Whoops! The second intentional interstellar broadcast shows humans as unintentional bumblers .
Following up on my rant on brands as lifestyles , Kevin points out "that Ralph Lauren, nee Lipschitz, isn't just satisfied with clothes, eyeglasses, sheets & towels, furniture, fragrances, and jewelry. He is now opening a restaurant, and has been nominated as a role model for children ." That last nomination is so utterly fawning it'll make you want to hurl. In the future the name on your T-shirt or jeans label is likely to mean quite a lot...
A new Topping the News .
QOTD2:
Ah, young webmaster... java leads to shockwave. Shockwave leads to realaudio. And realaudio leads to suffering.
-- Peter da Silva
Debra reviews Phantom Menace :
"The Jedi Knights are a bunch of gay leathermen with a preference for natural fiber clothing. (Works for me.) And the death scene between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan was the most touching homoerotic farewell ever. Romantic sigh."
A production flying car? 5 miles per litre, 600 mph .
Via Ars Technica , here comes a guy who's using mineral oil to cool an overclocked Pentium
"Where does this project stand right now? I will be building the new and improved "case" this week. This will allow the coils to be fully immersed and this will eliminate the condensation problem. I will then be able to run the ac on FULL-TIME to hit the MAXIMUM cold that this setup can attain. It should be VERY close to -40 C!!!!!!!!!! :)"
Need To Know is up.
Sorry about the lackluster updates this week, obviously I'm a little off.
Interesting Salon article about Joseph Kramer , founder of the Body Electric massage school which does a lot of work with erotic massage.
"The short version of it is, the core of my Christian background is to be of service to others, to look at what my gifts are and see how I can best use those in the world."
Roger passes along this note about a woman using cleavage as an egg incubator , she's trying to hatch a speckled green and brown curlew egg. There are some limitations, but sometimes, like writing poetry, these can be viewed as interesting challenges:
"Her husband, Knut, was under instructions not to touch her breasts for fear of cracking the egg."
Two about Australia from /. : The Australian government intercepts international communications of citizens, as a part of the Echelon ystem shared with the US and UK. And Australia has also passed draconian net censorship legislation. If ever there was a reminder that the second amendment that we have here in the US is important, these are it.
A new Mouthorgan this morning, talking about the Wesleyan course controversy.
Back from a wonderful paddle down the gorge run of the South Fork of the American. A river is always an awesome way to get centered again.
QOTD:
Kiki: "The KKK are pure *evil*. There's nothing good about them at *all*."
Loren:"They don't even have picnics?"
Clean Sheets should update today, but I'm taking a sanity day and heading for the river. Have a good one, y'all.
That Xerox PARC link down below came from Peter Meerholz .
Having trouble dealing with the PHBs? Want to get work done, but exist in a Windows shop? Now Linux has a boss-key, a Blue Screen of Death simulator . The other articles on the site are worth reading too.
A Bug's Life in an alternate universe .
Lost: one release print of Phantom Menace . If found, please call the Ranch.
That Jon Katz article about web logs has hit /. , I expect Flutterby will get nailed with hits.
A new My Word's Worth , on creeping mindlessness and running on automatic pilot, and when that goes wrong.
Sunday, May 23rd, 1999, after many good years and a shorter time less good, Catherine and Dan have decided that we're growing in different directions and we'd do that better if we did it independently. So we've decided to separate. Specifics are still being worked out.
And I (Dan) am still trying to assimilate this, as I assume is Catherine.
There are a bunch of articles about Canada's Supreme court declaring heterosexual definition of spouse unconstitutional , in effect legalizing same sex marriage.
Interesting AP/CNN article on the decline of "professional" full length pornography . Nominally it's about the low-rent section of the Cannes festival, but Ricardo Billi, Italian president of Gold Films, is quoted as saying "There's no more market for professional pornography. The market is being saturated with poorly made amateur videos -- no story, no decor, just pure sex". We couldn't have gotten clearer indication that professional porno films generally have no real sex. If I had inclinations towards that business and heard someone saying things like that I'd be renting some high end gear and tracking down people who were feeling exhibitionist and making well made amateur videos. If you're saying "We're not making films the market is buying, but we know what they are buying" it's hard to find pity...
Debra passes along this Hartford Courant update to the Wesleyan "Pornography: Writing of Prostitutes" situation . I'm told that Courant links don't last long, so get it now.
The Jon Katz /. articles mentioned further down are Voices from the Hellmouth , More Stories from the Hellmouth and The Price of Being Different .
Meta: I'm normally not much of a fan of Jon Katz, he writes for an audience that isn't me, but his /. articles on the Littleton shootings were well worth reading, and Jon Katz is nice enough to mention Flutterby in his latest article on electronic communities. Thanks! Now if I can get some of the software written that'd take this from munication to communication things would be really cool, but the installations for Burning Man are highest on my queue right now.
Via the Bradlands , an awesome article by Dan Savage taking on the Littleton shootings . As usual, Savage is an optimist:
The power cliques that rule American high schools are every bit as murderous as Harris and Klebold, only their damage is done in slow motion, over a period of many years, and fails to draw the attention of parents or teachers
Aaron points out that yesterday's stupid NT trick doesn't work on NT Alpha. There's also some indication that it depends on which service packs you've got installed.
"fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering; suffering connected to the hip-bone; the hip-bone connected to the..." (Thanks to Tom Lokovic for the push in that direction)
Via the Daily Illuminator , for those of you who've finished cleaning out your pants from the Echelon papers last week and the revelations of NSA key tampering and misrepresentation to the EU this week, http://www.americansecurity.net/ presents the CONPASS X-1280 , like having a Flouroscope or that scanner from Total Recall except with a radiation dose of .5mR per inspected human.
The CONPASS x-1280 allows a fully clothed individual to be totally x-rayed and analyzed within 10 seconds without an intrusive, labor, and time-intensive physical search.
This week's Need To Know is up.
Star Wars in incredible ASCIImation (turn on Java, it's worth it).
To go with my brands as lifestyles rant, just ran across an old copy of EW in the bathroom. Inside the back cover there's an ad for a Sony/Citibank Visa card: "Use the new Sony Card and turn the things you buy into everything Sony." Now you can listen to your Sony music on your Sony headphones while playing Sony video games on your Sony Playstation and your Sony television while you're waiting for your Sony movies to come on.
In celebration of National Masturbation month, Good Vibrations presents the Masturbation Hall of Fame .
Dan continues his bad mood from yesterday: The Mr. Cranky 3 part review of Phantom Menace (4 bombs), and this added comment on the top 10 reasons not to like Phantom Menace .
QOTD:
In my (admittedly limited) experience, lusers generally don't complain about knowing nothing -- they complain about the consequences of knowing nothing, and then reject the connection between the lack of knowledge and the consequences.
-- Kyle Haight
Stupid NT tricks: Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del. Bring up the process manager. Click on the "Performance" tab. Move the mouse pointer over the desktop and depress and hold either the right or the left mouse button (not both!). Watch the CPU usage peg to 100%.
Other Phantom Menace notes: Some woman was walking around the line to get into the theatre with one of those Darth Maul two headed lightsaber thingies. I kept thinking it was something I was way more likely to find at Good Vibrations .
Via YAWL comes Postcards From The Edge of the Galaxy , Carrie Fisher reminiscing about Star Wars:
The actor who played Boba Fett stood behind me while I was wearing the bikini, and he could see all the way to Florida. My mother was always the girl next door. I wasn't quite girl-next-door material; I was the girl-next-dogstar, the one in the titanium thong.
Via Scripting News , a report that Amazon has dropped a book under Scientology pressure
Mouthorgan this week is a guest piece by Henry Jenkins on violence and video games and popular culture. I want to read his book.
Ebert's Phantom Menace review sums it up perfectly: This was a special effects platform.
The discovery and testing of Anakin supplies the film's most important action, but in a sense all the action is equally important, because it provides platforms for special-effects sequences.
Brought to you by the SFTBOSMP, the Society for the Betterment of Stupid Movie Puppets: http://www.jarjarsucks.com/ (ihatejarjar.com and kiljarjar.com are taken, but have no web pages).
Well, my Star Wars: Episode I: The Fandom Menace review is up. I think I've avoided all spoilers, which probably means my review sucks, but I'm not good at writing reviews anyway. Summary? Wait for the video. If you do go see it in the theatre you'll be glad I lowered your expectations.
A reason for Shockwave: the JOesterizer 10 speed Frog Bender 2000 .
A question for users of my Nibelung list of web logs : Should I create another list for my daily comics, or just add it to the current list of web logs?
More wackos on parade: Paco Rabanne predicts Paris will be destroyed by Mir on August 11th. I wonder how many people are gonna take their cues from a guy who's well known for his recycled plastic and silver chain mail outfits... No, wait, cancel that. I predict terror in the streets and a mad exodus.
The AP reports that pornography on the computer of Harvard Divinity School's dean forced him to resign. Some free clues: If you've created a "Center for the Study of Values in Public Life" predicated on the belief that sex is sinful, learn how to copy your own damned files. And get a bloody ZIP drive. Sheesh. It's time to start a campaign to bring back evolution.
According to CNN , German sex firm Beate Uhse AG launched a share flotation on Wednesday .
Europe's largest purveyor of erotica, formed in 1946 by one of Germany's first female pilots, said it will raise up to 60.3 million euros ($64.11 million) to fund purchases and dominate the world market.
Keith Knight takes on perspective in newspaper stories .
Clean Sheets is up, reprints of David Steinberg and Mouthorgan , some poetry and a review.
Welcome to the Revolution: The iBrator .
Key escrow really for espionage, says EU . Sure 'nuff, whenever you hear "child pornography", "domestic terrorism", or "for the chillllldrunnn", the facts don't add up:
The U.S. government misled states in the EU and [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] about the true intention of its policy," the report adds.
"Between 1993 and 1997 police representatives were not involved in the NSA [National Security Agency]-led policy-making process for key recovery. Despite this, during the same period the U.S. government repeatedly presented its policy as being motivated by the stated needs of law-enforcement agencies."
Via Robot Wisdom , comes an article about Leon Botstein, who wants to abolish high school . As school administrators around the country are doing their best to force a repeat of the Columbine incident, Botstein has some good suggestions. "the values of high school are the opposite of the values of life."
Oh yeah, comics update: User Friendly goes in search of sushi, Sluggy Freelance continues the "Muffin the Vampire Baker" saga.
A new NETFUTURE .
In the poetry corner, a lament about tech support .
On the other hand, Salon has a good article on Camryn Manheim and Manheim's book Wake Up, I'm Fat.
Salon treads that fine line between journalism and arousal (treads, hell, they just wander all over the map) in this tale of a professor in love .
Okay, that'll teach me to send off an update before I finish reading an article. Marylaine did use the "crunchy and good with ketchup" line. But I think that something Marylaine misses in her analysis is that these are all stories adults tell to children. Yes, children come to love them, but it's the adults who need the reassurance.
A new My Word's Worth , on the appeal of fairytales, titled Meddling with Wizards. She didn't bring it up, but it's time to revisit my favorite take on that: "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup."
Eric passes along this note about Silicon Graphics embracing Linux :
To the extent that Irix has features that are still lacking in Linux, the company is expected to work to add them to Linux. It is also expected to make available some of its Irix technology under an open-source licensing agreement...
Also, if you're a Marin dweller, this is the first weekend of the Open Studios. I didn't run across a whole lot in my bike ride down through Mill Valley that really knocked my socks off (I like Nina Lions' style but none of her portraits lept out at me, and there's a woman on the Kentfield side of Larkspur who does some neat sculpture that we bought some of last year), but we'll be hitting San Rafael today.
Next week is San Anselmo, Fairfax, Novato, and west Marin.
A new Susie Bright column in Salon , on how the pornography crusaders have have figured out that absent any indications that porn harms women (in fact, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it doesn't) and have brought up harm to children as their next straw man. Meanwhile, the vast right-wing conspiracy hasn't lost its distaste for tales of pornographic downfall and redemption like Gene McConnell's. But as a marketing strategy, it's replaced Linda Lovelace with Tinky Winky. I guess these days you just can't raise enough money for the cause of saving grown-up women from unspeakable depravities, because frankly, the big girls have already spoken for themselves.
Wal-Mart says it won't sell a 'Morning After' Pill . Yet another reason to pay a little bit more to support your local merchants.
Via Need To Know , the EMF shielding "silver lining" undergarments :
This silver-plated, stretchable, washable nylon mesh is electrically conductive. It reflects radiation. Plus you won't get those static shocks as you used to in dry weather and your clothes won't cling to you! Fabric provides up to 35dB of shielding at 100 MHz. Surround what you want to protect!
Sam passes along this:
K-Y2K Jelly - For when you'd like 4 digits to fit where only 2 did before.
Oh, and we've figured out what George Lucas can do in case Fandom Menace bombs. Take a hint from Steve: iTroopers. I need to track down some pictures this weekend and see if I can GIMP them appropriately.
Topping the News is updated. Viagra causing an increase in STDs in China, assorted small-town small-mind censorship issues, Canadian customs seizures, and more.
Need To Know is up.
Via Whump/More Like This comes a great article quoting various sysadmins about what they like and don't like about NT and Linux as web serving and infrastructure platforms. Definitely worth reading if you're looking at deploying web related infrastructure any time soon.
Missed mouthorgan somehow. It's on masturbation.
Via Salon's people column comes the QOTD:
"Martha Stewart is backing Al Gore. She always liked elaborate, motionless centerpieces."
--- George Mair
Wesleyan University is reconsidering a course titled Pornography: Writing of Prostitutes . Despite positive reviews from students and faculty, the university president is bowing to outside perceptions.
Whoah! Now I want to see the movie... Apparently E.T. makes a cameo in Phantom Menace, "in one of the hover balconies in the main Senate Chamber."
Keith Knight on the 8 morning signs that you're gonna have a bad day . Also in Salon , a look at a Mount Holyoke erotic dance class ( http://www.salonmagazine.com/books/it/1999/05/12/strip_class/index.html ), something of a fluff piece, but still interesting.
So I was listening to a couple of U.S. Diplomats drone on about China and North Korea on a broadcast of a Commonwealth Club last night, and I realized that in the '80s we were worried about rogue financiers and large entrenched states, and in the '90s we're worried about rogue states and terrorists and large entrenched corporations.
New essays, fiction, poetry, and a review at Clean Sheets .
From Salon comes anohter harsh reminder that wilderness is not a separate place, and that it's important to change the way we live so we don't have to go there. Well, it isn't phrased that way, but the article about two yuppie tourists visiting Alaska is worth a read:
Noticing our incomprehending looks, he explained to us. "Off the grid means off the power grid in Homer. So we don't use electricity and contribute to the oil-producing economy."
I asked how they heated their homes and what they used for light. "Kerosene."
Via Salon comes another harsh reminder that wilderness is not a separate place, and that it's important to change the way we live so we don't have to go there. Well, it isn't phrased that way, but the article about two yuppie tourists visiting Alaska is worth a read:
Noticing our incomprehending looks, he explained to us. "Off the grid means off the power grid in Homer. So we don't use electricity and contribute to the oil-producing economy."
I asked how they heated their homes and what they used for light. "Kerosene."
It's Tax Freedom Day , when your average American has earned enough to pay for their annual tax bill. If I go on I'll just get cynical and end up crying, so I won't go there.
Via Whump/More Like This comes a story on Disney hooking up with the Free PC trend :
Marketing products for children has always been simple -- kids see the toy, kids want the toy, and parents buy the toy to shut the kid up. But adults with no children remained just out of reach.
FreeInfant.com aims to change that quicker than a smelly diaper. This June, the shady Pasadena company will hand out 25,000 free newborns to childless adults.
One of Brad's friends is concerned that straight people have cracked the code :
"Hell, putting a rainbow flag sticker on a bright yellow Miata driven by a thirty-something single man is practically redundant anyway."
Shel Silverstein dead at 66 . Poet for both children and adults, Playboy writer and cartoonist, and generally cool guy.
Phantom Menace reviews. Summary: It's being compared to "Godzilla". I'd include some of the more witty passages, but that might get close to spoiler territory, and I'd guess that there may be a few fans reading this.
VARIETY REVIEW
TIME MAGAZINE REVIEW
NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE REVIEW
Helping you make a decision in the next presidential election: http://www.gwbush.com/
Whump/More Like This pointed to this awesome article by Doc Searls on advertising and the web .
Let's face it: there are only two kinds of advertising demanded by their consumers: yellow pages and classifieds. It's not coincidental that they're both ugly. Beauty isn't a value when the only purpose is to answer the simple demand for useful information.
A new Comes Naturally column titled "Art and the Eroticism of Puberty" .
Tom Mangan has been trying to decide what his web page is for. It doesn't matter, really, I've found him entertaining enough that I keep his writing on my regular rotation no matter what he's doing, but he thinks he's found a direction which looks promising:
"...all future updates here will be devoted to people, places and other stuff I should've known about at my age, but didn't."
A lot of folks have pointed out this Jaron Lanier rant about piracy and the music industry . It's pretty plain that the push against new technologies in music delivery comes from the entrenched music industry rather than musicians. It's long been the case that record contracts have been "let 'em make their money on performance" deals, and it's true that musicians, certainly smaller acts, have little to worry about. I also think that we're going to see a change in the cultural perceptions of piracy and copyright because there are so many situations right now where the effects of unauthorized duplication are so obvious.
In My Word's Worth this morning Marylaine talks about the bias of news towards covering events rather than the changes in attitudes and culture that really affect us.
Marylaine also had a Mother's day column on Fox .
A new set of Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet strips. And, of course, catch back up on User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance .
And comics-wise I'm thinking I need to put Ozy & Millie and Kevin & Kell on the rotation.
Oh. My. It's the Quakarena , the dance craze that's sweeping the country.
Presenting the iNax: Sit Different .
Okay, I can deal with the absurdities of the world again, it's time to put Topping the News back on rotation. This is Pat Califia's regular take on recent weird sex news.
Need To Know serves up your weekly helping of snide sarcastic technology news.
Crypto export rules are unconstitutional . Hallelujah!
The other side of climbing Everest, the daughter Mallory left 75 years ago speaks . The lure of heights must run deep, she also lost a husband in a '47 climbing accident in Tennessee.
Here's a spoiled highschooler : He doesn't want to show up at school early enough to get a parking space, so his parents bought him a house next to the school for him and his friends to park at. The local zoning commission is not amused.
Via /. , an Amazon interview with Neal Stephenson in which he denies that the Cryptonomicon actually exists. I smell a cover-up. At any rate it's definitely time to make a bookstore run.
More Buy.com scams: They were offering cheap laserdiscs, everyone at work ordered lots, the messages today say that after giving all their personal information their orders have now been canceled.
Via Robot Wisdom , a short article talking about the free love movement of the late 1800s , with mention of the recent state breakup of the Divilbiss family of Tennessee.
In Salon , James Poniewozik complains that we are all page-view whores now . But as usual this is a matter of journalists thinking they've rediscovered something, actually it's slightly more complex than he lets on. It's not just page views, but it's page views by active consumers. Thus the reason that CBS's older demographic shows fail. Advertisers want people who buy and are easier to influence, and so advertiser supported media will always be targeted towards the lower intelligence more easily swayed consumer.
The new NETFUTURE is up, excerpts and discussion about Healy's Failure To Connect .
Mouthorgan is about body hair.
Morbus passed along a Wired article talking about alternatives to broadband .
If you haven't checked back into Scarlet Letters recently, the current issue is on eating and sex. It's obvious that its target audience isn't me, but it's a fun read if just to get the different perspective.
Via Hack The Planet comes this page on using DVDs under Linux . This is way cool, it means that the next thing I buy for my stereo rack is going to be a web server that speaks to the house network and runs Linux.
The new issue of Clean Sheets is up.
Keith Knight has trouble distinguishing The Phantom Menace from the war in Kosovo .
Well, this blows the premise of one of my all-time favorite short stories (I think it's the second of the Kim Stanley Robinson "It Came from Katmandu" trio), but Todd's been forwarding me messages all day from the current expedition which has found the body of George Mallory on Everest .
After mentioning Eric Boutillier-Brown yesterday, he added the latest update to his photo diary. His latest photo diary entry has a few neat images, the studies of the nude figure in the latticework of the bridge are neat, but the image of the woman languidly draped over the rock above the surf on the right just passed midway down has wonderful composition and a remarkable tension which is extremely effective.
A few days ago I linked to an apparently inaccurate article that said that the U.S. federal government was going to require vendors it did business with to have handicapped accessible pages. Apparently that's not the case at all, the rule applies to government agencies. Actual rule on handicapped accessible web pages and an accompanying FAQ on section 508 . Once again the mainstream media lets us down.
Surprise! Some of Fox's "World's Wildest Police Videos" is staged . And I'll bet next they're going to try to tell us that pro wrestling is faked, too.
If you read the article I pointed to earlier about bloatware, Microsoft's RegClean tool in particular , the discussion continues in RISKS , the latest issue has a very precise breakdown of where the memory goes
Interesting article in Salon this morning on a non-traditional mothering arrangement .
If you're not interested in the meta stuff skip this paragraph. Us webloggers are building up a community of sorts, with our own mythos and all. A recent smug article says that web logs are boring and repetitive , which is probably true, and I try to find original links and, as I'm constantly urged by my readers, enough of my own spin and commentary to make this a little more original. Anyway, Brad has a rant on why he maintains the Bradlands that basically says the same navel-gazing (thanks Brad!) things we all do.
Now let's get back to being entertaining.
Scroll down to the "Computational Matter" message , a quick overview of some chool tech in terms of using lots of really small forces to manipulate objects, specifically paper at 5Gs and actively keeping columns straight to increase their strengthy by 5.6x.
My very own entry in the Internet Movie Database .
It's fun to follow the work of Eric Boutilier-Brown , the last image in the latest entry in Eric's photo diary speaks to me, I'd like to see a print of that at a real size.
QOTD:
I'm missing "Rock climbing for Dummies". I see an evolutionary need...
--- Par Leijonhufvud
Whatever network problems were keeping me from My Word's Worth are gone, it's about teachers connecting with students:
Perhaps professors have not tried hard enough because higher education has for so long had a captive audience that didn't question the university's right to determine what students must learn.
It is hard to take large parts of academia seriously, for that reason alone. Don't get me started on philosophy...
Susie Bright finishes her acting in porn column series in Salon .
Dang it, Lawrence Lee pointed me to yet another piece on MFC bloat, and now I can't find it. I'll dig it out later.
Salon this morning has a recap of the various billboard liberation activities .
Sluggy Freelance weekly edition is updated. You might want to catch up on User Friendly too.
Archives of neat sites posted to Flutterby , notes to webmaster@flutterby.com