June 2006 Archives

I should really just get del.icio.us working properly…

• Yes, Ridley Scott is working on yet another cut of Blade Runner.
• And you thought that you needed to be extra careful filling your fish tank.
• Chefs on their favorite impossible-to-get cookbooks.
• Everything you never wanted to know about brassieres.
• Things in Iraq are getting better, didn’t you know? After all, shooting tennis players for wearing shorts is part of the stabilization process.
• Information is irrepressible. Unfortunately, people aren’t.
• David Byrne on music packaging.
• Everyone knows that airline fares change (sometimes drastically) depending on when you buy the ticket. But what if there was a website that predicted the best time to purchase an airline ticket?
• Speaking of airlines, just be glad you’re not Bill Walton, who’s 6’11”, has bad ankles, and flies 200 days a year.
• Adopt your own olive tree.
• Harold Varmus is trying to change academic publishing forever. And did you know that Harvard Law Review gets $100,000 a year from Westlaw to keep their articles off the Internet?
• Who knew that brown mice could rewrite ignore the laws of genetics?
• Next time you’re at Foxwoods, don’t forget to order the 30-pound hamburger.
• They must be going after the lucrative sumo wrestler market.
• Rachmaninoff played at Columbia Medical School. Well, maybe not…
• Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co. gets reargued, with a very surprising result.
• It’s the Anonymous Law Firm. Love the attorney bios.
• “Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you’ve done, then they know exactly what they want, but it’s not what you did.”
• There’s NO SHOUTING ON FLICKR.
• Is this the end of the line for Times New Roman? I have to admit that I’m not overly impressed so far with the putative heir to the throne.
• For decades, radio listeners have been puzzled by mysterious short-wave transmissions that consist almost entirely of human voices reading out numbers in repeated sequences. It’s widely believed that the broadcasts are the work on the world’s intelligence services, communicating with agents in the field via one-time pads. A number of these broadcasts [have been compiled under the title The Conet Project (PDF file). MP3s of the actual broadcasts can be found at the record company’s site. It’s really creepy listening.

On the other hand, this is kinda fun…

A few links that managed to not get into yesterday’s massive roundup:

• Ethan Zuckerman has a great, in-depth look at Negroponte’s One Child Per Laptop program and tries to explain what the program is and what the program isn’t.
• Crumpler Bags is giving away their (very expensive) bags in exchange for beer (sound, Flash). No, seriously. (link fixed)
• A very very scary article about how the 2004 election was stolen. Required reading.

As some of you know (and, I guess, the rest of you know now), I have an audition for a syndicated television quiz show coming up on Monday. As part of the application form, there are a series of questions that I’m inviting you—yes, you, my loyal readers—to help me answer (in the comments, of course).

1. What is the first thing you would do with $1 million?
2. What would [game show host] find most interesting about you?
3. What are the three things you want to do before you die?
4. Complete this sentence – You’d never believe it but I…
5. What is your most embarrassing moment?
6. I could be in the Guinness Book of World Records for…?
7. Do you have any bad habits or habits you know annoy other people?
8. If you had three wishes what would they be?

While it’s trivial to figure out what show exactly I’m aiming for, I’m not naming the show (nor the host) for the same reason I’ve never mentioned the name of my school here.

I spent nine (9) hours at Shea Stadium yesterday, the first three of which were spent staring at a tarp in the rain. The first game was a fairly straight-forward affair that the Metropolitans couldn’t put away, though it did feature some nifty plays in the field (Endy Chavez doubling up a gimpy Bonds at first in the first, ending the inning; Lastings Millage taking away a double with a nifty two-handed diving catch).

The second game, which was played almost entirely in a cold, swirling, wind-driven mist, was notable for its speed. Entering the sixth, Tom Glavine had been averaging 10 pitches an inning (he finished with 85 in 7 pitched, which is still a impressive 12 pitches per inning), and Jamey Wright, his Giants counterpart, matched his efficiency. I admit that we did not stay for the climatic 11th-inning victory, having left after watching Barry Bonds pinch-hit in the top of the 10th, going up against a 99-miles-per-hour-throwing Billy Wagner (I still think that Wagner’s entrance music should not be Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” but rather the Prelude to Tristan and Isolde).

And of Barry Lamar Bonds? Say what you will, but the guy has awe-inspiring (as in Old Testament awe, i.e. “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear”) bat speed and he hits the ball harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. In the ninth inning of the first game (amidst chants of “Let’s go ster-roids”), he spanked a rocket down the first-base-line that got to the corner so fast that he was limited to a single.

Note that despite the lusty boos directed towards the Giants’ left fielder, the crowd boo’d just as lustily when Bonds was intentionally walked.

My DVR’s synopsis for the original version of The Postman Always Rings Twice reads, in its entirety, “A drifter stops at a Greek diner and helps the owner’s lusty wife become a widow.”

That’s quite concise.

On June 6, 1996, I walked off an airplane at John F. Kennedy International Airport and began the next stage of my life. It is like it was yesterday and it is like it was another lifetime ago.

This one started off short but then kinda grew.

• Bruni’s back on the burger beat. Has any other serious food critic ever paid so much attention to the humble burger? Or are we just living in a hamburger renaissance?
• Love life advice for the ladies from a law student.
• Who knew? The Simpsons is stuffed chock full of math jokes.
• Yes, that is a golden throne. Who says the rich have no taste?
• God pissed off at the Lutherans and the Unitarians for reasons unknown. They probably forgot to return the hedge trimmer.
• Hot pictures of the Sun’s corona. Oh! I slay myself.
• Henry Rollins writes a love letter to Ann Coulter (video, sound). Henry, please tell me you actually mailed that.
• Design Observer redesigns; eliminates header, moves main content to a full-length column. This seems to be a new design trend in the on-line world (really, there are others out there, I just couldn’t be arsed to find them).
• A black bear, treed by a housecat. Musta been one pissed-off cat.
• While I’m waiting for my grades to come it, it’s comforting to note Justice Blackmun’s grades: 2 As, 4 Bs, 8 Cs, 3 Ds. Note that this still put him in the top 27% of his class.
• Dear Miss Manners, I just ripped off some dame’s purse, but all she had in cash and cash equivalents was two bucks and a metro card. What should I do with the rest of it?
• It seems that hiring unemployed bloggers to write blogs is the new black. Congratulations, Tony!
• MovableType 3.3 is now in public beta. While I’m sure the list of proposed features is long and extensive, all I really want is MORE SPEED. Faster, Pussycat!
• Why do conservatives hate Justice Kennedy? It should be noted that Kennedy is on the right side of the court, not the left…
• So some lucky Iraqi is $25M richer thanks to the US Government. But then again, will the tax man come calling?
• Ballmer beaten by badware. The money quote is “This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world,” which suggests that Microsoft is not, in fact, part of the real world.
• Via my brother, a young Beverly Sills belting out Una voca poco fa (sound, video). Crap sound, but it’s spectacular nonetheless.

In the latest entirely unsurprising news to come out of Iraq, the Washington Post is reporting that there is currently no functional legal system in Iraq:

Iraq’s legal system, once one of the most secular in the Middle East, is a shambles. If a “Law and Order” spinoff were set in Baghdad, it would feature police who are afraid to investigate sectarian murders (or are complicit in them, many say), lawyers afraid to take either side of a case and risk the wrath of powerful militias or well-armed gangs, judges assassinated for the decisions they have handed down, and the occasional car bombing at the courthouse.

Two such bombings killed at least 17 people in May alone.

No prizes for guessing who destroyed what was called “an impressive overall legal system, as long as we did not get into the political sphere.”

James Wolcott tackles The Complete New Yorker, an eight-DVD, one hundred dollar spectacular. It’s not entirely inappropriate that his fascinating review—half review, half history of the magazine institution—clocks in at a hefty four-and-a-half thousand words, a piece of the kind of bulk that would be appreciated at the New Yorker itself.

Two words say it all: Fractal Pizza.

So this girl is trying to spend an entire week inside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue (yeah, it’s the one that’s open 24/7). Quite frankly, it seems a bit untenable to me (see sleep, need for), but if she can pull it off, more power to her…

Or, really, you can find everything on YouTube: the original video for Dead Or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round”, which, if memory serves, was played at my junior high graduation dance (the song, not the video—if they’d played the video, I think that we youngins would have been scarred for life, not that growing up in Reagan’s America wasn’t bad enough to begin with).

In the middle of a very entertaining Father’s Day Gift List, Guy Kawasaki pauses to describe what he includes in his carry-one bag, including perfect reading material:

and one book which typically involves a retired Navy Seal who kills terrorists after they kill his family.

I think I’ve read that one.

(Alternate titles: Don’t forget to go and listen to the radio today; A new kind of Jocyean humor)

Mad Lit Professor Puts Finishing Touches On Bloomsday Device, reports The Onion.

Now everyone go out for a long wander through your city of choice.

Frank Bruni tries to change a restaurant reservation from 8 to 8:30:

I remember vividly a conversation with a certain trendy meatpacking district place during which I tried to change an 8 p.m. reservation to 8:30. The voice on the phone said this was simply impossible.

However, the voice said, my reservation could be moved back to 8:15.

And a notation could be made that I’d be arriving 15 minutes late.

The Times puts together a cute article about fan-created Trek.

The article, though, gets it a bit wrong about some of the motivations behind creating these bits of fandom; it suggests that the motivating factor is the recent cancellation of the late (and in some quarters, not-so-lamented) Enterprise and the subsequent lack of new, available Trek; this is, however, not really right, since many of the longer-running fan-based productions predate the demise of Enterprise; in fact, if memory serves, some of them actually have their genesis in the Voyager era. It seems to me that these fan-produced episodes are really much more of an extension of fan fiction, rather than a reaction to the lack of officially-sanctioned Trek.

As a side note, it must have been a really slow Saturday in the newsroom, because the article ran on the front page of the Sunday Times.

Loose ends:

• According to Stephen Hawking, the universe has no single beginning. Note the very subtle dig at creationism about half-way through the article.
• David Pogue considers the riddle that is Bill Gates. As a side note, it does seem that the Times is using WordPress to power their blogs.
• A Hamburger Today and Gothamist are throwing a burger party this Saturday. I wonder if Frank Bruni will make an appearance…
• The National Academy of Sciences has just released a report stating that not only is the Earth hotter than it’s ever been over the past 400 years, but humanity is the cause of most of the recent warming. This comes as no surprise to anyone who likes their science to be fact-based. It seems to me that the Bush Administration’s head-in-the-sand approach to global warming has a lot in common with the Vatican’s condemnation of Galileo’s theories about the Earth not being the center of the universe…
• Wendy Seltzer faces off with the MPAA over the question of DRM. Related: John Gruber points out that “interoperable DRM” is a classic oxymoron, and that ultimately, DRM places control of content not in the hands of the content creator, but rather in the hands of the technology creator.

You may recall my previous post about nutty Japanese Rube Goldberg Machines. Well, I’ve since stumbled across the world’s most complicated way to make ramen: it only requires six-and-a-half minutes and a machine that’s so large it won’t fit inside most New York City apartments.

(via ar)

Great photographers, as critiqued by the Internets.

Won of the moist exciting knew features in Microsoft Office 12 is contextual spell-check in Word. In other words, Microsoft’s engineers and programmers took the technology in they’re grammar czech and applied it too the problem of homonyms. Word will now czech not only four poor grammar, but also four incorrect word choice. No more confusing “their” and “they’re” (or “cant” and “can’t”)!

While this won’t bee a substitute for actually knowing proper English, eye think it’ll cut way down on the number of brane farts that will make they’re whey in too print.

This is a grate leap forward (at leased in my opinion); won can only hope that it will help fix the problem of people knot knowing the write word to use. You can reed more about it—and sea sum screenshots—hear: Contextual spelling in the 2007 Microsoft Office system

As a side note, won wonders how long it’ll bee before spelling czech migrates from the Office sweet to Windows proper; after all, the McIntosh already has system-wide spell-czech, do too the fact that its built-in too the Cocoa API.