I’m in a blogging funk this week, so this may be it for me, but it’s pretty darn cool. Make your own alphabet is the high-concept description for The Alphabet Synthesis Machine. My sample’s pictured below, and you can download it from The Alphabet Synthesis Machine. About the same cool level as sodaConstructor.
The backstory for the genesis of this applet connects in an interesting way to Andrea’s musings on the allure of Judaism-by-Palm (a mischaracterization on my part, to be sure).
| Gadgets |
Mike Watkins (who has a new book out on international negotiation) regularly sends us press clippings on the global scene.
Democrats Criticize Pentagon Budget, Anti-Terror War - Washington Post
"If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday," [Sen Robt.] Byrd said. "How long can we afford this? We went [to Afghanistan] to hunt down the terrorists. We don't know where Osama bin Laden is or whether he is alive or not. We don't know where Mullah [Mohammad] Omar is hiding. . . . When will we know we have achieved victory?"Byrd said the Pentagon has sent him documents estimating that the war would cost $30 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, meaning Congress will be asked to provide an extra $12.6 billion in addition to $17.4 billion in supplemental spending approved last fall.
"We've got a deficit and we know it will exceed $350 billion," [Sen. Ernest] Hollings said. The administration, he said, seems to be arguing, "Since we've got a war, we've got to have deficits -- and the war is never going to end."
Sooner or later, Hollings said, "this town is going to sober up."
US Conference to Form Plan to Oust Saddam - Washington Times
President Bush's inclusion of Iraq in his "axis of evil" has increased momentum within the administration for a policy of "regime change" in Baghdad. The administration has been internally divided over whether to make Saddam the next military front in Mr. Bush's post-September 11 war on terrorism.[Iraqi National Congress] Chairman Ahmed Chalabi told the French newspaper La Croix in an interview published yesterday that the Washington conference was designed in part to encourage Saddam's soldiers to join the opposition or at least not resist an effort to topple him.
He said his group was prepared to carry the fight to Baghdad if the United States supplied the arms and intelligence backing as it did in Afghanistan. . . . "The most important thing is to get rid of Saddam Hussein," Mr. Chalabi said. "Whatever choice is made, we will back it. If the United States decides to do the job itself, that's not a problem."
Charlotte Beers, Americas Image Czar - The Economist
Charlotte Beers's job is to fix America's image overseas. Can the schmooze queen of Madison Avenue deliver?“SHE got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice,” said Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, early last year as he defended his appointment of Charlotte Beers as chief spin-doctor.
Old Rival, Old Times in Afghanistan - Far East Economic Review
The [Afghani] government -- a shaky coalition of rival factions just barely united by their opposition to the Taliban -- was a gamble that depended on international support to take shape and now depends on that support to succeed. By failing to give adequate support, Karzai and other Afghans believe, the international community has played its part in the erosion of the government's authority.Since December, the international community has refused to deploy more international peacekeepers and failed to provide desperately needed cash from the $4.5 billion reconstruction fund pledged in Tokyo in January -- a bureaucratic failure in what is essentially an emergency situation.
The Intensification of Global Instability - Stratfor
Nothing moves in a straight line, and nothing moves in tandem. Nevertheless, if we were envision all these issues continuing to deteriorate, we could easily imagine that six months from now, Japan would be in economic and political chaos, an Indo-Pakistani war would be raging, Afghanistan would be experiencing a civil war of epic proportions, Iran would be fragmenting under internal pressures, the United States would be at war with Iraq, Israel and the Palestinians would be locked in a guerrilla war, the northern tier of Latin America would be in bloody chaos and U.S. forces would still be mired in a global struggle against al Qaeda. Meanwhile, other regions would be falling into chaos.It is therefore comforting to know that simple extrapolation is useless in predicting the future. At the same time, it is hard to locate the countervailing, stabilizing forces. It is difficult to see what force will save Japan from its fate or Colombia from its conflict. The problem with the current wave of instability is that its lack of a coherent pattern or organizing force makes it difficult to perceive the force that will limit the destabilizing process.
| Afghanistan | Iraq |
For those of you into interface design, check out 9031's Recommended Sites 0.1b1. I'm still trying to catch some of those links...
| Design |
Patrick writes:
Speaking of books, here is a site I found when I was doing a search for International Fund Services (this site description contained the phrase "ifs of history"). Kinda of interesting if you are into that kinda thing.
| History |
For those who wonder what Zagat *doesn't* publish, they put together a small webpage with some of the discarded one-liners. Enjoy.
Ouch!
CMM
| New York City | Reviews |
Saudi Arabia, certainly not the most Jew-friendly nation on earth, has floated a peace proposal: Israel returns to its pre-1967 border, and the Arab nations of the world normalize relations. This puts the Israeli-Palestinean peace process in a regional context, where it belongs. Israel will never be at peace as long as its neighbors want to throw it into the sea.
Even if Sharon agrees to such a plan, there remain 3 major sticking points: security, immigration, and Jerusalem. Here's my proposal:
1) Immigration & the 'right of return'. Control over immigration is essential to a nation's sovereignty. If the JDL wants to make its hq in Ramallah, or the leaders of Hamas want to settle in Tel Aviv, the PA and Israel (respectively) should have the right to say no. If either nation wants to restrict immigration based on religion or ethnicity, it might not be considered fair, but it's certainly within their rights.
I propose that the right of return be explicitly linked to the question of the Israel settlers now living in the West Bank and Gaza. I would offer a one-for-one deal: for every settler that wants to remain in Palestine, Israel will admit one "refugee" from Jordan. Both settlers and refugees will have the right to apply for citizenship in Palestine and Israel, respectively, if they so choose.
[Note of clarification: The general idea is to divide immigration into two categories. The first category is whatever people the soverign state wants to accept into its country. Thus Israel could, if it wanted to, import every Jew from around the world -- as long as they were living in Israel, not Palestine. Vice versa with the Palestinians -- they could let in as many returnees as they wanted to, to settle in the state of Palestine. (Alternatively, each state could decide to set an immigration policy that had nothing to do with ethnicity or religion, but they probably would not.)
The second category is those immigrants that each nation is "forced" to take. Here's where the reciprocity comes in. There are Jewish settlers who want to remain in the West Bank. There are Palestinian refugees who would like to live in Israel, in the places they came from originally. This is the symmetry I would enforce.]
2) Security. Neither country will be secure without a demilitarized zone between them. As a matter of treaty, make it clear that neither country's military forces can enter the DMZ. Crossing that Rubicon would be considered an act of war. For the security of the people living within the DMZ -- and for this plan to work the DMZ must be settled -- Israel and Palestine would field a joint police force with limited weapons.
The DMZ would serve another purpose: making explicit the idea of land-for-peace. Both Israel and Palestine would be held responsible for ensuring that their citizens do not commit terrorist acts against each other. For every Israeli killed by a terrorist, Palestine would lose political and taxation control over 1 square mile (or some such unit) within the DMZ. Likewise if a Palestinian is killed by an Israeli. Thus we take away the political incentive of a suicide bomber: he only gives more land to the enemy.
There's a mess of answered questions with this idea -- what does each country get if someone is wounded? is the land given back if the killer is brought to justice? or part of it? who administrates such a plan, and how do they decide what territory is given?. I don't begin to know the answers.
3) Jerusalem. Never, never, never divide the city. We saw what happened in Berlin. The policy on Jerusalem should be: One City, Two Capitals, Three Religions. This would require, in essence, four governments within the city: a city government which would jointly decide secular issues within the city; two capital governments, which would be limited in authority to the government of their respective nations; and a religious council, which would deal with questions of religious importance (such as the policy concerning the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock.) Again, there are many unanswered questions. But Jerusalem carries such spiritual and emotional weight in the hearts of Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, I cannot see peace without some way to share the city.
Few things make me more sad and angry than the continual state of war in and against Israel. Yet it always seems that a new prospect for peace arrives just when things seem close to collapse. Can we ever permit ourselves to think "maybe this time..."?
| Israel | Palestine |
We might summarize the Bush Doctrine this way: The United States faces an extraordinary danger. Washington is therefore prepared to take any action anywhere in the world to defend itself from this threat.
The defense of the homeland cannot be reduced to only defeating al Qaeda. The Bush administration has studied the lessons of the Israeli wars on Black September and other Palestinian groups and has drawn this conclusion: the defeat of any single group can disrupt and delay future attacks, but it cannot by itself eliminate them. Even if the United States were to utterly destroy al Qaeda, a new group would likely emerge. Therefore, the United States has three strategic goals:
1. Disrupt and defeat al Qaeda in order to buy time for a more thorough solution.
2. Prevent the emergence of follow-on groups by denying them sanctuaries in states where they can organize, train and plan.
3. Limit the threat posed by al Qaeda and follow-on groups by systematically eliminating weapons of mass destruction being held or developed by regimes that are favorably inclined toward them or in states where there is substantial sympathy for them.
A good summation of what Bush's foreign policy is all about: protect the US from further attacks, by any means necessary. (Except lying to our allies; we've shut down the Office of Strategic Disinformation.) So: what do you think?
(Mike Watkins sent us this link.)
| War on Terror | WMD | Al Qaeda |
Everyone is debating the relative merits of the plan to have all New Yorkers read the same book. Which leads us to ask, just what are New Yorkers actually reading anyway? Hence our new feature over on the sidebar: MTA Bestsellers, featuring the last 15 or so books that I've spotted on the IRT. Why? Why not? It's always interesting to see what people are actually reading. Plus it gives me the challenge of peering at straphangers' titles without looking like a stalker.
(For those of you who are blog-minded: the bestseller list is actually a separate blog, pasted in to the sidebar with javascript. The cool thing is, you can use this to syndicate the list anywhere. Click here for details.)
Let me know if this doesn't look right in your browser (or doesn't appear at all); I'm still testing it out. Enjoy!
| Subway | New York City | Lists |
Saturday night we went to see the Brooklyn Blades play out in Coney Island. (They tied the Westchester Wildcats 2-2). We had dinner beforehand at Totonno's Pizzeria out on Neptune & 15th St. Should you decide to go sample their excellent pies, don't do the following, unless you want to be instantly pegged as an outsider:
| New York City | Food | Pizza |
Your article on weblogs in Monday's "Business Day" missed the mark in its characterization of bloggers as raving diary writers with an inability to self-edit. I believe that blogs are a significant step in the democratization of both writing and editing -- particularly after September 11.
During the '80s, desktop publishing was supposed to put the power of the press in the hands of any PC user. But there was no distribution system (unless you had your zine listed in Factsheet Five.) Then in the '90s, the Web was going to do the same thing. But self-published sites either consisted of rarely-updated pages about cats or coffee pots, or became now-failed dot-coms. Some web programmers spoke of the promise of collaborative filtering -- "bots" that would roam the net, finding news of specific interest to us. But no bot or filter can yet approximate the judgment of a human editor.
Enter the blog. Your article is correct in noting that Blogger and its competitors make it easy to update one's website -- but the technology also helps one to manage, archive and aggregate relevant content. The result has been a boon for those looking to cut through the clutter of the web. Want to read about religion? Check out It's a Mystery. Or the Mideast conflict? Little Green Footballs is a must-read. Or type design? Go to Linesandsplines. Each of these blogs is a community of editors and writers who sift what is relevant to them from the global information stream, and who have their own interesting things to say.
I have been running my blog, Ishbaddidle, for over a year now. What began as a pop-culture review, written and read by my friends, really changed on September 11th. As a New Yorker, I found myself needing to tell my story, to hear the stories of others, to share readings and news, to try and make sense of it all. I think that for many of us, the convergence of this tragedy and our deeply personal reactions to it were worked out through our blogs. It was the coming of age for blogs.
Whither the weblog phenomenon? I don't know. It's true that there are many daily journal blogs ("what I had for breakfast") . But there is good writing and good editing out there, and much of the good stuff is powered by Blogger and its ilk. (But the way, your article is incorrect in asserting that "users must agree to accept ads on their Weblogs" for the free Blogger service. That is only true if you are using Blogspot to host your blog; otherwise, the only ad that must appear on your blog is a button that credits Blogger.)
Perhaps your article will be right in predicting that blogging is just a fad in the Internet's "fallow period." But I suspect that blogging is here to stay. Read more of what people are writing out there, and I think you will agree.
Thanks to Chris for helping edit this.
In a situation of moral absolutism, of mass murder, as my friend Frank says, terrorism, not "terrorism", it is heartbreaking and deeply disillusioning to see Leftist political leaders attempt to justify and explain that which the human heart is not meant to be able to comprehend. Searching U.S foreign policy for the reason that 19 men hijacked jumbo jets and crashed them into public buildings is madness. Moral relativism in the face of mass murder is sickening. And I guess, even more to the point, bin Laden's Leftist apologists, like the Nation, and all the Leftists I have already namechecked, Moore, Chomsky et al , who would like to lay blame for his actions ultimately on US support of Israel & sanctions against Iraq, have the wrong analysis.
Read it. Via LGF.
| Leftism |
Here's another one from a different article (on David Brock's latest Book called Blinded by the Right):
The numerous gays in "the seniormost ranks of the Reagan administration called themselves the 'laissez fairies,'" writes Brock.
| Neologisms | GOP | LGBT | David Brock |
Salon ran a pretty good commentary on what's good about Friends, following the announcement that the show has only one season left. I like the piece mainly because it makes a point I've been making for a while now -- that the show succeeded in spite of the craven Gen-X marketing effort that inspired it in 1994.
The other thing I like about it is that it addresses the longtime gripe of Seinfeld fans, that Friends is just a pale carbon copy of the much-praised Show About Nothing. A representative quote:
If "Seinfeld" was a show about nothing, "Friends" is a show about anything. It was also, surprisingly, a show in which people hung out with other people their own age. If anything about "Friends" is realistic, in fact, it's that. When characters of different ages have appeared on the show, their ages have been major issues. (Monica's relationship with the much older Richard, for example, ultimately failed for that reason.) In fact, from the nondescript title (the network had originally wanted to call it "Friends Like These") to the equal weight given to the collect-them-all personalities -- Flaky, Jappy, Controlly, Smarmy, Mopey and Dopey -- everything about "Friends" that was considered narrow or unworkable became one of its most important assets....Of course, "Friends" couldn't have existed without "Seinfeld." Although the latter was arguably a funnier show, "Friends" will probably age better in syndication. We loved the "Seinfeld" characters because they were loathsome, because they represented the opposite of what we were supposed to like and because they made us feel better about a future in which nothing was expected to happen....
We may have been 25 at the time the show began, but some of us -- like Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Joey and Phoebe -- would remain 25 for a few more years. But then we all grew up. If Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine hadn't landed in jail, they would have remained -- So here we are, forever. Forever and ever and ever -- in their own cozy hell, where no red-hot pokers were needed.
The "Friends," on the other hand, will probably end up living somewhere among us.
Nobody, including this Salon columnist, seems to remember this anymore, but about a year after Friends debuted (to astounding ratings), a very snippy Jerry Seinfeld -- then at the height of his show's popularity -- appeared on The Tonight Show and made some unsubtle references to the fellow NBC hit show and its similarity to his show. To be fair, he only made the comments in response to a question from Leno about the then-suffocating preponderance of urban/single/20-30-something sitcoms on TV, which Leno posited as Seinfeld's legacy; to which Jerry replied, "Oh you mean all these shows about friends sitting around talking? Yes, there are a lot of shows about friends right now, aren't there?" I agree that Seinfeld's show is the more groundbreaking one, but I thought then and still think now that not only was Jerry being an unconscionable, ungrateful bitch on national television, he was pretty inaccurate. This Salon story does a pretty good job of carving out Friends' legacy -- and keeping me from feeling too sheepish about admitting to my own friends (who all think the show is so five-years-ago) that I still watch it.
Favorite post-911 neologism from this NYT article: Shoeicide bomber.
| Neologisms | War on Terror |
Please bear with us as we work on redesign. It's got a ways to go, but I was getting sick of the old look. Plus I've got that cool new rotating-title. Go on, hit "reload" and watch the font change. Like you care.
Oh, and yes this CSS is lifted from Blue Robot, and the rotating-image code is from Crayonbox. Now I just have to fix all this. Comments? Errata? Suggestions?
I'm cruising up Amsterdam, the sun is brilliant, and I'm hearing "All I Wanna Do" on the radio for the first time. I turn it up. It's one of those rare afternoons when driving in Manhattan is a pleasure.
At the light, I have to turn Sheryl Crow down to hear what the guy in the next car is saying. "Hey," he says, "do you want me to fix that dent?" He indicates the passenger door on our Suburau, crumpled by a teenage driver in Missouri. "I got tools. 40 bucks."
"No thanks," I say. "If the car looks too good, someone will steal it."
"Oh, don't worry. I won't do that good a job."
I still tell that as one of my New York stories; it's got a good blend of wise-ass and hustle. But there's another story that happened a few years later. Different car, different ending.
My wife and I were looking at antiques and stopped first at a place on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. After we parked, a guy pulled up and offered to fix the dent on the wheel rim of the Camry. I just kept walking, but my wife hadn't quite heard him and started back toward him. She thought he was pointing out something wrong with our car -- the lights on, or a door left ajar. Sometimes she trusts people too much.
What was it that made me grab her elbow and steer her inside the shop? Maybe it was just the New York thing, the wall you've got to put up to keep out the constant assault of the city. Someone makes you an offer you don't want, asks for money you don't have, you just ignore him. Like it didn't happen, like he's not there at all. Sometimes I trust people too little.
He blew up. I don't remember the names he called me or the threats he made, still sitting in his car. I don't remember what I said back. But I remember being nervous -- and unwilling to back down. I was out on the sidewalk, and glad that the two guys who worked at the shop were both near and large.
It was clear that as long as I stood there, he would keep raving. My impulse then was to turn my back on him, go back in the shop, and ignore him. And then he told me to do just that. "Go on, turn around and go inside." He kept repeating it, commanding it. So of course that kept me out there on the sidewalk arguing with this lunatic car repair guy. Until I'd had enough, and really did turn and walk away.
Afterward, I felt an inchoate rage. I envisioned turning him into the cops for running an illegal business; or coming back to find our car vandalized; or various violent scenarios, fear and its flipside.
It was months before we got the car fixed. I sometimes think of these two dents as inverse New York stories. The sitcom and the cop drama, Yiddish and thuggish, the punch line and the fear of being punched.
| Cars |
They ran some brilliant counter-programming against the Olympics last night: The Glutton Bowl. A massive eating contest, with some very massive guys. (And of course, the Japanese.) The show ensured a battle between the sexes over the remote: guys eating 38 hard-boiled eggs, or 15 feet of sushi, or a bucket full of brains on Fox; over on NBC, women's figure skating. While it shared some of the production aspects of the more unfortunate "reality" game shows (like the prime-time televised shows The Chamber and The Chair featuring bondage, torture, and cash prizes), the telecasters treated it exactly like a sporting event. Sample snippet, during the egg-eating contest:
"Mark has come out of the matzoh-ball eating circuit, so that should help him here. Even though matzoh balls are round, and the eggs are oval."
This was no Fear Factor: these guys (and one woman I saw during the sushi eating contest) really do compete in eating contests. The whole thing was like watching Iron Chef -- except it didn't make me hungry, it made me sick.
| Food | Fox |
From Der Speigel, we have Batman, Conan, Rambo, Terminator, and Xena.
NB: Thanks, Sandra, for really making my day. I'll bet W has this up on his rec room wall already. Although maybe Cheney should have been the Invisible Man?
| Der Spiegel | George W. Bush | Colin Powell | Condoleeza Rice | Dick Cheney | Donald Rumsfeld | Comics |
It took us days to sift through the thousands of entries we received (well, actually, three) to last week's Oscar Trivia Challenge. Again, to avoid giving away the answers to the casual surfer, Ishbadiddle employs ColorMask technology to hide the answers. Just use your mouse to select the text below and it will magically appear! Just like Yes & Know, only without the pen.
In the true spirit of the Olympics, Chris and Debbie will share a Gold medal for their game efforts to answer the questions. The Bronze goes to Cebra for creativity. I've included Cebra's answers along with the right ones; if you can't tell the difference then go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
* Which movie has won more Oscars than any other without winning the Oscar for Best Picture?
Battlefield Earth. Or maybe Cabaret.
* Which movie has been the biggest Oscar-loser in history -- that is, which movie was nominated for 11 Oscars and failed to win a single one?
Two of the following three have earned this dubious distinction: The Color Purple, Titanic, and The Turning Point.
* What two films have received more nominations than Lord of the Ring's 13?
Either: All About Eve and Titanic
Or: The Postman and Under the Cherry Moon
* Four people have been nominated for acting, writing, and directing in the same film. (One of them twice). Who?
Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Warren Beatty (Reds and Heaven Can Wait), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Roberto Begnini (Life is Beautiful), and Alan Smithee (Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh).
* Who's the only Oscar to have won an Oscar?
Oscar Wilde, for There's Something About Ernest or Oscar Hammerstein II (Best Song: 1941, 1945)
* One Best Supporting Actress winner was on screen for 8 minutes. One Best Actor winner was on screen for 16 minutes. Who? (For a bonus point: what film did both of them appear in?)
Judi Dench as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. They were both in 84 Charing Cross Road. OR: "Katherine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy, but I can't think of anything they were in together."
* Kate Winslet and Judi Dench were nominated for playing the younger and the older novelist Iris Murdoch in Iris. This was the second time that two actresses have been nominated for playing the same character in the same film. What was the first? And what two actresses were nominated for playing the same character in two different films in the same year?
Gloria Stuart and Kate Winslet played Rose in Titanic. Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett both played Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth. As far as I know, Gloria Stuart and Cate Blanchett have never played the same character, but it's only a matter of time. Also accepted: those two babies who doubled for each other in Look Who's Talking.
* What two actors received Oscars (in two different years) for playing the same character in two different films? (That's two actors, one character, two movies, two Oscars.) And what four actors were each nominated twice for playing the same character in two different films? (That's four actors, four characters, eight nominations, and eight movies.)
Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells Of St. Mary's (1945).
Paul Newman as "Fast" Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961) and The Color Of Money (1986).
John Ritter as Ben Healy in Problem Child (1990) and Problem Child 2 (1991).
Peter O'Toole as King Henry II in Beckett (1964) and The Lion In Winter (1968).
Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974).
* What's the only sequel to win Best Picture?
Either Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves or Godfather II.
* Four women have been nominated for acting in movies directed by their husbands. (One of them won.) Who?
Frances McDormand (Fargo), directed by Joel Coen.
Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence), directed by John Cassavetes.
Melina Mercouri (Never on Sunday), directed by Jules Dassin.
Julie Andrews (Victor, Victoria) directed by Blake Edwards.
Mariah Carey (Glitter.) Well, she hasn't won...yet. And I'm not sure if she's married to the director. But she deserves to be in here somewhere.
* There are two families with three generations Of Oscar Winners. Who?
Either: The Kennedys and The Baldwins (if you stretch the definition of "generation")
Or: The Hustons and the Coppolas:
Walter Huston (Best Supporting Actor, The Treasure Of Sierra Madre, 1948); John Huston (Best Director, The Treasure Of Sierra Madre, 1948); Anjelica Huston (Best Supporting Actress, Prizzi's Honor, 1985).
Carmine Coppola (Best Original Dramatic Score, The Godfather: Part II, 1974); Francis Ford Coppola (Best Original Screenplay, Patton, 1970; Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather, 1970; Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, The Godfather: Part II, 1974); Nicholas Coppola A.K.A. Nicholas Cage: Francis Ford Coppola's nephew (Best Actor, Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
* Why didn't "Waking Life" get a Best Animated Feature nomination? (That's not actually trivia, I was just wondering).
No one can answer this one.
Most of the questions (and heck, the answers too) are from Oscar Trivia; a few from the insane Williams Trivia Contest.
| Trivia |
Above a street in Rosslyn, Virginia, next to the Gannett Headquarters, is a beautiful spiral henge of colored glass. It reaches up into the sky, and as you move inside, the glass shifts in color from yellows to reds to purples. Etched in the glass are the names of journalists who were killed while doing their job, or because they did their job too well. Now the name of Danny Pearl will be added to the list. His last words were "Yes, I am a Jew and my father is a Jew." (A statement of pride? A forced confession?) Then his kidnappers slit his throat. All on videotape.
How is it that the murder of one can still shake me even after the death of thousands? Did his kidnappers really think that killing him would aid their cause? In what world does this make any sense?
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to this open letter to the people of Pakistan from Mariane Pearl. Here it is in full:
| War on Terror | Pakistan | Wall Street Journal |
James over at It's A Mystery posted a link I sent him, in which a D&D player attempts to disprove allegations that children can learn actual spells from the Harry Potter books. (Sorry, I can't remember where I found this originally. So sue me.) And I have a new Disturbing Search Request.
| Occult | Referral Log | Disturbing Search Requests |
So there have been a ton of pieces of late about blogging, not the least of which were in Time and on NPR. But only two are really worth mentioning here: a we-knew-blogs-when-blogs-were-cool article in Wired online (worth mentioning because the second page peeps Paul Ford’s blog, linked earlier in Ishbadiddle by Andrea), and a concise piece about how to write personal writing better at A List Apart (worth mentioning because ALA is just so damn cool).
I’ve been away from the Ishbadiddle fold for a few days, and look at the content generated!
The Village Voice has put out its annual Pazz and Jop critics' poll -- available in this week's newspaper and on their website. The web version is superior on a number of levels -- not only because it says up for longer than a week, but because the Voice people have seen fit to include all of the respondents' polls; pre-web, only some of the polls would be represented in the paper.
The winners were predictable. On the album list, Dylan's Love and Theft topped the poll by the largest margin in P&J's nearly 30-year history. The Strokes' much-debated Is This It was #2, but it wasn't even close; Love and Theft all but doubled its points. Equally predictable, on the singles list, Missy Elliott's innovative, much-praised hit "Get Ur Freak On" topped the poll handily.
Whatever its faults -- don't get Jay Smith started on this topic -- P&J is probably the most useful music poll/award produced annually, because its slant -- i.e., the things rock critics drool over (usually a mix of acclaimed geezers, anointed indie-rockers and Important rappers) -- is not quite as craven as the slant of the other honoraria: the Grammys, the American Music Awards, the polls done by specific magazines, etc. In other words, rock critics might all talk to each other and breathe the same stale air, but it's likely that they listen to more music than the average Grammy voter; and it's quite unlikely that Robert Christgau, P&J's poll manager and elder statesman, calls respondents and pressures them to vote for his favorites. (There's one simple reason why Mick Jagger's latest album, loved by no one except Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, made the top five of Rolling Stone's 2001 music awards, for example.)
As someone who is a sometime-published music critic, always compiles year-end music top 10s, but does not contribute to Pazz and Jop, I like to compare my annual tallies with the critics' consensus. This year, nine of my 13 album-of-the-year picks made the P&J top 40 (exceptions were my #2 pick, Dismemberment Plan; #6, the Beta Band; #10, Craig David; and -- natch -- #12, Ben Folds). I'm happy to see that my number-one pick, the Avalanches' Since I Left You, nearly made P&J's top 10, a strong showing for a debut album. All but three of my single-of-the-year picks made the P&J list.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who obsesses over this sort of thing -- Douglas Wolk, my friend and former CMJ editor, clued me in to a P&J number-crunching site where someone named Glenn McDonald has actually figured out which poll participants match the overall results most closely and ranked them based on some formula. This is sorta fun, if you care even a little bit about rock criticism and spot a name or two you are familiar with (Rolling Stone's heavily published Rob Sheffield, for example, or sometime MTV and VH1 personalities Allison Stewart and Anthony DeCurtis) -- are they total shills for the rock-crit party line, or do they march to their own drum, as it were? (FYI, Sheffield is apparently way into the critical faves, making the top 10.)
Anyway, I shouldn't talk -- I often match the P&J results pretty closely -- and in fact, my friend Jay took the liberty of running the numbers for me. Here's what he found:
From: Jay Smith To: Douglas Wolk, Chris Molanphy Subject: Re: Pazz and Jop Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 12:13:31"Now I have the perfect way to know which of my
friends and acquaintances is the PazzAndJoppiest! Ted's just a little bit
PazzAndJoppier than Gavin. Douglas is PnJier than Robin, but not so
PnJ as Windy. And somehow Ivan's become more PnJ than any of them --
what's up with that?Chris, I've run the numbers, and I'm giving you an honorary 60.7. Oooh,
not quite as PazzAndJoppy as Joe Levy! Sorry, Chris. Just ditch that
Beta Band crap and learn to love the Dylan, and you're top ten material.
Oh, and then you'd be pushing Sheffield out of the top ten. Grudge Match!
I guess I kind of deserved that. CMM
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Here's one of the funniest websites I have ever found (after The Onion, of course).
Now that the 2002 update has taken place, I cannot wait to read new accounts of the dreaded faux pas. My personal favorites are when the person telling the story is actually the freak, as opposed to the person they are complaining about in their written diatribe.
Have at it, my friends!!!
-- Sandra
| Marriage |
If you've ever wished that *NSYNC would just leave the planet, your dream is about to be fulfilled: Lance Bass is going to blast off into outer space.
| Boy Bands | Space Travel |
I added a search thingy.
Patrick posts:
Has anyone reading this ever joined a fan club? I was doing a search on Jeri Ryan at the office (purely work related, I assure you) and the first site that popped up was her official fan club site. Not surprising. But when I opened the site there was only a letter saying that due to career and personal commitments, the founders and runners of the site no longer can longer continue their work.
Now, I am not trying to make fun of anyone. But what causes people to think, "Hey let's start a fan club." And why Jeri Ryan? Was she even on Star Trek Voyager (a magnet for fanatics no doubt) five years ago when this club started? I read somewhere else that she was a runner up in the Miss America pageant in 1990. Does that qualify you for a fan club? Again, no offense, but she was a supporting player in a somewhat popular syndicated show. Did her performance as "7 of 9" really change people's lives? Does Michael Dorn (AKA Worf) get a fan club, too? And then, why quit with the fan club? I can only imagine the conversation; "Honey, I know it's hard, but with me being up for partner at the firm and the second baby on the way, I just don't think we can spend the time we need on Jeri's page to make it really good. Jeri wouldn't like that, and we don't want to piss her off." I guess I always really believed that fan clubs were inventions of/run by movie studios and talent agencies as hype vehicles. Seeing this type of sincerity in a site without hype, is somewhat disturbing.
[NB: What I find disturbing is the fact that this is the second reference to Jeri Ryan on this site in the last week. I'm afraid we've just moved down a notch in the Geek Hierarchy.]
| Jeri Ryan | Star Trek |
The Alphabet Synthesis Machine is way cool. Via webmonkey.
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Someone just sent me this thought-provoking short online film -- maybe material for Ishbadiddle? Happy Valentine's Day & Chinese New Year!
-- Matt
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So they're filming a movie in our neighborhood -- Duplex, starring Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore, directed by Danny Devito. IMDB gives the logline as: "A young couple has a chance to move into a gorgeous duplex in the perfect New York neighborhood. All they have to do is bump off the current tenant, a cute little old lady." I'm glad to know that Hollywod thinks Park Slope is nice enough to kill for.
After picking my way through the trucks, props, and PAs with clipboards, I reached the coffee cart I sometimes patronize on my way to the train. The coffee's not very good, but the guy is friendly and it's less than a buck. As he gave me my change we talked about the movie. "It's good for business. Some of them buy their coffee from me." Maybe it was one of them who spent the bill I got with www.wheresgeorge.com stamped all over it. So of course I had to look. At Where's George, you can enter the serial number of your bill and see where it's been. My bill had come all the way from New Orleans, marked by a guy named Vernon. The idea is to mark your bill, enter it in the database, spend it normally, and then watch what happens to them -- kinda a combination of the film Twenty Bucks, and those grade-school experiments where we would release balloons with postcards and see how far they went.
As with most things webbish, there's a small subculture devoted to tracking money. One guy in New Jersey has entered 122,927 bills into the database. A million people have logged 15 million bills. There are get-togethers of "Georgers." There's a set of slang terms. (A "Wild Abe" is a $5 bill with the www.wheresgeorge.com marking found "in the wild"; "FRB Bingo" is getting hits on bills from all of the Federal Reserve Bank; a "boomerang" is a bill that's traveled far and then returned to its home city.) It's almost like obsessively tracking your referral logs on your blog. Not that I would ever do that.
Speaking of currency, Debbie got me an excellent book called Boggs: A Comedy of Values. JSG Boggs is an artist whose medium and subject is money. He draws money. Realistic money, but different enough to notice. He then goes and tries to trade it for something of value. He's not a counterfeiter (although the Treasury Department has a different opinion), because he doesn't try to pass off his art as money. Rather, he tries to barter his art in lieu of money. If the merchant takes the drawing, Boggs takes the receipt, the item, and anything else ancillary to the transaction, and sells those to a collector (for actual money, one presumes.) The collector then gets to hunt down the Boggs bill and try to buy it from the merchant (generally for far more than the bill's "face value".) The bill isn't the piece of art -- it's the transaction itself, the willingness of a merchant to temporarily turn commerce inside-out.
The general point is, what makes money valuable? It used to stand for gold, now it only stands for itself. Money is dependent on our confidence in it, which is why the British and US authorities weren't too keen on Boggs' activities. (John Kenneth Galbraith, who certainly knows something about money, had some interesting things to say on that subject.) The British case against Boggs is the narrative arc of the book, but along the way Weschler delves into the interplay between art and commerce, and the history and meaning of money (although he shortchanges alternabills like Ithaca Hours).
What would Boggs would make of the Georgers? Both are more interested in what these little pieces of green paper do, in the transactions they make possible. Boggs wants us to question our faith in them; but the Georgers have a less abstract interest in money. For them, it's like each bill is a message in a bottle, a way of sending themselves out into the wallets of America.
| Art | Park Slope | Distributed Culture | Georgers | JSG Boggs |
Newspapers have said Philippine karaoke parlors have been removing "My Way" from play lists because fights frequently broke out -- for unfathomable reasons -- when the song was sung. The song seems to drive many drunken men to commit anything from slight physical injuries to homicide, reports said.
