DESPITE...

the fact that I KNEW it was spam, I HAD to click on the email that I recieved that was entitled "Seasonal Hovercraft". I had to know. It WAS spam.

Whoa! www.gutenberg.org I can't even begin to tell you what all is in here beyond this: Free books! Free Books! Just get Zen and start browsing.

VERY SCARY

Quoted in an AP Wire article today:

"I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it," Cheney said.

What is this product?

quick, tell me: what are they selling with this copy?
"An Experience Beyond Words
Sophisticated Sensuality.
Extravagant Performance.
Inspired Design.
Precision-Engineered Technology."


It's just a toilet, people. The last time I had "An Experience Beyond Words" on the toilet, it was a BAD ONE. and what, exactly, is "extravagant" performance from a toilet? Pretty goofy stuff.

great graffitti art site

Wow. Some really fantastic stuff here:

Banksy

Home is in Your Head

I have made a discovery - His Name Is Alive's Home is in your Head is THE PERFECT record to listen to during an ice storm. Surreal, pretty, and kind of scary.

Wave power

flippin' sweet! An application of wave-driven hydroelectric power:

http://www.oceanpd.com/

Pinter's Nobel Proze Speech Blasts Bush and Blair

I thought you might find this interesting:

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

-Richard

IRONY, part 2:

So the US Military has been using white phosphorous in Iraq in a fashion that violates international law... this means that:

WE are the ones using chemical weapons in Iraq.


Some part of me knew that this was going to get worse.

"How Zombies Work"

Important information for everyone to remember this halloween. Consider this a public service announcement.

From HowStuffWorks.com: How Zombies Work

How do YOU spell IRONY?

Bush Pushes U.N. to Move Swiftly on Syria Report - New York Times

More Death Ray Stuff

Apparently some intrepid souls at MIT have proven that Archimedes Death Ray, while not necessarily feasible as a weapon, it can be made and it can cause spontaneous combustion of an oak plank! Thanks to Slashdot.

Dylan Thomas reads "Do not go gentle into that good night"

COOL! Poets.org has audio of Dylan Thomas reading... good stuff!

Bizarre proposed Indiana reproductive legislation

Hmm.... Add this post to the one I just did, nd we've basically got the roots of A Handmaid's Tale happening in contemporary politics!


Boing Boing: Bizarre proposed Indiana reproductive legislation

Bush Considers Invading Blue States under "Bird Flu" Ruse

File this AP news release under T for TERRIFYING.

Bush asserted aggressive action could be needed to prevent a potentially crippling U.S. outbreak of a bird flu strain that is sweeping through Asian poultry and causing experts to fear it could become the next deadly pandemic. Citing concern that state and local authorities might be unable to contain and deal with such an outbreak, Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to call in the military.

I am probably definitely paranoid. And this is certainly not a prediction. But... this is what you get when you have an administration that is rarely candid about what its intentions are. It's entirely too easy for me to imagine New England -- you know, the blue states, overrun in an "epidemic" and sent ito martial law lockdown and the spin machine selling a coup d'etat as "security".

Exercise may be good for cognition

Pretty interesting article about a study at the Salk institute that suggests that 30 minutes of extecise a day may actually help regain soem congnitive abilities, if I understood it corectly. Pretty Nifty.

Architeuthis Unmasked!

File under HOW COOL IS THAT?!!?

JApanese scientists have now captured video of LIVE giant squid -- a first. It's way exciting. It'll be even more exciting when I can ACTUALLY SEE the video. The NY Times article is pretty cool, though.

How frustrating

What great leadership. We stand on the edge of a petroleum crisis, and the solution from the executive branch is -- unsuprisingly -- reduce the limitations on building refineries (i.e. make the world safe for pollution), and... uh... asking the citizens to "conserve". No increase in our incentives to look for or exploit alternative fuel sources, just the same old protect-the-petroleum-economy strategy. I'm no energy-policy genius, but that doesn't seem to address the real issue: our dangerous petroleum dependence.

Grr.

I guess the saddest part about this whole thing is that this too-little measure represents a big reversal -- conservation was explicitly rejected from our prior energy policy as an "American way of life issue".

I try to avoid politics in this space, but sometimes I fail. Sorry about that.

The Real Lives of Thomas the Tank Engine

Very cool. Someone has done the homework to identify the "real" engines for the characters in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe.

The Real Lives of Thomas the Tank Engine

The Maine Lobster Game

Oh yeah, THIS is a game I could get into.
lobstergame.com

Dirty James Cash

is my Pirate name... Here's the explanation...

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You're musical, and you've got a certain style if not flair. You'll do just fine. Arr!

Weee-ird

We are watching ABC "News" 20/20 (not usually a habit of mine) reporting on Hurricane Rita -- and I was kind of suprised that they actually reported that religious wingnuts have made remarks about the devistation of Katrina being "God's Punishment".

Interestingly enough, it was radical Protestants condeming New Orleans for being a "City of Sin", a radical Rabbi in Israel condemning us for "America's Israel Policy" and a radical Islamic website condemning us for... the usual. It's interesting to me that fundamentalists of all stripes are sick in the same way. But I thought it was really, really weird for ABC news to dignify that kind of nutcasery with comment. Are we in such a religious country that it's commonplace for newscasts to ask if God is punishing us?

Wee-ird.

Pirate Name

Greetings Matey -

Try this quiz to learn your pirate name:

http://www.fidius.org/quiz/pirate/

Sincerely,
Mad Roger Read

Fossil Fueled Extinction

As I was filling up the gas tank of the Subaru the other night I caught a whiff of that odd, almost sweaty, tingly smell of gasoline. The thought that gasoline is a fossil fuel, distilled from flora nad fauna that lived long ago struck me and immediately I was left with some lingering questions:

Did dinosaurs smell like gasoline?
If so, were they highly flammable?

Maybe that's what happened to the dinosaurs...

Gabe Loves Words (Especially BIG Ones)

I feel like posting another one of my poems, and I hope that's okay.

REGARDING WORDS

As a child, I would suck on the pits
of apricots and plums:
I'd suck all the sweetness out
to the bitter end.
I'd suck the coolness out until
the temperature of the pit and my mouth
were the same.
Words are the seeds one finds
in fruit.
Imagine that--
a universe in a wooden bowl.


Missing you guys - Richard

Quote of the day:

"Light coming through shoji is like the sound of waves: it’s always basically the same thing but it’s never actually the same thing."
from Antipixel.
Wow.
Back to work...

Great Article on Risk management

Digital Web Magazine - Risky Business

Another article sort of stored for me. Have fun, if you're interested in basic project management.
Can you tell I'm at work?

Wired News: A Tool to Wake Up Wi-Fi Zombies

This is really neat - a tool to get people in a local wi-fi network to talk to one another!! Wired News: A Tool to Wake Up Wi-Fi Zombies

Wired News: Java Joy in Coffee Study

Coffee is a health food drink. I coulda told you that! Bottoms up!Wired News: Java Joy in Coffee Study

Flying Spaghetti Monster cult grows

Apparently we are among his many believers.

Boing Boing: Pastafarianism: Flying Spaghetti Monster cult grows

SiteProNews: The 10 Best Resources for CSS

SiteProNews: The 10 Best Resources for CSS

This one's stored just for me,. really.

you knew it was coming...

and you clicked on it anyway. Now you've got Gollum rap. Thank Heather for this one.

Reading Your Baby's Mind - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com

This article in NewsWeek provides an interesting review of all of the fascinating developments in understanding the minds of infants and babies that have emerged through the recent blossoming of cognitive science techniques. Interestingly enough, they're still just getting started with FMRI, but they're alread debunked several myths about early childhood development.
Sure, the pandering tone is annoying, but it still ought to be required reading for any of us with a little whelp at home.

Walken 2008

REALLY?

Forgive my skepticism...

Christopher Walken for President 2008 - Official Website

Flying Spaghetti Monster

I am now a devotee of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. May you each feel the glorious light touch of his noodly appendage.


The truth will set you free. And it comes with tomato sauce!

funny sight...

I've joked about this before, but I actually saw it this afternoon:
The ice cream man, flying down the street at 30 MPH, with the music on.



No one was chasing him.

Sweet! Roald Dahl in the New Yorker

A piece on one of my favorite children's authors -- very cool.
Roald Dahl!

About PEAR

There's an interesting article about Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research lab in WIRED. PEAR studies the degree to which people can impact mechanical systems using only their minds. Fringe? You bet. But they're doing real science and having some suprising results. I first learned of PEAR while I was an undergrad at USF and I'm thrilled that they exist. I'm glad to see scientists exploring the margins of our known universe.

Yikes! Supreme Court Justice O'Connor retires

OK, Big Scary. If you're a liberal, and you're THINKING about getting more involved in politics, now is a great time to get started because this one's for real -- the Bush administration is probably going to fill TWO vacancies on the Supreme Court. Let your congress person know what kind of justices you want appointed. Daily.
Supreme Court Justice O'Connor retires - Yahoo! News

Ha! Take THAT, truth functional model of cognition and meaning!

Throw this on the heap of evidence that suggests that cognition and meaning are not based on the settling the truth or falsity of "statements". I thought that this research is really, really clever -- people don't process information in discrete "quanta" (i.e. statement by statement) but they process on the fly, and assess the value of competing options on a sliding scale of good/bad as the information arrives...

In other words, we're doing the best we can with the information we're given.

Cornell News: New mind model

Firesign Theater Podcasting!

It's not cool enough that iTunes 4.9 (released today, I think) has support for podcasting, but there's a Firesign Theater podcast available, too!

JebBush wants more information on Schiavo's collapse

Apparently Jeb's going back to the well for more Schaivo action. Can't lleave that family alone, apparently.

Bush wants more information on Schiavo's collapse; call to 911

Technical Manual Poetry

In the course of renovating the bathroom on the house, I had to buy a new, more powerful Hitachi cordless drill to complete the mission. The manual contained several breakdowns in english usage and word choice that indicated that it was really, really poorly translated, but I think that this one, from the manual for the flashlight that came with it, was the tops:

"Do not leave the torchlight in the car or the like that tends to be exposed to the searching heat of the sun. Otherwise, troubles can result."

I think that might be the source of a lot of my troubles.

Downing Street Memo Hearings

I have listened to much of the Downing Street Memo hearings this afternoon, and was kind of blown away. There may actually *BE* an inquiry into whether or not the Bush administration misled the Congress and the people in the lead up to the war. OK, hell could freeze over, too.
But Pacifica.org has made the audio of the hearings available onine, and it was quite interesting:
Pacifica.org - Downing Street Memo Hearings Special Broadcast - John Conyers

Robots on Yahoo! News Photos

Wait, it gets better: ROBOT PICTURES!

Robots on Yahoo! News Photos

Robots Put on Show at World Expo in Japan

I posted this especially for Gary, but I think all of us will find it cool...

GeekInformed.com | - Robots Put on Show at World Expo in Japan

The Downing Street Memo

Of course I've hears about the Downing Street Memo (I hope that you have too, although press coverage here has been somewhat scarce). If you haven't heard, this is the internal British government document that contains information that implicates the Bush information in intentionally misleading the public into war in Iraq, understanding fully that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran".

It also mentions that the invasion was "timed to begin 30 days before the US Congressional election" (Now the speed to which we went to war makes sense, it was politically motivated) and that "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action", which says volumes aboutthe mess we're in now.


If you haven't read the text of it yourself, that's a good idea. It's pretty shocking:

The Downing Street Memo :: The text

Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain - New York Times

An article about Functional MRIs on the brains of epople falling in love -- apparently the parts of the mental "hardware" that "light up" when people are falling in love are being mapped. Some very, very interesting observations (with my own emphasis added):

In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.

It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.

And...

Still, said Dr. Hans Breiter, director of the Motivation and Emotion Neuroscience Collaboration at Massachusetts General Hospital, "I distrust about 95 percent of the M.R.I. literature and I would give this study an 'A'; it really moves the ball in terms of understanding infatuation love."

He added: "The findings fit nicely with a large, growing body of literature describing a generalized reward and aversion system in the brain, and put this intellectual construct of love directly onto the same axis as homeostatic rewards such as food, warmth, craving for drugs."

Neato burrito.

Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain - New York Times

'Godless America' on This American Life

I was driving over to pick up Gary Saturday night and I heard the last portion of This American Life -- it was a woman (Julia Sweeney was her name, I found out) retelling the story of how she changed her mind about her faith -- from being a Catholic, to being an atheist. Although it was years ago that I did the same (although I consider myself agnostic for epistemological reasons), I am fascinated by the process of (as she calls it) "Letting go of God" and a lot of the questions that led me down that path remain with me. She walked through all of the really personal and sometimes gut-wrenching emotions that I had to go through in the process. It hit close to home. It can be awkward living in a culture where Christian fundamentalism is more prevalent than ever when you're not Christian at all.

Some of the most compelling portion of the "testimony" was the section in which she tells the seminal event - a bible study that she was participating in where she actually read the bible and discovered the mean and vindictive side of her diety and his son. This is not the god we talked about in my youth group, either.

Anyway, I found it riveting and wanted to point you towards it-- I haven't heard the first half of the show which probes the question of why we want a separation of church and state in the first place. I'm about to go do that. But I suggest you skip on over there and listen to at least the last half of that fantastic show. Christians will certainly relate to her struggle, if not her conclusions.

If this link to the RealAudio file doesn't work, you'll need to look up the RealAudio file for June 3rd on the This American Life The WHOLE show is about an hour -- I think she's in the last 1/4 of the show if you want to skip ahead.


Found out that Julia Sweeney is the comedian who played "Pat" on saturday night live, and was a cast member there for 4 years. This section that she did is from her one-person show "Letting go of God"

Huh?

I noticed in the grocery store today that the "Arizona" brand iced tea has an unsweetened variety of their product... which they have dubbed the "Southern Style" version (emblazoned with an illustration of a grand plantation-style home, oaks draped with spanish moss, etc.)

Are they being ironic? "Southern style" should have the consistency and sweetness of pancake syrup, and slow down appreciably as it hits the ice in the glass.

Airport screeners could see X-rated X-rays

There's a privacy fuss being made about a technology that would allow airport screeners to besically see theough everyone's clothing, and detect hidden weapons/threats. And I'm definitely a believer in people's right to privacy, but I'm not certain that this is the kind of privacy that I give a crap about. I care about intrusion into my activities and thoughts and feelings, about being spied upon. I am more concerned about the privacy that surrounds behavior, not the contour of my physical shape. But then, I'm not in a position where it's expected that someone who would leer at nudity would be leering at me. It's sort of a moot point. But do you care?

Link to article: Airport screeners could see X-rated X-rays | CNET News.com

Best Beach in the Country

What's the best beach in the country? Fort DeSoto, which is my personal favorite local beach. We'll see you there monday!

Annual List Ranks Fort DeSoto Nation's Best Beach - from TBO.com

chicagocrime.org

This is what happens when you build a cool tool, and then provide the public with an open API to develop their own tools using it:
Someone built a searchable database that will plot the locations of types of crimes in Chicago onto a Google map. It's kind of cool, and kind of weird, and I'm not entirely certain that I would want to see this data for my neighborhood.

chicagocrime.org

Researchers pinpoint the part of the brain that understands sarcasm

Researchers pinpoint the part of the brain that understands sarcasm
Syndicated HealthDay news on Forbes.com, thanks to Slashdot

As a corrollary to this discovery, now we know why my skull has an enormous lump on it in that spot.

The Force is a Tool of Satan - Episode III ALERT!

I'm working to make a deadline, but this caught my eye and I couldn't resist sharing it with you. The website will tell you that it's not a joke, but I don't think that makes it less funny.

I really try to avoid holding up the views of other people up for ridicule, because I believe that any view can be made to look ridiculous from some perspective.

But some views are ridiculous. And the graphics alone are worth the click.

The Force is a Tool of Satan - Episode III ALERT!

Thanks to Boing Boing.

A short message from Uncle Sam to Iraq, as channelled by Kurt Vonnegut

Shared with us by Paul Krassner. This one's definitely worth the 12 seconds it'll take to read.

A.Word.A.Day: Comedogenic

Today's Wordsmith A.Word.A.Day selection is comedogenic, which reminded me that I always thought comedogenic should mean...

comedogenic (kom-i-do-JEN-ik) adjective

The unique quality of some items, such that they can be added to another ordinary item in order to make it funny.
Ex. "Comedogenic devices like the famous Groucho Marx glasses or Rubber Chickens are strictly prohibited"

A corrollary to this definition would be the fact that non-comedogenic cosmetics and facial cleansers would be promising that the cosmetics would *not* make you look funny, which is a lot more than many of these cosmetics can really claim, and would not nearly be as valuable as cosmetics that would make you look not funny.

A.R. Ammons

I've been reading a lot of Ammons lately, and I wanted to share some short ones:

SUCCESS STORY

I never got on good
relations with the world

first I had nothing
the world wanted

then the world had
nothing I wanted


CORRECTION

The burdens of the world
on my back
lighten the world
not a whit while
removing them greatly
decreases my specific
gravity


LEANING UP

The storm that downed
the living pine
left the dead hickory

standing:
barkless, stub-knobbed,
den-hole riddled,

the hickory
will
be around while

the heavy, heaving living
carry on carrying
nearly too much to bear alive.

-A.R. Ammons

If you need the big, bad funk...

boombastic will give you what you need. It should show up under "urban" under radio if you're using iTunes.

Whazzup? G!

Interesting and thought-provoking article:
Wired 13.05: Dome Improvement

An American Philosopher has analyzed a series of studies, and determined that whatever it is that I.Q. tests are measuring (it's supposed to be a particular thinking capacity called g) it's been consistently rising in industrialized nations, year after year. I like the hypothesis presented -- that our advances in logical ability are correlating with our increasingly rationalized environment, thanks to the growing presence of industrial-designed objects following logical rules (from traffic signals and telephones to VCRs, DVDs, PC's). One of the items that he points out (of course) is the rise of video games, with their visual-cognitive puzzling that keep kids building and trashing hypotheses for hours. I'm still not sold on the idea that "video games/Computers make kids smarter" but I DO think that they have a role in building a particular type of visual/logical thinking style. Video games can be more a part of a balanced educational regime than Fruit Loops are a part of a balanced breakfast. But it's sure not going to be the best breakfast by itself.

Mental Modeling

This article details some research into empathy, and how it appears that some animals (probably humans too) show strikingly similar neural activity watching another animal have an experience as the neural activity in the animal itself. The article casts this as "like mind reading", and I'm not sure that I agree with that characterization -- but the point here is that they're recognizing the mental hardware of empathy and projection. And that's damn cool. The mechanisms behind this are going to be fascinating, when they can tease them out.

See the world without leaving your seat!

Google Sightseeing is a cool blog set up to point you to interesting locations on (and images of) the planet, as seen through the previously-mentioned (and incredibly cool) Google Satellite.

I'm thrilled - the Encyclia Cochleata AND pink Phalanopsis are in bloom together... happy spring!

GabeusCorpus

Today's Tunes

The Thrills - So Much for the City

Yummy.

15 Years Ago: Nostalgia Trip

I was calling around looking for tickets to see George Clinton tomorrow at the State Theater.

I called the Disk Exchange on Central Avenue, and they didn't have any. But it was a cool flashback experience: That voice, the distinctive mellow monotone of the sole proprietor of The Disk Exchange named Nick hasn't changed in 15 years. Nick turned me on to Swans and Dos and Ministry and a whole ton of cool stuff back when I used to go and spend the bulk of my $320 paycheck from my full-time job at Blockbuster Video in his store every 2 weeks. Nick was "older" to us then, probably in his early 30's but he knew music, and he was really the only person in town who carried the interesting music. His store filled out my collection of Simple Minds LP's like no one else's could have, and brought me a ton of new and interesting sounds. My mind broadened almost incredibly during that time. He used to recognize me and we would occasionally talk about a recent show or a recent album, and share opinions but we weren't friends. He was Nick The Guy At The Record Exchange (the old name). But the sound of his voice on the phone was a trigger to a time when a day off meant paging through LP's (I didn't have a CD player yet), cigarettes, snack food, and clubs. I was transported into a world of the Stigmata 12" single, the "Just Say No/Mao/Yes" compilations, clove cigarettes, long nights in my dark green plaid trenchcoat and green beret spent at Channel Zero dancing, or making fun of people dancing, or just out on the town because there was nowhere to go, but we absolutely had to go there. Playing guitar in whatever public places they wouldn't kick us out of at 2 AM. Being a menace to the late night crowd at Wag's (late night diner) and drinking gallons of coffee. A flurry of constant creativity: writing and singing, dancing and music, almost all of it bad, but all of it sincere.

Damn, 1990 was a hell of a long time ago. I'm equally glad that I lived those days, and that I don't have to live there anymore. But it was nice to hear Nick's voice again. Good to know that he's there.

Benedict XVI

I'm not Catholic, but as a former Catholic (and oddly enough, occasional defender of the Roman Catholic faith) I find the election of Joseph Ratzinger a little depressing. As his central function appears to have been fighting any sort of reform within the Catholic church about sexual attitudes, it seems that the college of cardinals believes that the most important issues facing the world are not rampant poverty, hunger, violence, and oppression, but homosexuality, abortion, and the idea of married or women priests. What you do with your machete is your business, but what you do in your bedroom, Benedict XVI wants to weigh in...

The Catholic church used to seem like the denomination that really cared about real-world problems on a basic human level: justice, poverty, oppression. I had hoped for someone who might be concerned about those things, instead of a German version of Rick Santorum. This is one of the guys who actively fought that movement. Bummer.

There's an interesting cover article about him in the National Catholic Reporter about him from 1999. It says quite a bit about his controversial past. It appears that Gary's comparison to Karl Rove might not be entirely off-base.

What is the proper work of philosophy?

I avoid philosophy like one might normally avoid an ex-girlfriend. But I love philosophy, and I can't and won't stop thinking in that way, about this common life we're all living. I keep coming back to thinking about --- if not actually READING -- philosophy. So I've been fiddling with a word doc that may someday become a philosphy-related text, and in so doing, I have stumbled across an interesting idea that can be stated like this:

The proper role of philosophy the study of the human experience, as it is lived.

This would answer one of those nagging questions that I could never answer to my own satisfaction. Science teaches us so much about the world, it's leading to may answers about what traditionally was the purview of philosophers (most notably, questions about the nature and workings of the human mind, and that activity we call meaning). Psychology studies how we think and what we do. Anthropology studies human cultures. What's left for philosophy? Ethics. Virtue. Being. Meaning. Life, as it is lived. Wisdom. Looking at human living, from a systematic but not necessarily scientific perspective that treasures intersubjectivity more than objectivity. And it's not all that different from the job that it was when Socrates was doing it.

Whether this idea is a GOOD idea or not is outside of what I can accomplish this evening before I go to sleep. But it's interesting, to me.

The Unitarian Jihad spreads a lack of panic through the country

A startling new revelation of rational non-fundamentalists seeks to undremine the fabric of our increasingly repressive and hysterical theocracy:

People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere!

The Unitarian Jihad

For those of you ready to join the revolution, there's also a Unitarian Jihad Name Generator.

Thanks to Heather for forwarding the link...
(posted by Brother Shuriken of Mild Reason)

Little India: Hinduism Made Easy

Sanjay Patel is an animator and artist at Pixar who has illustrated a short encyclopedia of the Hindu pantheon for children, which I find cute, and wonderful. I want to get a copy... Little India: Hinduism Made Easy

Thanks to Drawn! for the link.

Spring in Plant City; The Strawberry Century!

Dad (Alfie) and I rode the Tampa Bay Freewheeler's Strawberry Century yesterday, and it was a truly gorgeous day to ride. Starting at sunrise we did a metric century (62 miles -- we actually rode 64.4, but they told us that they threw in the two "bonus miles" for free) in 3 Hours, 57 minutes and 55 seconds, which was faster than anticipated. It felt good, but we went out way too fast. We covered the first 20 miles in an hour because of the fast pace of the pack, and I haven't ridden that fast in quite a long time. After taking a break at the 20 mile marker we didn't hook up with another group for more than a few minutes. I started to get tired after the 30 mile mark, and was completely depleted for the last 10-15 miles. But I ground those miles out, and finished what I started. I'd still like to complete a non-metric century, but we'll get there... Dad took some pictures, I'll post them when I get them.

It is cool that Strawberry Fields in late spring smell strongly like Strawberry Preserves as you ride through them, although it really shouldn't be suprising that strawberries smell like strawberries. It's a lovely smell.

Ironic?

Saw an interesting product branding choice today:
"Forest Pride" brand Cypress Mulch.

In the same vein, the package advertised that it has "100% recycled contents".

Recycled what? Trees, of course! It's mulch. I can see it now... "Well, these trees were just standing there, so we recycled them..."

Neato!

This is where I was born: Sept-Iles, Quebec, and this is where I grew up as a kid in Montreal (I can actually see the roof of my house! It's almost exactly in the middle.): Montreal, Quebec.

Here is where Jami and I went to last week: State College, PA, home of Penn Sate!

Thanks for the link Gabe! This was awesome.

Look, you can see our house from here!

Google Maps is incredible. They've added the ability to look at COLOR sattelite photos of your (already draggable) map, in stunning detail. This morning, I used ot to trace my old 13 mile mountain biking route across the FrontRange, in Boulder.

Here's Our old apartment in Boulder,CO from the air (zoom in and the spur of trail that comes out from the train underpass on the main road in front of you was our apartment.

You can also count cars in the parking lot at work (back when it was full). Once again, zoom in.

and see the grass flats in tampa bay near the pier in Downtown St. Pete.


OK people, FIND COOL STUFF and post it. Use the "link to this page" link to get the URL of the map/image itself.

Potty Humor

There's a big wet spot on the carpet just outside of the men's room near my office today and I just can't help but to snicker every time I pass it. We've been doing too much potty training.

Sometimes "adult" working life is strikingly like MIDDLE SCHOOL, except there isn't anyone waiting to kick my ass during gym class.

I wonder how much of that is just a function of my being me.

Thurston Moore: "The Best 90 Minutes of My Life"

Thurston Moore o' Sonic Youth writing about the joy and power of mix tapes. A great quote from the end of the article:

Once again, we're being told that home taping (in the form of ripping and burning) is killing music. But it's not: It simply exists as a nod to the true love and ego involved in sharing music with friends and lovers. Trying to control music sharing - by shutting down P2P sites or MP3 blogs or BitTorrent or whatever other technology comes along - is like trying to control an affair of the heart. Nothing will stop it.

Wired 13.04: PLAY

The Tulip King

Here's a link to an article by Jim Knipfel of New York Press regarding David Nash, leader of the Blue Tulip Party... This must be the sort of democracy our founding fathers had envisioned. Enjoy!

http://www.nypress.com/18/12/news&columns/knipfel.cfm

My hat in the ring

As we mourn the loss of our Holy Father, our thoughts must turn to who will next lead the faithful. At this point I am officially declaring my candidacy for Pope. My platform is simple: I promise to bring the circus back to the Vatican! May the Holy Spirit lead the Cardinals to the correct decision for the Church. By the way, if chosen, I will have a contest to decide what my official Papal name will be. I am currently accepting submissions.

Google Ride Finder

"I love it when a plan comes together"

It thrills me when I see technology maturing before our very eyes, and so often it seems to be coming from Google. Google has now made public their "ride finder", which tracks the location of (participating) taxis and shuttles. I'm not sure how USEFUL the information is, because the information is said to be "less than 5 minutes old". But it's way cool, and maybe a little creepy (sure could make tailing someone's cab a hell of a lot easier). Check out downtown Chicago, since there are 3 participating taxi services there...
The Google Blog post announcing the service

Google Ride Finder

Spring in Florida

This morning, walking in to the office, spring was just positively palpable. It almost seems like it happens all at once. Suddenly the oak trees are showing that pale green that you just can't copy, the breeze seems the blow right through me, and my skin tingles with my first sunburn of the year. Now I can almost smell the beach from any part of town, if I stand there and concentrate (and maybe I can). I hear more seagulls, and the cheering crowds are back at the little league by the house, so the house is intermittently filled with enthusiastic cheers. I get chills thinking about the beach in the morning. Every hair on my whole body seems to know that it's spring.

Those of you who complain that the seasons don't change in Florida just aren't paying attention.

Photo Counter Folding

A kind of depressing item on Boing Boing today: a picture of a message at a photo counter, announcing that decreased demand has caused the photo counter to close. I expected this sooner or later, as digital makes much more sense for snappycam shooters. But I had hoped for later. I really like film. I'll be sad to see it go.

Boing Boing: Photo-counter: DUE TO DECREASE IN DEMAND THIS SERVICE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

A PBS Online presentation about Folk art and "Backyard Paradises"

This presentation online by PBS about folk art's "Backyard Paradises" is fantastic and fascinating....
OFF THE MAP | PBS

I'm sure they're everywhere, this week-after Easter. But here it is: the Ducky Peep AFTER-30-seconds-in-the-microwave photo. It was delicious. It had to be done.

GabeusCorpus

THE PEEP SHOW

GabeusCorpus

Cool quote

From today's Word a Day email from wordsmith.org (Regardless of how you feel about Mr. Chomsky):

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist (1928- )

Amazing online art piece.

THE ZOOMQUILT | a collaborative art project Wow. The FLASH version is highly recommended.

Running Octopus!

Very interesting finding -- some octopus actually pick up 6 of their legs, and run on the remaining two! Not only is this interesting, the video of it that goes with the article is pretty amusing:
Octopuses occasionally stroll around on two arms, UC Berkeley biologists report

Thanks Tantannie!

The Solar Death Ray

Oh yes, oh yes. The Solar Death Ray. Some intrepid geek out there has created an aray of 115 mirrors that focus the rays of the sun on to a single point... and do we use this power for good? Oh, no, we do not... and of course, the results are in the image gallery. The 7-year-old within me jumps with joy. And before you ask, yes, he DID do green plastic army men.

Thanks to Slashdot.

A Children's Alphabet-Zoo Site

Really delightful site for kids and anyone who loves typography. Clicking the letters makes them transform into animals, made out of type! Shame that there's such lag after clicking, but that doesn't diminish the page's brilliance.

Meatigami!

A Japanese page featuring instructions on how to make animals out of little sausages. Now, PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

a phrase:

So I wonder sometimes why you are watching

While I toss my pithy little matches into the bonfire of the discourse of our species

How to make a Duct tape Wallet

Oh yeah. MIGHTY cool. How to make a Duct tape Wallet

Edison and Ana Tobin enjoying a bath last week. I thought that this one was might cute.

GabeusCorpus

School Bus from Hell - I saw this friday on the way home from work.

GabeusCorpus

Bumper Sticker

On the way in to work today I saw bumper sticker with the Marines logo, and the phrase "Dying a Natural Death is for Pussies"

The car was driven by a senior citizen.


Yikes.

Times Bicycle Tour

I rode the Times Bicycle Tour with Alfie on Sunday- I didn't make my goals, but I had a great time. I summed up the experience yesterday in an email, so I'll cheat and just post that here:

It was a gorgeous day for a bike ride in the country, in spring, in Florida. Lots of oak trees wildflowers, foals, calves, sunshine, blazing downhill descents and a (damned) stiff breeze out of the East. We missed the start time for the 75 miler, and took off with the 40 milers, and out of a combination of factors (poor training, poor warm up, too much breakfast, not enough dinner, ride starting with a 4 mile climb) I ended up puking my brains out after the first 5.5 miles.
After which, I felt much better (and usually it takes me 10 miles to warm up), but we had lost a lot of the riders who would have helped pull us along at a better pace, and I had lost a lot of valuable nutrients and electrolytes. I pretty much gave up the main goal right then. I felt weak, and rode very poorly for most of the rest of the day (even had to walk up the last part of 3 or 4 of the climbs). Around the 30 mile mark my quadriceps started cramping up, but I finished the 40 mile ride ON the bicycle, so I'm glad for that. The idea of getting swept up by the sag wagon was mortifying. We ended up completing the ride in around 2:45, (+/- 14.5 MPH). I felt a little bit better seeing that there were people walking, stopped, or resting at the tops of almost every good climb (there were a lot of them) but was nonetheless disappointed that I didn't even come close to meeting my goal.

The summary: I had a really good time, and it was a gorgeous day in beautiful countryside, but from an athletic perspective, it was as close to a total disaster as it could get without entirely ruining the fun. I am going to have to take a good, hard look at the feasibility of an April 10th century.

TMBG Repeat count

By the time I had left the house this morning, we had listened to tracks 14-18 of Flood 3 times. When "Road Movie to Berlin" comes on, Edison runs full tilt to the stereo to wind it back to "Whistling in the Dark".

I said "say cheese", and I got a whole lotta cheese, allright...

GabeusCorpus

The Amazing Flying Edison... the muddy version.

GabeusCorpus

I took this afternoon off from work. This is what I've been missing - Ana Tobin enjoying a custom known as "tiny bath"

GabeusCorpus

Drawn!

A simply amazing blog about cartooning, illustrating, and art. Yikes!
Drawn!
via BoingBoing

Giant Steps by Michal Levy

Giant Steps by Michal Levy is a very, very cool extremely short film to the soundtrack of John Coltrane's Giant Steps. Thanks to Gabe W.

Whistling in the Dark

I have succeeded in getting the kids hooked on They Might Be Giants' Flood (as previously discussed here). A side effect of this is that Edison now knows that he needs to make the CD player's display read "14" in order to hear how favorite tune, "Whistling in the Dark". But my favorite developments are Ana Tobin trying to sing along with "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" and the fact that Edison has identified which engines from the Thomas and Friends stories sing which songs. Apparently, Gordon sings "Whistling in the Dark", Bill and Ben (the twins) sing "They Might be Giants" and Henry sings "Road Movie to Berlin".

Trying to imagine what he sees in his head while he's imagining these engines singing these songs is heartwarming and very funny (to me). It's interesting to see how he fits things into his world, too.

Odd eBay item

The big questionon everyone's mind, is did they take it from a real vegetarian?

I absolutely love this shot of the kids. Nick was watching the kids yesterday and took this picture. Edison in particular LOVES Nick's camera phone.

GabeusCorpus

Super Mario, in Post-it Notes

I saw this on BoingBoing this morning and it's too good not to share.

Engineering students built a Super Mario Brothers mural for Engineering week on a glass building -- out of Post-It notes.

Alexi rules the road

Alexi is a custom project car made of a hearse. Mad Max had better run and hide. Found via Gibson's blog.

Hunter S. Thompson has commit suicide.

I'd like to believe that he decided that the time was right, rather than believe that he decided that life wasn't worth living. Either way, I'm glad that he was here for a while.

The Horror that is TicketMaster

I'm cranky this afternoon. This is the icing on the cake:
Rather than drive downtown to pick up tickets to see Interpol at Jannus, I figured that I'd order them online -- how convenient! What I didn't realize is that TicketMaster was going to screw me blind for the privelege. For the "convenience" and the "service" that TicketMaster provides, which is what the charges were called, I would have been paying an extra $30.30 (granted, split among the 4 of us who are going, but that makes a $23 ticket into a $30.58 ticket.)

I suppose that I'll be driving downtown on my way home from work. How much will I pay downtown?

$23 a ticket.

eCommerce is not supposed to be a barrier to purchasing goods.

Hubble Wallpaper

Yes, killer wallpaper for your 'puter from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now everyone at work will know how cool you really are.


Note:
These last 2 posts are from Lifehacker.com, a Sony-sponsored (but really great) blog with links to hacks that you can use in everyday life, or interesting things. Pretty nifty. They have made a post or two that panders to their sponsor's views on file sharing networks, but hey... I'm not going there for the politics.

Verizon "Free" Web Access Cell Phone Hack

This hack tells you how to set your proxy server on your phone to use something other than Verizon's proxy server -- which means that you don't have to pay them $5 to use it. The effect is that you can get your wireless internet for free on your cell phone -- of course, your minutes are still charged.

It's amazing what you can do when you understand how the tools work. Of course, I haven't yet tried it...

Dig the article : Link

I wanna know...

why coffee robots (vending machines) make such god awful coffee. I mean, terrible. Worse than burnt, old, gnarly gas station coffee. There's no excuse for it. We need to design an automated machine that makes fresh brewed, fresh ground, real coffee. This is not beyond the reach of the brighter minds of contemporary industrial design.

Because this crap doesn't taste remotely like coffee.

Parents around the world REJOICE...

They Might be Giants have released (TODAY) Here Come the ABC's, a DVD aimed at teaching the alphabet to yer little ones. The great thing about TMBG's pedagogic streak is not that the music is entertaining, but that they're not limited to just the basics of the ABCs or Presidental History (James K. Polk), they'll take on complex subject matter like taxonomy (Mammal) or stellar astronomy (Why Does the Sun Shine?). Unlike so many of other entertainers who aim material at children, they're not coddling them. Like any good science musem, they're fun and challenging.

This will be great, because Edison and Ana Tobin have "discovered" music, and one of their favorites is a vanilla-bland CD of "childrens music" which sounds as if it's been performed under heavy sedation. They love it, though, and I'm thrilled for them. I'm happy that they have a favorite record that they want to wear out and dance and sing.

However, I'm not above a well-placed counterstrike, and it appears to be working: They're getting hooked on Flood and yesterday Edison nearly went hysterical when Mommy couldn't figure out which track was about "Whistling in the Dark". Ana Tobin loves the intro and Birdhouse in your Soul.

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager

This page is really, really cool - a visual plot of the last 100 years of the top 1,000 baby names, dynamically altered based on the names - or beginnings of names that you type. Fascinating. Also interesting to note that the first name "Edison" was at its most popular in 1910, dropping from the top 1,000 in the 1950's. Requires Java, and some Microsoft browsers may note have it.

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager

Google Maps Rule

Keith just brought this to my attention - the Google Maps service has launched, and it has some GREAT user interface improvements over the other providers that I've used -plus, once you've selected an area, you can search for anything within that area. Once again, Google shows that they've got amazing talent...
Google Maps

Mad Knife Skills

As someone who loves to cook, enjoys large, sharp knives, and has a penchant for lopping off chunks of my left thumb, I was excited to see that one of Yahoo's website picks of the day was a page on good knife technique. Some good stuff here:

How to Cut...

Why I am an Inept Political Analyst

Note: This post was touched off by a post on Gary's LiveJournal last week - I'm trying to hash out those thoughts more completely.


Gary asked us if we thought the left (or just normal conservatives) can figure out how to compete with the radical right "NeoConservative" movement that appears to be stonger-than-ever after the November elections, or "is it just a matter of waiting until it burns itself out?"

I like thinking about politics and on occasion I suffer under the illusion that my thoughts on this subject matter in some small way, so I spent a few moments pondering this question and came to a most surprising answer:

I have no idea. Not a blessed clue. And I'm usually willing to conjecture on anything.

But this one has me stumped, because it hangs on what large groups of people will believe, and that's what I'm confused about. No matter what the political slant, I hear things being said that leave me completely perplexed. Here's what makes me think I'm totally unqualified to issue future predictions:

• My fellow Americans just re-elected an administration that was the source of reversals and broken promises even before 9/11, and then became even more twisted -- behaving in a manner that either looks grossly inept, or criminally deceptive.


• The biggest problem facing the American people right now is that Social Security, allegedly, will run out of money in 40some years. A plan that funnels money OUT of the system will solve the problem. (scratches his head). I'd love to get a plan like that for my student loans. Employment, health care, education, hunger, poverty, who cares.


• George Bush claims a "mandate" after winning by some 60,000 Ohioans. A claim which I've seen repeated in the press (wish I could remember where). Amazing. People seem to buy it, even democrats. Doesn't this bother anyone?


• The figures that I've seen on people opposing gay marriage - healthy majorities, all of them. Huh? I completely fail to understand how someone else's marriage, gay or otherwise, has any impact whatsoever on MY marriage. All of the arguments that I've heard against the idea are either ridiculous (the slippery slope artuments about Gay marriage leading to marrying trees and rocks), or entirely motivated by religion-based bigotry. Whatever the reasoning, a big, big chunk of the American People are buying this argument


• What passes for political speech in this country is not really discussion of the issues and searching for solutions, but sloganeering and banter about issues that really matter. Both Conservatives and Liberals speak past one another, sniping each other, rather than trying to the issues.


• Maybe the most compelling argument that I'm a complete fool is the fact that I'm annoyed by the people I'm supposed to agree with:
  
  • "Not One Damn Dime Day" was a great indicator of how infantile and lazy the left can be. People "protested" by staying home and doing nothing. Maybe this goes a long way towards explaining all of the stuff above. There's no positive vision, there's nothing being advocated, just an exhortation to damage companies that had nothing to do with the decision to go to war, in order to "send a message" to the leaders of our country. You wanna send a message? Buy a stamp and use it. I feel weird pointing this out -- if you're doing nothing, you're actually... doing nothing.
    
    It seems that the "protest" culture of the left is good at one thing - digging their heels in and saying what they're against. You don't win voters or politicians over with that kind of stuff. The left needs to put forth a positive vision of life: compassion, energized communities, decentralized economies, economic justice... These fantastic ideas are out there, but the message is hidden by sarcasm, anger and bitterness. Nobody wants to listen to a mob of angry protesters. I know why they're angry, and it's understandable, but the current strategy is losing the battle for the American people's minds.
  
  
  • That being said, I'm amazed by talk about pulling out of Iraq. Like it or not, those of us who hated the idea of the war failed to stop it. Now we've destroyed the country, and it's time to fix it before we leave. It's really pretty simple -- we are obligated to leave them with as much or more stability than they had when we bombed the stuffing out of them. Is this too simplistic? We blew it up, we have to help fix it.
  
  

The long and the short of it is that I'm completely out of step with many of my American contemporaries, and it doesn't seem to divide like it used to, on clean ideological lines. And this could mean many things, but the explanations that stand out to me are these two: I am either insane with arrogance, or this country is crowded with grossly misinformed people who aren't thinking clearly. When you're hopelessly out of step with the vast majority of your society, it's much more likely that you're the one who's crazy and they're not (we can get into a discussion about "truth as intersubjective convergence on data" later if you want). This is why I am an inept political analyst. Now, don't listen to me!

A Day of Mourning

After a long, 5 week wait, I have had my repaired eMachines Laptop returned to me -- without my data. Pictures, website files, a massive library of music, almost a year's worth of email, bicycling training log, all gone. It'll take quite some time get the computer back to where it was.


So if you aren't doing it already, back up your data. Losing it sucks, completely.

Great Show...

Gary and I had the pleasure of seeing Camper Van Beethoven last week, and opening up for them was The Hackensaw Boys - a really fantastic group of guys from Virginia playing old-timey music very, very well with a fierce, uplifting, and innebriated spirit. All IN all, it was a great time. And of course, Camper Van was fantastic. It is now my policy to see David Lowery at any opportunity I get.

The "Music" page has some good samples. Check these fellers out:
The Hackensaw Boys Band -- Roots Based Americana Music Direct from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia ::

Theo Jansen is Evolving a New Line of Animals...

Or so he would have us believe. What I do see here, are stunning and beautiful works of creativity. His masterful creatures are masterworks of kinetic sculpture. Here's a Wired article:
Wired News: Wild Things Are on the Beach

And his website itself:
www.strandbeest.com

And the page for his Animaris Rhinoceros Transport, complete with video.

Apparently Xenophobia is a Family Value

Does it mean that I'm dumb if this stuff never ceases to suprise me? I'd like to think that i'm just overestimating people.

James Dobson, the founder of the social conservative organization Focus on the Family has taken aim at SpongeBob's creators, claiming that he has been enlisted in a "pro-homosexual" video. As is usually the case when people "out" a cartoon figure, there appears to be little substance -- as if it would really matter if SpongeBob was gay.

The video is said by it's creators to celebrate the general notion of "tolerance" and features a wide variety of characters (including Barney, Jimmy Neutron, more) -- and it also makes no reference to "sexual preference" in any fashion. But Dobson and company are really, really upset about this message of tolerance.

On Wednesday... Paul Batura, assistant to Mr. Dobson at Focus on the Family, said the group stood by its accusation.

"We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," he said. "It is a classic bait and switch."

Yeah. Because it would be really bad if kids were brainwashed into thinking that people who are different from them might be O.K.

I can't find a link to the clip anywhere online. Post it in a comment if you can find it. I'd love to see this dangerous message.
The New York Times > Washington > Conservatives Pick Soft Target: A Cartoon Sponge

Just a footnote, here: Let me point out, that sponges are asexual. I don't want to be the one to mention this to Bob himself, but I'm not sure that SpongeBob could be gay, even if he... er... it wanted to. It's an equipment issue.

All-Mom Bands Rock the House and Cradle

Lost of good things in the news today -- either that, or I'm really, really bored. But I think this is cool on any day -- everyone should be in a band. Especially mommies:
All-Mom Bands Rock the House and Cradle

I especially like the re-written version of "we got the beat" (since The Go Go's are a big deal with the toddler set in our house lately) entitled "We're Really Beat".

Weird Tide

California has to do everything different. They can't just have red tide like everyone else. It has to be Giant Squid.
Yahoo! News - Jumbo Squid Wash Onto California Beaches

Pictures from Titan: Cassini-Huygens

Humankind, if it's still credited with accomplishing things, has done something really, really fanstastic: we landed a robot on one of Saturn's moons, and it's taking pictures for us.

The more I think about it, the cooler, and the crazier it seems. The images are neat, and it's wonderful that we're getting a very close look at one of the most interesting locations in the Solar System.

Link: ESA - Cassini-Huygens Website

Villains! Reprobates! Faithless Scoundrels! Bastardos!

Wonderful. Yesterday, some criminal masterminds broke into several cars in the work parking lot, and one of them was our new minivan. They took nothing, because there was nothing of value (other than our irreplaceable DVD of The Back of Beyond: The Story of the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad, which would have been a tragic loss) but smashed the window and tore up the window run channel getting into the van. I'm annoyed, because even with insurance it's expensive, and doubly annoyed at their moronic plan. What sort of criminal geniuses break into a minivan and a bunch of old cars in a video-monitored parking lot of a large company in broad daylight? I guess we'll see if they get away with it. But I'd think with criminal intent and a large dose of hubris, they could have found a much easier and more lucrative target. Points off for style, boys.

Yahoo! News - Judge Rejects School Board Evolution Stand

What's most gratifying about this is that it's filed in with the Reuter's "Oddly Enough" weird news feed. Because, yes, it's bizarre that it happened in the first place.
Yahoo! News - Judge Rejects School Board Evolution Stand

Happy Birthday, Ana Tobin!

On this, the occasion of Ana Tobin's 2nd Birthday, we wish her all the best. This is what I got this morning when I said "SMILE!"



Mommy gave her a candle to blow out in her French toast...



And Edison wished her happy birthday, too:

Science as a verb

I just finished Jeff Klinkenberg's Seasons of Real Florida and I enjoyed it tremendously. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in old-style Florida, and the glimpses of it that can be caught between Target and the gas station.

In this essay, he's hanging out with Jim Loyd, an animal behaviorist known as "Firefly Doc" who studies fireflies as a professor at the University of Florida. There are many great moments, but I loved this quote about science:

"Science is not voodoo," he told me. "Amateurs should be able to do it. But a lot of students today think science requires lots of expensive technology and a laboratory." The accessibility of science was his favorite theme. He once wrote an essay about the subject, inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England transcendentalist who encouraged naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau:

"Foregoing generations of students beheld nature face to face; ours, through their eyes, poorly," Doc wrote, capturing the flavor of Emerson's nineteenth-century prose. "Why should not our students also enjoy an original relation with their universe? Why should not our learners have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a science by revelation to them, and not merely through the history of others? Surrounded in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through them, and will invite them by the invigoration they supply to actions that reach to achieve new heights of insight, why should our students grope among the dry bones of the past, or the molecules or electrons of some wanting future, and live themselves as role-playing facades they know from TV?"

"The sun shines today too. There are things to be explored and found again, fresh."

Fireflies, of course.

Right on. This part serves nicely to shore up Klinkenberg's argument in the book that those who don't see the seasons in Florida need to connect with the part of it that isn't climate-controlled and interior-designed. To me it's more than that, though - science and philosophy and poetry aren't just subjects to be studied, they're disciplines to be practiced. They're not nouns, they're verbs.

Y'all ought to read the book. Thanks to mom for loaning it to me!

Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle

Picked this up from William Gibson's blog -- this is the title of a series of government ads in North Korea exhorting gentlemen to keep their hair cropped short. It sounds like a great album title for the next Spiritualized album.

Quoth the BBC:

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy

One of my favorite parts of their campaign, this one from one of the North Korean newspapers:

"No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded."

There's actually something that Kim Jong Il and I can agree on.

LINK: BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | N Korea wages war on long hair

Coining a new phrase: ex podex

Once every few hundred years, someone stumbles across a stunning innovation that profoundly impacts the entire course of human history. But that has nothing to do with this:

Yesterday I was looking for a nice way to politely point out that someone was... (ahem) speaking beyond the boundaries of their knowldege and expertise... which is to say, I had to admit that I was talking out of my ass about something. But nobody wants to admit that, and it doesn't sound pretty, so nobody really wants to hear that either.

So I figured, there can't be a better way to remain pretentious while obfuscating my admission than to use Latin! I thought of the phrase "ex cathedra" [full definition] whose literal translation means "from the chair", but the current meaning is "With the authority derived from one's office or position". I needed the opposite of that... so with a quick trip to a Latin dictionary and the replacement of a basic noun, "ex cathedra" became ex podex - literally, "from the anus". The fact that underneath that glossy Latin exterior it's actually kind of gross only adds to the inherent appeal of the words. That, and it's fun to say.


Usage:

"Chadwick's advice on flanged hooberdoozits is completely ex podex. He has no ideas what he's talking about."

"At the risk of speaking ex podex, I'll give you my poorly informed opinion on the matter..."

Such as it is, this is my gift to the world. I am recruiting you to pass it on.

Use the expression freely, and think of me when you do. As if you wouldn't anyway.

KENNY MUHAMMAD AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

Killer Beatboxing with the New York Philharmonic. YEAH, boyee.
(Thanks to Gabe W. for sending this one on)

KENNY MUHAMMAD AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

"Buffyisms" make an appearance in a PBS Documentary about the English language

The website for a PBS documentary about the rapid changes in American English entitled "do you speak American?" features a section on the impact of the language use in Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the American slang:

Do You Speak American -- Buffy & Co. Changed How Teens Talk. A Lot.

Apparently it's an excerpt from a book by Michael Adams entitled
Slayer Slang: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon

Super cool.

UPDATE: (1/7/5) The show, though good, was not as interesting as the articles on the website, IMHO.

Saved by Old Wisdom

I'm always interested in the function of folklore - and this time, it saved an entire village of "Sea Gypsies" from the Tsunami in Thailand. Sometimes it's better to save the questioning-the-conventional-wisdom for later.

"The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will come back fast and will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared," says the 65-year-old sea gypsy.

Link to story in The Nation: Bangkok's Independent Newspaper :
SAVED BY OLD WISDOM: Gypsies know their sea

Snappy New Year

In the true spirit of Surrealism, I didn't realize that I had Surrealist predictions for the new year, until I wrote them in an email this morning. In case they come true, I'll post them here:

- A new virus will be unleashed that makes people grow Portuguese-speaking fish heads over their entire body

- Eight-legged snakes will take the place of the traders on the floor of the NYSE for one day

- The date of Tristan Tsara’s birthday celebration will be determined by cutting out numbers from the newspaper, mixing them up in a paper bag, and selecting 3 numbers at random

- President Bush will give a press conference wearing the head from a chicken suit, and the body of a gorilla suit. He will speak for 5 minutes, in a conversational tone, without using any consonants.

- After the instantaneous evaporation of Kathleen McGinty, the Creature from the Black Lagoon (a native Floridian, mind you) is named the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection

- Two Words: Carbon Tree Fickle Note Frog Tasting

Cool Toys - The Rasterbator

The Rasterbator is a really, really cool toy - it will create a PDF of a half-tone printable poster of whatever image you feed into it, across the number of pages you specify. If you want a really cool, monochrome dot-poster of any photo you've got, use this really nifty tool. Free, of course.