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Back to current entries
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September 21, 2002
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Soothing Image:
A snap from a recent trip up north, to Lake Tahoe.
(click to zoom)
Weird News:
Mexico City police will fight crime while wearing
sombreros.
(login with annoying/annoying)
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September 18, 2002
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Many are aware that when Williard Scott was merely local
on-air talent Inside the Beltway, he was the first
Ronald McDonald, in the 1960s. Did you know he also
did Saturday morning television, as an emcee named
Commander
Retro ? Although the cheesy images are good for yucks,
this news doesn't much interest me; but a half-Williard
link at the bottom is fascinating -- there's an on-line
shrine to the
Joy Boys! (They were a team on DC radio in
the 1950s & MOR 60s.)
Pooh-san is now the
most
popular char in Japan -- bigger than Mickey Mouse.
More spherical-crafts how-to: Build a
Tensegrity
Dodecahedron -- with soda straws, paper clips
and rubber bands.
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September 16, 2002
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I've just posted a
temari
how-to page, really just a sequence of
photos illustrating the progress of a pattern
I'm calling the Amsterdam. (Recently, theGirl snapped
this
photo of el Temari displayng
all his balls, or at least those
I haven't given away.)
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September 12, 2002
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A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Moon is a faked-Apollo
film and website, by that Tennessee yahoo
Buzz
Aldrin punched out.
Americans
are badly served by semi-official media
propaganda is a column by Mark Hertsgaard,
an American journalist. His latest book is
The Eagle's Shadow: Why America
Fascinates and Infuriates the World.
But the world doesn't hate us, the American people.
It is our government, our military, and our corporations
that are resented. To anyone living outside the US, this
may seem an obvious point. But we Americans are not used
to drawing the distinction most outsiders do between
Americans and America.
More excellent ranting against our media:
In
the Wake of 9-11, the American Press Has Embraced a
'Demented Caesarism' (by Mark Crispin
Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon).
Progressive
Irrelevance? by Anis Shivani
The left thinks of Bush as an idiot. He is, but only in the
sense of not being intellectual. He is the smartest fascist
to come down the pike in a long while, and has completely
outwitted the opposition. As long as progressives continue
to grant the basic premises of the "war on terrorism" -- that
it is a "war" and that we're fighting "terror" -- it will
wage a losing struggle.
Stepford
Citizen Syndrome: Top 10 Signs Your Neighbor is
Brainwashed by Maureen Farrell. Also,
Ten
Reasons Why Many Gulf War Veterans Oppose Re-Invading Iraq,
by an anonymous veteran of that conflict.
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September 5, 2002
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Ever heard of Tranzis? I guess I'm one -- that's short for
Transnational Progressive... those disdainful of "one-worlders"
have created the label (with its implied Nazi-"z" put-down).
This
article by Richard Poe explains more, and a set of three
in Foreign Policy (by Kofi, Noam and Ruth Wedgewood) wonder,
What
Is the International Community? I'd say it's what we humans must
evolve into, if we're ever to achieve the Star Trek dream.
This means transcending the age of the nation-state, and according to
The Soverign Individual (a book I've mentioned previously,
which I think everyone should read) we entered the closing phase
of that era when the Berlin wall came down.
The
Troubling New Face of America -- excellent column from today's Washington
Post by former President Carter.
Hmmm... we've seen recent linkage here about Mick,
Jimmy and Slate... can there be some convergence?
Yes! From
Seth's
travels in Kashmir (last week in Slate):
Stan [Armington] once took Jimmy Carter on a trek to
Everest base camp in the mid-1980s. He says the ex-president
(and ex-nuclear-engineer) could read a topographic map like
nobody's business. There were 35 Secret Service agents on
the trek taking shifts, and they all got altitude sickness.
(Stan also once took Mick Jagger on a trek, but Mick gave
up after two days.)
From the Onion:
Who
Will Bring Closure to a Grieving Nation? Also,
MS-NBC asks, Why
do cell phones make us stupid?
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September 4, 2002
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Forgot to mention the audiophile angle relating to the Stones'
catalog re-release: although they'll be playable as normal CDs,
these are also SACDs -- there's a format war ongoing
between
Sony / Philip’s SACD media, and DVD-Audio, which is
supported by AOL/Time-Warner.
(Slate
column, all about these Super Audio Compact Disks.) For a view
into the world of Sir Mick & the lads today, check this
New
Yorker article (its focus is Jagger's fashions).
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September 2, 2002
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The Rolling Stones ABKCO catalog was re-released
last week -- this is the material I call 'Blue Label
Stones' because it was originally on London records
(as opposed to their own label, which was yellow,
beginning with "Sticky Fingers" in 1971.) This era
could also be characterized as the Brian Jones Rolling
Stones, and it's far superior to what came after, IMO.
Everything's been remixed, and included are
stereo
versions of several songs generally available only in
mono or that bogus 'reprocessed' stereo (treble on one
side, bass on the other). No bonus tracks, however;
there wasn't much chance that
Cocksucker
Blues would be included.
The Chitty
Experience is a public record of the
kinds of things you think about when you have to
listen to the soundtrack of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"
every day, sometimes twice a day.
Also from last week, a Zompist
rant about Mac vs. Windows (which, unlike most
such, comes out in favor of the latter).
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August 28, 2002
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Shop
Till Eggs, Diapers, Toothpaste Drop is the
NY Times report about an automated
kombini, or C-Store, called
Shop2000.
One of the first was unveiled yesterday in Adams-Morgan. Do they
realize that rather than futuristic, the 2K now
signifies a naïve, happier age? (Remember: use
annoying/annoying to get in -- this also works at the
Nando Times,
a news site which just yesterday started
insisting on registration.)
Comics by
Derek Kirk (or Gim Ji-Hoon), a Korean-American. Lots of
good stuff there.
Slate slide
show about the designs on the new quarters. (This
is a deep link; there's a lead-in story, easy enough to
locate). For all the latest data concerning these
curiously intriguing coins, see Coin World's
statequarters.com .
Last Thursday, the shrub held a fundraiser in downtown
Portland. The magnitude of the demonstration outside
surprised his handlers, according to
Salon.
(Another
report
about the fracas from a more biased source.) Don Joughin
took his kids, expecting a peaceful protest (?) -- here's
his
story, with photos and message board, about how he and
his were pepper-sprayed by the police.
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August 26, 2002
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Over the course of a few days last week, I spent several hours
sitting on Tower Record's floor (since they've removed all
their comfortable chairs, to thwart shoppers like me, who've
come to perceive today's extremely well-stocked bookstores as
the library). My mission was inspecting each page of the two
new All-American Ads volumes from Taschen -- they're
the size of phone books, and quite fascinating. One's for the
1940s
and the other, the
1950s.
To see samples of the sort I was absorbing, check this
Ephemera
Now page -- it's a matrix of cleverly-cropped thumbnails.
Don't Canadians call those inflatable "Moon-Bounce"
chambers people rent for kids' parties "bouncy
castles"? In England, they have a
bouncy
cathedral.
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August 22, 2002
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In the words
of Chuck Taggart,
Schaaaaaadenfreude!
Schadenfreude!
Schadenfreude!
(To be sung to the tune of the "Hallelujah
Chorus".)
The odious Georgian Bob Barr has been ousted from
the US Congress. Unfortunately, the other
Republican who defeated him in the primary doesn't
sound much better. Despite that, though, it's nice
to see the Karma Kops catch up with Barr.
Some Canadian's Open
Letter to America everybody's linking to, and
Wil
Wheaton's response. Speaking of Wesley: tonight,
up in the City, at the DNA Lounge, he'll climb into
the ring for a celebrity boxing match against Barney,
the Purple Dinosaur -- an
EFF
benefit. Sounds like fun, but I won't be there.
My dictionary says "nostalgia" is "a bittersweet
longing for things, persons, or situations of the past,"
or being homesick -- it seems many interpret the word
as meaning 'longing for their own past' and would like
a different word to characterize the yearning for ages
before they were born. Andy thought a term for this was
'minivercheevy' but John clarifies: it's a poem called
Miniver
Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson. (On
Minver Cheevy has various reactions -- literary
commentary.) Craig Lambert discusses the history and
two different different types of nostalgia in
Same
As It Never Was: reflective and restorative.
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August 16, 2002
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Man
Conquers Space -- what if the 1950s
Colliers articles had come true? A
film is being made; not finished yet, but you
can get an idea of what they're up to.
Global warmth for US after 9/11 turns to frost,
even among the British -- USA Today
article says that
many Europeans have started using the phrase "that's
American" [as] shorthand for "not taking anyone else
into consideration."
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August 14, 2002
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Amazing photo
(with explanation) of a space shuttle launch
plume, illuminated by the setting sun, with the
moon.
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August 11, 2002
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Worried about suitcase nukes? A site by Russ Kirk called
the
Memory Hole lists suppressed news stories -- it says
that
according
to JFK and a recent Time magazine article, the
Soviets assembled one inside their DC embassy, for
doomsday, from components smuggled in via the diplomatic
pouch. If this is true, it's probably still there.
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August 9, 2002
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According to
nausicaa.net,
Miyazaki will attend the
"Spirited Away"
premiere on September 10th at el Capitan, Disney's
flagship cinema on Hollywood Blvd.
In the Washington Monthly:
Confidence
Men -- "Why the myth of Republican competence persists,
despite all the evidence to the contrary",
by Joshua Micah Marshall.
Laurent Murawiec is this week's Name in The News. The
analyst from Rand (which disavows all knowledge) and
GW faculty member (who has no classes) gave a briefing
at the Pentagon advocating the overthrow of the royal
house of Saud. Tuesday's
Washington
Post article about the briefing, with Saudi
reaction; Wednesday's more direct
Slate
article reprinted the content of his Powerpoint
slides, and has more background, including the LaRouche
connection. (Slate labels Murawiec a 'nutbag'.
"Egypt the
Prize.")
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August 7, 2002
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Illustrated LA Weekly article about riding the rails:
The
Hobohemians -- On
the rails with the new freedom riders:
The grizzled old hobos may be dying off, but they're being
replaced in boxcars and on the porches of grain cars by
street kids, gutter punks, dreamy anarchists and eco-warriors,
train-obsessed professionals, all held loosely together by
a vision of freedom as old as the nation itself, an America
of movement and self-reliance, of mythic vastness and silence,
of discovery, escape, rebellion. It's an America that was
offered long ago and never delivered, that we're all supposed
to love but not allowed to look for, that's just around the
corner and always out of reach.
Hallelujah,
I'm a Bum -- summary of Smithsonian magazine's
article from four years ago, about the old days, during the
Depression.
Weekly Standard article:
Patio
Man and the Sprawl People, by David Brooks:
Cutting through the landscape are broad commercial thoroughfares
with two-tier, big-box malls on either side. In the front tier is
a line of highly themed chain restaurants that all fuse into the same
Macaroni Grill Olive Outback Cantina Charlie Chiang's Dave & Buster's
Cheesecake Factory mélange of peppy servers, superfluous
ceiling fans, free bread with olive oil, and taco salad entrees.
Cat and Girl -- comics
by Dorothy Gambrell.
Free
Online Barcode Generator.
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August 5, 2002
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Way back when I was a daily cyclist, pre-automotive,
I'd heard about how Davis, California was the most pro-bike
place in the country -- incentives, bike paths
everywhere, etc. I've yet to visit the place (it's
somewhere out beyond the East Bay), but
Geoff has a friend up there, and confirms
it -- says the local police cars sport this
logo, oddly familiar to fans of "The Prisoner."
On August 1st, the interplanetary magnetic field near
Earth suddenly turned south -- a condition that renders
Earth's magnetosphere vulnerable to solar wind gusts. A
G2-class geomagnetic storm began soon after. Sky
watchers in Canada and parts of the United States saw
colorful auroras on August 2nd. The storm continued
fitfully until August 4th.
See snapshots of those recent skies at the
Aurora
Gallery.
Feel
the Heat -- a premonition from the year 2007?
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August 2, 2002
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This week, the source of Slate's diary entries
is Seth, writing from Thailand -- fascinating!
Start at the
beginning -- his description of Bangkok traffic is the same
as I observed in Kuala Lumpur, just down the peninsula:
At red lights, all the motorbikes filter through
the cars up to the front, making every change to
green look like the start of a motocross race.
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August 1, 2002
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This brief weblog
entry concerns HavenCo, and has a photo, the first
I've ever seen of that WWII platform off the coast of
England, also known as the independent state of Sealand.
Always enjoy reading James Fallows.
He just completed a three-part dialogue with
Kevin Phillips, author of the new Wealth
and Democracy: A Political History of the
American Rich. ("Make your blood
boil? Well I should say..." Begin with
part one.)
The Atlantic also dredged up a piece he wrote
for them in 1982,
Living
With a Computer, where he described how life
changed after he acquired a $4000 multi-component
system he used as a word processor, running a program
called "The Electric Pencil."
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July 30, 2002
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This to That is
a simple, informative page where you use pulldowns
to specify two types of surfaces, and hit the
"Let's Glue!" button to get the best adhesives
to stick 'em together.
Exit
Here features photos of Route 66 and other nostalgia:
Motel signs, old cars, even some guys's snapshots of
his CCC experience.
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July 28, 2002
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A new fixture in these parts, visible while driving 'round,
is some poor minimal-wage shmoe standing at the curb, waving a
sign -- their usual employer, an over-priced, nearby apartment
complex, now desperate to fill vacancies -- I've also spotted
someone hired by a Subway franchise, wearing a happy-sandwich
outfit; and just today I saw someone with a sign reading "Golf
Liquidation," a going-out-of-business phrase which has also
become a common sight here.
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July 26, 2002
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According to guest BoingBoing
blogger Xeni Jardin,
Since i-mode was first introduced in Japan, mobile phone
users there have used text emoticons called emoji
to send dense messages in fewer bytes. Top providers
DoCoMo, J-Phone and AU/KDDI have begun offering proprietary
sets of emoji characters enabling two users on the same
service to send messages to one another on the go
without conventional text. Thanks to recent introductions
of new colorful, cool, animated emoji sets, speed-obsessed
keitai (mobile phone users) are evolving a
rich, all-pictographic, shorthand language.
These are just some I like; she put up a couple strings,
and decodes the message they convey. They're specified with
four-digit key sequences, shown in the following tables:
DoCoMo
(boring selection, but with English text);
J-phone,
and a J-Sky
supplement (click pages 4, 5, & 6).
Tick
Tock Toys, Archives and Galleries
has scans of a multitude of archaic
products -- for example, a whole section on
Pillsbury "Funny Face" packets,
organized by years-of-issue series. They're
cross-referenced on this
Drinks page, which also shows the "Fizzies"
and "Flav-r Straws" I remember fondly from my
childhood. Where else can you see a
Shake-a-Pudd'n
image? Dan Goodsell's apparently
been stashing away this stuff for decades;
now the Internet gives him the opportunity
to display his collection.
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July 24, 2002
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More political ranting...
From an excellent
interview
with Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush
Dyslexicon, contrasting with the media's
treatment of Clinton:
The double standard is mind-boggling. On the one
hand, the media went to town on Whitewater, which was a
petty matter to begin with and turned out to be entirely
legal -- just like "Filegate," "Travelgate," "Troopergate,"
and all the other so-called "scandals" that had actually
been fabricated by the right.
On Bush's actual transgressions, on the other hand, the
media have kept politely mum: his theft of the election;
his team's excessive closeness to Big Oil, the weapons
manufacturers and the Saudis; his lax response to the repeated
warnings of a terrorist attack; his flight into the
Heartland on 9/11; his team's many links to Enron; and his
own bald-faced lies about his tight relationship with
Kenneth Lay. Only now, finally, has the press begun to
press him on his history of shady business dealings,
because the economic mess is undeniable -- but even
here they pull their punches.
For whatever reasons, they were always quick to lambaste
Clinton over trivial things, where nothing was at stake.
In this case, everything's at stake. The dangers are
enormous.
The lie about Monica was trivial. It affected no one.
It was unimportant. It was a private matter, period.
The lie about Ken Lay pertained to a momentous issue.
It had to do with the thousands of Enron employees who
had lost their pensions. It had to do with the systematic
fleecing of a multitude of shareholders. It had to do with
corporate chicanery on a gigantic scale, and, as we would
soon find out, it was by no means an anomaly, but just
one symptom of a corporate epidemic.
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