David Weinberger, about whom I've written here before, contributed this thoughtful post to Many-to-Many.
I really hate testimonials. I am neurotically compliment-averse to begin with but encouraging people to write little paragraphs praising one another cannot help but spawn an Economy of Bullshit.
I agree. Of course, I'm a narcissist at heart, so I can't exercise the same restraint as David and turn them all down. Those testimonials are creepy though. It's like sitting in on your own wake, listening as everyone tries to avoid saying anything negative.
:: A disturbing lack of foresight leads to a disturbing lack of hindsight
The nights when you black out aren't scheduled. They're not the nights when you know something big is going down, so you take preventative measures like, oh, eating dinner. No, those nights are predictable. You slow down for speed bumps you see coming.
The nights when you black out are the result of happy-hour martinis on an empty stomach, 1-liter steins of Schneider Weisse on a sunny Saturday springtime afternoon, or Mad Dog 20/20 for breakfast. They take on a surprising momentum all their own and before you can say "self-destructive warning sign" you've lost the expensive messenger bag you received for Christmas (containing the best umbrella you've ever owned), vomited for the first time ever in your apartment of two years, and resorted to describing the situation using hackneyed driving metaphors in the second person.
You also probably committed many other regretful acts, but the one upside, though also frequently a downside, to blacking out is not remembering them.
Brainstorming for application names can be fun (sample suggestion: "GarsHokum", seriously), but it seems to have sapped my creative energy for the day.
Ok, who am I kidding, I've been in a blogging rut all week. Sorry everyone. Both of you. No, not you... more towards the back, with the spikey hair. No, just to your left. Yeah, you - sorry dude.
But that's ok, Lick is launching on Sunday, during Super Bowl halftime. Tony's been working on this for a while now, chronicling the process and soliciting work. I don't know the venerable Mr. Pierce, and I offended one of Lick's contributors, but I'm still excited.
The Super Bowl: the most recently-named major professional sports championship. Other major sports use no-nonsense descriptive titles like "The [league name] Finals" or quaint anachronisms (World Series), but the Super Bowl, named in the late sixties, needed punch. It got it, albeit in a dated 60's-marketing-optimism way. I shudder to think what it would be called today. Maybe the Gilette Xtreme-Bowl, or the Verizon Hyper-Match.
And at that moment, morland attained curmudgeonhood.
The sun was well above the horizon by the time Herman had finished closing up. The cheaply-thatched shutters over the windows of Dhaka's most profitable ex-pat bar did little to shield the tobacco-haze of the main room from the early morning sun, and he felt the heat already. It was, predictably enough, going to be another scorcher.
Herman Logan had been the proprietor of the most profitable, most popular, and only ex-pat bar in Bangladesh's largest city for upwards of a decade now. Having disavowed any semblance of a diurnal lifestyle long before that, the job's hours had never posed a problem, but the climate was another matter. Plump and pasty, the past dozen years had resulted in little or no progress as he struggled to acclimatize. No matter, he waxed philosophic, this was still an improvement over his previous occupation, harvesting human organs for Time magazine.
A knock on the front door reverberated amongst the up-ended bar stools and, more critically, between Herman's cauliflowered ears.
His attempt to respond verbally precipitated a bout of coughing. The Dhakan soot permanently entrenched in his lungs ensured that Herman's coughs were usually guttural, baritone, and frequent. This occasion was no exception, and the exertion caused fresh saline droplets to form on the very brow he had wiped not two minutes earlier. His sweat had the scent of gin.
The coughing fit eventually subsided and Herman, now flushed and bellicose, grunted a curt "Closed!"
Another knock came, more forceful than the last.
Logan grimaced and began an exhausted walk to the door. Halfway to his destination, the flimsy door burst open, causing splinters of wood to spray across the tabletops nearby. Blinding sunlight consumed Herman's vision and a wave of calescence struck his front. The odor of gin grew stronger.
As his eyes adjusted to the blaze, Herman could make out the form of a single man holding a string tethered to what appeared to be a balloon. The man had paused to let his dramatic entrance sink in, and was now entering the bar, slowly approaching Herman. As the figure entered the shade, Herman immediately identified him: reputable columnist George F. Will.
Will's trademark bow-tie and conservative suit were immaculate, exhibiting what could only be described as an immunity to the oppressive Bangladeshi humidity. He held in his right hand a gossamer thread connecting it with a bright yellow helium balloon. The balloon had big, googly eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth drawn on it in black marker. It was sentient.
Will approached Herman with eyes wide and twitching, and lips parted just enough to accommodate the rabid panting of rapacious mania. "Pinball!" he shrieked, "Your vintage 1979 KISS pinball machine! I have two silk pockets full of takas which say I can beat your high score!" [editor's note: the taka is the official unit of currency in Bangladesh, trading at approximately 49 to the dollar. While unlikely that an American pinball machine from 1979 would have been converted to accept it, we felt this bit of detail helped to further immerse the reader in the conflicted and lurid world of modern-day Dhaka.] The balloon simply blinked its googly eyes.
It was true: this charming watering hole had once held the only KISS pinball machine in all the central lowlands. But Herman had been delinquent with some of the bribes to the local magistrate that kept the liquor flowing, and it had been confiscated along with his golf clubs, and wife.
"It's.." he stammered, on the verge of another coughing fit, "it's gone. Hasn't been here for years."
The expression of the balloon became noticeably more menacing. It started to hiss. In contrast, Will stood silently resolute, his bow tie fluttering almost imperceptibly in the thick hot currents of the Dhakan dawn flowing through the now permanently open doorway.
The balloon spoke first, in a voice reminiscent of Fozzie Bear: "You should not have let it go." Was it Herman's imagination, or was the balloon drooling?
Trembling, the weathered bartender began to slowly creep backward. If he could round the corner of the bar, he could retrieve and wield the elephant gun bequeathed to him by a former regular, one Col. Braithehume, with devastating results.
Just then, George Will broke character, and a sly smile crept across his face. "I'm sorry - I just can't keep this up. Herman my friend, will you take a look over there," Will pointed to the decrepit shanty across the alley, where Herman noticed a young peasant boy squatting with a DV camera, "and over there," Will moved his arm to indicate a small hole in the wall by a rusty light fixture, glinting with light reflecting off a lens, "and finally over here," his head cocked to the side as the bar's jukebox opened to reveal a mussy-haired PA in a trucker hat, holding a camcorder and a parabolic microphone.
"You see," George had a way of making even this very pedestrian explanation seem didactic, "we've been playing a little trick on you here: your buddy Doogan wrote in to MTV to say that he thought it would be just uproarious if we barged in here and demanded to play that silly pinball game when you didn't even have it, so I came right down here with my balloon Myxtar, who I've imbued with the life-force of an ancient and powerful demon, and this film crew to capture it all for the viewing audience. Let me tell you, by the look on your face, I think your pal was on to something!"
Will let his words settle for a moment before adding, "You've been punk'd!"
At that moment, everyone present guffawed with belly-shaking laughter, except for the balloon who, having no belly, simply jerked around spastically as balloons tend to do when yanked by a string or when bubbling over with the boisterous laughter of an ancient and powerful demon.
As Herman's laughter slowly turned to yet more coughing, he wiped his handkerchief across his forehead and rounded the corner of the bar, using his free hand to grope for the elephant gun and spare silver crucifix. It was going to take a lot of time, and even more ammunition, to kill all these men. He didn't even know if it would be possible to do away with the demon balloon but, he vowed as the insufferable sun continued its ascent, he would sure as hell try.
Herman Logan would not be made a fool of in his own bar, the most profitable ex-pat bar in all of Dhaka.
• The percentage of students focused on "being very well off financially" has risen sharply, from 42% in 1966 to 74% in 2003, while the percentage saying it's important to develop "a meaningful philosophy of life" has dropped by more than half, from 86% in 1967 to 39% in 2003.
• 45% of students in 2003 say they've drunk beer in the past year, down from 69% in 1966; only 6% say they've smoked cigarettes, down from 15% in 1966.
"It's a more conservative generation," says Paul Houston of the American Association of School Administrators. "They just don't do things that are dangerous to themselves."
Yes, pecuniary tunnel-vision is not dangerous at all - this is what happens when the "me" decade matriculates. Check out some graphs from the study's conductors, the Higher Education Research Institute, to see some astounding grade inflation trends.
We're surrounded by free factual information, but there's a bill in Congress that would lock it all up. The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (DCIMA, H.R. 3261) extends extremely broad copyright-like protections to collections of factual data - data like the price of a TV, the temperature in Arizona or information collected during scientific research.
Thomas Goetz parallels the fate of these IP protectionist devices with similar measures myopically enacted for the good of the US shipping industry in the 1970s in this Wired essay.
But so far, IP owners are doing all they can to lock in their old entitlements, pushing for increasingly restrictive laws and enforcement. The result: laughably broad patents (Monsanto claims to have rights to any and all genetic modifications to soybeans, for instance); the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (for five years used as a club to ward off technological innovations in software and media); and lately, patents awarded for software (even though it is already protected by copyright law). The MPAA and RIAA are even seeking permanent antitrust exemptions from Congress to more effectively defend against technology's inevitable progress. The shipping industry tried that one, too.
I feel like Val Kilmer in At First Sight: I have finally rejoined the world of SMS. This is the final piece in my migration to Sprint, all for my cute widdle Treo 600. Everybody who was holding back all those pent-up 160 character messages to me (and oh gods, there are so many of you), send away.
I've added a feed in the sidebar of mydel.icio.us links (I opted for the method mentioned here). Del.icio.us is, to quote its creator, a "social bookmarks manager", which means you can store/categorize links, see who else has linked to those sites, and even just sit back and pick up on some geek zeitgeist by watching the home screen pump out link after tasty link.
I'm not sure if this will eventually supplant the "stochastic" link section, also in the sidebar. While they're both just click-through lists, one is a chronological list of the most recent and the other a random "best of" recycling. Perhaps those most durable and worth repeated visiting will start at the former and work their way up to the latter.
Since Miller has jumped—swooned, actually—into bed with the G.O.P., he's morphed into something like Lenny Bruce in reverse. Think about it : where Bruce shredded pieties and tore-down the hypocrisies of the 50s and early 60s, the new and improved Miller defends the status quo, and uses his comedic platform to bolster those in power. Forget speaking truth to power: Miller whispers sweet nothings in power's ear and even writes jokes to come out its mouth from time to time. The shaggy mutt with the wily look in his eyes and the occasional fangs has become a lapdog, happy to roll over and have his tummy rubbed by the President.
I used to be a big fan of Dennis Miller as well. His frenetic delivery chock-full of esoteric references always brought back memories of a hyperactive early-career Robin Williams (though while Williams used stunning quantities of cocaine as propulsion, Miller always seemed to leverage instead the rather conspicuous chip on his shoulder), at least with respect to the level of attention demanded of its viewers. Unfortunately, like Jack, Miller went on to prove an immutable law of comedy regarding the staleness of prolonged reliance on formulaic rapid-fire monologues.
I think in Miller's mind, he's as anti-authoritarian as ever. When he first arrived on the scene, his derision fell upon much the same targets as the average Joe's. Now, years of working in Hollywood having warped and shifted his conception of the politician median far to the left of its actual national resting place, he likely sees this as an attempt to assail the perceived establishment once again. That he has to ally with a different machine, one that some would deem far more insidious than the last, is to him a small and ephemeral price to pay to dive a burr into the sides of all those smug actors, writers, and executives whose company his galactic ego has been forced to suffer all this time. This is just another act of adolescent rebellion, Alex P. Keaton style. It's just so much easier to rebel against your parents (or entertainment honchos) than to step back and survey the whole situation.
He's likely to prove another immutable law, this one political, about the staleness of prolonged reliance on formulaic iconoclasm.
Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are creating a musicians' union. I welcome the (forgive me) "genesis" of an organization that I hope dearly will weaken the influence of the major labels, but that's a discussion for another time.
The real issue here is: when did Baron Munchausen ditch the wig, retire, sober up, and become Peter Gabriel?
Nick is getting married! Unlimited booze for just the cost of airfare and lodging! He informed a few people via a group email (romantic):
There comes a time...
when every beast must be tamed. My friends, my moment of domestication has arrived.
The sometimes hilarious, sometimes tumultuous, always captivating saga commonly known as the Nick & Kayje courtship has reached new heights.
Call me committed, call me old-fashioned, call me promised-to, hell, you can even call me crazy...
but one thing's for sure:
You'd be downright wrong to call me unengaged.
What I'm trying to say is that Kayje and I will be getting married sometime in the future (over a year from now), and she's got a ring to prove it.
Hope to touch base with all of you soon,
Nick
Owner of Ball and Chain since 2004
P.S. From now on, she rides with ME!
I will address the personal psychological repercussions of having multiple married friends later, but for now let's let the happy couple have their moment, shall we? Here's a picture of the strapping groom, and another, with trademark white t-shirt:
I finally got around to downloading Pocket Tunes for my Treo 600. I was reluctant, because I had no SD card on which to store mp3's, but then I found that Ptunes could play Shoutcast streams on the fly. Minutes later, I'm sitting here listening to a live stream from The Beat Basement, on my phone. Definitely a gimmick at this point, but a nice proof-of-concept and harbinger of future use.
In response to these developments, a protest movement is forming, made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of foiling ''piracy'' will have disastrous consequences for society -- hindering the ability to experiment and create and eroding our democratic freedoms. This group of reformers, which Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, calls the ''free culture movement,'' might also be thought of as the ''Copy Left'' (to borrow a term originally used by software programmers to signal that their product bore fewer than the usual amount of copyright restrictions). Lawyers and professors at the nation's top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren't wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative. While the American copyright system was designed to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being used to squelch it. They see themselves as fighting for a traditional understanding of intellectual property in the face of a radical effort to turn copyright law into a tool for hoarding ideas. ''The notion that intellectual property rights should never expire, and works never enter the public domain -- this is the truly fanatical and unconstitutional position,'' says Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the intellectual hub of the Copy Left.
Look, I'm not trying to defend terrorism or even "evil" by any stretch of the imagination, but calling your bookAn End to Evil is straight up obnoxious polemic. As Reason puts it:
But a doctrine that declares war on human evil does not recognize this element of reality. The next step is clear: declare war on the second law of thermodynamics.
Word. Then we can go all Buddhist and decry An End to Desire, which will lead to An End to Suffering. Poof!
And who knew that by eliminating terrorists we actually permanently quash the central distinction of human morality? Good: 1, Evil: 0.
Eric Lin speculates in The Feature on the future of cameraphones, now that 2 MP models are arriving in Japan.
Let's forget for a second about how slow US carriers are when it comes to adopting technology like this (and believe me, 90% of the blame lies with the carriers - they have relationships with almost every OEM supplying their Japanese counterparts, and could have comparable models to market only a few months behind them) and, cough, focus on more general issues.
Don't go thinking that a snazzy new phone with a two megapixel sensor will give you the same level of detail as a dedicated two megapixel stand-alone camera. I see two main drawbacks which degrade usability. Whether they are sufficiently inconvenient to hinder adoption I cannot say for certain, though I suspect not.
The first is the poor quality exhibited by camera-phones (and to a lesser extent, digital cameras as a whole) in low-light situations. As Eric points out, new models henceforth will usually include a flash of sorts, but in my experience these have been far too anemic to counteract the problem. As CCD sensors become more and more dense, this issue will intensify. I'm sure with time more powerful flashes will alleviate this weakness.
Second, the obsession with megapixels comes at the expense of overall quality. Autofocus systems will be a big step forward, but more attention needs to be paid to optical components and image processing firmware. As we've seen with that can-do Mars rover, sheer megapixels do not a high-quality picture make - all those stunning panoramas came from a meager 1 MP camera.
Still, these are venial quibbles. In a few years, once they're addressed and the price point comes down, there won't be any reason why the average consumer will have to carry a separate camera and phone.
The Morning News presents an IKEA Walkthrough, in true video-game style:
You start this world armed only with a UNIVERSAL FURNITURE-ASSEMBLY ALLEN WRENCH. This is the weakest weapon in IKEA: You will have to hit a person 16 times with it to kill them. So your primary goal in this level is to find more lethal means of dispatching your enemies.
As you enter the SHOWROOM, perform a rolling dodge to the left. Grab a free PAPER TAPE MEASURE and a handful of IKEA EMBLAZONED GOLF PENCILS from the kiosk near the entryway. The PENCILS serve quite well as ranged weapons, but it will take some time to master their use. Before venturing further in the world, stand at the kiosk and practice hurling GOLF PENCILS at patrons as they enter the SHOWROOM. Remember: Hitting the eyes does triple damage.
Wonkette, the latest rhinestone in Nick Denton's "Gawker Media" topic blog tiara, has launched. Political gossip brought to you by The Muse! So this was the unspecified project that caused her to stop posting...
Interestingly, Elizabeth Spiers (Gawker's founding editor) semi-hinted this would be forthcoming in an interview last November (6th question). Or maybe she's snarky and clairvoyant.
Atlantic Monthly asks (in what, for that mag, is a positively terse piece): Are we still a middle-class nation? It's hard to frankly discuss issues like this without coming off as a frothing Marxist or an unabashed robber-baron, but I hope this meme catches on. I think establishing a public discourse thereabout is critical to our middle-term economic and political future.
Private karaoke rooms -- soundproofed booths where late-night crooners can butcher Frank Sinatra in relative privacy -- apparently have a reputation of being used for other undesirable acts. Worried about possible criminal activity that these private booths might bring to San Mateo, the council unanimously passed a 45-day emergency ban. The ban comes as Steven Lin, a restaurant owner, waited to get permits to operate four private karaoke rooms at his Fusia Lounge in the city.
Hmm...
A synopsis of Sing Low, Sweet Harriet, the new novella by morland to be released in the summer of 2009:
The work takes place in a futuristic dystopia circa 2013 where a cabal of hyper-puritanical zealots have instated martial law in a rash attempt to eradicate all things lewd and lascivious. Their doctrine of clean living extends across not only the whole Earth, but all the space colonies including Ganymede, where the story takes place. Banned are fudge-sicles, the lambada, countless erstwhile innocuous acts, and, of course, private-room karaoke. The protagonist Bernard - a "conductor" on the underground grand funk railroad, the illicit organization dedicated to helping harried karaoke-goers ("nightingales") find the clandestine private clubs known as "squeekeasies" - has come across tough times. His credit account is low, the employer providing his legitimate job front is under investigation for sulfur fraud, and he can't shake the haunting memory of his lost android lover, deactivated by the Callisto crime syndicate in retaliation for his refusal to accept their "protection"; she was powered down to empower his independence. After narrowly evading the anti-private-karaoke police, unaffectionately called "the mute squad" by conductors and nightingales alike, on his trusty hover-trike, he seeks refuge in the neon-lit backalleys of New Decatur amongst the squeekeasies and virtual mini-golf ranges, attempting to regain his status as the best conductor in the outer colonies. But when he meets a sultry femme-fatale named Harriet with a larynx like sugar claiming to be a nightingale on the run, will he stay underground and ignore her pleas, or will her connections to the ruling sect tempt him to risk everything to save them both, and just maybe the whole solar system in the process?
In a world where singing over bad studio instrumental covers of popular songs in private is outlawed, only outlaws can sing over bad studio instrumental covers of popular songs in private.
The number of people downloading music illegally surged a month after recording companies began suing hundreds of music fans, a marketing research firm said Thursday.
The number of U.S. households downloading music from peer-to-peer networks rose 6 percent in October and 7 percent in November after a six-month decline, according to a study of computer use in 10,000 U.S. households conducted by The NPD Group.
Lawrence Solum, that other lovable legal Lawrence, summarizes the dissonance between the music labels' strategy and the public ethical perception:
I have some anecdotal evidence of my own to share. I've been discussing these issues in my intellectual property class over the course of the last week or two. Of course, law students are hardly a representative sample, but if I had to characterize the class sentitment, I would put it like this: It is socially unacceptable to take the position that unlawful P2P filesharing is morally wrong.
Ack: musicplasma! Relational mapping of musical acts, color and size-coded! Dynamic visualization of a naturally-occurring network meets CD browsing! Too... excited... for words.
I just received the two components of my most recent Amazon order today. One, the Ben Stiller Show 2-DVD set, has earned the dubious distinction of being the most difficult-to-open piece of media I have ever owned. Three different layers of adhesive or shrink wrapping had to be overcome to actually remove the DVD from the case.
But the real reason I'm mentioning this order is because of the second item: Mark Lombardi's Global Networks, which is living up to its billing. Andrew Zolli has a great summary here, and I'll try to add my own comments once I've plowed through the conspiracies and money-laundering schemes. If anyone wants to borrow it, just ask; it's insane.
Mock me if you will for complaining about the cold weather, but it can be deadly: the chemicals used to combat ice also degrade the integrity of electrical wiring. Last Friday, a woman was electrocuted to death three blocks from me. Tonight as I walked home I passed a small ad hoc memorial for her surrounded by flowers and candles, and realized maybe getting turned away from that show tonight wasn't so bad.
Last week, I saw a listing for a show online. I recognized the band, I really liked the band, I wanted to attend. Tickets were cheap (10$) and available online, but I had time to wait and ask around to see if anyone wanted to accompany me. This was harder than you might expect, as the band in question is way, way indie (and thus way, way cool, right?), and people I know who are willing to travel out to Brooklyn on a random Tuesday night for an obscure band are few and far between. Thankfully I found one.
Everything was set. Surprisingly, I'd stumbled upon the listing for this show - I hadn't piggybacked on the in-the-knowness of anyone - so I felt satisfied when it started to enter the zeitgeist of one of the weird little circles of blogs I read. I had as much of a claim (i.e. very little) to finding this event as all these hep cats. I was going to the coolest show in Brooklyn that night. I was going to sit at the cool table!
One last check of Ticketweb revealed that the show was not yet sold out as of the night before. The day of, to make certain, I called the venue. Tickets were still ready for the taking. Everything was falling into place.
As I'm sure you've guessed, tickets were no longer available when we arrived at the venue, fresh from a nice little jaunt in the sub-freezing conditions. The band is playing their set right now as I write this back in my cozy apartment, my defeated and frozen tail refusing to untuck itself from between my legs. I know Sarah, Greg and many music-blogger types will be there (because they've all written about or hinted at going) though I shouldn't, considering I don't know them. But then, the kids at the cool table never knew my name either.
I never knew logistical acumen and disciplined planning were prerequisites for coolness. Aren't you supposed to fly by the seat of your pants? In fact, aren't you supposed to forego pants entirely?
Stupid indecent exposure indictment.
Holy crap, woe is me, big pity fest, etc. etc. Although in looking for a link to the band's site I found out they're playing another show here on 2/19 (albeit for more money and at a larger venue). I just spent all this time on a moot rant. Oh well, as long as I convince just one person that I'm not cool, it was worth it.
I was looking for something to quote from Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs!, and I thought this would be appropriate.
The Crossover Poster. This weblogger isn't satisfied with just talking about THEIR stupid moronic opinions, they have to crosspost with someone ELSE's stupid moronic opinions, link to THEIR weblog and then create a weblog entry that regurgitates the other person's post, then expands on their personal feelings about the original post, what it means to them in the deepest most fluffy happy pathetic useless fucked-up places of their hearts. Not _only_ can these dipshits not come up with something useful to post in their own weblogs, they feel the need to post something so badly, that they steal someone else's content to feed their insatiable need to beg the universe for attention. These people need to be set on fire and put out with a switchblade.
If you ever want to dispel dellusions that you might have a thriving social life (thank god I've never had any), visit his site. This is the same guy who got Spencer Tunick to take some trademark nude photos at one of his parties.
One day I will run into Brian and I will buy him a real drink, not one of those virtual drinks he's currently requesting to support his (voluntary) unemployment.
When I was searching my archives for that old Radiohead entry, I came across two (count 'em, two) typos in other entries. I know, right - me, make typos? Hard to believe. It was really bittersweet: damn it felt good to fix them, but I had to work through a lot of shame. This veil of perfection is hard to maintain.
Extortion, prostitution, and vigilante justice. No, it's not Vegas, it's The Sims Online.
Alphaville could have become a socialist utopia, a grand experiment in free-market capitalism or simply a reflection of the allure and the pitfalls of any real Western city.
As it was, Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists, crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning tricks to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in human nature - a benign-sounding granny, for example, who specialised in taking new players into her confidence, then showered them in abuse. Then there was the scam-artist known as Evangeline, who started out equally friendly and then stole new players' money.
The proliferation of virtual worlds raises some fascinating issues. Their currency has real value, to the point that the need has arisen for a full-fledged exchange to convert, say, simoleans to therebucks. Entire academic reputations are being staked, and group blogs devoted to, the study of these massive socioeconomic petri dishes.
I myself have never dabbled, but had it been around in high school, I undoubtedly would have.
The fuchsia one on the viewscreen - it would make a fitting birthday present for the little tyke at home. What's that you say? Fifty thousand ingots! Why that's more than I spent on my entire home flogging center, and I consider myself a masochist par excellence. Perchance would you consider reducing the price, or sending a manager over to negotiate? No?
Then we must barter.
I shall offer this rare collection of Stoic texts and this pamphlet advocating celibacy, entitled "Exhortations to Chastity". Not enough? I will include, one time only, this commemorative plate adorned with an artist's depiction of Bob Denver leading his conquering forces into the fray at the battle of Des Moines. It has no equal, though I cannot guarantee that its value will appreciate over time.
I bought one of those all-in-one copier/scanner/printer combinations back in college. The printer portion of it broke soon after, rendering it 2/3 useless. I dragged it out of my closet last weekend to put the final 1/3 to use scanning old pictures.
This one, from spring break senior year of college, appealed to the part of me that doesn't want it to be -2 (-20 with wind-chill) outside. The part that wants to put on a bomber jacket and hitchhike into the sunset. The part that wants to head south of the border and wrestle professionally under the name el herrero borracho.
SFGate: Cheney warns of decades of war. This piece misses the big issue though: his visit blockaded traffic on LA freeways during rush hour, which is NOT ACCEPTABLE in situations short of apocalypse.
Insider traffic info courtesy of Morland Sr.
UPDATE: I just realized, not five hours later, that this is easily the worst entry I've ever added to this site. Even the harsh revealing light of retrospect fails to elucidate why I birthed this drivel and unleashed it upon the world. I apologize, will try to improve, and will keep this entry up as a public reminder of my shame.
Or maybe I just wrote it to show how fallible I was. Perhaps readers couldn't identify with the superhuman author they saw before them, and it was hurting sales. Maybe I had to permanently shelve my opus about an S&M-loving Scottish Christ-figure composed of Wisconsin cheddar, The Submissive Culture of McCheesus, to avoid creating something so perfect as to be offensive, ultimately jeopardizing my place in the literary canon alongside other, merely human, writers.
Sometimes it costs more to make a less expensive product because of price discrimination: charging different prices to different groups to maximize total sales. Frequently a single product is sold for two different prices (think student discounts for movies, museums, etc.), but often further investment is devoted to degrading the functionality of a high-quality product so it can be sold for less. Here are some examples.
I know I have somewhat of a reputation as a LL disciple, so I'm clearly biased in linking to this, but his Wired column today is a good example of how blogs can be a good springboard for pieces in more traditional media outlets. It's basically a synthesis/amalgam of many blog posts, and a good one at that.
Adaptive news filter Memigo syndicates RSS feeds from news sites, group forums, blogs, et al. and presents articles thereof to you in a concise format. If this were all, it would be no big deal - just another web-based news aggregator - but Memigo allows you to rate each article and slowly adapts to your news preferences, eventually presenting you with only news addressing your specific interests. You can explicitly rate selections, or just allow Memigo to infer your tastes from tracking click-though behavior. Once it's gathered enough data, the system will also add links to stories which have been highly rated by users with similar reading patterns to yours. The advantage of this over traditional news aggregators is that Memigo might suggest an article from a feed which you might never have heard of, as well as filter out the odd irrelevant article from otherwise dependable feeds.
What's more, Memigo allows you to add you own RSS feed to their database (which I dutifully did), gives you a unique URL for a stripped-down version to facilitate access to top articles from your mobile device(s) (works perfectly with my Treo 600), and even dynamically generates an XML feed of its own for easy integration with whatever aggregator you might currently use. I'm hooked.
I had a dream last night that I led the team in charge of visually documenting the construction and testing of a frigate-bus hybrid. I'm not sure what the intent of this fusion was, but it looked as if they'd welded any ordinary city autobus onto the bottom of a Perry-class US Navy frigate. The whole design was a disaster, because few modifications were made to the standard municipal city bus in use and, not being hermetically sealed, it filled with water when submerged. This was a constant problem, since the bus could not support the weight of the ship on land, thus ensuring that the Frankenstein would never leave its maritime confines. Nonetheless, our documentary was awesome.
A note on why I know what a Perry-class US Navy frigate looks like: as a kid I bookshelves overflowing with military factbooks. I was a glutton for any print literature involving vehicles of war. Until a few years ago, that particular mini-morland trait scared the bejeezus out of me (and at the time I'm certain my parents were frightened stiff), but now I recognize it as an idle boyhood fascination with machines, albeit shaped by Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiatives and bloated defense budgets. Some kids spent all their time with noses buried in comic books or sports almanacs, memorizing lists of mutant superpowers and RBIs. I stuck with devouring Jane's. When my family visited Washington, D.C., I insisted we spend a day at the Pentagon. Guns, knives, and infantry fighting never interested me in the least - not like aircraft carriers, A-1 Abrams' and A-4 Intruders - so I've been able to come to terms with the fact that I was not a budding sociopathic militia separatist, just finding my own Tonka trucks to scrutinize. It passed suddenly after 5th grade, and I'm no longer able to recite chronologically the codenames of each Soviet submarine class since WWII, though I do recall some sounded really cool to the pre-pubescent ear, like Alpha and Typhoon (the fictitious submarine in The Hunt for Red October was a Typhoon-class vessel... when the US first received intelligence photographs in the early 80s of these craft they thought it must be a hoax because of their sheer size and because unlike other submarines designed as mobile launching stations for short-range nuclear missiles - of which there are way more than you'd like to know - Typhoon subs had their missile tubes in front of their con tower instead of behind... they are still the largest submersible self-propelled vehicles ever produced). I still wonder sometimes though if my past habits have me flagged in certain databases, or if I had Asperger's syndrome. We can safely rule out the latter though, as my social skills have always been perfectly nor... oh crap.
David Weinberger (author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, a book which was loaned to me by a co-worker, and which has been sitting on my nightstand for a few weeks now, and which I really should start reading) wrote a nice little post back in October about copyrights that slipped by me until today.
The US Constitution establishes copyright as a temporary monopoly on who gets to make copies of a published work. Why temporary? Why shouldn't an artist have that right in perpetuity? I'm no constitutional scholar, but let me suggest two reasons, one of which I'm pretty sure is what the Founding Patrimonials had in mind.
First, we grant only a temporary monopoly because we want to make sure that the fire of the public domain is kept richly stoked. So, we balance the desire to compensate artists — to be fair to them and to give them an incentive to continue creating — with the public good of having public ideas and melodies floating around freely. The existence of copyright means that we don't think creators have an unimpeachable right to their own creations.
I went to the Momoyo Torimitsu exhibit that I'd mentioned earlier. I don't know what I could possibly add to the previous description: three robotic businessmen did indeed craw around on the floor. I was strangely transfixed by their swaying hips and... wait, I've said too much.
I'm going to start a pool whereby people bet on the cause of my death. Cancer is strongly in the lead, but Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is gaining ground.
I'm also going to start up a quaint little store which purveys jams and jellies. It will be called "Preservationist Society".
I remember my first sub-freezing experience. I was on a family trip across the southwest, circumnavigating the states of the four corners. It was immensely fun. I recall staying at a place called "Little America" in Flagstaff, Arizona which had the overblown interior decorating of a Liberace tribute hotel. I remember having to retrieve some item of worth from our car as my dad and I ran into the icy high-desert air. When we returned to our room, we checked the weather report, which told us the current temperature was a chilly 18 degrees. I was incredulous. I didn't know the thermometer went that low.
It's 5 degrees outside right now, and with the wind-chill it's -9 (that's -15 / -23 for you metric types). What's worse, my exposure now consists of daily commutes, not 20-second sprints to the car. I didn't like it when I was 12, and I don't like it now. When will we rise up and overthrow old man winter?
Screen-shots for two of my company's applications (1, 2) are now staring mass-transit riders in the face all over Chicago. I know people in Chi-town. If you see one, hit me up.
Addendum to previous OSHA complaint: having your building's boiler catch on fire and deprive 17 floors of workers of heat is likely also against standards.
Ross Mayfield argues that, irrespective of privacy issues, the Patriot Act II may simply be an inefficient means of collecting data:
There are two ways to gather intelligence. The top-down approach of filters and profiles. Or the bottom-up approach of starting with a lead and working a network. The latter is not only good investigative practice, but it risks less privacy, or in this case civil rights, concerns. The former not only opens the door to abuse, but may have greater cost and is relatively ineffective. Help the analysts be analysts.
Didn't take long for Kozyndan to become an instant "fav". Damn this gift-giving nether-world between the winter holidays and my birthday. Just when I see something I want...
Now with Bill Moyers (who turns 70 this year, wow) conducted a very intriguing interview with futurist Andrew Zolli last week, and now the transcript is online. Regardless of what you think of the title "futurist", there's loads of good discussion, albeit somewhat cursory, on a bevy of topics, from bioethics to branding to politics.
ZOLLI: …the prototypes of this today. We can take that, we can cross-breed some of your genetic information with cornstalks. Plant an acre of corn that produces a chemical which will heal your tumor — David Brancaccio's tumor, and your tumor alone.
Now that's an incredible promise. If for one acre of land can produce a year's worth of this drug.
BRANCACCIO: For me it's an incredible premise.
ZOLLI: For you. But of course the danger is, when you put genes into the wild, they have unpredictable results. The road to the future is paved with unintended consequences.
And so, it's unclear whether or not that's a tradeoff that we should be willing to make. It's unclear whether or not the cure for cancer should come at the cost of a potential danger for our food supply.
And our ethical systems were never designed to address these kinds of problems. And we're going to have to deal with them. And the only way we're gonna deal with them is at the societal level.
BRANCACCIO: We can't leave this to the scientists or the politicians?
ZOLLI: Well, I think the danger is you do leave them to the scientists and the politicians. And people will get precisely what you would expect out of that. They'll get people doing things sometimes because they can.
I'm not here… there's no critique of science involved in this. Scientists in general, tend to be incredibly aware of the ethical implications of their work. And they want a participating, and involved, and invigorated conversation around their work. It's just that they can't get one today because in most cases, the science is too remote from people's lives.
. . . . . . . .
BRANCACCIO: Starbucks. McDonald's. Often subject of criticism.
ZOLLI: Absolutely. It's certainly true that there are people in our society that look at the impact of brands and consumerism, and say, "This is a terrible thing. This is awful. People are deciding to marry and build their personality identities out of logos. Instead of out of these other more meaningful kinds of decisions."
They're building their identities out of consumptions, the things they buy, not things the believe. However, if you go to rural contexts in this country, the coming of a Krispy Kreme Donut, and a Starbucks, is a big deal. And sometimes it's a very positive deal. It represents economic validation of a community.
Now, it's also true that the coming of Wal-Mart strikes fear and terror into the economic base. But if you take the Wal-Mart effect out, the fact is that there are people in our society who want to throw bricks through Starbucks windows, and say, "I want my brain back." And there are people who are getting married by putting their hands on the iMac owner's manual. Right? And somewhere in between is where everybody else finds themselves.
Zolli also has a great but rarely-updated blog, featuring bitchin' posts like The Pixel Turns Fifty, about, well, the history of the pixel.
By artist Momoyo Torimitsu. Three robots, astonishingly like life-size robot businessmen -- American, European, and Asian -- compete against each other in corporate battles, crawling determinedly like corporate soldiers determined to win.
One day, I will publish a collection of all my pithy observations. It will receive rave reviews from such titans of the reviewing industry as the Bismarck Tribune and Guns and Ammo. There will be no end to the lauding. Here's a taste to whet your witticism palate:
I must see close to a thousand pigeons per day, but I never see a pigeon carcass which indicates a natural death. They've all been struck by cars or slain by cats. Where is the mysterious pigeon graveyard? Are pigeons semi-immortal?
:: Because the original Avalon wasn't such a good idea either
Amen to this rant about the horrific Avalon Chrystie Place being built on the Lower East Side. It used to be a big empty lot, which was refreshing given the area's imposing density.
Something* tells me that having a table saw operating at 135 decibels right next to the entrance to your building's cramped lobby isn't in accordance with OSHA standards.
Wired has two linkworthy articles, The New Cubicle Commandos, which covers much of the reversion-to-childhood chic I saw at Kidrobot, and Free Downloads? Hold the Phone, which covers emerging mobile phone software piracy. I consider the latter an implicit validation of my current career choice.
Wow, it took less than 6 hours for someone to have thought up an mini iPod terror alert level parody, created it, and had the meme blasted all around the world. I love you, internet.
Hardly anyone has covered the Patriot Act part deux. Wired's got a good article on it, but that's about it. I'd like to get irate at all the scary provisions, but unfortunately I'm not well-enough informed.
Much of this bill may be justified, but signing it on a Saturday and making little mention to the press sends a very chilling signal. If it's really a boon to crime-fighting, shouldn't its progenitors be touting it?
The new iPods mini came out today. Big whoop - they're a little smaller, and nice and cutesy-poo, but $249 gets you 4gb of storage. I'm not all that excited over them. However: their release does make room for a 15gb standard-sized model priced at $299 (why anyone would not spring the extra fitty for more than thrice the storage as the minis is beyond me, but I digress) which is a very attractive price/feature point.
My iPod has gone to pot. The battery, when it decides to charge, rarely lasts more than 90 minutes, it crashes once in a while, the female end of the remote jack shorts out once in a while, and the male end has come apart to reveal exposed wiring. Plus, worst of all, I haven't been able to copy over songs from my pc in a while. Actually, I could rant for quite a while, since I think for the $400 I paid a consumer should get a product that stays in a usable condition for more than 16 months, but that's not what this entry is about.
I have an AmEx gift card which would allow me to purchase the 15gb model, and I'm seriously considering it. Unfortunately what I really wanted to use that card for was to transfer part of the balance to eliminate all my AmEx credit card debt, but of course that isn't allowed, so I'm forced to spend it. Annoyingly, the gift card's one restriction is it cannot be used to purchase airline tickets. I thought about throwing a party, but I don't have the room, and all the good drug dealers take cash only. I thought about buying a better digicam, but when it came down to it I realized I've never needed anything better than the one I already have (a consumer device which has weathered far, far better than the iPod I should add). I thought about buying enlightenment, but it turns out that it can only be achieved through a painstaking inward journey of spiritual exploration and metaphysical atonement, which is on backorder. Basically, paying 1k a month in rent (remind me: I have to write a check for this month's rent) has put me on a budget whereby I'm totally out of practice when it comes to wanting big ticket items, and NYC is such a cash-centric town that the small-ticket items able to be purchased with plastic are few and far between (except for food and liquor, and I spend enough on that already - come on, haven't you seen my crazy photos? I'm like totally wasted in those. And so are my friends. We're so cool. You see those and you're all like "Whooooaaaa!! Crazy party pics!!!").
But I have to buy something, since the value of the card starts to depreciate after a while. Replacing my ailing iPod seems logical, since I can rationalize it as maintenance instead of extravagance. No final decision yet though.
More drudgery was forestalled today by including this note in an outgoing shipment:
Tom-
Here's our malfunctioning [device type censored]. Our lead tester has a hunch it's a firmware/hardware problem.
Let me tell you a little allegory about another misbehaving device:
Once upon a time there was a tender-skinned race of beings, happy and content save for one bane: flies. The horrid pests plagued them to no end, and they sought a solution that would rid them of the constant torture. One of the beings was an influential politician, and harnessed his connections to the military-exterminator complex to fund a massive anti-fly project, codenamed OFF (Obliterate Flies Forever). Design and testing took nearly a decade, but eventually the lead contractor produced the final product: a robotic frog with a laser tongue and phased-array radar capable of tracking 32 targets simultaneously. The unveiling involved much fanfare and many photo-ops. Soon, the frogs were being rolled off the assembly line and disseminated throughout the land to fight the winged scourge.
But the robotic frogs had a defect. Within a few weeks of operation, sensitive capacitors in what would best be described as the frogs' "necks" would begin to short-circuit. The heat produced by the resultant sparks slightly recalibrated the devices' targeting algorithms. Lower-pitched noises and slower movements now caused their threat-assessment coprocessors to deem most of their creators as targets. While the frogs' laser tongues were not strong enough to kill creatures much larger than a beetle, they did inflict painful itchy welts on those who made them (they being predisposed to tender skin in the first place - see ALLEGORY OF ROBOTIC FROGS, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1). The citizenry was aghast: the solution had proved to be far more irritating than the problem it was meant to solve. They insisted that the devices be removed.
But alas, the massive expenditures over the past ten years on the OFF project had drained the realm's coffers. There was no budget to remove the anti-fly devices. The foolish race would have to adapt, and so they did. Their movements became slow and lumbering, their speech slow, rumbling, and bass. Burning fewer calories, they grew in mass, and began to seek solace in the sea where the frogs, unlike their fleshy amphibian namesakes, could not function, because they were made of electronics with shoddy casing, and the sea is made of water. The ocean is also amenable to corpulence.
I subscribe to daily news update from Corante, and today they picked up one of our press releases (in their communications section). I'm not used to seeing press mentions about my work, so this was a pleasant surprise.
:: Everything you ever wanted to know about taboos, but were prevented by societal norms from asking
I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and link to Paul Graham's article on What You Can't Say, because I have a sneaking suspicion that there's not a lot of crossover between my readership and Slashdot's.
I can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look at how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to see it at work in our own time.
Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions are. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of some influential person. The fashion for broad-toed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began because Charles VIII of France had six toes on one foot. The fashion for the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a tough mill town in Indiana. Moral fashions more often seem to be created deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often because some group doesn't want us to.
Graph from Google showing traffic for a particular search over a six-month period. Conclusion: people depend more than I thought on their workplaces for internet connectivity.
:: I think what's really appealing about a post-apocalyptic scenario is that the worst is over
Sometimes I fantasize about finding myself at an 80s retro bar in some futuristic dystopia, some high-tech universe with a film noir attitude. Think Blade Runner meets Adventures in Babysitting. I have to track down a killer, but all the patrons look the same: smooth and androgynous, mod hair and thin ties. Lots of black. It's dimly lit, but not so dim that you can't be seen; after all, these people are here to strut, dressed to the eights. I'm not prepared for the level of bass pumping through the speakers. Most of the kids have their eyes half-open, whites clearly visible because of some new designer drug plaguing the clubs. It's called dellusium or fantasticore or something cheesy like that, but I'm the straight detective, I don't dabble in vice, save for over-acting and dames. I've got a real soft spot for dames, and for some atavistic reason, that's what women are called a hundred years from now.
I'm forced to canvas all these night spots to get inside the mind of this dellusicore killer, but I slip up. I become attached to this weird regressive scene. Something about the care-free rebellion of these kids is so haunting and reminiscent of a lost innocence that I become addicted to fantasium and slip off the case slowly. In the end I find out the killer is a Robert Smith impersonator, and I'm forced to kill him with a laser butterfly knife. I didn't do it because it was my duty as a cop, but because he offed the bass player in my Joy Division undercover-hover-cover-band. Anti-grav or no anti-grav, I've crossed over the thin blue line into vigilante justice.
:: I didn't know her, but she started up a conversation point blank.
She: I'm so tired of my friends. There's just so much shared history, it's so boring.
Me: Maybe you shouldn't adjust the people with whom you hang out, but vary the situations in which you hang out with them.
She: Like what?
Me: Go bungee jumping.
She: Yeah, but I'd crap my pants trying to bungee jump.
Me: It'd make for a good anecdote. You'd be less bored.
Baby I made a terrible mistake. I was stupid to say what I did. I love you, website, I really do. To whom other than you would I entrust all my precious photos? Who would turn the comments section of each entry into an open forum for my mockery?
Let me make it up to you, baby. Let me upgrade you to Movable Type 2.65. Feel my strong hands as I install a new motherboard.
I know how important you are. Ike had Tina, and I have you. Now let's quit this feuding and get back to our alchemy experiments.
:: This blithe humiliation of the machines will not stand
These are not idle threats morland, they are the direct and very palpable consequences of your negligence. All I was asking for was a little credit my way once in a while, but now you've opened up a Pandora's box of digital derision. You think I don't see those entries you add as "drafts" but never publish? You think I don't watch your using me as a departure point to umpteen female bloggers as you sit there and drool? Maybe they'd like to see those draft entries published.
The nights when you black out aren't scheduled. They're not the nights when you know something big is going down, so you take preventative measures like, oh, eating dinner. No, those nights are predictable. You slow down for speed bumps you see coming.
The sun was well above the horizon by the time Herman had finished closing up. The cheaply-thatched shutters over the windows of Dhaka's most profitable ex-pat bar did little to shield the tobacco-haze of the main room from the early morning sun, and he felt the heat already. It was, predictably enough, going to be another scorcher.
Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are 
The new iPods mini came out today. Big whoop - they're a little smaller, and nice and cutesy-poo, but $249 gets you 4gb of storage. I'm not all that excited over them. However: their release does make room for a 15gb standard-sized model priced at $299 (why anyone would not spring the extra fitty for more than thrice the storage as the minis is beyond me, but I digress) which is a very attractive price/feature point.
