So It Goes

Listen:

One of my all-time favorite writers has died. From the New York Times:

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84....

Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”

Not all Mr. Vonnegut’s themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment.

I discovered Vonnegut in college and over the course of one summer read all of his novels (up to that point). Slaughterhouse-Five and Cats Cradle get all the attention (and deservedly), but Galapagos was always one of my personal favorites of his. We will miss you, Kurt.

Time to go back and reread...

Hare-Raising Adventures

The niece Lucy came to visit for Easter weekend. I take full responsibility for the bunny suit, as well as the repercussions headed my way in about 12 years...

Mal Content

Tom Robbins (I think) once mentioned in a novel that a person's personality ccould be determined by which Beatle you liked the best (I always preferred John, make of that what you will) but this Internet quiz uses the characters in the brilliant-but-cancelled TV series Firefly (and subsequent movie Serenity) to gauge a person's personal traits. Apparently, I am Mal Reynolds. Damn. I was hoping to be a Reaver.

Your results:
You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 65% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 55% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 50% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 45% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 45% A Reaver (Cannibal) 35% River (Stowaway) 30% Inara Serra (Companion) 25% Alliance 20% Wash (Ship Pilot) 20% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 10%

Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.

Click here to take the Serenity Personality Quiz

I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down

If you are in the Saratoga Springs area, this Saturday, March 31, at the Country Corner Cafe (home of perfectly respectable French toast), there will be a stand-up comedy showcase, featuring participants from several local Toastmasters clubs--including yours truly, parading his shame for all to see. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The show starts at 7:00 p.m. Heckling begins at 7:10. Therapy will be available after the show. Tickets are $15, and there will be dessert, I'm led to understand.

Directions: Exit 15 Northway. Turn toward Saratoga. There are 3 lights: Gick, Route 9 north, then East Avenue. Take a left on East and go one block. Turn Right on Excelsior for one block. Jog to the left and get on High Rock. You will see World Gym. The Country Corner Cafe is located in the same building as World Gym (where you can work off the dessert, if you'd like). There is good parking on the left side of the building, and bad parking on the street. The specific address is 165 High Rock Avenue, if you wish to Google Maps or MapQuest it.

Hail the Conquering Hero

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, CT, was probably one of most fun weekends I have spent in a good long time. Granted, I didn't leave the hotel or see the outside for 48 hours (it was kind of like being at a printing industry trade show except that I didn't feel like killing myself), but they had a pretty good hotel bar. I got to meet Will Shortz (New York Times Crossword Puzzle editor), Patrick Creadon (the director of the movie Wordplay--and he was interested in coming to visit the Saratoga Film Forum), and Phil Donahue who was competing. (Interestingly, one of the puzzles had the clue "TV's Donahue." I wonder if he could have entered "me" and gotten points for it.) I also hung out with a bunch of really cool, fun people and met some of the puzzle constructors who made my life hell (and enjoyable, ironically, simultaneously...).

Oh, how did I do? Well, I came in 263rd out of 698 (top 38%). Not bad for a first-timer! Now I can't wait for next year--February 29-March 2 in Brooklyn, of all places.

Cross Swords

This weekend, I am headed to beautiful, downtown Stamford, Connecticut, for the 30th Annual Crossword Puzzle Tournament, ground zero for the nerdy and dork-like (like me), where I shall no doubt bring dishonor upon myself and my family (to the extent that I have not done that already...it is on my to-do list). Of course, I signed up for this before having rented the movie Wordplay, so it will be interesting (I blame it all on my hard-Scrabble childhood). But, when in doubt: emo, etui, oreo, olio, oleo, and of course, oboe.

Tales from the Robot Holocaust--More Slitherbots!

We're boned:

A robot built to mimic a real-life salamander heads for the waters of Lake Geneva. The robot, dubbed Salamandra robotica by its creators at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, was designed to move like a salamander both on land and in the water.

The researchers say building the robot helped them understand vertebrate locomotion and how movement developed when animals moved from sea to land.

Brownie Points

Do you like brownies? Sure, we all do. Do you prefer the edges to the middles ("mushy mushy")? If so, via Boing Boing, here's a brownie pan for you. It's all edges:
Is there anyone else who automatically associates brownies with an episode of Barney Miller or am I just showing my age?

Bambi, No!!!

From the "Yahoo! News Stories I Would not Click on in a Million Years" Department, sadly listed under "most popular":

Man gets probation for dead deer sex

OK, Computer...

From the Department of Irritating Technology:

If you're happy, the robot knows it

And warms up its laser cannon. But I digress...

I hang my head and sink into my chair dejectedly. As I slouch, the computer monitor in front of me tilts forward and drops low to almost touch the desk, mimicking my gloomy posture. When I perk up and straighten my back, the computer spots the change and the monitor cheerfully swings forward and upward.

Meet RoCo, the world's first expressive computer (.mov video). Inhabiting a back room in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, the robotic computer has a monitor for a head and a simple LCD screen for a face. It expresses itself using its double-jointed neck, which is equipped with actuators that shift the monitor up and down, tilt it forward and back and swivel it from side to side, rather like Pixar's animated lamp. An attached camera can detect when its user moves, allowing RoCo to adjust its posture accordingly.

Unveiled at a human-robot interaction conference in Washington DC on 11 March, RoCo's creators hope that by responding to a user's changes in posture, people might be more likely to build up a "rapport" with the computer that will make sitting at a desk all day a little more enjoyable. The MIT researchers also believe that by tuning into users' moods, the robot might help them get their work done more effectively.

Is that really the key to making sitting at a computer more enjoyable? I don't want a "rapport" with my computer. I just want it to function fast and reliably. How about computers that don't suddenly forget all their settings? How about software that doesn't crash every five seconds? How about making Microsoft Word so that it doesn't have utter contempt for the user? How about not having to restyle the same bullet in PowerPoint 50 times?

I'm better now.

In a related story, Microsoft is working on what it is calling SaltInWounds technology that senses when the user is in a bad mood and does everything it can to make it worse.

Maya Con Dios

Via Pharyngula, I don't know that this movie is for real, but I have heard people (even intelligent ones) making a big deal out of the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. Apparently, this is supposed to herald the end of the world. I don't know; my "Breathtaking Views" American Lung Association calendar ends in December 2007 and I'm not especially worried.

From the Web site:

"I recently had the opportunity to view a new documentary called “2012 The Odyssey” If you are just starting your journey in learning about the theories and prophases surrounding the Mayan end date of December 21 2012, I strongly recommend this highly informative film.

In the documentary, you are invited to join author Sharron Rose on her quest to learn as much as possible about this fast approaching prophecy. Rose takes us along as she travels across the United States speaking with a virtual who’s who of experts on the subject at hand. Featured experts include, Jose Arguelles, Gregg Braden, Rick Levine, Geoff Stray, Moira Timms, Alberto Villoldo, Jay Weidner, the Incan Elders and who I consider to be the father of these theories, John Major Jenkins.

Rose also travels to many places of significant interest located right here in the United States such as Washington D.C., the Denver Airport and a new discovery for me, The Georgia Guidestones. She soon discovers that there are numerous groups and people who understand that this present age is ending and a new world is now just beginning.

In this documentary you will learn just about everything you need to know associated with the December 21 2012 prophesy. You will discover the secrets of the Mayans, the Incans, the Alchemists, the Christians, the Masons and others of our ancient ancestors concerning the end of time and the promise of our destiny as human beings.

I strongly believe that you will learn a great deal from this documentary, and that you will walk away with a more educated understanding of what awaits us over the next few years."

The Denver Airport?! What, did the Mayans predict an outbreak of lost luggage as one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

There's a really (unintentionally) funny trailer, as well. We can look forward to outbreaks of telepathy as 2012 approaches. Yeah, right. On the plus side, since the world will end on December 21, I guess I don't have to do any Christmas shopping that year. Whew!

Personally, I would instead look forward to 2112 The Odyssey. Hold the Red Star proudly high in hand!

Moist and Chewie

I suppose this was inevitable: the Wookieepedia!

Sound Logic?

Via the Wall Street Journal, more music industry woes, largely brought on by themselves:

In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.

The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry's salvation.

The slide stems from the confluence of long-simmering factors that are now feeding off each other, including the demise of specialty music retailers like longtime music mecca Tower Records. About 800 music stores, including Tower's 89 locations, closed in 2006 alone.

The conventional "wisdom" has it that digital downloads are killing CD sales, which may be somewhat true, but even more conventional wisdom has it that music today sucks so badly, which is why CD sales are down.

I'm not entirely convinced of either of those explanations. To the latter, I have found that there is actually a lot of really good and diverse music around today (arguably more than when I was a teen, driven by affordable music recording/editing technology which has meant that artists don't need to spend thousands of dollars on a professional recording studio to record something halfway decent), you just tend not to hear it unless you go looking for it (which is why I love Internet radio). Terrestrial radio screwed the pooch when it decided to play only what people want to hear--which means that they have to have heard it before to want to hear it, which creates a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario. On the rare occasions when my iPod automobile tape deck adapter keeps popping out and I am forced to listen to the radio in the car, even a "decent" station like WEQX (out of Manchester, VT) will rarely play anything really good and new and interesting.

Second of all, the "science" of tracking CD sales is a tad dubious, and always has been; it's hardly a comprehensive survey of all music outlets, and given the diversity of music retailers on the Internet, I wouldn't be surprised if many many CD sales are simply not recorded. For example, I buy 90% of my CDs online from CD Universe, which is cheaper than even Amazon and, since their warehouse is located in Connecticut, I can usually get my stuff in a day without having to pay for express shipping. I also tend to find obscure CDs at independent music stores in Boston or NYC. Some I buy from indie labels or artists' Web sites directly.

Thirdly, most of the "really good music" (IMHO) is on small, independent labels. In fact, of the 21 new releases I bought in 2006, only 6 were on major labels (Columbia, WB, Geffen, and Capitol--and they were typically records by longtime "classic" artists like Bob Dylan or Paul Simon), compared to 8 on indie labels and another 7 on independent labels but manufactured and/or distributed by majors. Small labels tend to go unnoticed by the RIAA (which is why they hate Internet radio, methinks, since Internet radio tends to benefit small, independent artists more than bigger ones).

The recording industry has screwed itself by focusing its energies on digital rights management (DRM) and suing teenagers, rather than realizing that the Internet and P2P networks are a great source of free publicity (kind of what radio used to be). What the music industry needs is some 21st-century marketing acumen and not phalanxes of lawyers and whingeing about how music consumers are all pirates and thieves. The music industry needs to start thinking "long tail" because anyone who seriously likes and buys music couldn't care less about the latest creature from "American Idol" (the number one album, apparently)--not that I have ever actually seen "American Idol," but I'm happy to indulge my prejudice that it unwatchably sucks.

The Looming Robot Holocaust--Have You Checked the Children?

It's been a while since we last checked on the progress of the impending enslavement/destruction of humanity by our robot overlords, but, via Engadget, they are now coming for the children (assuming that's a bad thing...). Let's see how many upsetting things we can identify in the following excerpt:

[T]he ¥5,229 ($45) Issho Ni Nenne (pictured on the left) manufactured in collaboration with Disney. The plush toy features a digital audio player loaded with womb sounds. That's right, apparently an internal microphone was stuffed into a living womb while music played in the room. Just put baby on a bender of sloshing fluids, heartbeat, and muffled music and he'll be out faster than you can say "pass the Thunderbird." And what happens when baby wakes to find he's been duped by a giant mouse? No worries, a "baby mood switch" will sense the babies cries and generate an audible "curiosity trigger" to make baby forget why he was crying in the first place. Another cocktail of womb music and he's back to sleep.

Soft Cell

Here is incontrovertible proof that just because something is technologically feasible doesn't mean that it's even remotely a good idea--a Bluetooth-enabled pillow:

The perCushion...a cotton velvet pillow with a Bluetooth transceiver inside. Just place your cellphone within 30 feet and you can engage in a little pillow talk with your significant other.

I wonder how well it would hold up during a pillow fight.

Happy Pi Day

Yes, 3/14 is the celebration by mathematicians and other assorted dorks (like me) of the mathematical constant known as pi (3.14). If we wanted to be even geekier and dork-like, we could celebrate the pi hour and minute: 1:59 (as in 3.14159). But that would really be pushing it.

Media Mix

Some movies I rented recently, which I highly recommend:

Idiocracy, released with no publicity whatsoever and went almost straight to DVD, is writer/director Mike Judge's long-awaited followup to the cult classic Office Space (itself a brilliant and dead-on look at corporate "life"). An average guy is frozen in the year 2005 as part of an Army experiment and wakes up 500 years in the future (kind of like the premise of Futurama), only in the interim the human race has devolved in intelligence such that people can't speak in complete sentences, people are named after snack food brands, and humankind has become too moronic to solve even its most basic needs (like growing crops). Thus, Mr. Frozen Guy, whom no one can understand because he uses big words (in comparison) and is put in prison for "sounding faggy," has by default become the smartest person in the world and is made Secretary of the Interior by the President (who is a former porn star and wrestler). It's an hysterically funny dystopia, although my only complaint is the timeframe: I don't think the atrophying of human intelligence is as far away as 500 years. I give about 10!

Little Miss Sunshine--Yeah, everyone has seen this already, but it takes me a while. A dysfunctional family road movie. I was really not expecting to like this, as I thought it was going to be cloying and sappy, but it was surprisingly darkly funny, which I liked. I was also expecting one of two equally sappy and cliched endings, and it actually went in an unexpected direction. I highly recommend this one.

A Scanner Darkly--Philip K. Dick is one of my favorite writers, and while his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly (about the symbiotic relationship between narcs and drug users) was not my favorite, I was hoping to like the movie. Maybe I need to give it another try, but I just did not care for it. I think the problem was the animation--it was shot as a live-action film then "rotoscoped" to make it look like an animated film. There is something unsettling (which could very well be the point) about that style of animation that just bugs me. It's kind of like the visual equivalent of nails on a blackboard.

Garden State--I saw this at the Spectrum in Albany a couple years ago when it came out, and I've wanted to see it again ever since and finally rented it (I may buy it). How I love this movie. Zach Braff (who stars in that TV show Scrubs which I have never seen) wrote, directed, and stars in this indie film about a twenty-something actor/waiter who revisits his New Jersey hometown after having been away for almost a decade. Emotionally numb from having been on some form of antidepressant since childhood (thanks to his psychiatrist father), he goes off the meds for a weekend and finally learns what it's like to actually feel something (meeting Natalie Portman's free-spirited character helps in this department, as well). This is a very funny, very moving film, that is up there with Sideways as one of my favorite moves of the past few years.

I almost saw The Queen yesterday at the Saratoga Film Forum, but we had a surprise sell-out and I offered to relinquish my seat to a paying customer.

In other media news, I am almost finished a really good first novel by Joshua Ferris called Then We Came to the End, a dark comedy about life in an advertising agency following the dot-com bust in 2000, and the attendant paranoia over lay-offs. Although I am not finished with it yet, it is so far highly recommended. It took me a while to realize this, but the narrative voice is the first person plural ("we")--there is no single "narrator character" but is instead narrated by the group of coworkers en masse. It shouldn't work as well as it does, but it's a very enjoyable book.

In music news, I picked up the latest album by The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible, which after a couple of spins I like, but need to listen to a few more times to fully appreciate. I am having a hard time getting into the new Shins album Wincing the Night Away; I liked Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow a lot but there is just something about the new one. I don't know; maybe I need to give a few more tries. I also picked up a 5.1 Surround Sound version of The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed which is really cool.

Happily, sports season is over. No more college football, no more college basketball. Syracuse choked in the Big East quarterfinals and got snubbed by the NCAA and did not make the tournament. No brackets for the Orange. So I can just watch March Madness without really having any stake in it (except I hope Duke loses).

Chutes Too Narrow

E Ink is back (assuming they ever went away) with another proof-of-concept prototype (but not a marketable product): the blueChute.

The inventor points out that at just 5mm thick, the blueChute is thinner than a Nano, while still making room for a MicroSD slot and Bluetooth. So not only is the design very portable, but its functions can include email/weather/news streaming (say from your phone) on top of the traditional Daniel Steel eBook stereotypes.

Hold the Candle

Well, I suppose it had to happen eventually--fire is now obsolete. I guess you really can't get much more archaic than fire (except maybe "air," "earth," or "water"). But, yes, high-tech kiddies can now put LED "candles" on their birthday cakes (I'm not sure how one blows them out). But, then again, at $85 per candle, I can't imagine they will be used much beyond Junior's first birthday.

Remember What the Doormat Said

Perfect for the manic depressive--a "reversible doormat" that can welcome or repel guests depending on your mood at any given moment. A bit of a reach, typographically speaking, but I like the idea.

Pushing Up the Daisies

I guess I have mixed feelingss about this, and not just the improper use of the word "your":

You'll die from a Heart Attack during Sex.

Your a lover not a fighter but sadly, in the act of making love your heart will stop. But what a way to go.

'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com

In truth, though, would prefer it to be "mysteriously," my death an enigma to science, just like my life!

Mamma Mia!

While I am not an ABBA fan in any way, shape, or form, this mashup would make me rethink the whole thing.

Abba the Hutt is the result of the fruitful collaboration between the three remaining members of Abba, the seminal seventies pop combo, and Jabba The Hutt, a crime lord from the desert planet of Tatooine. The album includes an irresistible mash up of seventies Swedish pop music and Tatooinish sex funk. Features timeless hitsongs such as “I Ho, I Ho, I Ho, I Ho” , “Dancing Queen Amidala” and “Super StormTrouper”.

Would that this would be actually made!

The Cabinet of Dr. Calamari

Via Pharyngula, a film I have got to rent:

I have seen The Calamari Wrestler. It was…indescribable. I won't even try. The basic idea, though, is that it's about pro wrestling in Japan, with a dying wrestler who undergoes a magical transformation in Pakistan to keep him alive, which also allows him to become a super-star in the ring. He battles rivals to learn a heartwarming secret at the end.

Some classic subtitles in the screen captures provided on the link:

"I want to become a squid again."
"Oh, God, please turn Kan-Ichi into a squid again."
"Not the squid. It's the sweaty monks that came with him." (Hmm...I'd be interested to know the context for that bit of dialog!)

A user at the Internet Movie Database sums up the plot thusly:

A giant squid (in wrestling boots) humiliates the champion wrestler of Japan. The only recourse is a rematch but how can a human wrestle with a giant talking invertebrate? There are no bones to grapple. Is the squid a reincarnation of the previous champion and who is the squid's mysterious trainer? How far is the champion willing to go to defend his honor? Will his fiancé fall in love with the squid?

Radio KAOS

Well, this is depressing. From today's LA Times:

In a ruling made public Tuesday, the Copyright Royalty Board significantly increased the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming digital songs online. The decision also ended a discounted fee for small Internet broadcasters.

Broadcast radio stations that also stream their programs online, such as KCRW in Santa Monica, said they might have to scale back on webcasting, and operators of Internet-only radio stations said the new fees would probably force them to go silent.

An estimated 72 million listeners each month tune in to Internet music programming from hobbyists, traditional radio broadcasters and Web companies such as Yahoo Inc., AccuRadio.com and Pandora.com, seeing them as an alternative to broadcast radio.

The board ruled that the current rate of 0.08 of a cent each time a song is played would more than double by 2010. For music sites run by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, the board set a flat $500 annual fee per radio channel for a certain number of listening hours per month — which stations such as KCRW far exceed.

"Unless we can find an alternative to paying the published rates, there's no feasible way we can continue," said Bill Goldsmith, who operates an online rock-music station called Radio Paradise in Paradise, Calif. He estimated that he would owe $650,000 in royalties under the new fee structure in 2007 — 25% more than he expected to pull in this year from listener donations.

I often listen to Radio Paradise (as well a a few others, depending on my mood)--I have even sent them donations and bought T-shirts. They are a wonderfully eclectic radio station that has no real format, plays anything at any time, and is a great way to hear things I am not able to hear anywhere else, certainly not on terrestrial radio, which has become generally unlistenable in its blandness. There actually is good new music being made, but it takes some effort to find it. Oh, and this irks me:

All broadcasters have to pay royalties to composers and publishers, but traditional radio broadcasters — arguing that airtime is free promotion — have long been exempted from paying royalties to artists and record labels whose songs they play on the air. Laws passed in the 1990s governing digital recordings, however, required Internet and satellite radio operators to pay those so-called performance fees.

How is Internet airplay not free promotion in the same way? Do you know how many CDs I have bought as a result of what I heard on Internet radio in the three years that I have been listening to it? Well...let's just say that it's more than 50. A lot more. How many have I bought as a result of listening to terrestrial radio in the past 10 years? Zero.

I recently read an interesting history of modern radio called Something in the Air, and I am not alone in thinking that "traditional" radio has gone to the dogs. Sure, consultants and playlists and market research have made radio profitable, but for those of us (a minority, apparently) who really like hearing new and interesting music (not the same five songs repeated ad nauseam) and used to like listening to (more or less) freeform radio (although it was close to extinct by the time I started listening in), it has just become insufferably dull, like the modern shopping mall: an undifferentiated mass of uninteresting sameness. It figures--Internet radio has finally made radio exciting to listen to again and it's in jeopardy. Typical.

Mo' Bile

From UK's Guardian, an hysterical mobile phone review, only some of which is excerpted here:

My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots
...
It seems to have been designed specifically to irritate anyone with a mind. It starts gently - a pinch of annoyance here, an inconvenience there - but before long the steady drip, drip, drip of minor frustrations begins to affect your quality of life, like a mouth ulcer, or a stone in your boot, or the lingering memory of love gone sour.

The menu system is a confusing mangle of branching dead ends. It has touch-sensitive buttons that either refuse to work, or leap into action if you breathe on them. One such button also terminates calls, so it is easy to cut people off merely by holding the phone against your ear to hear them. It has no apparent "silent" mode, and when you set it to vibrate, it buzzes like a hornet in a matchbox.

It is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary "features" aimed at idiots, including a mode that scans each text message and turns some of the words into tiny ani- mations, so if someone texts to say they have just run over your child in their car, the word "car" is replaced by a wacky cartoon vehicle putt-putting onto the screen. There is also a crap built-in game in which you play a rabbit ...
...
Worst of all, it seems to have an unmarked omnipresent shortcut to Orange's internet service, which means that whether you are confused by the menu, or the typeface, or the user- confounding buttons, you are never more than one click away from accidentally plunging into an overpriced galaxy of idiocy, which, rather than politely restricting itself to news headlines and train timetables, thunders "BUFF OR ROUGH? GET VOTING!" and starts hurling cameraphone snaps of "babes and hunks" in their underwear at you, presumably because some pin-brained coven of marketing gonks discovered the average Orange internet user was teenage and incredibly stupid, so they set about mercilessly tailoring all their "content" toward priapic halfwits, thereby assuring no one outside this slim demographic will ever use their gaudy, insulting service ever again. And then they probably reached across the table and high-fived each other for skilfully delivering "targeted content" or something, even though what they should really have done, if there was any justice in the world, is smash the desk to pieces, select the longest wooden splinters they could find, then drive them firmly into their imbecilic, atrophied, world-wrecking rodent brains.

Nemo No Mo'

For those waiting with baited breath (ahem) for Finding Nemo 2...

Pirates of Pirates of the Caribbean

Via Boing Boing, a funny anti-piracy graphic, sure to get a rousing cheer of "Amen" from anyone who has ever bought a DVD. (At least with VHS, you could fast forward through that FBI warning).

Back in Black

For those loyal Blogito Ergo Sum followers (should there be any), sorry, but it has been awhile since the last post. It's been somewhat busy over here, plus Blogger kept insisting that I switch to the "New Blogger" which involves the creation of a Google account and until now I've been too lazy to wade through that process.

It reminded me of the time I was in a rush, needed to do one small, quick piece of online banking, and my bank's Web site took that opportunity to completely revamp their sign-in process, requiring new user names, passwords, etc., making what was supposed to be a two-minute task a long, 20-minute ordeal. Which could explain why my sign-in information is various types of lurid profanity....

With luck, I shall be resuming my regularly scheduled, haphazard (ahem) blogging schedule.

Sweet Freedom

Gizmodo asks, "Could you stand to be without your computer, just for one day?" And I answer, "Hell, yeah!" (I occasionally do, and quite happily.)

But for those who love to try to deny themselves the things they like, there is the forthcoming "Ditch Your Computer for a Day":

The 24-hour period in question is March 24, which happens to fall on a Saturday....

Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!

Hey, this is like that "turn off your TV" day.

"Turn off your TV" day--now that's an easy one! I will actually be in Stamford, CT, at the 30th Annual Crossword Puzzle Tournament on March 24, so it will be easy enough for me!

Power Plays

Via Boing Boing, what I suspect may be the wave of the wired future: being forced to pay for power. Get ready:

Yesterday on a stop-over at Dallas/Fort-Worth airport, I spotted these $2-per-use electrical outlets aimed at business travellers who wanted to get some electricity for their laptops.

A follow-up post says this:

airports are going to begin charging travelers for access to power outlets.

How much? $3 for 30 minutes, according to Carlson Wagonlit Travel's CWT Traveler e-newsletter and USA Today. One of the companies providing this "service" is Minnesota-based Smarte Carte, who's known for charging travelers a few bucks for access to carts to transport luggage from baggage to your car.

Just a matter of time, really. My advice: stock up on batteries.

A Life in the Day

The current issue of Scientific American has an interesting (yet disturbing) article on a Microsoft project called LifeBits. No, it's not the merger of Life and Alpha-Bits cereals, but rather:

a quest to digitally chronicle every aspect of a person's life, starting with one of our own lives ([Gordon] Bell's). For the past six years, we have attempted to record all of Bell's communications with other people and machines, as well as the images he sees, the sounds he hears and the Web sites he visits--storing everything in a personal digital archive that is both searchable and secure.

Um...why?

Digital memories can do more than simply assist the recollection of past events, conversations and projects. Portable sensors can take readings of things that are not even perceived by humans, such as oxygen levels in the blood or the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Computers can then scan these data to identify patterns: for instance, they might determine which environmental conditions worsen a child's asthma. Sensors can also log the three billion or so heartbeats in a person's lifetime, along with other physiological indicators, and warn of a possible heart attack. This information would allow doctors to spot irregularities early, providing warnings before an illness becomes serious. Your physician would have access to a detailed, ongoing health record, and you would no longer have to rack your brain to answer questions such as "When did you first feel this way?"

Yeah, right. My PC can't even find a Word file when I know the name of it. I'm going to trust computer hardware and software to run my life and health? Oh, I don't think so.

Every word one has ever read, whether in an e-mail, an electronic document or on a Web site, can be found again with just a few keystrokes. Computers can analyze digital memories to help with time management, pointing out when you are not spending enough time on your highest priorities. Your locations can be logged at regular intervals, producing animated maps that trace your peregrinations. Perhaps most important, digital memories can enable all people to tell their life stories to their descendants in a compelling, detailed fashion that until now has been reserved solely for the rich and famous.

Oh, that sounds useful. I give any machine that nags me about time management 0.5 seconds before it goes out the window. Let's have it time how fast it takes to hit the pavement.

Granted, there some things I wish I could remember better, but I'm not sure that every second of my life--or anyone's life--is really worth remembering in toto. And anyone whose life is exciting or interesting enough that 100% of it needs to be recorded will probably need to be committed to Bellevue for nervous exhaustion before they need software to keep track of it all.

[M]anufacturers are producing a new generation of inexpensive sensors that may soon become ubiquitous. Some of these devices can record a wealth of information about the user's health and physical movements. Others can gauge the temperature, humidity, air pressure and light level in the surrounding environment and even detect the presence of warm bodies nearby.

I'm pretty good at detecting the presence of warm bodies nearby. Unfortunately, most of the bodies near me tend to be ice cold. But that's neither here nor there...

As for ubiquitous sensors tracking our movements, well, Orwell that ends well.

Meanwhile and Far Away...

Over at The Industry Measure blog, commentary on digital rights management (DRM), online video (shocker: advertisers are not jumping in with a fist full of dollars! Quel horreur!), I propagate Dr. Joe's meme about hardware and software tools (and without using any profanity!), and one of the most unique "value-added services" I've experienced from a commercial printer.

Not the Only Flame in Town

Ever wonder why people tend to act like complete dickweeds online? Well, social psychology to the rescue! Sez the New York Times:

Jett Lucas, a 14-year-old friend, tells me the kids in his middle school send one other a steady stream of instant messages through the day. But there’s a problem.

“Kids will say things to each other in their messages that are too embarrassing to say in person,” Jett tells me. “Then when they actually meet up, they are too shy to bring up what they said in the message. It makes things tense.”

Jett’s complaint seems to be part of a larger pattern plaguing the world of virtual communications, a problem recognized since the earliest days of the Internet: flaming, or sending a message that is taken as offensive, embarrassing or downright rude.

The hallmark of the flame is precisely what Jett lamented: thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically — or go unmentioned — face to face.

Flaming has a technical name, the “online disinhibition effect,” which psychologists apply to the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace.

And try reading comments to magazine articles or blog posts, or even Amazon.com buyer comments sometime. ("My god! Who could evre posibly like this spoon?! Ths is an insullt to the very concpt of spoon-ness. It makes me so mad Ilm not eve going to profread anythig I typr!") So why are people such assholes?

[T]he anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming.

The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.

This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track.

Research by Jennifer Beer, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, finds that this face-to-face guidance system inhibits impulses for actions that would upset the other person or otherwise throw the interaction off.

But isn't that what those idiot smileys are for? (Doh! I've just done it myself!)

True, there are those cute, if somewhat lame, emoticons that cleverly arrange punctuation marks to signify an emotion. The e-mail equivalent of a mood ring, they surely lack the neural impact of an actual smile or frown. Without the raised eyebrow that signals irony, say, or the tone of voice that signals delight, the orbitofrontal cortex has little to go on.

By the way, the same basic phenomenon explains why people often behave downright rudely while driving--the notion of anonymity, the enhanced sense of self, and the lack of any real consequences for antisocial driving behavior (so-called "road rage" aside).

In fact, the NYT article goes on to discuss the first recorded case of "Web rage" in, of all places, Britain:

a 47-year-old Londoner was convicted of assault on a man with whom he had traded insults in a chat room. He and a friend tracked down the man and attacked him with a pickax handle and a knife.

I have no doubt the fear-mongering U.S. media will seize on this and manufacture an epidemic of "Web rage" to scare the pants off people, like they do with just about everything else. ("Salad: The Silent Killer!" "Death by Escalator!" "Fresh Air: Dissolving Your Lungs from the Inside!" "Your Own Shadow: The Dark Stranger Who Walks Behind You!" "Be Terrified of Everything! We're the gods! We're the gods!! Bwa-hahahahahaha!!!!)

Sorry, I inadvertently watched a bit of the Today show the other day (at someone else's instigation) and I swear I'm not exaggerating all that much.

Appendix BB

Only in Alaska. From the Anchorage Daily News:

Though it may look vaguely like a hand grenade, the solid white structure in the X-ray is actually someone's appendix, visible only because it is full of shotgun pellets -- so full, in fact, that it is stretched to about three times its normal size.
The patient, a 73-year-old Inuit woman at Norton Sound Regional Hospital in Nome, had probably been swallowing the pellets inadvertently for decades, in the meat of ducks and geese shot by local hunters.

The image did not surprise the doctors who interpreted her X-ray, William Cox and Gene Pesola, who were used to seeing pellets -- though not this many -- in the appendix in Alaska Natives.

Let's just hope that, if her appendix ever bursts, it's not in a public place. I'd hate for innocent bystanders to get shot by someone's appendix.

Squid Pro Quo

Well, this is no surprise:

Your Squid Quotient = 150
Interpreting your results: An average Squid Quotient is around 100. A SQ of 100 means you have a normal affinity for squid. A SQ above 100 means you have an attraction or fondness for squid. Below 100 means that you should probably stay away from the deep ocean.

Via Pharyngula, take the SQ (Squid Quotient) test here. Other...um, interesting squid-related quizzes there, as well.

More Gas Pains

Sez Wired:

Gas prices are on the way up again and could likely pass $3 again this summer in many areas, according to the Detroit News. Gas in Detroit is up a whopping 38 cents in a month, and based on last years' precedent is on course to again pass 3 bucks in May.

If you don't live on the West Coast, consider yourself fuel-lucky. In Sacramento gas is now at $2.72 compared to the national average of $2.26.

Passing $3 a gallon when people are planning their summer vacations won't make drivers happy and will probably increase sales of hybrids while not doing any favors for the Detroit automakers soon to be known as the big 2. High prices will also put pressure on politicians and prompt more interest in ethanol.

Ethanol is a bit of chimera (according to a feature article in the January 2007 Scientific American, at present ethanol production is no more efficient or economical than petroleum
production, and is really little more than a political sop to the cornbelt, though with luck and effort that will change), but I like the idea of hybrids.

Winter Wonderland

Well, all told we got about 2 1/2 to 3 feet of snow here in Saratoga in the past two days. Not having the benefit of a wussy snowblower or snowplow (just my trusty shovel), it was a struggle to stay on top of it all. (Or, eventually, a struggle to not fall over on top of it all.) Wednesday morning, I went out at 10 a.m. and there were about 6-8 inches on the driveway, plus a two-foot windroll from the plow. By the time I was done, the plow came by again, adding another one-foot windroll. By the time I was done with that, another inch or two had fallen and covered the rest of the driveway, so I got rid of that before heading in to go back to work.

I went out again at 1 p.m. and there were another 3-4 inches on the driveway. As I was taking care of that, the plow came by again, adding another two-foot windroll. Oy.

After taking care of that, I collapsed in a heap on the couch. I went out again at 4:30 p.m., at which time another 3-4 inches had fallen (and, yes, another one-foot windroll). After that was done, I could no longer move, so I was done for the day.

This morning, I went out at 9 a.m. and there was a residual 1-2 inches (and a 1/2-foot windroll). That wasn't too bad, but the mailbox was completely inaccessible. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Rose (my mail carrier), and after seriously considering having the Post Office hold my mail until April, I began the two-hour process of excavating the mailbox.

I had no idea so many parts of the body could ache simultaneously. Why did I leave L.A.?

Wrapped Up in Books

Taking a tip from a blog I read occasonally (Crooked Timber) I thought it would be a good idea (for some reason) to keep track of all the books I read. And what's the point of having a blog if one can't inflict the tedious minutiae of one's life on others? So, below the fold, I chronicle the books I've read over the past 12 months (the ones I remember). The comments are not intended to be a comprehensive review; just some random notes that occurred to me.



The Most Evil Pirates in History
Shelley Klein
Read: Feb. 2007
Non-Fiction
A Christmas present from mi hermano. Some of the pirates didn't seem that evil, although many had a bizarre tebndency to cut off people's lips, cook them, then feed them back to the victim. Odd. Still, an entertaining read, if you're into pirates.

Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs
Read: Feb. 2007
Non-Fiction
Fairly entertaining if somewhat implausible memoir of growing up as a gay teen in a highly dysfunctional family--and eventually going to live with his mother's therapist's even more highly dysfunctional family. A lot of this was hard to believe (and I'm told that the author has come under fire for purportedly making things up). We showed the movie at the Film Forum, but I was told it was terrible (by our own Managing Director) so I avoided it.

Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
Maureen Ogle
Read: Jan. 2007
Non-Fiction
Another Christmas present from mi hermano, a compelling history of the American beer industry, from its humble beginnings among German immigrants to the mass-produced (and foul-tasting) swill produced by the major breweries today. The book smashes some common myths and is well-researched. Good reading while drinking a pint or two of a good craft brew.

A Taxonomy of Barnacles
Galt Niederhoffer
Read: Jan. 2007
Fiction
Not that good story of six sisters and their eccentric father. There is a goofy attempt to tie the sisters (who are named Barnacle) and their WASPy neighbors the Finches to Darwin's writings on finches and barnacles but it so doesn't work. The author is wildly inaccurate with regard to many points of Darwinism (The Origin of Species has nothing to do with the beginning of life, but rather how natural selection gives rise to new species) as well as New York City geography (the D train does not go to Queens). (The book also needed a good copy editor.) It was occasionally kind of funny, especially early on, but all the characters got pretty annoying very quickly. Not really recommended.

V.
Thomas Pynchon
Read: Jan. 2007
Fiction
Flushed with the success of making it through Against the Day unscathed, I thought I would start back at the beginning. I did enjoy V., although I suspect a second pass would clarify some things--like, for example, the plot.

Bee Season
Myla Goldberg
Read: Dec. 2006
Fiction
OK, I admit: I bought this book because of The Decemberists' song "A Song for Myla Goldberg" which I like. This enjoyable debut novel, about a teenage girl's adventures in the dog-eat-dog world of spelling bees, takes a bizarre turn about halfway through and ends up ultimately being slightly less than completely satisfying, but is still recommended.

Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon
Read: Nov.-Dec. 2006
Fiction
Mammoth, 1,000+-page tome which I didn't quite understand all of, but enjoyed immensely. More commentary here.

The Brooklyn Follies
Paul Auster
Read: Nov. 2006
Fiction
I first read Auster when I was in college and his "existential" mind-f--k "New York Trilogy" came out and I loved it (you know, characters answer ringing phones and end up talking to themselves…weird stuff like that). Auster has gotten a bit more down to earth in the 20 years since his debut, and The Brooklyn Follies is a nice tale of a retiree who moves from the 'burbs to Brooklyn and chronicles the universe of personalities that surround him. Nice, thought-provoking read, well-drawn characters, but the jaunt to Vermont has that typical New York contempt for anyone who doesn't live in an urban setting, which is faintly annoying. Still, an enjoyable book.

Nature Girl
Carl Hiaasen
Read: Nov. 2006
Fiction
I love Carl Hiaasen's crime fiction (I've read all his books) but this one should just be buried in a Florida swamp. Really annoying protagonist, a "bad guy" who really isn't all that bad, no real plot to speak of, and a final scene that goes on interminably. I cannot recommend this one. Go check out Skinny Dip, Basket Case, Sick Puppy, or Tourist Season (or any other book of his, really) for much better Hiaasen.

The Lay of the Land
Richard Ford
Read: Oct. 2006
Fiction
The weakest of the three Bascombe novels (see below), but it still has much to recommend it. This time, Bascombe is in his 50s and is fighting prostate cancer. Ford likes to set these novels over holiday weekends (this time it's Thanksgiving) with some big, climactic event short-circuiting the resolution to some family crisis. This time it feels really forced and doesn't quite work. Still most of the book is quite enjoyable and Ford's use of language is a joy to read.

Independence Day
Richard Ford
Read: Oct. 2006
Fiction
The sequel to The Sportswriter (see below) picks up Bascombe five years later and is a much more powerful book than its prequel (and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995). I read this when it first came out and loved it; I reread it before reading The Lay of the Land. The paperback of Independence Day came out about the same time as the wretched movie Independence Day (which had nothing to do with this book). I remember when I bought it mentioning to the clerk in Barnes & Noble that I didn't like the film version. She gave me an odd look, probably for good reason.

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford
Read: Oct. 2006
Fiction
When The Lay of the Land came out, which was the third book in Ford's trilogy, I dedided to reread the first two. The Sportswriter introduces the titular Frank Bascombe at the tender age of 38 (ahem), in the wake of his divorce following the dwath of his young son. A long stream of consciousness, at times quite poignant. I really liked this book, although the sequel Independence Day was better.

The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester
read: Sep. 2006
Fiction
I picked this up based on the fact that Walter Koenig's character in Babylon 5 was named for the author Alfred Bester, and on the Earth of The Demolished Man, telepaths exist and have been drafted to make crime impossible. This book was somewhat of the inspiration for the Psi Cops in B5. A compelling book, fascinating ideas (megabillionnaire kills his rival and finds ways to elude the telepaths). Recommended.

Rainbows End
Vernor Vinge
Read: Aug. 2006
Fiction
Good science-fiction tale set a scant 25 years hence; has the ruing of truth. More commentary here.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Haruki Murakami
Read: Aug. 2006
Fiction
One of my favorite authors of all time; a collection of short stories which were not bad, although I like his novels better. In particular, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (one of my favorite books of all time), A Wild Sheep Chase, and Kafka on the Shore.

Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert
Read: May-June 2006
Non-Fiction
Interesting look at why we are not as happy as we think we are--why we are never as happy with material things as we think we will be, and similar permutations of those ideas. Good quantitative data to back up his ideas. I wasn't surprised by any of it (I never expect anything to make me happy!) but it was an interesting read. He has a very light, often very funny style.

The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown
Read: May 2006
Fiction
Ugh. I read this on the beach in the Outer Banks. I would have tossed it into the ocean, but I borrowed it from Ken (not that he would have minded.) Horribly written and just generally annoying. Probably the most overrated book ever.

John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics
Richard Parker
Finished: May 2006
Non-Fiction
It took me forever to get through this, but it is a well-done bio of perhaps the most famous economist--probably ever. Dense book, which covers I think every day of his 90+ years. Good detail on his ideas on those of his opponents. One is saddeend that at one time in this country there were serious intellectual thinkers debating intelligently on TV, rather than the shrieking heads we now have. Sigh.

Freaknomics
Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner
Read: Apr. 2006
Non-Fiction
Controversial look at "the economics of everyday things," but seemed a bit lackluster to me. Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers, if it's so lucrative? Was Roe v. Wade responsible for the 1990s drop in the crime rate? Etc. Much of it is a reach, but some of it was kind of eye-opening.

Wicked
Gregory Maguire
Read: Mar. 2006
Fiction
I have always hated The Wizard of Oz (the movie) but I was intrigued by this "biography" of the Wicked Witch of the West. Everyone has read this already, but I really enjoyed it.

The Planets
Dava Sobel
Read: Feb. 2006
Non-Fiction
More or less short odes to each of the planets of the Solar System, with some science of the planets and the stories of their discovery thrown in. I like Dava Sobel's science writing--I loved Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, but The Planets was a bit too "lyrical," touchy-feely, and stylistic for me, and too skimpy on actual science. Not bad, but I'd recommend it hesitatingly.

Heel Thyself

While I have never worn high heels myself and, quite frankly, am not much of a fan of them on others (they just look painful), here is a weird idea: convertible high heels. Here's what would make this idea really cool: if they could be adjusted automatically while they are being worn. How cool would that be? You're standing there, talking up someone at a party and, suddenly there is a whirring sound, and her (or his) heels grow like four or five inches. Sort of like a sexy Nosferatu. Even I would go for that.

Wake Up Next to UXB

Via Engadget, another bizarre alarm clock, this time in the guise of a bomb:

The DangerBomb alarm clock from Banpresto is yet another oddball way of coaxing you into the morning grind. To disable the alarm, you must reconnect the red, yellow, and blue cables in the correct order. Fail your mission and suffer the annoyance -- and possible death -- of a mocked audible explosion.

Word of advice: do not bring this on any junket to Boston. Or, come to think of it, on a plane anywhere....

Gut Feelings

Or would that be "intestinal fortitude"? Be that as it may, my advice to the truckers of the world is that if you are hauling 40 tons of cow intestines (and good god, why?) you might want to pull into a rest stop before fiddling with your MP3 player.

Truck spills 40 tons of cow intestines

About 40 tons of cow intestines and bones spilled onto a major highway after a truck driver became distracted by his digital music player and his semitrailer tipped over, officials said.

Authorities closed parts of Interstate 43 for about two hours Thursday while the beef byproduct was cleaned up, said sheriff's Sgt. Blaine Spicer.

Animal Magnetism

Another personality quiz. This time: which super villian are you?

Your results:
You are Magneto
You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.



Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Jarring Video

Have a jar you can't get open? All the more reason to get a pet octopus, one of which was easily taught how to unscrew a jar. Cool video here.

Zombie Nightmare

Oh, I don't know:

New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.

New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed "watch out" to no avail.

Yeah, because the ban on driving while on the phone has been so &%$#%^ effective. (I almost got nailed again in CVS parking lot yesterday by a dork on a cellphone. It's a good thing I'm never on a cellphone; one of us out there has to be alert!)

Actually, I think it's rather entertaining watching people on cellphones try to cross streets--like watching someone play a video game like Frogger. I don't think we need a law; when it comes to the cellphone zombies, I'm perfectly willing to let natural selection take its course.

Masssssssage

Get St. Patrick on the phone. Creepiest thing I've seen in some time (via Boing Boing):

There's a spa in Israel where people pay to receive therapeutic massage from a bunch of live, nonvenomous snakes.

Seeing that Saratoga Springs is the "Spa City" (and is abbreviated SS, or maybe SSS), I hope this trend doesn't make it here.

Filipino Clambake

Get the drawn butter and head on out to the Philippines:

New mollusk species found in Philippines

A French-led marine expedition team believes it has discovered thousands of new species of mollusks and crustaceans around a Philippine island, officials and scientists said Monday.

Some 80 scientists, technicians, students and volunteers from 19 countries surveyed the waters around Panglao island, 390 miles southeast of Manila from 2004-05.

"Numerous species were observed and photographed alive, many for the first time, and it is estimated that 150-250 of the crustaceans and 1,500-2,500 of the mollusks are new species," said a statement from the expedition team, which was led by Philippe Bouchet of the French National Museum of Natural History.

The Examined Life

Here is one of those ideas so cool I wish I had thought of it: what if your life were conceived as a corporate annual report?

Would You Believe...

...that Get Smart is finally coming to DVD? Interestingly, it is only available as a $200+ five-season box set via Time-Life, but supposedly each season will be individually available come Fall 2007. The "red car" seasons were the best ones. When Max and 99 got married and spawned, the show pretty much went downhill.

Straight to Hell, Boys

You know the Bible 77%!

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Not bad, I guess, for someone who has never actually read the bible or is even remotely religious. Chalk it up to a) many of the questions referring to characters or events that have permeated pop culture and b) easy to figure out multiple choices.

For the Birds

Do you hate your officemates? Sure, we all do. Now, here is a novel way to torture them:

Designed by Japan's leading toy company: Takaratomy presents "Kotoridayori" (Humming Bird), the all new 2007 adorable solar powered toy. Featuring a chubby bird in the middle that sings in random tunes. The bird will also tweets when it senses vibrations. It has a built-in battery that will charge when it sits on the solar powered system. Takaratomy's Humming Bird is small and fits nicely in the palm. Great gift idea for anyone. Available in 3 different colors.

I can only assume the "humming bird" is different from a "hummingbird," since that thing is never a hummingbird.

Car Talk

Wired asks:

What Will Your Car Look Like in 2010?

I would imagine that my car will look pretty much the way it does now, although I may get around to washing it by 2010.

A Wicked [Cute?] Pack of Cards

For those who are Tarot-fied, the self-described "cutest Tarot deck you will ever own" based on Hello Kitty characters.

All the major and minor arcana are included, such as The High Priestess:
The Hanged Man...er, Pig:
And, my favorite, Death:
Aww.....

I Me Mine

In which the world continues its descent into complete insanity:

What Rachel Rasmussen thought was an explosive situation ended without a bang once the Army rolled into town.

Rasmussen, who recently purchased a new home in Wittenberg, thought she had found a land mine in her backyard but discovered Wednesday that it actually was an old base for a large umbrella.

You don't even want to know what her reaction was to the barbecue pit.

Horse Feathers

Uh, OK:

Colonial Downs, which offers betting on horse races at 10 sites across Virginia, is pushing for changes in state law so that it can offer a new form of gambling, called historical racing, on which people wager on horse races that have already taken place.

One more time for the world: "people wager on horse races that have already taken place." That's what I thought they said. Wha? Ah:

In historical gambling, which is also called instant gaming, customers would put as little as a nickel and as much as $5 into a video terminal that resembles a slot machine. The terminal randomly selects a race from an archive of at least 10,000 previous horses races from tracks around the country. Customers review a graphic showing the odds and statistics for each horse before deciding which one to bet on.

The race appears on the monitor. If the chosen horse wins, the patron will receive a payout based on the odds, how much was bet and that day's purse.

My guess is that anyone with a thorough and meticulous knowledge of the history of horse racing (and/or a concealed palmtop computer) could beat this, even if they left the horses' names off the screens.

Besides...wasn't this kind of the plot of The Sting?

I Am the Neuromancer?

Apparently (via which science-fiction writer are you?):

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Oh, the Sponge-anity!

Putting the phrase "sponge disasters" in a headline is a pretty good way to get me to click on an article. From Yahoo! News:

Microwave experiments cause sponge disasters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week -- with sometimes disastrous results.

A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges.

They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge.

"Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off," one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Could the destruction of a sponge really be considered a "disaster"? And, gee, who would have thought that putting something in an oven would cook it?

Oops...

Last night, I was helping a friend of mine (who is an eighth-grade science teacher) edit some video of her classes for some educational conference/contest. Fortunately, nothing in her video went as awry as this science experiment, caught on video. The inevitable line: "That wasn't supposed to happen." Serves him right for wearing a tie-dyed lab smock.

A Sloth By Any Other Name...

...would still be as immobile.

I've had days like this:

Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.

The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.

Neither pounds of cucumbers nor plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough to make Mats move.

Then again, you know, they are called "sloths" for a reason....

Finnish Lines

Oh, this is just wrong:

A novel whose narrative consists entirely of mobile phone text messages has been published in Finland.

"The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies — roughly 1,000 altogether — are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in regular SMS traffic.

The Sound of Silence

One wonders if this is apocryphal or not:

A press release making the rounds on the web...claims that a conceptual artist named Jonathon Keats has made Cage's 4'33" into a ringtone.

If it's true, it's the best possible ringtone that could ever have been created.

Of the Icing

Far be it from me to say anything bad about the Wegmans supermarket chain (except that I hate them for not having a store around me), but, via Engadget, I was amused by their cake printer that could not handle special characters:
I'm sure that brought a tear to Aunt Elsa's eye.

I remember back in the late 1990s I did a story for Micro Publishing News on Torrance Bakery (in Torrance, CA), which was one of the first bakeries in the country to be able to print computer files onto cakes. They had adapted a Canon BubbleJet printer to use food-coloring-based inks that printed onto thin sheets of icing that could then be placed in top of a just-baked cake. For our holiday party we had the cover of our December issue printed on a cake. It looked cool but was kind of tasteless...slight flaw there...

I assume cake-printing technology has proceeded by leaps in bounds since then, though I still prefer my cakes to be imaged the old-fashioned way.

A Very GoodYear

I think I have solved my transportation problem (well, not really as problem per se). Instead of getting a new car, I think I will opt for my own personal blimp:

The Personal Blimp uses hot air (rather than Helium) for lift and virtually silent electric motors for propulsion. To put it another way: the Personal Blimp is a hot air balloon that can be maneuvered about in nearly perfect quiet. Passengers in a Personal Blimp have a serene experience of flight unavailable in any other type of aircraft. (Note: Initial flight tests are using a conventional gas-powered motor. Electric motors will be added once these initial tests are complete. Similarly, the initial flight tests are being made with conventional -- i.e. loud -- hot air balloon burners. Quiet burners will be added later.)

I suppose we should be happy it doesn't use hydrogen--oh, the humanity!

Fowl Threats

Here's a little tidbit of information I picked up this morning at the periodontist's, while undergoing oral surgery. My oral surgeon, by the way, is fond of expounding on bizarre trivia, either because he's just that kind of guy or it's a subtle way of getting the sedation to kick in faster.

Anyway, did you know that if you are a bird owner, you should not cook with Teflon cookware? Apparently, if you overheat Teflon, it releases a gas that is lethal to birds which, thanks to their heightened metabolism, they absorb more quickly than more lethargically metabolic organisms.

To that end, I propose the Tippi Hedren line of Teflon-coated cookware.

You could also use the cookware to take care of the creature it had done in.

The subsequent dissertation on the molecular structure of Teflon ultimately put me under....

Pure MADness

Now, who, I say, who could resist this?

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