January 2006 Archives

So this guy, who’s a skydiver, takes a pair of small jet engines and straps them to his feet…

Upset with poor working conditions, disgruntled snowmen march in Moscow (picture).

Fever of 103.5? Check. Sleeping all day? Check. Sore, achy all over? Check.

Check out these awesome pictures of the interior of the New York branch of Morimoto, which is supposed to open at the end of the month. The very-long-awaited restaurant looks nothing like the Philadelpha edition, but it still looks amazing. Can’t wait to eat there…

I find it amusing that the fact pattern in this case is very similar to the hypothetical fact pattern I had to deal with in appellate arguments in my legal writing class last year.

How similar? Well, if you substitute the words ‘billboard advertising’ for ‘magazine advertising,’ the case goes from being “very similar” to “essentially identical”.

Check out this huge, amazing collection of mid-century commercial art and advertising. It’s all been scanned with loving care and just looks gorgeous.

Aside from the artwork itself, it’s also a fascinating anthropological look at middle-class America in the 1940s and 1950s: for example, the implicit messages (what those philosopher types call ‘semiotics’) here, here, here, here, and here are fascinating to look at some 50 years after the fact.

Google to BellSouth: Go f*ck yourself.

Google to DOJ: Bite me.

Defective Yeti presents the Bush Administration as a text-based adventure game.

Brings back memories of wandering around the Great Underground Empire, trying to get that damn dam to work.

In case you’re wondering, the title is a reference to a different game also produced by Infocom.

It’s the first day back at school, and I’ve already seen more people in the building—in the lounge, in the library—asleep, either with book on lap, head back, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, or simply curled up on a couch, jacket covering their head to shut out the light than I think I saw all of last semester.

Buried inside all the PR puffery in this piece about the F/A-22 reaching operational status, is the quote

“In any air-to-air fight out there, it is a hopeless mismatch,” Krumm said. “What we are more concerned with are countries that want to deny us air space by purchasing surface-to-air missiles and that kind of stuff. Those are very lethal to the way the U.S. deploys.”

This kind of skips over the fact the US already has such an overwhelming advantage in the air that the only possible ground-to-air threat would have to come from small mobile units… the kind of units that don’t actually work very well in real-world conditions.

There’s also the fact that the article fails to mention things like range, effective loiter time, and other factors that are somewhat more important in real combat situations…

Just out of curiosity, how many people knew that clicking on the title of an entry (e.g. “Quick Question…”, above) takes you to the individual entry?

Clotilde Dusoulier dines at an all-duck restaurant called Le Petit Canard in the 9th. Must remember to stop by there next time I’m in Paris…

Great article in the Times about the rise of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and how aggressive, modernist programming is actually selling tickets….

Guy Kawasaki’s Top Ten List:

• Live off your parents as long as possible.
• Pursue joy, not happiness.
• Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.
• Learn to speak a foreign language, play a musical instrument, and play non-contact sports.
• Continue to learn.
• Learn to like yourself or change yourself until you can like yourself.
• Don’t get married too soon.
• Play to win and win to play.
• Obey the absolutes.
• Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone.

The whole, annotated list can be found here.

It is worth noting, in this age of high-flying wide-open offenses, that the four teams left in the NFL playoffs are all run-first, pass-second teams that rely on stout defenses to prevent shootouts.

So this completely obscure German physicist rewrites Einstein’s relativity equations in the language of quantum physics, adds a few extra dimensions to make it work andaccidentally invents a hyperspace drive in the process. It sounds like a Larry Niven short story, but it’s actually true…

• It looks like there’s a Chinese map predating Columbus that clearly shows the Americas and Australia.
• Where’s Waldo? Where’s Kim Jong-Il? Rebecca MacKinnon rounds up the latest on the reported whereabouts of the world’s least predictable dictator.
• This is just a lovely photograph of LAX by Doc Searls.
• Can anyone read this and seriously think that there is no health care crisis in this nation?
• Two beautifully designed and implemented blogs: First, cabel.name, a new blog by one of the co-founders of Panic, a boutique Macintosh software firm. Click on the thumbnails—it’s a pretty neat web effect (seems to work best in Safari, unsurprisingly). Second, Maniacal Rage, which is just so pretty (and built with Ruby for Rails, at that).
• BusinessWeek on how math is changing everything.
• The new Honda Civic. Check out the ad, featuring a soundtrack of car sounds produced entirely by a choir of sixty singers. It’s a rather nifty vehicle; unfortunately it seems unlikely to ever be sold in the United States…

Law school textbooks are a total racket:

In comparison, the hardback edition of Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire has a list price that works out to $0.04 cents per page (and it retails for about $0.03 per page).

The Times is reporting that legendary soprano Birgit Nilsson, one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, passed away, aged 87, on Christmas Day.

She owned all the big dramatic soprano roles—Brunhilde, Turandot, Isolde, Aida, and so on and so forth—during her career, and we are lucky enough that many of her signature roles were captured in the recording studio. Legend has it that EMI’s recording engineers had trouble recording her properly during the taping of the Solti Ring Cycle because her voice was so huge.

The opera world will miss her.

Update: Opera blog Parterre Box posts a tribute to the Great Swede, and also kindly provides a few clips of that great voice in action as a tribute.

Yes, folks, it’s David Bowie superhero comics.

No, really, I’m not joking (unfortunately).

Nikon is essentially abandoning the film camera market.

This is huge.

So here are the courses I’m taking in the spring semester:

• Evidence
• Trust & Estates
• Constitutional Law II
• Professional Responsibility
• Advanced Legal Research
• Cyberlaw Seminar

Throw in the journal that I’m on and it adds up to a whopping 16 units. I predict this will be a very long semester…

Apparently Robert Fripp is recording the sounds for Windows Vista (link goes to a page with a video). It should be noted that Brian Eno was repsonsible for the Windows 95 chime; one wonders what luminary of seventies English prog rock/ambient Microsoft will tap to make the sounds for their next OS.

Taken from Lady Crumpet:

Seven Things To Do Before I Die: 1. Climb Mt. Rainier 2. Write a novel 3. Learn to play guitar 4. Get mentioned in the New York Times 5. See the aurora borealis 6. Drive a road course in a high-performance vehicle 7. See Einstein on the Beach in a live production

Seven Things I Can’t Do: 1. Understand the alpha channel in Photoshop 2. Not lose my temper when I see the President on television 3. Pick out colors 4. Suffer fools gladly 5. Know what a good hairstyle on me is 6. Stop procrastinating 7. Drink root beer

Seven Things That Attract Me To Blogging: 1. The worldwide adulation 2. The groupies 3. The piles of cash 4. My lust for glory 5. My dream of becoming the leader of a religious cult that worships the aurora borealis 6. My obsessive desire to make it impossible to google the other Paul Frankenstein 7. On the internet, everyone’s an expert

Seven Things I Say Most Often: 1. [redacted] 2. [expletive deleted] 3. [censored] 4. [blasphemous] 5. [possibly defamatory] 6. [banned by the FCC] 7. [Even Nixon didn’t use this one]

Seven Movies That I Love: 1. Ran 2. The Right Stuff 3. 2001: A Space Odyssey 4. Wings of Desire 5. Young Frankenstein 6. Time Bandits 7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Seven Musical Works I Can Listen To Over and Over: 1. Tosca 2. Le Sacre du Printemps 3. Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello 4. Strauss’ Four Last Songs 5. Blue Wonder Power Milk 6. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #4 in G 7. Le Nozze di Figaro

Looks like it’s time for the 2006 Bloggies. You guys know how to do the right thing…

OK, so according to c|net, sending “annoying” web messages or email anonymously is now a federal crime.

So, apparently, the vast majority of Usenet has been instantly been outlawed. Whee.

Global Voices is looking for a few good men (or women)… specifically, a Managing Editor, Regional Editors, and translators.

A former Apple product manager on Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses and how he generates his RDF.

It’s appropriate since Jobs is scheduled for another major keynote next Tuesday…

(RDF=Reality Distortion Field)

LemonadeGame.com brings back some fun memories of time spent in front of the old Apple ][…

This will, of course, do nothing to stem the ever-increasing flood of spam, but it’s nice to see, anyway: ISP wins $11 billion judgement against spammer.

The Times on that yummy delicious thing, mac & cheese.

So this is 2006, eh? Seems a lot like 2005 so far.