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Back to current entries
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September 21, 2003
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A friend of a friend posted some
photos
of the hurricane's destruction in
Kitty Hawk.
Mistakes
of Vietnam Repeated with Iraq by Max Cleland (former Senator
who actually fought in Vietnam, like Gore; but unlike Cheney, Rummy
or the AWOL shrub).
Seems like I've been linking to lots of columns by Paul
Krugman -- so who is he?
This
article in the Gurdian explains, and why he gets
death threats:
For the past five years, Krugman -- a lifelong academic
with the exception of a brief stint as an economics staffer
under Reagan -- has been moonlighting as a columnist on the
NY Times op ed page, a position so influential in
the US that it has no real British parallel. And though that
paper's editors seem to have believed that they were hiring
him to ponder abstruse matters of economic policy, it didn't
work out that way. Accustomed to the vigorous ivy league tradition
of calling a stupid argument a stupid argument (and isolated,
at home in New Jersey, from the Washington dinner-party circuit
frequented by so many other political columnists) he has become
pretty much the only voice in the mainstream US media to openly
and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people:
first to sell a calamitous tax cut, and then to sell a war.
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September 18, 2003
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The Gospel of
Supply
Side Jesus is a comic strip by Al Franken and Don
Simpson, from the best-selling Fair and Balanced - Lying
Liars book.
DC
Bud -- the drug czar proposes a pot debate, and the
pro-legalization
MPP
accepts the challenge with relish.
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September 15, 2003
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Disney animates Dali's
Destino.
-- "the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before."
Performance artist Yoko Ono has repeated her
Cut
Piece in a reaction to current events.
Aeronauts
is a great set of early Soviet aviation photographs.
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September 14, 2003
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Here's something I've been working up for a while,
an addition to the 'misc' section: a
Guide to WET Magazine.
As both collector and former subscriber, who better
suited to the task of posting this cyber-shrine to gourmet
bathing? And just coincedentally, to give the 'dry' an idea,
this
Yahoo!News thing is just the sort of blurb one
might have found in WET.
So let me get this straight -- ten days ago, on
Thursday night, there was an NFL 'kickoff extravaganza'
in DC which featured
Redskins
disrobing Britney Spears? Sure, fine, if they
held it in a footbal stadium, but on the Mall, between
the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial? Sounds like a new
low in vulgarity, a desecration, even -- at least, the
Parents
Television Council was not amused.
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September 12, 2003
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Good-bye, Johnny, RIP...
My Ten Favorite Cash tracks:
- Folsom Prison Blues
- I Walk The Line
- Ring of Fire
- Hey, Good Looking
- Starkville City Jail
- Come Along and Ride This Train (from his TV show)
- What Is Truth?
- Sunday Morning Coming Down
- Tennessee Stud
- When the Man Comes Around
Amusing comic journal:
Mekka Blue .
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September 11, 2003
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Yesterday, noted Conservative William F. Buckley posted a
column
about how the shrub is evil, with six reasons why; while in Boston, a
crowd
of 1,200 booed Ashcroft -- he's there
on his 'Patriot Act' tour.
More news:
Berke
Breathed to resurrect Opus in late November
(Sundays only).
And finally,
burning
hypocrisy is about what the festival has
become. Sounds like it might be too late... has
Burning Man 'jumped the shark'?
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September 10, 2003
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Yikes!
Cobalt Jackets and our own Scorched Earth policy.
About a 1961 TV show called
Way
Out -- just before my time; I'd never heard of it.
Oops
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September 9, 2003
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Everybody's linking to
the
latest works -- several of them are quite
amazing, although they're slow-loaders --
especially the first one ("Rotating Snakes")
and the last ("Wedding in Japan").
New Heinlein novel coming!
For
Us, the Living,
in bookstores by the end
of November.
All about the mysterious
Toynbee
Tiles.
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September 7, 2003
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In the news, a couple days ago:
Death
inside Big Thunder Mountain. Earlier in the summer, I had my
first ride on a "real" roller coster; somehow I wasn't
counting Big Thunder, seems too tame. (Some of us are still
annoyed with them for replacing the really tame
Rainbow
Caverns Mine Train with the current attraction.)
The Urban Legends crew has a running tabulation of
Disneyland
Deaths for the morbidly curious. (The snopes.com
folks have been receiving a lot of heat in blog-land for
revising
their
details of the bin Laden clan's movements after
9-11.)
I remember how the scales of ignorance fell from my
eyes during my first trip to Europe -- one of the
enlightenments concerned place names. Sure, I knew
they called Germany "Deutschland," but everywhere else
had their own names, too -- the real ones. Geoff Cohen's
made a stab at a correctly-labeled Europa map; he links to it in
this
post to the Coherence Engine.
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September 5, 2003
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Excellent
Ask
the Pilot today. Also, quotable
posts
from 'No More Mr Nice Blog'
about American Productivity.
Part 1 of
The Wire "Records That Set The World
On Fire [When No One Was Listening]." I've actually
owned a few of these platters -- most of the rest
sound fascinating.
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September 1, 2003
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Totems!
It's a thumbnail of Thunderbird Park in downtown
Victoria... just back from a long-weekend rendezvous
with theGirl in Vancouver, kinda like some form
of the new
Experimental
Tourism. Added the bus-and-ferry excursion
onward, over to the island itself, to visit
the BC capital -- a great time was had in the
Pacific NW, watching civilized, soothing
public
television in our noisy hotel rooms.
A trio of new products:
- I recently heard a This American Life repeat
where David Sedaris reviewed the
Stadium
Pal. Hilarious; sorry that I'm too lazy to
look up the original
link.
Related, in some way (or perhaps not): the
Bottom
Buddy.
- Snoring
Stopper is a head harness which prevents
mouth-breathing. Kind of a kinetic solution, versus
the electronic Snore Stopper's approach (which I've
learned about via spam).
Wear it on your wrist while you sleep, like a watch. A
tiny, highly sensitive microphone detects snoring and
sends safe electronic pulses to the wrist. These pulses
cause you to alter your sleeping position and stop snoring.
The pulses aren't powerful enough to disrupt your sleep,
but they will make you roll over, and the snoring
will stop. The microphone only detects sounds in the
snoring frequency. It won't be affected by other
surrounding noise, such as someone talking, or
watching television.
I find the confidence with which we're assured that
electric jolts to a sleeping snorer's
wrist = rolling over to be a little dubious.
- Magnetic
Blinkies -- I've got a couple of these, a blue, and
a red/green.
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August 24, 2003
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Heads
in the Sand is a DC City Paper article
listing the most popular right-wing print media, and
details of their editorial pages' now-discredited
beatings of the drums of war, parroting the government
this past spring. Of particular interest to my hometown
readers is the article's description of revisionism and
'bamboozlement' at the Washington Post.
An important new book: Clyde Prestowitz'
Rogue
Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of
Good Intentions -- heard him on the radio the
other night, was spellbound.
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August 22, 2003
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At
Long Last, Salarymen Get Their Due -- about "Project X,"
the new TV show in Japan celebrating technological
breakthroughs, and the people who made them.
(Thanks, Geoff!)
Short Popular
Science bit on a Shell station in Iceland,
the first filling station ever to offer hydrogen.
Rodger
Roundy makes great paintings! (He's from
Cheverly, MD; born '69; has packrat parents.) Love
those Rufus Girls!
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August 17, 2003
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Scared
to Death in last month's Popular Mechanics --
thrill ride deaths and injuries -- has several photos of the
nightmare: a power failure while riding a twisty roller coaster.
They didn't require rescue by cherry-picker at Cedar Point
Thursday afternoon; according to
this
Yahoo!News photo, passengers on that Magnumn XL200 train, stopped part-way
up the first big rise, got to walk back down the track, kinda like stranded
travelers from a NYC subway.
Power
Outrage Traced To Dim Bulb In White House -- Greg Palast tells
The Tale of The Brits Who
Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight,
Turned Off Our Lights.
Complementary
Currencies for Social Change -- an Interview
with Bernard Lietaer. Time dollars!
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August 13, 2003
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About
the "Amélie Poulainization" of her Montmartre
neighborhood. (NY Times, registration required.)
Concerning
"O Superman" -- in 1981, it hit #2 in the British
charts) -- Justin's
got it in repeat play now. Hmmm... didn't realize
Laurie'd put out a
new
record last year -- after reading the reviews on
Amazon, reckon I'm gonna save my money, give it a
pass, and just play "Big Science" again, myself.
Bamboo
Bicycle
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August 10, 2003
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Hey, it's Sunday -- time to rail against
the Scribes and Pharisees!
'Good'
Catholics and Ugly Tactics is a great column by
Michael Schattman, a Catholic judge whose appointment
to the Federal bench was allegedly blocked because of his creed:
In his vilest public act yet, Senator Orrin Hatch has contrived
to insert religion into the judicial confirmation process and
then to accuse Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy and Richard
Durbin (both Roman Catholics) of rejecting a nominee because
he is Catholic.
This was last week's news; but read on for more good stuff:
The truth, which became painfully obvious as we prepared to attack Iraq, is that
most Catholic Americans are "cafeteria Catholics," who choose from among the
practices and principles offered by the church to the faithful. There was no
mass exodus from the military of Catholic chaplains and service personnel after
the pope condemned the war. They made their peace between God and Caesar. There
is still no mass uprising of the Catholic right against the death penalty. The
only dish that most of these Catholics choose from the doctrinal cafeteria is
opposition to abortion.
This fundamental hypocrisy is what's always made the
supposedly-Christian so hard to take. Inconsistencies
like this remind me of that great Zompist post,
Have
Evangelicals sold their souls to the devil?
How can we be single-issue partisans, when God is not a single-issue
deity? There are many commandments, and much as we'd like to, we can't
edit them down to two. Of course, it could be argued that the Bible has
done this for us; but all has not been boiled down to abortion. That
alarming passage, Matthew 25:31-46, seems to reduce all judgment to
whether or not we have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, invited in
the stranger, and visited the prisoner.
'Course any discussion of the Commandments is incomplete
without reference to Jon Carroll's
Very
Fine Five Commandments column from a couple years
back. Unrelated, except for the source: in today's
Chronicle, a front-page report titled
Oaksterdam
about a developing situation in Oakland.
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August 8, 2003
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Journal
Comic Jam is an image map, a big group -- click
any figure to access some form of online,
illustrated journal.
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August 7, 2003
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At least eight of the 62 San Francisco Starbucks shops were
vandalized
by pranksters today. The windows were plastered with big
"Closed" and "For Lease" signs. And speaking of Starbuck,
the fans
hate the new "Battlestar Galactica" (coming soon on
the Sci-Fi Channel).
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August 6, 2003
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It's Hiroshima Day, the anniversary -- nice
Yahoo!News
photo of memorial lanterns on the Motoyasu river in the
evening. Also from Japan, have ya seen that
Fruits book?
Playing
Dress Up addresses the phenomenon, known as
cosplay (for costume play).
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August 5, 2003
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Plain
Hinglish in the Spectator --
It is a safe bet that PG Wodehouse is the
inspiration for many standard Hinglish-isms, viz
a ‘quantum’ (never a mere amount), ‘sans’ (as in,
he went out ‘sans’ his coat), or, my favourite, ‘for
the nonce’. An Indian acquaintance once playfully
suggested that Wodehouse has a place in the elastic
pantheon of Hindu gods.
Lots of nostalgic photographs from the Virginia suburbs at
NorVaPics. The site's
range extends into DC and Maryland.
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August 2, 2003
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It's leaking
out, the contents of the 28 censored
pages from the Congreessional 9-11 Report, which
allege "
connections between the hijacking plot and the very
top levels of the Saudi royal family."
Joe Conason talks with BuzzFlash about
Republican
Hypocrisy -- amazing, appaling details. On BoingBoing,
Cory Doctorow
explains
how such scandals remain obscure -- actually he quotes an
article ("The New Censorship") from the current
Harpers,
an excellent publication which stubbornly resists moving
online, for the most part.
In the current New Yorker:
The
myth of the big opening weekend, or how the
"Jaws" formula has come to dominate the today's
mainstream movie experience. Lesson (which I can't
repeat often enough): study up before you buy that
movie ticket!
Celebrities
Who Died in Airplane Crashes at the Fear of Flying
Site.
Spirit
of the Seas -- a mammoth sculpture-fountain of
three big fish and Neptune, proposed for the
Port of San Diego.
All about
A
Whiter Shade of Pale -- lyrics, sources (NOT the
Canterbury Tale) and covers -- I didn't realize this
tune had become part of the standard wedding music
repertoire (although it's not hard to believe) -- just
sounds kinda downbeat and too somber, to me.
That recent NY Times
article
about Trader Joe's. (Registration required)
And finally,
this
image which everyone's linking to, although the
actual source is unknown -- "Dear Japanese People:..."
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July 30, 2003
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The last Type 1 ('old Beetle') rolled off the line at
VW of Mexico today:
Yahoo slideshow.
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July 27, 2003
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Art
Deco in London, at the V&A.
ThingsToWorship.com,
especially the 'God'
entry under 'Things Not to Worship.' Plus --
Forget
about Jesus (from the Church of the SubGenius), and the annual
Blessing of the
Cars site features an image by Shag.
The congressional commission's 9-11 report was
released this week, but big chunks of text were
declared 'Secret' and blacked out, where a
'foreign government which which funded the
terrorists' was allegedly identified. The Saudis are
steamin' --
"We cannot respond to blank
pages."
The first Hunter Thompson 'Hey Rube' column at ESPN I saw was
Welcome
to the Big Darkness.
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July 27, 2003
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Art
Deco in London, at the V&A.
ThingsToWorship.com,
especially the 'God'
entry under 'Things Not to Worship.' Plus --
Forget
about Jesus (from the Church of the SubGenius), and the annual
Blessing of the
Cars site features an image by Shag.
The congressional commission's 9-11 report was
released this week, but big chunks of text were
declared 'Secret' and blacked out, where a
'foreign government which which funded the
terrorists' was allegedly identified. The Saudis are
steamin' --
"We cannot respond to blank
pages."
The first Hunter Thompson 'Hey Rube' column at ESPN I saw was
Welcome
to the Big Darkness.
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July 22, 2003
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Yes,
We'll Have No Bananas
Experts say the world's favourite fruit will pass
into oblivion within a decade. Why? Because the
banana is the victim of centuries of genetic
tampering. The banana's main problem is that it
has become sterile and seedless as a result of
10,000 years of selective breeding.
Traffic
Light Dishes whadya mean,
'blue AKA green light'
... I need to inspect one of these.
Saw an interview with Google's Rosenberg in an
airline magazine, he said
"For finding products, I
use Froogle
exclusively."
Perhaps you'll find it useful, too.
Great column by Hal Crowther:
Weapons
of Mass Stupidity. (Be careful where you read
this -- someone who left their copy in a shop was
questioned
by the FBI). His
Twilight's
Last Gleaming from March was also
well worth reading. These columns were first
published in Creative Loafing, a southern
'rag' where you can also catch the occasional
Charlotte, NC art review by Scott Lucas --
this
one concerns an early Hopper show.
Bonus
w/ Scott photo (Easter, 2001)
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July 16, 2003
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One of the ways I keep up with wuzappnin' is checking Yahoo!News'
most-emailed
content at least once a day. Somebody's putting
its images into comic
strips but the result seems kinda lame to me.
Alan Murray reports
in the WSJournal about that manifesto the
'Committee of the Republic' is circulating in DC.
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July 15, 2003
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It was bound to happen eventually --
this
report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz describes
the recent discussion in the Knesset of a Final Solution to
the Palestinian problem. (Naturally, that term was not used.)
Speaking of Endlosung, years ago, in my first
logbook, I had a couple pages labeled "Big Death" where I
compiled body counts of the big wars, pograms, bombings
of the 20th Century, with a natural focus on WWII. Getting
all the statistics together, maybe see a pattern, get some
understanding. Rudolph
Rummel has completed this task.
Rudolph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science
at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career studying
wars, conflicts, and governmental mass murder, for which he
has coined the term
democide.
Among Rummel's more startling findings is that the death toll from
government mass murder is far greater than the death toll from
war -- four times as many people have been murdered in cold blood
by people working for governments than have died in battle.
A final quote, from his section on the Khymer Rouge:
The whole tragic episode illustrates the point that
humanity is divided into two groups -- those who wish
to live, and those who wish to kill. The question is,
to whom does the world belong? In Cambodia, for
whatever combination of reasons, the question was
answered in favor of the killers, as it was in
Germany, as it was in Russia, as it could be anywhere
in the world, if and when the killers are given the
chance.
Bush
Lies, Media Swallows -- Eric Alterman explains why
the press has such a difficult time calling the president
a liar (with one recent exception).
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July 14, 2003
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Saddam’s
cars... much of the collection was looted. He
had a pink '55 Chevy?!
Indians
say No to Cowboys' request for shot
troops. (That's an expression I first heard of
in a reference to black infantryman at the Battle
of Gettysburg, as in 'whoever's available to be
shot at.')
It's Bastille Day -- Viva la France!
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July 11, 2003
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Two photos from the news:
Tubeheads
in Tokyo, and the shrub & First Lady
watching
elephants in Africa. (He supposedly made said comment to Laura,
whereupon she slapped him.)
More Yahoo!News -- soon (now, in
Korea) you'll be able to configure your cell
phone to repel mosquitos, by emitting frequencies
they dislike.
Finally, in CNN Money, we read about the new
Milk
and Cookies.
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July 10, 2003
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Here's why I ran into Laurie Anderson at work -- she's the
NASA
Artist in Residence for 2003. From this inspiration, what
will she create?
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July 5, 2003
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Two English guys on a
summer
bike trip in 1953, to the coast and then
on through France, Switzerland and Germany.
B&W photographs included, and lots
more -- seems they've gotten this all
packaged into a book:
Cycling Holiday 1953.
Only
in America by Eric Hobsbawm in The Chronicle
Review --
Far from being a clear example that the rest of the
world can imitate, the U.S.A., however powerful and
influential, remains an unending process, distorted by
big money and public emotion, a system tinkering with
institutions, public and private, to make them fit
realities unforeseen in the unalterable text of a
1787 Constitution.
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July 3, 2003
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Trivia
Cinema '76
This strange image is quite familiar to me, although
before last week I hadn't seen it in a long, long
time. I spotted it among the vinyl in a Mountain
View thrift shop, and at only $1, had to take it home.
It's the cover art of a record called "Cinema '76" and the
gatefold
jacket is opened up in the full view (click to zoom)
so the back is to the left. This is, in fact, the same record my brother
Jeff bought at the New York World's Fair (more details
here) and it's the
soundtrack to the 'Heroes of the Revolution' program
at the Continental Insurance pavillion. In web research
I've uncovered very little about this,
certainly no site with MP3s -- perhaps posting them is
now my job) but -- who knew? In preparation for the
Bicentenial, the Texas Boys' Choir performed the
same
program in the mid-1970s -- and that site (which
I learned about on
Renaissance
Man's Potpourri blog, scroll down to June 4) does
have sound files available (although the format they're
in is unreadable to me at this time).
Green Laser Pointers on eBay
I want a green laser pointer. Who doesn't? I've been
monitoring the prices online for awhile, they're available
for $200 but a 'Buy It Now' source on eBay has 'em for just
over $100 (plus extra for shipping). So, I've been monitoring
activity of this eBay Store,
Lasers
and Silver, and I've come to the conculsion it's some
sort of racket, they're -- well, not abusing the
auction system, but certainly manipulating it with a cohort
of shills. They always have a few of these laser pointers in
auction also, and although the bidding alway starts at $1,
the final price is inevitably up around that same ball-park
of $100 (plus, don't forget, the $8 shipping). Check a sample's
bidding
history -- lots of the same users are ratcheting up
the price. Why not just start the bidding at, like, $75 --
what's the point of starting so low, again & again?
Mysteries of eBay. Myself, ever in search of a bargain,
I need a better connection with the Taiwanese
manufacturer, "Leadlight."
www.costofwar.com
shows ...
a
running total of the amount of money spent by
the US Government to finance the war in Iraq.
It's interactive, read 'em & weep
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June 29, 2003
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WMD, the FCC & Tina Brown --
This
Media Life column by Michael Wolff -- excellent.
The latest Flying Car -- the
Taero 4000.
Perhaps this one will get off the ground?
Details of this last little jaunt down Monterey way:
On the way south, we paused briefly at the Montalvo
villa, in Saratoga, to inspect
the Patrick
Dougherty sculture called "Dwelling" he built
there in February. Then off to Santa Cruz,
for Woodies on the Wharf -- my pictures of that
event came out so well they deserved a
special page -- don't
miss it. After the vehicles drove away, off the pier,
we rode the Giant Dipper, my first ride on a big
ol' wooden roller coaster. Would I do it again?
Mmmm probably. The next day, off to the
Pinnacles, a
great place, fascinating, geology all a-jumble, in the
heart of the San Andreas fault. Fortunately, no seismic
activity right then. That night we were 'leisure
guests' at the Asilomar
Conference Center (thanks for the tip, Susan!) Kind
of like a very nice summer camp by the sea, but instead
of kids, well-dressed folk with name tags and
foreign accents wandering about, and instead of
cabins, motel-standard lodgings (but no television,
just a clock-radio -- ahh, rustic). The next morning,
the 17-mile Drive through Pebble Beach, a pause in
Carmel, and then on to Big Sur, but only as far as the
Bixby Bridge; and home again.
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June 25, 2003
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Back from a much-fun long-weekend swing through
the Monterey penninsula with theGirl -- more on
that trip anon.
Good 'Motley
Fool' take on Fed cutting of interest rates.
Today, they reduced it to 1%. (Will you take it
to zero, Alan? What then?)
About consciousness-raising and the new label:
Bright!
Scalzi doesn't
like it and although I'm not against the idea my
first reaction was a memory of something I read in
Embracing
Defeat about how that particular
word was common in Japanese propaganda during
the Pacific War (although I'm not sure if their
definition also includes the cerebral "animatedly
clever; intelligent" aspect which is what the
anti-superstition consciousness-raising is all about).
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