies & sheriffs around here look askance at my youthful exuberance at all this ado --"much ado about, y'know"-- *yawn* Ha, I reply. It's Friday.

It's astonishing that just last summer these invites were auctioned off eBay for hundreds of dollars each; and now, well, even lil' ol' me am privileged enough to have dozens to just hand out. Amazing! (Seven, OK)

This grandiose Blog Title notwithstanding, I have a realistic view of my position in the blogosphere; I am not that far higher than all the other neophytes around here, so if I am deemed worthy of being a tipping point then obviously lots and lots of points have already tipped. But that's okay, as long as I get to play Gladwell myself. No strings attached, no spam to follow, first come first served. You may email me, or put a note at the "Comments" box.

Oh, and (with apologies to Obi-George), May the Blog be With You! Long Live Google, eh? (Yahoo too, of course. MSN, whatever.)

-----------------------------------
This is the letter Google sent me:
"Invite a friend to Gmail!
We hope you've liked using Gmail. We've definitely been working hard to make it better. Meanwhile, the Gmail family has been growing largely through invitations--sent by users who want to share Gmail with the people they care about. We hope you'll want to as well. Just fill in this form below and we'll send your friends and family invitations to open their own shiny Gmail accounts."
Please note it is Friday. I may be slow on the weekend, ego-tripping elsewhere. Patience.
(Google 8, August 1: Google wins)

[ToC] ToC the ToC, Wog the Wog

2005-03-11T00:18:00.000-08:00

Since the ToC feature from Feedster is not working (though my coding's correct), and the template mod I just processed (see the new lucky links?) concluded by giving me a show of all files published in this here blog, why don't I just reprint it here, as a rough sort of ToC? That's Table-of-Contents, ye newer newbies, hehe. Arranged from newest to oldest.

Filenames are not fun to read, maybe not even to scan, but it'd have to do, for now -- for myself, a bemused look back; oh, so this was the blogger's trail, it's who I was, what I typed, where my head was at -- more or less! Was there a path etched out? No, not really; style, yes, sense and belief and the occasional chortle (hold the snark), but no steaming ahead to anything, no rush toward ecstatic Meccas.

"Traveler, there is no path," says the poet Antonio Machado, and quoted in Time, "the path is made by walking." So I take my random walk, and love my blogging love; choose to believe that this no-path post-age is truly what's best (of course!, no question!) -- well, it doeth save so much trouble otherwise. Teehee.

I don't know. Maybe it's really like a Rorschach test. Like NASCAR. You either understand it, and go with its flow, or you don't. Mass transit is more virtuous, and greenhouse gases are foul, but boy do we love our crazy fast NAScars anyway. Well. Sometimes. Hmm, not good metaphor for the "blue-staters," (shd really be red, not blue), not even with a good simile to "tune up" our internal engines.

Maybe it's more like a drawn-out summit. On the one side, the big ego. On the other, all the little postings jostling for a connection. Like Caesar, like Bush, the great leader both loved and not, in Brussels to meet and greet and huddle with the panoply of EU potentates. Oh, brother, in Brussels I sprout! And stop. This traveler must rest now. OK, the listing now...

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"Files published... 100% "[though there's actually a bunch of drafts yet pub'd]

archives/2005_03_06_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/03/movies-nays-from-nyt.html
2005/03/google-toolbar-autolink-on-t3-is-no.html
2005/03/health-best-health-sites-three-to.html
2005/03/poem-after-while-subtle-difference-of.html
2005/03/business-money-march.html

archives/2005_02_27_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/03/religion-faithful-blogs-collecting.html
2005/03/advice-how-to-do-just-one-or-two.html
2005/03/acting-five-who-played-howard-hughes.html
2005/03/business-whistleblowing-doth-geth-dark.html

archives/2005_02_20_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/02/music-son-of-metropolis-san-francisco.html
2005/02/nintendo-spritely-history-of-mario.html
archives/2005_02_13_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/02/blog-wasting-time-to-saving-time-lose.html

2005/02/weight-of-dharma-and-weight-portal-to.html
2005/02/weight-to-mistake-physical-hunger-for.html
2005/02/media-name-of-drudge-is-not-times-and.html

2005/02/aa-can-chris-rock-say-i-see-white.html
2005/02/tv-grammys-worst-ratings-in-8-years.html
2005/02/aa-chris-rock-only-gays-watch-oscars.html

2005/02/media-blogmatics-of-lynch-mobs-or-chud.html
2005/02/media-cnn-resigns-to-growing-influence.html

archives/2005_02_06_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/02/charles-middle-aged-boring-but-finally.html
2005/02/charles-bitter-feud-of-three-in.html
2005/02/prediction-royal-racehorse-will-win.html

2005/02/law-how-appealing-to-bite-cha-back-or_10.html
2005/02/law-so-devilish-this-sticky-issue.html
2005/02/intl-pol-so-okay-no-touch-iraq-but-do.html
2005/02/anecdote-faultlessly-clear-dream-in.html
2005/02/apology-how-to-wait-out-my-inner-lara.html

archives/2005_01_30_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/02/forecast-how-to-predict-superbowl.html
2005/02/phil-how-to-annoy-your-favorite-ayn.html
2005/02/strategy-how-to-win-superbowl.html
2005/02/strategy-how-to-train-for-superbowl.html

2005/02/humor-fifty-ways-you-know-youre-ahole.html
2005/02/copyright-eiffel-tower-repossessed-mon.html
2005/02/blog-really-not-worth-blogging-really.html
2005/02/tech-rivals-aim-to-displace-ipod-with.html
2005/02/tactic-reader-experience-with-ny.html

2005/02/punctuation-same-letter-changed.html
2005/02/image-purple-fingers-for-iraq-orange.html
2005/02/graphics-so-what-its-cartoon.html
2005/02/blog-great-blog-little-blog.html

2005/02/media-insufficient-skepticism.html
2005/02/phil-ayn-rand-shrugged-off-at-100.html
2005/02/blog-blogging-viral-freedom-in-arab.html
2005/02/media-moronics-xrlq-debunks-daily.html
2005/02/correction-daily-torygraph-story-of.html

2005/02/speech-dear-mr-bush-keep-it-simple.html
2005/02/follow-up-weimarer-republik-news_02.html
2005/02/follow-up-post-weimar-unemployment.html

2005/02/clip-super-rollerblade-jump.html
2005/02/net-while-googling-similar-fate.html
2005/02/net-windoesnt.html

2005/02/academic-germane-greer-prick-hold.html
2005/02/hx-so-why-did-weimar-republic.html
2005/02/tech-unintended-outcomes.html
2005/02/follow-up-weimarer-republik.html

2005/02/offbeat-how-not-to-skip-monthly-rent.html
2005/02/offbeat-how-to-skip-monthly-rent.html
2005/02/taste-what-al-franken-and-bill-oreilly.html

2005/02/gossipwhat-people-were-overheard.html
2005/02/book-how-world-ends-before-this-blog.html
2005/02/blog-make-title-relevant-to-overall.html
2005/02/culture-what-are-you.html
2005/02/china-cracking-down-gambling-rings-pos.html

2005/02/ala-guide-to-great-web-sites-for-kids.html
2005/02/pcworldcom-tax-software-scoop-on.html
2005/02/pc-security-basics-for-home-users.html
2005/02/pc-100-ways-to-master-your-pc-like.html

2005/01/ad-ba-da-ba-ba-ba-im-freakin-ittm.html
2005/01/humor-how-to-fake-it-on-super-bowl.html
2005/01/play-messing-w-google-on-photoshop.html

2005/01/ad-thats-way-we-banned-ad-banned-ad.html
2005/01/dvd-mad-about-you-hand-picked.html
2005/01/deleted-entry.html

2005/01/webdesign-googles-i-feel-lucky-button.html
2005/01/culture-keywords-reflect-bent-values.html
2005/01/future-of-search-rides-on-relevance.html

2005/01/webdesign-ugh-at-step1-software-home.html
2005/01/web-pages-that-suck-examples-of-bad.html
2005/01/webdesign-bibliotheek-rotterdam-sucks.html
2005/01/google-cheatsheets-and-more.html

2005/01/verbal-555-question-courtesy-this.html
2005/01/to-u-silly-crystal-blue-goose-u-my.html
2005/01/visual-words-jumbled-but-mind-not.html
2005/01/vision-deutsche-prof-hpg-w-nifty.html

2005/01/phil-162-names-of-most-common.html
2005/01/paradox-pos-good-ideas-of-fiction.html
2005/01/persuasion-crystal-blue-baby.html
2005/01/dear-bloggercom-this-is-blogger-spam.html

archives/2005_01_23_augustarrived_archive.html
2005/01/psy-things-i-owe-comic-books.html
2005/01/tv-from-moderate-voice-johnny-carson.html
2005/01/iraq-speech-bush-should-have-given-and.html

2005/01/iraq-water-anxiety-school-explosion.html
2005/01/activism-from-excellent-blog-baghdad.html
2005/01/activism-tv-committee-to-protect.html
2005/01/activism-committee-to-protect-bloggers.html
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[movies] Nays from the NYT

2005-03-10T23:48:00.000-08:00

I was so looking forward to the new film releases this weekend, but the NYT reviews in tomorrow's edition are really just all thumbs-down. Nay on "Robots," perh. because it's neither Pixar nor anime, nay on the new Bruce Willis, and very mixed for the new Kevin Costner. NYT: not nec. your friend, Hollywoodies, hehe, esp. regarding Costner's "Upside of Anger." Maybe postponement from the Oscar season was a good choice after all -- maybe.

Synopsis of "She's All Angles, He's Got Curves" review by A. O. Scott:
"The upside of "The Upside of Anger," a deeply flawed attempt to marry midlife romantic comedy with domestic farce, is that it provides a platform for Kevin Costner and Joan Allen to do some marvelous work. Both performances are somewhat familiar: Mr. Costner, once again, is an athlete past his prime, and Ms. Allen is a brittle, unhappy suburban housewife, but the actors slip into their characters with ease and wit, and complement each other beautifully as they explore a haphazard friendship that turns into a love affair.

The downside is that the director, Mike Binder, does not give them enough of a dramatic context to work in, and undermines their efforts with a surprise ending that very nearly destroys the whole movie. Alicia Witt, Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood and Keri Russell play Ms. Allen's daughters, but their characters are as thinly conceived as figures in a television pilot, and it is hard to believe that the four of them and Ms. Allen add up to a family."
(More here for Movie Details NY Showtimes Trailers Watch Video: Movie Minutes)
----------------
EDIT. Fixed misdirected links, added italics. "neither ~~from~~ Pixar nor anime"

[google toolbar] AutoLink on the T3 is No Fuss

2005-03-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Rebuttal to the esteemed Walter Mossberg (WSJ) from Houston Chronicle columnist Dwight Silverman on "Google Toolbar: Why the fuss?"(both from today, 3/10):

"Walt Mossberg, the dean of tech columnists, waxes nasty today in the Wall Street Journal on the AutoLink feature in the beta version of the Google Toolbar. He's one of several who've waved red flags over this, saying it's unfair to Web page designers.

Mossberg argues:

"What if you had worked hard to design a Web page, carefully placing links just where you wanted them and carefully selecting the Web destinations to which those links led? And then, what if a company with great power on the Web started adding its own links to your page, drawing visitors away from your page to other sites of its own choosing?

You might be more than a little upset. You might wonder what gives any third party the right to edit or alter your Web page without your knowledge or permission.
Yet that's exactly what Google, the powerful search-engine company, is doing. A new feature of the company's popular Google Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser actually adds links right into the body of any Web page. The links lead to Google's own map site or to other sites Google selects."

Silverman's rebuttal: "Once you install it, AutoLink doesn't alter the look of any page unless you click on its button in the toolbar. When AutoLink spots an address, ISBN book number or a VIN vehicle number, the text on its button changes. Once you click on the button, then and only then is the item in question highlighted. Again, you make the choice.
You can choose your map provider, if you'd rather not use Google Maps.
If you don't want to use it, turning AutoLink off is easy to do from the toolbar's options menu."

Conclusion: "I say create the product, throw it out there, and let users decide."

If you're unsure, stick with the standard version 2; but I think it's okay to go ahead, and download the beta. T3, baby!
--------------------------------
UPDATE: Mark Fleming, "GuestColumnist" in Webpronews (Fri. 3/11 morn.) asserts "Use The Controversial Google Toolbar": "My thought on Toolbar Beta 3 and Autolinks come from a user perspective. I say use it! Downloading and installing Google Toolbar takes literally minutes.It will give you a pop up blocker, spell check, word translator, autofill, highlighter, word find button, Google search field and more.

Look, the Google Toolbar is an optional download. Then, clicking on Autolinks is an optional step. On top of that, you can go into Options and change where the Autolinks point to. At this point, I don't believe Google is overreaching. If they become more heavy-handed in their 'suggestions,' I could have a problem with it.

Now when Google comes out with a much-rumored Gbrowser and it becomes the world standard we'll have to revisit how they are using their powerful hold of the user.

Note: All of this assumes you are still on the old-school Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is the only browser on which the Google Toolbar works. Come on, get with it and starting using the much better Firefox browser! "

BTW, writer Fleming has a new blog at www.googletutor.com, called plainly "Google Tutor & Advisor," with tips and techniques for google users, which is to say, for pretty much anybody on the net. I say check it out. (& I'll add it to my Blogroll when I can access the *blasted* thing again.) b

Another view: "Google Goes Too Far," says Weapon of Mass Distraction(3/12): "Maybe something happens when a company grows so successful that its name becomes a verb. Google's new toolbar inserts links of its own choosing into websites, something Microsoft was hammered when it tried the same thing a couple of years ago." Adds blogwriter Derek Gilbert, "It's basically high-quality adware."

Another BTW: is "blogwriter" in use? Or did I just committed --hehe-- neolingo? Hence coinage.

[health] The Best Health Sites, Three to Start

2005-03-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

The best health sites aren't necessarily those you'd find at the top of google or yahoo. The Charleston, S.C. Post and Courier recommends you go to these three excellent destinations first:

http://Medlineplus.gov as starting point. Drugs, clinical trials, tutorials. From the Gov.
http://Quackwatch.org as reality check against "health frauds, myths, and fads." Great to read, fun to say ("Quack!")
http://Snopes.com for the urban legends. Can't have too many of those!

[poem] "After a While" the Subtle Difference of the Original Voice

2005-03-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

The poem "After a While" by one Veronica A. Shoffstall is, in my opinion, one of the best riming (olde Eng. proper) wonders of our time. Written in 1971 when she was 19, it has made the rounds on the net and elsewhere, dating videos and Yahoo-singles' intros certainly, and tweaked, squeaked, and otherwise screwed around to well-meaning or even inimitable means and ends.

Some rewording is fine, kinda; "grace of woman" to "grace of an adult" is okay, sorta -- more general use from gender openness. But give the lady credit, eh? And the title is not "You Learn" a la Alanis Morrissette, but "After a While."

Well, here is the original, but point-of-origin unknown. The poetess' website at GeoCities is defunct; her present whereabouts is unclear from my admittedly short search. I'll look further later, but if anyone knows her email (not shoffst@bic.org? or my gmail not working?) it'd be appreciated; I'd want formal permission to reprint. Anyway, here it is with her "Author's note."
------------------------
(Author's note: This poem has been plagiarized, bastardized, renamed, reworded, redesigned, expanded and reduced. But it is my work, which I wrote at the age of 19 and had published in my college yearbook. Why anyone would want to claim it is beyond me, but for what it's worth, I wrote it, and if I'd known it was going to be this popular, I'd have done a better job of it. - V.S.)
------- ------- -------

After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...

© 1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

[business] Money, March

2005-03-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

$... Wal-Mart cleared a profit of $10.3 billion in the last fiscal year. That works out to almost $20,000 a minute. [New York Times]

$... CEO turnover at 1,000 big corporations skyrocketed to 97 departures in 2004, more than doubling the 44 from 2002. On average, failing execs got the pink slip after 18 months. [BusinessWeek]

$... 28% of all Medicare costs are spent in the last year of the lives of the patients. Just the final year. [New York Times]

$... Hollywood insiders estimate that 150 Oscar statuettes have been sold (since the Academy Awards began in 1929). Prices could go as high as $1.5m. [Forbes.com]

&... CDs and DVDs do not break down in landfills, but do release toxic dioxins when burned. Pioneer and Sanyo are now developing corn-based discs that would decompose. Eventually. [Wired]

--------
EDIT. "lives of the patients," not "patients' lives": less concise but more acute. "but do release toxic dioxins": clearer comp. Though my mind's clearly decomposed, already.

[religion] Faithful Blogs Collecting Power

2005-03-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

The Religion Journal section of the New York Times today (Saturday) features a fascinating article on the "growing number of religion-oriented blogs, many of them irreverent and contrarian, and all serving as a meeting point for the like-minded." Whether to evangelize, educate, or simply discuss church and theology, "religious bloggers are starting to realize the potential of their collective power." For example, check out SmartChristian.com.

The rather concise coverage by Debra Nussbaum Cohen points out that "in some blogs, particularly those of conservative Christians, political and religious beliefs are intertwined. But whether conservative or liberal, most religion-based blogs seem to be created by people on the extremes of the religious spectrum. 'People who blog tend to be the kind who already have firm opinions and a certain world-view,' said Kathy Shaidle, a self-described 'conservative Catholic Gen-Xer' and founder of RelapsedCatholic.com.

"While the Internet addresses of many blogs look much like those of other Web sites, blogs are fluid and interactive and create conversation and debate, rather than simply present information. No one knows precisely how many blogs there are, but a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that roughly eight million American adults have created them. Lee Rainie, director of the project, estimates that 10 percent to 20 percent of those are related to religion."

"Religious blogs give a public voice to people who otherwise might not have one, like Fatima Mohammed, a recent college graduate in Milwaukee. Ms. Mohammed, 24, is an observant Muslim who prays five times a day, dresses modestly and wears hijab to cover her hair. In her blog, LoveThyUmmah.com --Ummah means "the Muslim community" -- "I'm speaking from the perspective of a young Muslim woman in America. It's a unique outlet," Ms. Mohammed said. "The blog lets me get my voice out there."

Cohen also reports that in making use of the new medium, many of "the most fervently religious (blogs) are anonymous." Ah but of course, church demands community, and the community may look askance at the fervent self (& the more fervent, the more nettlesome its potential). Anonymity makes perfect sense. Reading on:

"Aidel Maidel, whose nom-de-blog means "Nice Jewish Girl" (aidelmaidel.blogspot.com), posts about the ups and downs of being a working religious mother who is fairly new to Hasidic life. She guards her anonymity because it lets her write things that some in her community might perceive as less than flattering, which could potentially compromise her daughters' ability to marry well, she said, though they are now respectively an infant and a toddler... "It was a place for me to vent," she said. "Blogging provided me with a real space where I could say what I wanted and nobody would judge me."

"For a few religious bloggers, online endeavors have become more than an outlet.

"For Gordon Atkinson, a Baptist minister, it has led to a book... (In his) unconventional religious blog, RealLivePreacher.com, (with) occasionally salty language, he relates his theological struggles, ideas for sermon titles and car-pooling experiences. He began blogging in December 2002 because it provided a place to write, but kept it anonymous so as not to hurt his parishioners' feelings. After being identified, he decided to continue it anyway. A Christian publisher, Eerdman's, soon invited him to assemble his essays in book form, and in October it published RealLivePreacher.com, the book.

"Mr. Atkinson is one of a swelling pool of pastors entering the blogosphere. With more than one million reader visits since his blog began, he is also one of the most successful. His writing is "about how faith and life meet in nonreligious ways," he said, adding, "I hope not to be very churchy."

In a related story from last Sunday, the Times also explores "a growing movement to call attention to the open Christianity of America's great leaders and founding documents. The goal is to reverse what many evangelical Christians claim is a secularist revision of history, to defend displays of religion in public life and to make room for God in public school classrooms.

"Their campaign and the liberal resistance have turned even the slightest clues about the souls of the Republic's great leaders - that Washington left church before communion and almost never referred to Jesus, that the famously skeptical Jefferson attended Sunday services in the House of Representatives, or that Lincoln never joined a church at all - into hotly contested turf in the battle over the place of religion in public life... And sympathetic legislators in a dozen states have passed American Heritage Education Acts intended to protect teachers who discuss religion's role in history -- measures liberals call unnecessary."

Certainly this has riled up the academic community, "including some conservative and evangelical scholars," surprisingly enough: "the 18th-century religious views of the founders hardly fit into contemporary categories like evangelical Protestant or secular humanist. Nor... do the great leaders' public expressions of faith necessarily tell us much about how their notion of an ideal relationship between religion and government."

"Sure, God shows up on the bad stuff," says David Barton, vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party and a leading advocate against the "secularist" teachings of our public education system. "We don't hear much about the five revivals in American history, but we always hear about the Salem witch trials." Still, he said, he only sought to dust off the fact of the founders' Christianity, not to argue for or against it. "If we are arguing off the premise that we have to be secular today because we have always been secular," he said, "then we are arguing off the wrong premise."

Related articles in the NYT (all except the first one below requires $premium membership$ or a $fee$ for access):
Putting God Back Into American History (February 27, 2005)
ASIA'S DEADLY WAVES: RELIGIONS; Faith Divides the Survivors And It Unites Them, Too (January 12, 2005) $
Some Democrats Believe the Party Should Get Religion (November 17, 2004) $
THE 2004 ELECTION: FAITH GROUPS; President Benefits From Efforts to Build a Coalition of Religious Voters (November 5, 2004) $
There's more results for the topics Christians and Christianity and Religion and Churches

[advice] How to Do Just One or Two Things Really, Really Well

2005-03-04T18:06:00.000-08:00

The key to a well-read website or personal blogplace is to specialize, focus, hone, show, and above all believe in what you are doing. Believe, and you will. Don't believe, and you won't. Simple.

I want to explore further this line of thought in the coming weeks. But for now I note that Dave Pollard has got that covered, more or less. So here's his quicklist on "How to do one or two things really well:

Believe in yourself. You can do anything if you believe. You can't do anything if you don't.

Find one or two very specific things that are either very useful or very interesting, that you do (or can learn to do) really well, better than anyone else, and which you like doing.

Hone your skill in and deepen your knowledge about those one or two things.

Stop doing other things that distract your focus from achieving brilliance in those one or two things.

Show others, bravely, how well you can do these things -- It's not a distinctive competency unless others recognize it as such.

Trust your instincts to tell you what to do, what not to do, when to persevere and when to give up and try something else."

[acting] Five Who Played Howard Hughes Before Leo (I'm Rooting for Tommy Lee)

2005-03-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

The 1977 TV-movie of Howard Hughes, with Tommy Lee Jones far more persuasive as the reclusive maverick millionaire, is out on DVD. Nice enough for a late night viewing, judging from the first half-hour that I've watched. Nothing interesting at the Rotten Tomatoes site; I googled around and found this: "Hollywood itself has had the occasional fixation over Hughes with such projects as �The Amazing Howard Hughes,� a TV biography starring Tommy Lee Jones, and Jonathan Demme's offbeat �Melvin and Howard,� about a luckless man who claims he gave hitchhiker Hughes (Jason Robards) a lift and subsequently was left a fortune by the recluse. Dean Stockwell made a memorably creepy cameo as Hughes in Francis Ford Coppola's �Tucker: The Man and His Dream.�"

Better info from the Boston Globe: "at least five actors preceding Leonardo DiCaprio in playing the eccentric reclusive billionaire. And that's not counting" wannabes like Warren Beatty and Johnny Depp.

There's the first portrayal, discreet but true, of "Robert Ryan's sinister, controlling paranoid in "Caught" (1949), (who) has the memorable moniker "Smith Ohlrig."

"Lean and dark, Ryan bears at least a passing resemblance to Hughes. That's more than can be said for George Peppard's Jonas Cord, in "The Carpetbaggers" (1964). The movie focuses on Hughes's early Hollywood years, before the craziness began to show. Unfortunately, Peppard's Blond Beast looks have more in common with a Hughes Tool oil rig (or ohlrig) than with Hughes.

After Hughes's death, in 1976, there was no need for pseudonyms -- or discretion. The 1977 TV movie 'The Amazing Howard Hughes' is based on a tell-all bestseller by Hughes's right-hand man, Noah Dietrich. (John C. Reilly plays him in 'The Aviator.') As Hughes, Tommy Lee Jones combines Robert Robert Ryan's dark good looks with George Peppard's beefiness and gets to impressively chew the (germ-free) scenery.

In 'Melvin and Howard' (1980), Jason Robards is clearly having a grand time. All stringy hair and beard, he plays Hughes as the world's richest hermit on the lam. He's an eccentric in the best Jonathan Demme tradition -- except, of course, that Hughes really existed (though whether he actually ever met Melvin Dummar, his purported heir, is another matter).

Dean Stockwell has a creepy, saturnine grandeur playing Hughes in 'Tucker' (1980). His fedora'd gloom is pure antimatter to the sunny boyishness of Jeff Bridges's title character. There are no switchblade-long fingernails or Mormon-guarded manias to be seen, but you can feel the weirdness just waiting to emerge."

[business] Whistleblowing Doth Geth Dark & Byzantine

2005-03-02T19:04:00.000-08:00

The new Forbes (dated 3/14/5) came in the mail today, and its cover article is a sobering and very well-written examination of the whistleblowing phenomenon that got revved up in 1986. Of course, being a bizness mag, its focus is on "The Dark Side of Whistleblowing."

Note that in many areas the feds already cap the good-squealors' fiscal incentive to more earthbound parameters (a quarter mil for customs cases, $1.6m for bank fraud). Still, prudence and sanity indicate that we may have swung tooo far the other way, and need to redress to a new balance.

An excerpt: "In the post-Enron era, these self-appointed do-gooders are granted breathless audiences by Congress, extolled on national television and lauded by Time magazine as Persons of the Year. But some whistleblowers are motivated by greed, willing to stretch the truth for profit. That owes to the whistleblower law, adopted in 1986, that hands informants as much as a 30% cut of any money recouped by the government. ...

Since then whistleblower cases have boomed, recovering $7.9 billion from offending companies--and paying out $1.3 billion to the insiders who ratted on the wrongdoers. A whistleblower bar now spans some 200 lawyers. As word of giant awards has spread--$100 million to the two guys who blew the whistle on HCA and $32 million for a suit against Schering-Plough--the number of suits has soared. Fiscal 2003 saw 326 whistleblower suits, ten times as many as cropped up in 1986; the government gets involved in only about one-sixth of the cases, but these yield 96% of recoveries. And while the law first took aim at defense contractors and sought to protect low-level tattlers, it is now used to target fraud in health care and an array of other businesses."
-------------------
EDIT. Doth, not Doeth. [Geth not proper archaic?] Swung tooo far the other way.

[music] "Son of Metropolis San Francisco" to Premier at Other Minds 11

2005-02-25T18:18:00.000-08:00

The great audio-artiste Charles Amirkhanian"(ah-meer-KHA-nyan) will premier his radiophonic tape piece, Son of Metropolis San Francisco at the Other Minds 11 Music Festival in --natch-- San Francisco. The "Son" part means it's actually more of a condensation of the "Metropolis San Francisco" work, twenty-six minutes squeezed from the original fifty-five.

The "Father," so to speak, was commissioned in 1997 by West German Radio, Studio 3 Horspiel in Cologne, and premiered in the U.S. by New American Radio for the NPR satellite network. The piece is like a pastiche of the San Francisco Bay Area, "a part-abstract, part-representational audio snapshot" that makes for an idiosyncratic chow-mein of bits "ranging from barking elephant seals at Año Nuevo Beach to a runaway overflow valve next to a hot tub at Harbin Hot Springs."

And hopefully he'll squish in the parts with the "Chinese sitcom, Tongan gardeners, and conga drummers at Ocean Beach", as transfigured on a Synclavier digital synthesizer. Lots of fun, if you're hip for some experimental ear-candy by a meditative luminary.

For more info: Chas. Amirkhanian's interview with "American Mavericks" here, his discussion on balancing composing and arts administration here, and an old ('98, old for an avant-gardist!) NPR interview here.

[Nintendo] A Spritely History of Mario, Alas Now Blotchy w. Aliased Fringes

2005-02-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

A funky and spritely history of the famous Mario by Nintendo in its official mag: "When creating Mario - originally called simply 'jumpman' - Shigeru Miyamoto made him look the way he does because of hardware limitations of the time." The videogame character required a mustache so his nose could be distinguished from his face, "overalls so arm movements were visible, and a hat because hair was hard to draw."

But Nintendo is blinded by its need to take the lead in 3D modeling; it doesn't heed the lessons of "underpowered hardware (that) produced hideous looking graphics," previous failures like 3DO, Jaguar, SegaCD.

"Instead of pure colours and clearly defined edges, Mario now has a blotchy appearance - a result of reducing the number of colours in the 3D model. Instead of clear edges Mario's now saddled with aliased fringes, usually black, resulting in the kind of blue-screen border seen in old movies."

And it's only getting worse. The article shows us four renditions of the lil' fella, and the latest one is not only not the best but is arguably the hardest to look at, even when compared to the first Mario from over twenty years ago.

"It's a shame that Nintendo, home to some of the world's finest 2D animators, is taking the quick way out and producing these ugly graphics. Many people consider 2D animation to be superior in many respects to the 3D graphics prevalent in modern games. If Nintendo keeps squandering their position as standard-bearer for this declining art form it will lead only to less joyous times for us all."

Via SimpleBits. Check out the reader comments. There's more in Slashdot awhile back here, with reply and rebuttal here.

[blog] Wasting Time to Saving Time, Lose Yourself to Be Yourself: the True Cost of Unencumbered Thought

2005-02-18T16:28:00.000-08:00

Saving time is becoming top priority again. More specifically, the need to filter out what is unimportant, sort out what is left, and squeeze and condense the gist of necessities that remains. That means read less mags and papers, edit out from my mind what is less than truly germane, letting go all the really interesting articles that nevertheless do not contribute to my own future well-being or development, what won't make a tangible enough difference in the myriad idealistic projects, and projections. Perhaps limit myself to one hour of non-book reading a day.

Yes, I know it seems embedded in my DNA this weird need to waste time, distract myself with trivialities that almost seems a balm from an overheated mind. And it seem to make perfect parallels with this desire --this need-- to "save" the world. It will never be quite a good life for me if I cannot contribute somewhere along the way to this greater whole. Altruism experienced on this unsober track that demands parallel momentum with Ambition expended. That's evolution, however messy.

And this post will have to do, however fuzzed-out. No outline at all, all mental wanderings but it'd have to do, because it's really hard to pull away yet stay engaged otherwise, the inchoate thoughts that spread and mutate -- ugh. It's a sort of viral marketing and germination to myself; oh it'll work, but it sure takes time. Patience, and budgeting, that's what to focus on now. Am thinking of the Pollard piece on budgeting: "Pick a few topics about which you are passionate, that you think others may or should be passionate about, and write mostly about them, rather than writing a little bit about everything under the sun."

Need to give myself time to "waste," to ramble as I am doing very much now (and try not to feel embarrassed about the meander), to continue doing due diligence, and yet spin out off the main line, to allow myself to unwind and stop making sense. I need to blog and not-blog.

Write faster, yet write looser. Stay mellow, and yet maintain conciseness. Very contrary, and yet necessary. The muse demands it, I'm not sure why.

What I am sure is that I love both disciplined analysis and lyrical prose, one to dig deep, the other to, well, sing.

I'd also like to revisit that Dave Pollard piece from a year ago (12/29/3) on blogging and the need to budget time and revisit purpose. And this is what he says, what I've been telling myself in my noggins instead of in ink and bytes and black-and-white:
"Give yourself time to think, to experience offline, and to think creatively. This is the most important time-saver of all.

Don't just react to what you read and see in the news. Get away from reading and your computer and other media, take a walk, do things that stimulate your creativity and give you unique material to write about, talk to people to get different viewpoints and ideas, clear your mind, think about what's really important to you, what you really believe, what you think needs to be done and said, and then write about that.

The time you spend in unencumbered thought will be saved many times over in the process of reading and writing: You'll know exactly what you want to say, your enthusiasm and creative energy will make your writing easier, faster and more entertaining and valuable to readers, and you'll find it much easier to say 'no' to wasting time reading and writing about things that are suddenly much less important."

(Something I could do is collaborate in a group blog, but somehow it doesn't feel quite right for now. Another time.)

Be unique, be valuable, be the first. Connect with an A-lister, make a good impression, and write about something that's "hot" and Paris-Hilton-ish, once in a while, because that is what pulls in readers.(Oh, Googleslut!) I need to spend more time studying what pulls them in best -- even as I promise myself to write first and last to satisfy myself only. Hmm. Conundrum.

[weight] Of Dharma and the Weight-Portal to Spirituality

2005-02-16T01:34:00.000-08:00

Following up on my previous post on the Hollywood skinny and skinny Jane Fonda's spiritual hunger propelling her physical hunger, and my comment of the Buddha being such an un-Hollywood fatty --sorry, chubbyguy-- that may indicate another Way, I look up this explanatory article from Dharmaweb, a spiritual web-portal system:

"Siddhartha's fame as a great ascetic grew and he attracted a following. But he was never fully satisfied. He didn't feel extreme self-denial had brought him closer to answering the fundamental questions of existence.

Siddhartha realized rather than producing truths, torturing the body through starvation and dehydration was actually an obstacle to spiritual advancement, just as a life of intense luxury would be. Discouraged by his former course, Siddhartha began to eat in moderation. He encouraged others to follow this path of balance, which he called the Middle Way. Many of his students and companions abandoned him, feeling he had forsaken the quest. However, as his strength and mental clarity increased, Siddhartha pursued ultimate truth with even greater intensity.

Finally, one night in May, Siddhartha sat under a Bodhi tree and vowed: 'Flesh may wither away, blood may dry up, but I shall not rise from this seat until I attain Enlightenment.' There he meditated until dawn. Though challenged by Yama, the Lord of Death, Siddhartha was able to purify his mind and lift the veils of ignorance through intense, vajra-like concentration. As the new day dawned and the last veils were lifted, the 35 year old Siddhartha became the Buddha (the 'Enlightened One').

For the remainder of his eighty years, the Buddha preached the Dharma in an effort to help other sentient beings reach enlightenment." [From http://www.dharmatemple.net]

[weight] To Mistake Physical Hunger for Hollywood Hunger, Even Spiritual Hunger

2005-02-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

ETonline.com : "From millionaire teen MARY-KATE OLSEN entering a Utah facility to battle anorexia to 'The Simple Life' star NICOLE RICHIE's estimated less than a hundred-pound tiny figure, Hollywood starlets are flaunting their featherweight frames. The upcoming issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands this Friday, examines the weight of some of Tinseltown's tiniest stars."

News to me is that Nicole Ritchie weighs but 97 pounds; that's just a pound less than famously skinny Sarah Jessica Parker! Nicole is 5'2", Sarah is 5'4". Selma Blair and Brittany Murphy, both at 5'3", come in ("estimated," it says) at 103 and 114, respectively; funny, I'd have thought it's the other way around, Brittany being the skin-and-bones ("I am proud of being Olive Oyl, so let it be!") and Selma somewhat weightier, despite her naturally small, unsiliconed chest. Also noted are Kate Bosworth at 5'7''/115 lbs ("I feel like I have a back with a crack. I'm trying to get a little more [of a butt]"), and Kelly Ripa at 108 lbs ("I look small, but I'm deceptively heavy," she told Letterman).

This piece from ETonline reports that "Jane Fonda made the shocking announcement (last Saturday) that she had suffered from bulimia for 35 years." You're kidding, right? Jane Fonda bulimic is "shocking"? She's been saying that on and off for years; not that it's not worth repeating, but I expect ET to do better than just repeat some silly press release interjection from her PR flacks. If you must squawk, then trill with something new, will ya? Shock me with something shocking, not Jane Fonda is... bulimic!

I do like her line though: "I mistook the physical hunger for spiritual hunger." Which leads me to an old train of thought about body and soul. Specifically, the correlation of soulful intensity and physical leanness.

What fascinates me is that spiritul fulfillment almost requires this lessening of earthly weight in favor of an immaterial body, a spectral emanation --if you will-- that minimizes the significance of actual human form. What Lewis Mumford calls "the vital transcendental soul belonging to the spiritual realm" seems to assert, even demands, the reduction of physical human substance, as if it is a zero-sum game where the more spiritual thou art, the less poundage thou own. No surprise to me then that most religious messiahs are very skinny dudes.

Most: the big exception being Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as the Buddha. Can't explain that one. Ah well. The paradox of life. (But He'll never make it in Hollywood! Ooh such sacrilege will cost me in the afterlife.)

[media] The Name of the Drudge is Not the Times, and Not a Riff(raff) Like Chris Rock

2005-02-14T15:35:00.000-08:00

Drudge Blog.com � About Last Night: A Blog By Any Other Name: "Rhyme him, slime him, warn him out of town while he still has his life, just don't lump him together with Wonkette. One of Matt's charming paradoxes is that he thrives on public castigation, but nothing pushes his buttons quicker than being reduced to a malapropism like the b-word. ...
But today's edition of the New York Times has moved him to defend the bloggers in a somewhat rare moment of online alt-journalism solidarity. ...
Long a word that he’s loved to hate, claiming it sounds too much like “booger", he seems to have made peace with the “bloggers”...

The real problem with describing Drudge Report as a weblog is not in its supposed stigma, but that it’s a misnomer. If we think of it literally, then we could call a weblog a linear series of entries, often with links within a website’s graphic borders. Going further, we might agree that the central feature of a “blog” is the series of installments of “copy” – the blogger’s original Web copy as opposed to headlines or linked material. So what is the difference between a news blog and the Drudge Report? ...
Although it’s not made up of a collection of pages, it is set up like a comprehensive news site. It does not center around or focus on a daily, linear “installment” of news. Rather, its feature is the collection of headlines itself. Links are an amalgamation of stories, news columns, and a few strays like Drudge Report Archives. Matt’s original news stories are linked both by his own name and by the headlines to the stories themselves. ...
On a news blog, the author’s installment is the feature and the links are secondary. On an independent news site like Drudge, the link features are the foci and the individual news stories, even his own, are secondary.

Today’s Drudge Report headline - and last night’s colorful riff on Chris Rock - is even more intriguing with a little background info on Matt’s past tangle with him."

[AA] Can Chris Rock Say, "I See White Women?"

2005-02-14T14:56:00.000-08:00

Althouse (from Madison, Wisconsin): "Oscar shows are so boring (in part) because the Academy takes itself too damn seriously. Of course, if Rock says the sort of thing that we at home want to hear expressed, because it punctures the pompous self-regard of the very vain people in live audience, Rock might have a tough time making it through the night.

As for 'Awards for art are f---ing idiotic' -- that's a pretty routine thing for the actors themselves to say. It shows appreciation for art -- as opposed to awards -- and is actually fundamentally respectful toward the very thing the awards are meant to recognize."
------------------
EDIT. Quote is from a white female, the real prime audience for the Oscars I'd say.

[TV] Grammys Worst Ratings in 8 Years, May Need "Extreme Makeover"

2005-02-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

The kudocast hits the skids, reportsVariety.com - ABC heavies hit Grammys: "The 47th annual Grammy Awards on CBS, airing opposite original episodes of ABC's hot series 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,' posted their smallest ratings in eight years but still won the night for the Eye.

According to preliminary nationals from Nielsen, the primetime portion of the Grammys (8-11 p.m.) averaged an 8.2 rating/19 share in adults 18-49 and 19.2 million viewers overall, peaking in the 10 o'clock half-hour with an 8.7/20 in the demo.

While the Grammys kudocast delivered its lowest 18-49 rating since 1997 and was down more than 25% year-to-year, the ABC hits were affected too, finishing on the lower end of their ratings range for original segs."

[AA] Chris Rock: Only Gays Watch Oscars (Hey, Fashion Show)

2005-02-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

Choice of Chris Rock as host of this month's awards show may not be so smart, so says the Drudge Report Sunday. "Concern deepened after Rock claimed only gays watch the Oscars!
'I never watched the Oscars. Come on, it's a fashion show,' Rock recently declared.
'What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one!'
Rock added: 'Awards for art are f---ing idiotic.' "

[media] Blogmatics of Lynch Mobs, or Chud Upon Chummy Club? "Poor Eason" or Caught Weasel?

2005-02-14T14:30:00.000-08:00

Comments in Centerfield: Lynch Mobs?: "There is no such thing as off the record anymore. I myself respect requests to go off the record, but I wouldn't assume my own request to go off the record would be honored.
A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't want what you say to be featured on a blog of the opposite political persuasion, don't say it at all."

--"I worked for a few days on Easongate.com. These were not blood thristy people. WE just believed if you are going to make a statement at an international forum that US troops are targeting and killing journalists intentionally you should be able to back it up if not then keep your trap shut. A very high ranking official at CNN should know better than to open his mouth without proof. He had a habit of doing this. WE do what the MSM shouldn't need us to do."

--"Jordan's backpedaling and semantics might have had some credibility had he not made similar comments several times previously over the last two years, been challenged on them, and then failed to provide any subtantiation whatsoever.
So if you're looking to twitch the needle on my pity meter for Eason Jordan, it's totally wasted effort. He knew what he was saying. He knew how it would be interpreted. He had his "definition of is" excuse prepared. This time it didn't fly."

--"This guy brought this chud upon himself. The press has for some time been a chummy club that holds those it pursues to much higher standards than those to which it holds itself in practice.
There definitely IS something to be said for not letting this go so far that anyone who says something iffy gets blacklisted. But the thing to be said is NOT "poor Eason."
If he had said it in a bar with some buddies, that would be one thing. But floating unsubstantiated conspiracy theories at a professional forum is NOT something journalists should feel free to do."

[media] CNN Resigns to Growing Influence of Blogs, MSM Loses Careerman to "Hacking Wolves"

2005-02-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

"With the resignation Friday of a top news executive from CNN, bloggers have laid claim to a prominent media career for the second time in five months, the New York Times reports today ("Resignation at CNN Shows the Growing Influence of Blogs").

In September, conservative bloggers exposed flaws in a report by Dan Rather; he subsequently announced that on March 9 he would step down as anchor of the 'CBS Evening News.' On Friday, after nearly two weeks of intensifying pressure on the Internet, Eason Jordan, the chief news executive at CNN, abruptly resigned after being besieged by the online community. Morever, last week liberal bloggers forced a sketchily credentialed White House reporter to quit his post. ...

Mr. Jordan, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, apparently said, according to various witnesses, that he believed the United States military had aimed at journalists and killed 12 of them. There is some uncertainty over his precise language and the forum, which videotaped the conference, has not released the tape. When he quit Friday night, Mr. Jordan said in a statement that, 'I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists.' ...

Nonetheless, within days of his purported statement, many blog sites were swamped with outraged assertions that he was slandering American troops. ...

At buzzmachine.com,(Jeff)Jarvis said bloggers should keep their real target in mind. "I wish our goal were not taking off heads but digging up truth," he cautioned. ...

Some on line were simply trying to make sense of what happened. "Have we entered an era where our lives can be destroyed by a pack of wolves hacking at their keyboards with no oversight, no editors, and no accountability?" asked a blogger named Mark Coffey, 36, who says he works as an analyst in Austin, Tex. "Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where the MSM has become irrelevant," he asked, using blogger shorthand for mainstream media.

His own conclusion is that the mainstream media "is being held to account as never before by the strong force of individual citizens who won't settle for sloppy research and inflammatory comments without foundation, particularly from those with a wide national reach, such as Rather and Eason."

Stay tuned, folks; this story is only getting better. Or should I say, bigger. In the meantime, it behooves us in this increasingly fabled blogophere --whether we are left, or right, or independent, overseen by none but our own consciences, editing and self-correcting as we merrily post along -- not to celebrate quite so loudly.

Better to sit back now. Take deep breaths. Re-assess.

And remember: with Power comes Responsibility. To invent our future, we must now have to reinvent our ideals.

Of course, moral decency does not ensure journalistic success, or even emotional stability. It's not supposed to. That's another truth we'll be discovering -- for many, the hard way-- along the way. Alas, alas.

[Charles] Middle-aged, Boring, But Finally Happy

2005-02-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

So the news is out. Charles and Camilla, moral at last. I was grinning reading the following comments reported by Times Online - Britain:

"'Charles and Camilla don't sell magazines anymore. This is not Brad and Jennifer. They are middle-aged and boring-looking.' - Judy Wade, royal correspondent for Hello! magazine.

'You can't fix a scandal by marrying your mistress.' - Kristel Badenhorft, 22, a student from South Africa outside Buckingham Palace.

'These arrangements have my strong support and are consistent with Church of England guidelines concerning remarriage which the Prince of Wales fully accepts as a committed Anglican and as prospective Supreme Governor of the Church of England.' - Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

'It is just a rather crafty way of making it sound different - everyone who marries (a prince or princess) is their consort. There is no more difference in this name than being referred to as 'Mrs Jones', or 'Mrs Jones, the much beloved wife.' - Harold Brooks-Baker of Burke's Peerage on the title HRH Princess Consort.

'There's a danger she could look like the mother of the bride. A discreet set of posies would also help set her apart so she doesn't look like a guest. She's not a bad looking woman. When she smiles her face lights up. She could look incredibly elegant in a full length off white dress.' - Liz Savage, editor of Brides magazine.

'They are clearly very much in love. It must be the end of a series of nightmare years for Camilla, every day reading in the papers about being the mistress this and that. They are entitled to have their own happiness the same as everyone else.' - Winston Churchill, the grandson of Britain's wartime prime minister and a friend of the couple."

I am with you, Winston Churchill. Why are so many people getting so down on this impending wedding, now that it's finally official? Wouldn't we prefer a happy prince to a sad and lonely prince? Well, not the absolutists, but we don't care about that.

We also don't care that it'll probably be carried off cheaply, inexpensively ("vot? half a million pounds? do we ruu-ly need quite so *many* flowers?); or that it'll be understated, certainly, nowhere as grandiose (or gaudy! she sniffs) as Diana's nuptials; not even that it may well play without bridemaids.

But so what? It's time, they're happy,and that's all it matters. "A good cow is a happy cow, and happy cows.." -- oh, Camilla do love those happy cows! I'm just saying!

The dodgy Brit interval that determines the coincidence gate has, as it turned out, been highly adjustable, but finally it synths up for these middle-aged, boringly illicit lovebirds. He seems like a nice but stodgy dude, while she just seems.. um, dude-ish --teehee-- and yes, both of them have been serially guilty of adultery (as have their spouses) spawning a throng of tabloid headlines.

But I do love a good celebration, and when the time comes, may we just --hmm, let it go-- just get carried along and be very pleased to raise a glass and a cheer for the joyful conjunction. "Sound the horns! Bring the hounds! That's right, loveys, and --ooh-- feel up the ol' treasure chest!" Tee-hee, and congratulations to Charles and Camilla.

[Charles] The Bitter Feud of 'Three in A Marriage'

2005-02-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

Scotsman.com News : "When Diana, the late Princess of Wales, was famously said to have referred to Camilla Parker Bowles as "The Rottweiler", it uncovered years of animosity.
Referring to her marriage and Camilla, she said: “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”"

[prediction] "Royal" Racehorse Will Win After Prince Charles' Wedding, By a Fluke

2005-02-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

Synchronism becomes headlines: that's my prediction. Anything named "Royal" will become lucky when Charles and Camilla finally get hitched. It couldn't be helped. The scribes will throw around terms like "out of the clear blue sky," "by a fluke," and oh, "as luck would have it..." Of course luck will have it. I'm not being mordant, I simply subscribe to the parallelism of power and fate and peradventure, cosmic harmony stipulated by Ch-- casualty and moira and the ol' kismet. That's all. And if the racehorse has "Royal" in its name, I'm wagering on it to win, that's all. Providence speaks.
. . . A U G U S T . . . A R R I V E D . . . P R E D I C T S . . .

" Bookmakers are expecting a host of coincidence bets on John Smith's Grand National day which takes place on April 9 - just 24 hours after the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Ladbrokes are quoting a special price of 10-1 that a horse with Royal in its name wins the Aintree spectacular.
'There have been three 'royal' winners in the past, most recently Royal Athlete in 1995, and with Clan Royal heading the market the nation could be set for a princely pay-out,' said Balthazar Fabricius of Ladbrokes.
William Hill, who have Clan Royal as their 11-1 favourite for the big race, offer 20-1 that Prince Charles gives Parker-Bowles a racehorse as a wedding gift."

[law] How Appealing to Bite Cha Back, or, Pledge Thy Allegiance to Charlton Heston

2005-02-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

AP Wire | 02/09/2005 | Appeals court sued over seal: "SAN FRANCISCO - The federal appeals court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion is being sued for allegedly displaying the Ten Commandments on its seal and courthouses.

The case was brought by Pleasanton attorney Ryan Donlon, who was admitted to practice before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June. In his lawsuit against the San Francisco-based court, he said the certificate admitting him contains the court's seal which unlawfully contains what he believes is a tablet object that "represents the Judeo-Christian Decalogue commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments."

Cathy Catterson, the court's clerk, said the seal highlights a woman, known as "the Majesty of the Law" who is reading a large book. At her feet is a tablet with 10 unreadable lines on it, what Donlon believes is the Ten Commandments.

Catterson said the tablet has "the same shape" of the Ten Commandments but "you can't read the text of it."

The case is Donlon v. United States, 05-0536.

[law] So Devilish This Sticky Issue

2005-02-10T06:01:00.001-08:00

Clovis News Journal: "Stickers on a Clovis man's car portray cartoon images of bare-breasted female devils in sexually compromising positions. And the images have caught the attention of Clovis police.

Officials have charged 31-year-old Dean Young, the owner of a yellow Ford Focus displaying the images, with distribution of sexually oriented materials to minors. The charge is a misdemeanor carrying a maximum punishment of 364 days in jail and $1,000 fine. Young is scheduled to appear in magistrate court on the charges in the next few weeks.

Young in turn has notified the American Civil Liberties Union, which is considering representing Young; an ACLU spokesman said Young's First Amendment rights may have been violated. "

[int'l pol.] So Okay, No Touch Iraq, But Do Touch Saudi? Sticky Wickets!

2005-02-10T05:21:00.000-08:00

From Maureen Dowd's column in today's NYT: "In our ally Saudi Arabia's first nationwide elections for municipal councils today, women have been banned from voting or running.

The Saudis, who obviously picked up a few tips from the Bushies about how to suppress the vote, claimed that they didn't have enough voting booths for women.

But the Saudi columnist Badriyah al-Bisher was quoted by The A.P. as saying that the elections were reminiscent of the time the first President George Bush did not step in when Saudi women made a spirited effort to drive, after female American soldiers arrived for Desert Shield. The women drivers were slapped down, insulted and ostracized for the next decade.

'We've been dumped in the back seat again,' she said, 'and only a man is allowed to drive us.' "

So let's get our story straight, Ms. Dowd: we shouldn't touch the Iraqis, but should the Saudis? Some consistency, please. (I know, sticky problem.)

[anecdote] Faultlessly Clear "Dream," in Altered State

2005-02-10T05:04:00.000-08:00

I saw this item from The Corner on National Review Online picked up by gawker.com with its typically snarky note, and originally posted it here with my own snark, something like "[drugs] A Perfectly Cautionary Tale to 'Just Say No,'" but realized on second thought: No, that's the wrong take for me; I need to avoid the snark. Hence my revised gentler, kinder headline above. This anecdote-confession --so droll, so faultlessly clear-- is by National Review columnist John Derbyshire, writing on Don & Phil Everly (and what else was beautiful besides their "Cathy's Clown"):

"The Everly Brothers, in fact, though I think superbly gifted, have an uncomfortable place in my consciousness. Way back in my wasted youth I did, like all the rest of you, a lot of seriously foolish things. One thing I did was mess around with... substances. Well, this included an acid phase. One day I took far too much of the stuff and went into a very peculiar state. One feature of it was that it had a **sound track**; and the main thing I remember about the sound track was Don & Phil singing 'Dream.' The creepy thing was the ABSOLUTELY PERFECT quality of the recording (all this inside my head, of course). It was as faultlessly clear -- every word, every note -- as if they were there in the room with me. And it was on a loop, over and over.

I have never felt the same about the Everlies since. Why that particular song came to me in that particular state, I have no idea." (Posted at 11:24 AM, Wed 2/9/5)

[apology] How to Wait Out My Inner Lara

2005-02-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

My apologies for not making a single bloody post this week. I've been under the weather of late, and feeling sleepy, short-lived, and loonier than a Lara Flynn Boyle on a translatlantic flight, if that's even possible. Gladdened only by these weird search-engine queries that land the random visitor here ("Johnny Carson racist clips"? "cate blanchett nipple slips"? who wrote mcdonald's theme ba da ba ba ba? At least there's waht are two important roles of plankton -- that'll get you SpongeBob SquarePants' spongy asexuality, heehee. And documentary feature winner prediction 77th academy awards --sorry I couldn't be more helpful; I'll try to see them when available here.) Hopefully I'll be posting again by the end of this Rooster Week (Hey, Chinese New Year 4703!), and that patient readers will return. Thank you.

August Arrived shall be back by the end of week. Thank you for your patience.

[forecast] How to Predict the Superbowl Outcome, How Hard to Laugh at Those Po' Eagles

2005-02-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

Now, the Super Bowl. Here are three facts that favor the Patriots (from Hei Lun, Begging to Differ):

Super Bowls tend to be high-scoring.
Super Bowls tend to be blowouts. The average margin of victory is 15.9 points. In Super Bowls with two weeks between the game and the championship games, as is the case this year, the margin of victory is 16.8 points. Ten of the 31 Supers Bowls played with two weeks' rest have resulted in a margin of victory of 20 points or more.
The favorites win an overwhelming percentage of the Super Bowls. Looking though the old scores, I counted three upsets in 38 years: Jets over the Colts in 1969, Broncos over the Packers in 1998, and the Patriots over the Rams in 2002. If you count the Giants' win over the Bills in 1991, then that makes four upsets, but in retrospect that Giants team have gained more respect while the Bills team has been marred by their subsequent Super Bowl failures.

Conclusion: favorites tend to win and win big in the Super Bowl."

And My Prediction: New England Patriots 35, Philadelphia Eagles 17. How hard should we laugh at those po' Eagles? Pretty hard. They lucked out in a soft season. But their luck's about to run out...

[phil] How to Annoy Your Favorite Ayn Rand Groupie

2005-02-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

Via Crooked Timber: "If you want to annoy your favorite Ayn Rand groupie,
direct him or her to Scott McLemee's speculations, about where Rand got her ideas (Scott doesn't do permalinks - so if this link decays rapidly, don't blame me). "

Reader feedback:
-- The Cult of Ayn Rand, the reading of which I found to be a savage pleasure (having disavowed my teenage love for her quite some time back), suggests that her motifs came primarily from American business fiction of the 1920’s. Apparently this genre, with businessman as hero, was quite popular back then. It appears to have fallen out of favor after 1929.

-- Alan Greenspan was once a Randian. And now he’s in charge of the Fed.
-- Yeah. Robert Reich is quite funny about that (Greenspan) in Locked in the Cabinet.
-- I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, having once been a Randroid myself. I think the reason I fell for the egoist kool-aid is that Rand identified what seemed to me to be a particularly pernicious and hard-to-fight style of civic corruption: the con man with a line of appealing bullcrap and friends in high places. She then cooks the books to make the problem seem to be the contents of the bullcrap, rather than the favors from the powerful.
I can’t prove the above, but I offer as supporting evidence the notion that there has seldom been a truer real-world example of a Rand bad guy than George W. Bush. And so many “objectivists” revere him.
-- Best restroom graffiti I ever saw in college was “Ayn Rand is L. Ron Hubbard in Drag.”

-- Give in to the dark side. You put yourselves before others every day, you might as well make it a virtue and live the good life. Else stop being so hypocritical and start donating most of your cash to the poor oppressed you wish someone else would help.
Heh, and when anyone talks about confiscatory tax levels I’m always reminded of what happened when Ben and Jerry's tried to limit the salary of their CEO to $500,000.

[strategy] How to Win the Superbowl

2005-02-05T02:55:00.000-08:00

"We know the Pats are a beautifully coached team when Belichick has time to think. But are they still the best team in the NFL when Belichick has no time to think, and the players have to rely on their instincts?

The point of thin-slicing -- the art of making accurate predictions from very "thin-slices" of experience, is that it's something that only experts can do. I talk about a guy, in "Blink," who can listen to a couple have a random conversation with each other for 15 minutes and -- on the basis of that "thin-slice" -- predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will be together or divorce seven years down the road.

But that's an expert, someone who has spent his life studying marriage. I can't do that. So my thin-slice of the Pats-Eagles matchup won't be useful. I learn most of what I know about sports form ESPN.com! Nor am I, then, particularly interested in the opinions of the general sports fan either.

But we come up with a half-dozen people in football whose opinion we really respect: How does Bill Walsh see this matchup? Or Joe Gibbs? Or Tony Dungy? Or Bill Cowher? (Who, after all, played them both). If Cowher said that he worried more about playing the Eagles than the Pats, I'd take the Eagles and the six or seven points, thank you very much. And if Bill Simmons took the Eagles, I'd feel even better about my pick. (Like that's ever going to happen.)" <Interview: Malcolm Gladwell>

[strategy] How to Train for the Superbowl

2005-02-05T02:41:00.000-08:00

"Police officers will tell you that you must practice dialing 911 at least once a week. Because if you don't, when a burglar is actually in the next room, believe it or not you won't be able to dial 911: you'll forget the number, or you'll have lost so many motor skills under the stress of the moment that your fingers won't be able to pick out the buttons on the phone.

I'd run quarterbacks through a live-fire exercise at Quantico. I'd have them spend the offseason working with a trauma team in South Central L.A.

It is only through repeated exposures to genuine stress that our body learns how to function effectively under that kind of pressure. I think it's time we realize that a quarterback needs the same kind of exhaustive preparation for combat that we give bodyguards and soldiers.

The worst thing about the Super Bowl is the two-week layoff. I think teams get over-coached in the second week. In "Blink," I talk about how we can turn ER doctors from terrible decision-makers in diagnosing chest pain into great decision-makers simply by limiting the amount of information they are given about a patient. Load them down with every conceivable piece of data, and they have real difficulty distinguishing heartburn from a heart attack.

Limit them to three or four crucial pieces of data, though, and they do a great job. How can that not be true of football players as well? It's quite possible right now that Tom Brady or Donovan McNabb simply know too much about each other. " <Interview: Malcolm Gladwell>

[humor] Fifty Ways You Know You're an A**hole

2005-02-03T17:51:00.000-08:00

"It's official, you're an a**hole if:..."

(John Mayer, don't click on this! Move on to the Eiffel Tower! Piece below! To your bottom! 'Tis so not fair, mon cherie... And nok, you're not a bottom, you're a top! You're The Top! Yoou're Gershwin, You're Tower of Pizza! Totally Domino's!... With pepperoni cheeks and garlic thighs! And belly button like.. feta cheese!... and rosemary, and thyme!)

(Call Paul Simon. Work on a new song, "Fifty Ways to Sing a Sequel!" Simon Cowell could do chorus! He'll back up! He's free. He's not on The List! Ain't no A-hole, he, but just 'other bloke trying to make rent on his six-million-dollar mansion!)

[copyright] Eiffel Tower Repossessed, Mon Cherie, Via Le Light... Ting!

2005-02-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Fast Company Now: "You need look no further than Mickey Mouse in the US, or Elvis in the UK, to understand how copyright, for better or worst (sic), affects the marketplace. But while Disney resorted to legal means to get more life out (of) Mickey, those that oversee the Eiffel Tower came up with something far more clever.

The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that."

----------------------
It isn't just the Eiffel Tower, a reader comments that http://www.stockindustry.org/resources/specialreleases.html has a long list of things you can't take pictures of, including the Hollywood Sign, and a tree called "the lone cypress" in Pebble Beach, CA.

According to http://www.midrealism.paxtonfineart.com/Pages/Articlecoastweekly.html, it might actually be legal to take pictures of the lone cypress but no one has truly challenge the company that owns its copyright.

And what happens when blind people start getting electronic eyes (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision.html) which would record images? Would they be compelled to turn off their peeps? *Click!* Conundrum!
------------

I must wonder also how an EuroDisney replica of say, the Golden Gate Bridge, would apply to this curious Gallic ruling. How 'bout those Vegas miniatures of 'round-the-world landmarks?

And what about paintings and billboards on the side of buildings? To layer it even more, what if I take a photograph of a painting on the side of a Gallic landmark, and sell it to a London tabloid? Could I start a World War III? Oh my. We'd need a new Berne Convention for the Copyrights, if not a Geneva for the War.

And what if the New York Police Department should decide it will follow suit and copyright its uniform blues and detective accoutrements? Could there then be imposed restrictions or even bans on shooting photos of Sipowitz beating up some scuzzy suspect, because it would constitute copyright infringement of the NYPD?

But what if Sipowitz could only speak second-rate French? "Oui, mon cherry, you're undar ar-rash!" Would it still hold up in court? Would Law & Order be secure in its berth? Or will CSI:NY take over, no buzz and all? What would Judge Amy sayth?

---------------------------- ------ -------------------------
UPDATE via post above: La Juste Amy is indisposed, subbing at Tufts and prepping for sweeps.

Le Sipowitss zays, "Spread 'em, John Mayer, you Heffear Zang A-hole you!... Um, can I say A hole, Man Amour? That ain't no Janet-Jackson-sacrilege to your Messieur Gonzalez now, would it huh? FCC, right? FTC?... JOA? DOJ? One of those C's or J's!... Welll, Excuze-za-mwharr! "

[blog] Really Not Worth Blogging. Really

2005-02-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

"So glad I don't have the time to blog about EVERYthing. If I blogged about every alarm, then a few weeks ago I'd have been raving about the NYC subway fire that knocked out an entire local line and struck an express line down to one-third its normal capacity, and how it was going to take 3-5 years to restore it, and the impact it was going to have not just on New Yorkers but on New Jersey commuters who come in on a bus over the George Washington Bridge. But I didn't, I was too busy. But then a few days later when the original timeline was brought back to a matter of months, I said, you know, I should write about how quickly things change and how sometimes it makes sense to hold your opinion back. But I didn't, I was too busy. And so now, today, that local line that was supposed to take years, then months, is actually working as of today.

The moral of the story remains: don't blog everything. " [via tom tomorrow.]

Which elicits this response from reader ishbabiddle:

"I've just had a commenter pull the old "why didn't you blog about X?" routine -- for which I updated my FAQ. Feel free to copy this language:

This is a blog. A collection of writing and links in chronological order. It's not:

1) A news organization, with responsibility to cover every issue.
2) A comprehensive statement of anyone's political (and other) beliefs.
3) Something we spend 24 hours a day on, to the exclusion of my work, family, sanity, etc.

So, omitting to write something on any given topic cannot be taken as evidence of anything -- except as evidence, perhaps, that (my blog) is at best an unreliable place to get all of your news."

[tech] Rivals Aim to Displace IPod With Portable Music Subscriptions

2005-02-03T10:18:00.000-08:00

There's no way any of the current vendors could overtake Apple's iPod in the short term, as that lil' gadget has graduated to cultural icon status. But a couple of year down the line, who knows? When Dell gets into the market, you shouldn't count anything out. Story.

"The system works by essentially putting a timer on the tracks loaded on the player. Every time the user connects the player to the PC and the music service, the player automatically checks whether the user's subscription is still in effect. Songs stop playing if the subscription has lapsed. If the user doesn't regularly synch up the player with the service, the songs go dead as well.

Marketing will be crucial to persuading consumers accustomed to buying CDs or owning digital music tracks purchased online to switch to paying a monthly fee for music, like they might do for cable television programming."

[tactic] Reader Experience with NY Unemployment Office

2005-02-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

"My experience with NYS unemployment stipulated that you had to accept any job that you were qualified for that paid a certain percent of what you were making before and was within X miles of your house. If (an employer's) interested, he could drag the papers out of the file. It sounded very restrictive.

However, in reality, unemployment was so understaffed during the early Bush administration that they didn't have time to check up on you and see if you were really applying for all these jobs or not. Plus, you can easily fake your way out of coercion. They want you to interview for something you hate? Blow the interview. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the system is coercive.

There are some people who abuse unemployment. Not that I think (the system) does a good job of really catching the pros at this. But it does frustrate the rest of us. "

[punctuation] Same Letter, Changed Punctuation, Completely Opposite Meaning!

2005-02-02T22:52:00.000-08:00

An excellent example from the the little book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, via Begging to Differ. I love it. Zero-Tolerance Approach to Love Grammar!

Dear Jack,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy -- will you let me be yours?

Jill

Dear Jack,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours,
Jill

UPDATE: I added color boxes to the two letters (ain't they be-uutiful!) & looked up the title.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves is not a grammar book, insists author Lynne Truss at her every media appearance; like a self-help volume, it "gives you permission to love punctuation". And it became a runaway bestseller. See, miracles do happen.

[image] Purple Fingers for Iraq, Orange Scarfs (or Ties) for the Ukraine

2005-02-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

"Serious question: would you be annoyed if the Republicans had all worn orange ties after the Ukrainian election? If not, is it because that was not an issue of partisan contention, whereas Iraq was?
---
If the Republicans want to wear rose boutonnieres in their velvet suits with orange scarves and purple fingers, that's fine—but the gesture would stink if they were scheduling Silly Day without telling the Democrats. Yes, Orange Scarf Day would stink less than Purple Finger Day because the Ukrainian election was a less contentious affair. But because Iraq is more contentious—put another way, more important to Americans—there's all the more reason to have Purple Finger Day (even if aesthetic elitists like me think it's stupid). And all the more benefit if you can be solely responsible for PFD and make the other guys seem like they're anti-PFD.

The fact is, this stuff probably goes on all the time. Silly hat days are part of the job description for any congressman, and Dems and GOPs do wear different hats—I'm not trying to make a hard and fast rule. But the Iraq election is important enough that it ought to have occurred to the GOP to extend the invitation to the Dems. It's such a small gesture but important issue, why not?"

----------------
I think we should have both purple fingers and orange scarfs (or ties). Gestures are not meaningless; they set the stage for real, substantive changes. Never mind the silly hats, think long-term reform. And yes, why not make it bi-partisan?

[graphics] So What it's a Cartoon?

2005-02-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

Iconize Me! Just loved looking at this.

[blog] Great Blog, Little Blog

2005-02-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

UK Commentators - Laban Tall's Blog: "In the approximate words of de Morgan and Jonathan Swift :

Great blogs have little blogs upon their backs to bite �em,
And little blogs have lesser blogs, and so ad infinitum.
And the great blogs themselves, in turn, have greater blogs to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

Swift also noted a motto which would suit one blogger :

Libertas et natale solum:

Fine words! I wonder where you stole �em.
(Verses occasioned by Whitshed�s Motto on his Coach. Translates roughly as Liberty And Homeland.)

UPDATE - Kernon Gibes did this in September 2003.

Great blogs have little blogs that seek a link for free,
And little blogs have lesser blogs, their end obscurity.
And the great blogs themselves, in turn, seek greater blogs for profit;
While these again seek greater still, to end at Instapundit."

[media] Insufficient Skepticism

2005-02-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

Jack Of Clubs: "We have learned recently that we shouldn't trust the media to get the story straight. It is useful to note that this rule applies even if the story seems to vindicate our own suspicions. In fact, scepticism in circumstances where we want to believe the story is even more crucial than in cases where we feel insulted or falsely accused. People are not often fooled into believing things that they don't want to. But if a story sounds too good to be true... it probably is."

[phil] Ayn Rand Shrugged Off at 100

2005-02-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

ProfessorBainbridge.com: "Robert Fulford opined:
[Jeff] Walker classifies Objectivism as a cult, and certainly it has cultish qualities: It insists on conformity, judges members by loyalty rather than merit, shames and excommunicates dissenters, interferes in the private lives of members and claims to have an answer for everything. But it doesn't entirely fit the cult pattern: no street solicitation, no begging, no barracks or dorms, no techniques of sleep deprivation, etc. It more closely resembles an old-fashioned political movement, always splitting into smaller parts, like the Trotskyites."

[blog] Blogging Viral Freedom in the Arab World

2005-02-02T17:55:00.000-08:00

Spirit of America: "Arabic Blogging Tool - Viral Freedom
Support independent new media and free expression in Iraq and the Arab world.
We are funding the development of an Arabic blogging (Web logging) tool and, with donor support, we will host the blogs at no cost to the bloggers. This will allow blogs to be created easily. It will give voice to those working for freedom and democracy in the Arab world. And it will enable them to more easily connect with and share ideas with their peers. "

"Putting these tools into more languages extends the power of citizens everywhere to question authority, spread democracy, and find truth. This is historic." -- Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine

[media moronics] Xrlq Debunks Daily Telegraph Story

2005-02-02T15:44:00.000-08:00

Xrlq/damnum absque injuria (posted 1/31, 7:45a):
"Snopes is reserving judgment, but I’m not. This story is officially bunk, with pieces of it cribbed from another story about an unemployed woman in Berlin who was inadvertently referred to a “bartending” job at a facility which, unbeknownst to the agency, was in fact a bordello. Unlike Clare Chapman and her rag of a newspaper, the unemployment agency has already apologized for their error. Kudos to Amptoons for swatting this down early as well.

All further blogger speculation on this subject should end immediately, and if the Daily Telegraph wants to retain a shred of credibility, (it should end) Clare Chapman’s career and that of her editor. Such “fake but inaccurate” sensationalism has no more of a legitimate place in the British media than Dan Rather and Mary Mapes have in ours. I’ve refiled this entry under Media Lameness, Morons and Urban Legends."
---------------------------
damnum absque injuria � Idiot Journalist of the Year (posted 2/1, 2:29p):
"The year is only a month old, but it’s not too early to start taking nominations. So far, at least ~~two~~ three journalistic numbskulls are definitely in the running.

The first is Sarah Boxer of the New York Times, whose baseless speculations about Ali Fadhil and his brothers at Iraq the Model put all of them in danger.

The second is Clare Chapman of the Daily Telegraph, who used bits and pieces from a story in a German tabloid to essentially make up a story about German unemployment agencies supposedly coercing unemployed women into becoming prostitutes.

The third is Robert H. Reid of the Ass. Press, who proudly broke today’s story about the capture of G.I. Joe by Iraqi ~~militants insurgents terrorists~~ idiots."
----------------------------------
EDIT. Fixed typo "newspaper," italicized titles, html'd [strikeout] words.

[correction] Daily Torygraph Story of German Fraulein Denied Benefits for Refusing Brothel Position is Simply False

2005-02-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I ran a news story originating from the Daily Telegraph about a German fraulein who lost her unemployment benefits because she refused a job offer from a brothel. Well, that story appears to be false!

Through Ginny's-mother-in-law in Chicago Boyz, I get the following correction:

"The article in the Daily Telegraph seems to have been cobbled together from several German sources.

The information about the waitress who was told to interview for a job that turned out to be at a brothel was taken from an article on "jungle-world.com," which calls itself a "leftist weekly." That article was posted July 30, 2003 (!!).

The 25-year-old waitress was told to contact the company "Reni Massage." The woman found the company's website and figured out that it was a brothel and decided to not get in touch. According to the Berlin employment center, the job posting had been sent to the woman by mistake. The job offer had been for bar staff (not for "sexual services," as the Telegraph article claims) and it hadn't been obvious from the information that the employment center had received that the company was a brothel.

The second part of the Daily Telegraph article contains information also found in an article from the leftist alternative Berlin daily "tageszeitung," filed on December 18, 2004. Both articles quote a Hamburg lawyer called Mechthild Garweg (note that the Telegraph misspells her first name). In the "tageszeitung" article, Ms. Garweg notes that there is nothing in the law regulating unemployment benefits that would prevent an employment center to force a woman to work as a prostitute if she wants to keep her benefits. It is clear from the article that this is merely a theoretical possibility. German employment centers have meanwhile asserted that they would not be passing on job offers for prostitution."

[speech] Dear Mr. Bush: Keep it Simple, Direct, & Understated for Your SOTU Address Tonight

2005-02-02T12:37:00.000-08:00

NYT Op-Ed: Building a Better State of the Union Address: "My favorite edit from last year's State of the Union involved Ashley Pearson, a 10-year-old girl in Rhode Island who had written a lovely letter to the president asking that he please 'tell me what I can do to save our country.' This simple note called for a simple and gracious response, and one was dictated by the president himself, telling Ashley to be good to her mom and dad, and to be sure to thank any soldiers she might meet.

This was not enough for one editor, whose redline copy of the speech exhorted the girl to write to Afghan children, do volunteer work, join the Peace Corps, become a teacher. In all we counted eight great tasks - a life-plan of unending service for poor little Ashley."

[follow-up] Weimarer Republik News - German unemployment hits highest level for 70 years

2005-02-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

Y! link: "The last time the jobless total was above five million in Germany was in the 1930s, when the record stood at 6.128 million in February 1932, even if the situation in Germany before World War II is not really comparable to post-war Germany. "

[follow-up] Post-Weimar Unemployment Passes 5 Million Mark

2005-02-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! link: "The unadjusted jobless rate in Germany rose to 12.1 percent, with 5.037 million people out of work in the nation of 82 million, as a new benefit system swelled the ranks of the registered jobless, the government's Federal Labor Agency said. The total rose by 573,000 from December. "

And Heisenberg still senile. Yet no Nazi.

[clip] Super Rollerblade Jump!

2005-02-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

Clip here

[net] While Googling "A Similar Fate"

2005-02-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

... I got this fromPersonality Tests and Tools: "Jung tests are similar in underlying theory to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator �" Fun site, BTW.

[net] Windoesn't

2005-02-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

The Daily Grind: Windoesn't: "So far as I can tell, the main (only) route in for malware is via Internet Explorer, which I only use for Windows Update. And yes, I have had situations where checking Windows Update and then immediately running Ad-Aware has revealed the presence of exploits, which strikes me as damned clever but not exactly admirable. What I haven't yet tried is the (beta) of Microsoft's own malware-removal tool, which from the reviews is an excellent piece of software. However, from what I can gather, when it goes final they're going to - get this - charge for it. That is, quite frankly, unbelievable."

[academic] Germane Greer Prick! Hold the Front Page!

2005-02-02T10:33:00.000-08:00

The Daily Grind link: "She's occasionally funny and very occasionally incisive. She probably wrote some significant stuff some time ago. But enough, already."

[hx] So Why Did the Weimar Republic Collapsed? Hindenburg Senile, Not Nazi

2005-02-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Weimar Republic - Wikipedia link Following up on my Weimar train-of-thought this morning, I looked up its entry in the Wikipedia. (Weimar in the Wiki, hehe... I wish Google would index Jared Diamond's Collapse; I'd be willing to pay for the privilege -- you read that, Publishing Row?) Anyway, beyond the problems of economic trouble and the 1919 constitution, consider the personal element. The personalistics, if you will. Wikipedia:

"Another focus seems to be Paul von Hindenburg, who became Reichspr�sident in 1925. He certainly was a representative of the older, authoritarian 1871 Empire and it is hard to label him a democrat in support of the 1919 Republic. It is also known that at least during the later years, being well over 80 years old, he was senile.

He was, however, no Nazi. One could wonder if a different President with solid democratic beliefs would have allowed Parliament to be so extensively circumvented with the use of Article 48 decrees; more specifically, would a different President have signed the Reichstag Fire Decree?

It has also been speculated why Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reichskanzler in the first place on January 30, 1933; after all, Hindenburg waited one and a half days before making that decision. Some claim that Nazism would have lost much public support if Hitler had not become Chancellor."

[tech] Unintended Outcomes

2005-02-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

sociable thinking: Unintended Outcomes: I was looking up something to follow up on my previous post on the unintended consequence of the new German unemployment law, but a comment spam re-directed me onto Sociable Thinking. We gotta fix that comment spam problem soon, or this whole blog interaction process is gonna ossify.

Anyway, this following entry is fascinating and merits reprinting. You can't really comment in the original blog, however; it's totally trashed by the spam. Alas. Maybe the thread could pick up from here? (Or until my comment section suffers a similar fate? Alas, indeed).

"Maybe it just reflects the trend in American society in general for a split to develop between the coastals and non-coastals, but it strikes me that there is an implicit bias in developing new gadgets, which are always conceived of in terms of their use in cities and/or by the young.

Any designed thing that targets any other population is for a 'niche market.' This is because our environments have such a profound impact on how we conceptualize objects and problems. Using the trucker example, since my concept of a road (narrow, busy, etc.) is different from that of a long-distance trucker (long, monotonous, etc.), I cannot help but think of the problems drivers face in a different way. The other day, before reading this article, I was discussing technologies to help drivers, and parking and traffic just came to mind so much more easily than, say, boredom or helping disabled vehicles.

So unintended consequences are good. They get me thinking about how my conceptions of everyday things differ from the conceptions of others, and also how technology can address their problems, not just mine.
Posted by Scott Golder at December 8, 2003 12:53 PM

Comment
One reason designers-- or probably more accurately, marketing people-- divide the world into 'the young and urban' and 'a million other niches' is that a lot of them are young and urban; the another is that strategic marketing tells them to. Read Regis McKenna, Geoffrey Moore, Theodore Levitt, et al, and you learn that this is how you have to introduce new technologies: you've got to find the beach-head of early adopters to guarantee your success, THEN you diversity.

This argument originally was presented as a way to counter the habit of trying to reach a broad mass market quickly, and to focus attention on what different groups (early adopters, mainstreams, laggards, etc.) want in technology: some want it to be transformative or disruptive, others to be an incremental improvement, an upgrade. (The trick is to sell the same technology to all these groups.) But after 20+ years, it's starting to ossify.

McKenna, at least, does talk about the importance of watching what users do, for clues about how to upgrade products and find new markets; but he doesn't go as far as to suggest the more constructivist view your entry takes.
Posted by: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang at December 11, 2003 04:43 PM"

[follow-up] Weimarer republik

2005-02-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

link Poster from 1932, courtesy Wikimedia.org.

[offbeat] How Not to Skip the Monthly Rent

2005-02-02T06:36:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: THIS STORY APPEARS TO BE FALSE, cobbled together from old stories. My apologies. SEE MY ENTRY THIS AFTERNOON.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

link: "A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing 'sexual services' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalized in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organized crime.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job -- including in the sex industry -- or lose her unemployment benefit.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centers must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Mechthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specializes in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month last December to 4.5 million, taking the number out-of-work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

-------------------------------
Is Das Deutschland going the way of the WeimarRepublic all over again?
And do you remember what happened after Weimar?

[offbeat] How to Skip the Monthly Rent

2005-02-02T06:15:00.000-08:00

Mainichi Interactive - Top News: "I was having trouble paying rent. I thought I wouldn't have to pay it if the entire apartment complex burned down," she was quoted as telling investigators.

[taste] What Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly Have in Common

2005-02-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

link The horseshoe curve in their customer reviews. You may be familiar with the bell curve from your (most dreaded? *grin*) professors. Well, there is apparently an inverse correspondent of that in the surveys and ratings of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et. al. Customer feedback on controversial books and authors tend to go either extremely positive or extremely negative; seldom do you see patterns of moderation.

But is this a true reflection of actual value? How could it be, how do you tell? With what criteria do you process this information?

Which is another way of saying: How do you judge a controversy?

And what weight and upon what hidden standards do you give to the scandals du jour?

There's an asst. professor of Russian lit at Dartmouth who tries to quantify this extremity in audience reaction. He's been looking at Limbaugh, Franken and the other controversial authors and has developed a "controversiality index" to measure this knowledge. It's going through the patenting process now, and should bring some sweet coin to Dartmouth via its technology transfer office. I guess we'll next be seeing this -- hmm, CI? I of C? IC? -- splattered all over the book ads soon.

Gossip...What people were overheard saying on the London Underground

2005-02-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Underground link: "We all eavesdrop on the tube. (Except if plugged into walkman/Ipod/mother) The following are quotes I have overheard.

Are they real? Or are they just the feverish imaginings of a diseased mind? It's up to you to decide...

27th January 2005
1. Like my mum always says: you don't polish the best china with wire wool.
2. I like that advert where the car pisses on the dog.
3. The more I see Nicole Kidman, the harder it is to believe that she ever married Tom Cruise.
4. How's dad? Still got that beard?
5. Ten years ago I was in college and she was twelve. Twelve!
6. We have to change at Earls Court. The trains on the District Line are very picky about where they go.
7. One day all this will be scorched earth.
8. They killed 90% of the Jewish population of Poland. I'm sure the Poles didn't object.
9. I am a loser. I am always a loser.
10. How old is John Terry? He looks about forty."

[book]] How the World Ends Before This Blog Does

2005-02-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

The New York Times Sunday Book Review, 1/30/5> 'Collapse': How the World Ends: "Taken together, ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' and ''Collapse'' represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation. They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past.

"I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care.

"All of which makes the two books exasperating, because both come to conclusions that are probably wrong."

Reviewer is Gregg Easterbrook of TNR, who carries high cred with me. If Easterbrook (GE) finds Diamond (JD) wrong, then I, August Arrived (AA), will need to re-evaluate.
--------------------------------------------------------------
To Diamond's thesis, that environmental coincidences are the principal factor in human history, the critic essentially agrees.

JD: ''Our world society is presently on a nonsustainable course.'' The West is in peril: ''The prosperity that the First World enjoys at present is based on spending down its environmental capital.'' Calamity comes quickly: ''A society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth and power.''

Now GE's rebuttal: "Like most species, most people do not live on islands, yet ''Collapse'' tries to generalize from environmental failures on isolated islands to environmental threats to society as a whole...

"If trends remain unchanged, the global economy is unsustainable. But the Fallacy of Uninterrupted Trends tells us patterns won't remain unchanged. For instance, deforestation of the United States, rampant in the 19th century, has stopped...

"He thinks backward 13,000 years, forward only a decade or two. What might human society be like 13,000 years from now?"

Oh man, hopefully it'd still be in fine enough shape to take good care of my AA blog!

(Please excuse AA for feeling so presumptuous today; just wait till he overexerts himself and into bed he Collapses! Ha! )

[blog] Make title relevant to overall theme, use keywords to rank well

2005-02-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

1 good point in otherwise useless article - Search Engine News Journal 1/31/5: Many blog titles "contain no relevance to the overall blog theme. Keep that in mind when selecting a title.
Keywords within the blog title and URL are very powerful in ranking well"

[culture] What are you?

2005-02-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Blogcritics.org link: "Thanks to sites like BlogExplosion and BlogClicker I've been finding out all kinds of neat things about myself."

China cracking down gambling rings [pos. link w/ Taiwan??]

2005-02-01T08:37:00.000-08:00

Fujian police smash online gambling rings: "China recently launched a nationwide assault on gambling websites, Chen said.
'Fujian's security forces will do their best in this campaign and crack down on online gambling wherever it may be in the province.' "

ALA | Guide to Great Web Sites for Kids

2005-02-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

ALA link: "Last updated: 03/28/2003"
The American Library Association merits high cred, but the site's been dormant for almost two years. Has the Bush cutbacks been that severe? *grin*

PCWorld.com - Tax Software: The Scoop on Shrink-Wrap

2005-02-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

PCWorld.com - Tax Software: The Scoop on Shrink-Wrap: "For taxpayers with complicated tax situations, TurboTax remains the best tax program, but TaxCut and TaxAct may suit others better." From Jan. 31.

[pc security] Basics for Home Users

2005-02-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

HNS - Home User Security Guide: "basics for securing your home computing environment. " From Jan. 31.

[pc] 100 ways to master your PC (like control-a!)

2005-02-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

The Advertiser link: Short, sensible advice for the newbies. And a couple that could help those who think they're all that already. Control-a would do what?! Oh, thank you. Some excerpts:
"66. Stuck on you
A simple paper clip will open a disc drive that stubbornly refuses to open and release the CD trapped within. Unwind the paperclip and insert it in the little hole on the drive tray usually located near the eject button. You can now open the tray manually. Be sure the drive isn't spinning.
67. Mastering the dark side
Web pages containing dark text on a dark background are a result of either the background not loading properly or bad Web page design. The solution is to hit Ctrl A. This will highlight all text on the website in a readable combination, such as white text on a blue background.
68. Empty the recycle bin
Deleting desktop icons and files is a two-stage process. Anything you delete ultimately ends up in the recycle bin, which must be periodically emptied. To do this, right click on the rubbish bin icon on the desk top and click 'empty recycle bin'.
69. Old e-mails
While deleted messages will disappear from your inbox, they are simply moved to a deleted items folder. Clear these deleted files by deleting them once again to save drive space. "

[ad] Ba Da Ba Ba Ba! I'm Freakin' It!(tm) American Slang as McForeign Language?

2005-01-31T19:18:00.000-08:00

world champion: McDonalds Wants You To F*ck Its Sandwiches HeHeHe. I don't know about this, guys. Could it be the start of a corporate urban legend? Could the marketers at McFreak Yourself(tm) be smarter than they seem? Too hip to be square, or too cunning to be hip? Indeed.

From the original entry: "Nothing is better than when a giant company makes an attempt to be cool with their marketing, only to do something that is completely moronic causing the very audience it is chasing to mock them."

One poster's response: "Don't have sex with hamburgers! I screwed a Big Mac a few weeks ago and Now I'm pregnant with Chicken Nuggets!"

[humor] How to fake it on Super Bowl Sunday......... ... (Some advice here surprisingly good, sensible)

2005-01-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

FOXSports.com - NFL Playoffs- How to fake it on Super Bowl Sunday: "You also need to be careful not to bring the wrong beverage. It is not the time to share your prized Pinot Noir from last weekend's getaway to the vineyards. Beer is always the safest bet. And you won't be labeled a loser if you bring soda as well. After all, plenty of people 'take it easy' on Sunday. Now here is a clincher -- if you really want to be the hero, call before you leave to see who wants a Starbucks coffee (or Dunkin' Donuts for our pals back in Boston!). It is not always easy to stay perky for eight hours of pregame hype and a drawn-out game, no matter how captivating the sport may be."

[play] Messing w/ Google on Photoshop

2005-01-31T18:22:00.000-08:00

FARK.com: (1322360) In anticipation of Google's upcoming Video/TV searching program, photoshop other sectors Google could intrude into: Lotsa hijinks here. Here's one instruction:
"go to google.com, go to view/source (or whatever that command is in your respective browser). dig through the source code and change any text you wish to change. save the file as a .html on your harddrive. open that file with your browser. on my system it didn't load the picture (probably could be achieved through 'save site with pictures' options many browsers have, but anyways). then combine screenshots. be careful to not have a focus on any text fields or your mouse pointer in view when taking screenshots.
Or: more effective to save the entire webpage. In IE it is File -> Save As and save it into a new folder. It will save the logo.gif in the appropriate subfolder and you can then edit that directly and also edit the html on the main page."

[ad] That's the Way We Banned the Ad, Banned the Ad, the Super Bowl Ad

2005-01-31T17:35:00.000-08:00

So Early in the Morning! Yes, banned. <------Click on it now, decide for yourself!

Banned banned banned. And for what? A piece of unused lingerie hanging on a chair? You've got to be kidding, guys.

Bud may be afraid to make trouble. But we're not, are we?

[dvd] Mad About You "Hand-picked" Collection: Before the Jumped Shark, Better Than South Park!

2005-01-31T10:44:00.000-08:00

TWoP Forum link: I love "Mad About You"! And now there's going to be a 8-1/4hr, 22 ep DVD boxed-set out next week! Yea! It was such a warm, goofy congenial show about domestic lifebliss -- so nourishing, it's like Rob and Laura Petrie redux! (Luvved Laura in those capri pants!) Only on second thought did I realize, Hey, actually I haven't see that many episodes, however. Its network carrier simply doesn't feel... quite right for me. Let me see if I may say it again in a clearer but not-as-simple way. Okay, when I watch this network, with its particular branding style, it sometimes feel as if I'm stuck in some po' sufferin' dowager's abode with too much incense and floral display and the curtains are all drawn and closin' in -- sorry, I do like incense and florals, but just, mmm, in less measure.

(And maybe mo' apologies to any po' sufferin' dowager out there, I was actually going after the station, and needed a fast mad metaphor about the station. Got incensed instead.)

There's something about the Lifetime Channel that sets off my finger on the remote, so I'm far behind on the series, I think. Probably. Seven seasons, right? Really wouldn't know for sure, because Paul and Jamie are like buds or pal-sies who happen to drop by, you hang, we chat, she laughs, we laugh, andwhataboutthattime oh what time is it again? Ooh, really, must've lost track.

So a DVD collection (4-disc boxed set, 22 eps "hand-picked" by the two stars, about $32, out Feb. 8) would be the best fit for me. Great performances come dear or cheap, but this one, if disc'd, this one I'll keep.

Every generation must, in its own turn, in its own lingo and wit and humor, express its conception of the way and use of marital union, of marital bliss. MAY is an excellent expression of ours.

Well, that is, until the writers went dry and smothered Jamie with that quasi-affair and quicksanded Paul in those deadly moody blues (jumped the shark with the Desperate Baby-vibes). I lost interest then, 20% because of the loss in its comedic integrity, 80% because of the sheer drought in script quality. If this collection is indeed the best of the eps, then maybe that stoopid melodram'ic arc would get another viewing -- the finger on the remote will get a two-minute warning... but it'd better be better than what I've seen, or that's it: Next! Heaven, babe: Return to marital bliss!

Thank God for the DVD
We'll skip the jumped shark
Paul and Jamie still happy?
Is better than South Park!

'Tis smart to go disc
And irksome to go Lifetime
Heaven may prefer no viewer
But this viewer prefers heaven.

------------------------------------------

"What does everyone think of the episodes Paul & Helen picked for the DVD collection? I agree that the Alan Brady ep is a great one that they included, and I'm pleased as punch they're including the Giblets for Murray Thanksgiving turkeys ep. from Season 3 and The Conversation shot in one take in front of the crying baby's room ep. from Season 6.

I really wish they would have included more episodes from Season 3, though, as I thought that's when MAY was at its peak. The Mad About You wedding ep., the My Boyfriend's Back Queen Talon comic book ep., the Money Changes Everything Cyndi Lauper ep. and so many others are classics that could have been added to the DVD set. (Of course I just wish they would put out that whole season on DVD.) I also wish Season 4's Ovulation Day, the Debbie Buchman tells everyone she's gay ep mentioned a couple posts upthread (which I probably consider the funniest MAY ep, either that or Giblets...), was included.

Anyone else have any thoughts? Since I was only able to watch MAY sporadically after Season 4, how did they do picking out Season 5, 6, and 7 episodes?

Since I didn't see the episode list posted anywhere else, here it is. Also, has anyone heard about what any of the extras will be?

Disc 1
The Pilot (a.k.a. 'Romantic Improvisations'; Season 1)
Met Someone (Season 1)
Virtual Reality (Season 2)
Cold Feet (Season 2)
Giblets for Murray (Season 3)
Special Features:
Exclusive extras with participation from Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser
Other Sony Previews

Disc 2
Our Fifteen Minutes (Season 3)
The Alan Brady Show (Season 3)
Yoko Said (Season 4)
The Finale (Parts 1, 2, & 3; Season 4)

Disc 3
Citizen Buchman (Season 5)
The Penis (Season 5)
The Birth (Parts 1 & 2; Season 5)
Letters to Mabel (Season 6)
Moody Blues (Season 6)

Disc 4
Le Sex Show (Season 6)
The Conversation (Season 6)
Paved with Good Intentions (Season 7)
The Final Frontier (double-length series-ending Season 7 episode)"

[deleted entry]

2005-01-30T18:30:00.000-08:00

[webdesign] Google's "I Feel Lucky" button unused but beloved! {U krazy humans!}

2005-01-30T18:04:00.000-08:00

Peter Van Dijck's Guide to Ease � 2005 � January: "Rashmi�s Blog: Google�s pragmatic, data-driven approach to user interface design: so at Google (being a data company with a huge customer base), they user test with data: make a small change, show it to a subset of users, and track the results. Amazon uses this approach too.
Also: �The �I am Feeling Lucky� button is not used much. But their focus group participants always tell them they like it, and ask Google not to remove it (even though these participants have never used that button, nor do they ever intend to use it!). So its not all rationality and data driven design at Google!�
Peterme also follows up."

[culture] Keywords Reflect Bent & Values of Society

2005-01-30T18:01:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com: Books: Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society: "Keywords focuses on the sociology of language, demonstrating how the key words we use to understand our society take on new meanings and how these changes reflect the political bent and values of society."
Book not recommended, text is highly academic, but point of focus intrigues me.

Future of search rides on relevance | CNET News.com

2005-01-30T17:38:00.000-08:00

Future of search rides on relevance | CNET News.com: "at Ask Jeeves. 'People are usually coming to us looking for a specific answer. The focus for us can't only be on adding new kinds of content, like audio or video, to search--it has to be centered on what the users are really looking for.' "
Amen. Stop focusing on the addition and implementation of ever mo' bells and whistles, and zero in instead on the ordinary man in the street or at the home who cares not a whit about your latest technologies, only on how your tools can make his life better, or at least more entertaining.

[webdesign] Ugh at... STEP1 Software Home Page

2005-01-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

STEP1 Software Home Page
"Folks, you have to stop using FrontPage themes. They're horrible, they will hurt your business, and they're the spawn of all bad web design. While you can buy some very nice templates for FrontPage, I haven't seen one decent FrontPage theme. Not one. Stop in the name of all that's holy. Remember: even Microsoft doesn't use FrontPage."

Web Pages That Suck -- Examples of Bad Web Design

2005-01-30T17:16:00.000-08:00

Web Pages That Suck -- Examples of Bad Web Design: "The second largest library in the Netherlands has given birth to a new dimension of 'suckness'." Thank you, Daily Sucker. I'm marking you for regular visits. Learn while I laugh. Best way to study *major grin*

[webdesign] Bibliotheek Rotterdam ...sucks!

2005-01-30T17:12:00.000-08:00

Bibliotheek RotterdamOverwhelming graphics and a big mess of colors make this one disaster of a website. Instructive for this neophyte webmaster. Go simple. Think Google.

Unless, of course, your site suffers from too much bandwidth and you need to drive the netsurfers off your domain!

Google cheatsheets and more

2005-01-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

link (from Things to Remember. Cluttered code from Link2Blogs.com; I may have to drop their service.)
All things Google...
Good starting point is Google Cheatsheet.
More helpful hints on how to use Google.
Search your own PC using Google Search your own webpage using GoogleSeems not working on blogspot... Am I wrong?
Unofficial gmail FAQ Use gmail account as network drive!Want to warn you that network drive is experimental software and not official Google service.
Very funny blog about google Googlefight! Find out what is more popular search on Google.Simply awesome
TouchGraph Google Browser.
And finally financial information: search google using stocks:GOOG

[verbal] The 5:55 Question, Courtesy This Flying INsomnia

2005-01-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

Mary's father has five daughters: Nana, Nene, Nini, Nono. What is the name of the fifth daughter?

Do you have the answer? Good, say it out loud. (Well, not if there's somebody in bed besides you! Just mouth the word.)

Okay, the entry immediately below? I predict that you're going to read it at just... about... now!

tO U Silly Crystal Blue Goose U: My Answer Re Heaven (Entry) Above

2005-01-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

You're wrong, bub. Read the question again. Think, NoNO!

(Tricky, eh? Hee-hee)

[visual] Words jumbled, but mind, not

2005-01-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

link: "Illusion? No. But it does play on the mind. What is it in the brain that allows things like this to work? Even though the letters are jumbled in the following paragraph,most people have no trouble reading it!

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

[vision] Deutsche prof. h'pg w/ nifty creations (& easter egg!)

2005-01-30T05:35:00.000-08:00

Michael Bach homepage: " Freiburg Evoked Potentials
53 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena "

[phil] 162 names of the most common fallacies

2005-01-30T05:01:00.000-08:00

Fallacies�[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]: Hmm, more promising, less ambiguous. Another marking for later perusal.

"A fallacy is a kind of error in reasoning. The alphabetical list below contains 162 names of the most common fallacies, and it provides explanations and examples of each of them. Fallacies should not be persuasive, but they often are. Fallacies may be created unintentionally, or they may be created intentionally in order to deceive other people. The vast majority of the commonly identified fallacies involve arguments, although some involve explanations, or definitions, or other products of reasoning. Sometimes the term 'fallacy' is used even more broadly to indicate any false belief or cause of a false belief. The list below includes some fallacies of this sort, but most of them are fallacies in arguing informally in natural language."

[paradox] Pos. good ideas, of Fiction

2005-01-30T04:57:00.000-08:00

The Paradox of Fiction [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
But it's all written in that academic muck. I'll log it and come back later.

[persuasion] Crystal blue, baby

2005-01-30T04:33:00.000-08:00

English Blogger: It's 4:33 Sunday morn and I'm giggling like a silly schoolgirl over this blog entry:

"Crystal Blue Persuasion
Persuade? Me? Never. Ok, so this one time, at band camp, wait wrong story. Persuading is something I don't like to admit I've done. The word itself just sounds so sly and devilish. But I am human and humans are naturally selfish, so I have tried to persuade people to get my way. In fact, I can think of several occasions where I have persuaded someone. Shame on me, I know...

So it was time for the final installment of the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. I was able to drive at that time, but my parents didn't want me driving that late because I wanted to go to the first showing which happened to be at midnight. Well I talked to my friend and he didn't seem too excited about seeing it that late. So I made up a little untrue information that they were giving out five custom fit 'one rings' from the movie at the midnight showing. He thought that sounded cool and I had got him to drag along with me. When we got to the theatre and all they were raffling off was cheap radio station t-shirts he was angry. He vouched never to see another movie with me again, but I did get to see the movie."

Dear Blogger.com: This is Blogger Spam, Deceptive Page Title to Boot

2005-01-30T04:17:00.000-08:00

[psy] Things I Owe Comic Books

2005-01-27T13:58:00.000-08:00

The All-New All-Different Howling Curmudgeons: "in a large part, I owe a certain cast of mind to comic books. Specifically, the difference between myself and my friend when discussing hyperspatial relationships, to use but one example from our conversation.

I was discussing how a box could be larger on the inside than the outside, and the very idea seemed to burn his brain a little, which I found amusing. Sure, there are plenty of ways I could have been exposed to this idea.. Dr. Who comes to mind... but the fact is, the first time I came across it was in an old Gardner Fox comic. Same thing with parallel universes, time travel and causal violations... all of these good tropes of weird mind-bending SF, the kind of stuff I would come to love from writers like Tim Powers or Borges, I was first introduced to in comic books."

[TV] From The Moderate Voice: Johnny Carson 1925-2005: An Appreciation

2005-01-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

link: IknowIknow, wasn't this last week's news? But I do feel compelled to make at least one entry here --pay tribune and all that-- and this linked appreciation ended on such an eloquent note...

"And in the end, he maintained his classy attitude even when NBC passed over the person he reportedly wanted to replace him (David Letterman: some reports now say Carson helped Letterman with jokes in his final months).

Entertainers are shaped by what they watch and the context of the era of show business in which they performed. Carson's was the era of Benny, Hope, Lucille Ball and others.

It's an era that's largely gone, displaced by ironic humor and comedians that surfaced by going through the comedy club farm system.

Jay's or David's couch is nice...but it's not Johnny's couch.

And since Carson left, it has been evident that an important piece of furniture -- and a beloved fixture -- have been missing from the room."

---------------
I commented, "Carson was a powerhouse, but I've appreciate him doing a couple shows now and then since he officially left the Tonight Show, if only I could then compare him to Leno and Letterman et. al. in the context of our time, now.

Benny and Hope were *way* old-school, black-and-white celluloid, not easy for me to get into; and Carson belongs with that group? For now I'm gonna just call him Carson, thank you.

(OT: And wow, so many links here! My blog has maybe one now, & nothing in Technorati. I feel so green...)" Well, that is how I feel.