So we went and saw it last night. It was pretty good: I liked Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker; Willem Dafoe did the Jekyll / Hyde thing without going completely over the top; J. K. Simmons (who plays the psychatrist on Law & Order -- that's why he looked so familiar) deserves a 2 Minute Oscar for his portrayal of news editor J. Jonah Jameson; the love story was not quite as bad as that of Attack of the Clones. Danny Elfman is a complete hack -- is that chorus he uses in every single score he's ever written real, or synthesized? And I found the beginning of the movie, in which he discoveres his powers and becomes Spider-Man, much more fun than the whole show-down with the Green Goblin. (Then again, you could probably say the same thing about the first Superman movie and the first Batman movie.) Plus, as Debbie pointed out, it's a bit hard to watch two actors face off if you can't see their faces at all.
So, in the middle of the movie, there's the first fight between Spidey and the Green Goblin, in an obviously fake Times Square. The Goblin starts throwing bombs; the buildings are exploding; people are screaming. And I started freaking out. Panic. My heart racing. I closed my eyes and saw the streets filled with smoke. I opened them and there were people turned to skeletons. And then she fell.... I very nearly left the theater. It's only a movie, it's only a movie, it's only....
A minute later and it had passed. I wonder though: I didn't have this reaction watching the CBS 9/11 special or the DVD that the Here Is New York project put together. Why this?
| 9/11 | PTSD |
I wanted to cross-post (from Bleahh) the IMS/ISC bid to become the administrator of the dot-org TLD. It’s almost hard to believe some times just how awful Verisign is. Yet another horror story about a domain getting sold out from under the rightful owners appeared yesterday on Zeldman, and it makes me nervous that a domain for which I recently acquired high-level responsibility (private site, so no URL) is up for renewal in under two weeks. Which is worse: that it may have already been renewed and we’re stuck with them for another few years? or that it hasn’t yet been renewed and I risk having it sold to the next schmuck who thinks it’s a cool name?
Hence, I’m doing my part to spread the dot.
•
You can go and post a message of support, ideally after reading at least part of the IMS/ISC proposal.
There's also this campaign:
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Beijing Newspaper Retreats, Apologizes for Capitol Gaffe
"Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money," the paper said. "This is what the Onion does."
Here's my post on the original gaffe. Found the retraction story on karlo.org.
Update:
Ennis sent this email exchange to me on the subject. Since I don't read Chinese I'll have to take their word on the content of these links:
From: David K________
For better or worse, the Chinese are not even close to the first to have taken the Onion too seriously. An example from Wired:
"A recent cover story, '98 HOMOSEXUAL-RECRUITMENT DRIVE NEARING GOAL was picked up by Fred Phelps, architect of the notorious God Hates Fags Web site, who listed the article as proof of a gay conspiracy."
From: Ben R_______
Subject: RE: what's chinese for "satire"
Thanks for that point, David. It should be kept in mind, too, that it's not a question of Chinese people not understanding satire, of which they have a rich tradition.
Rather, we're talking about a stodgy state-run newspaper trying hilariously to acknowledge a mistake while making it look as though it was the fault of a dastardly, irresponsible U.S. paper.
Beijing Evening News's "correction" talks in this serious tone about how it went and did follow-up interviews with congressional officials, etc. ...
Here, a Chinese online journal ridicules the Beijing Evening News for making an ass of itself twice.
| Journalism |
Who-hoo! The New York Times has a piece on nycbloggers.com in today's Circuits. Check it out!
| New York Times |
"But there's no need to worry, as although they can escape they are perfectly harmless and won't be taking over just yet." It looks like Hawking was right about those robots.
| Artificial Intelligence | Mad Science | End Of The World |
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 26, 2002
Filed at 2:31 p.m. ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and cannot be recited in schools.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1954 act of Congress inserting the phrase "under God'' after the words "one nation'' in the pledge. The court said the phrase violates the so-called Establishment Clause in the Constitution that requires a separation of church and state.
"A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion,'' Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote for the three-judge panel.
Further Reading:
Supreme Court decides that compelling a student to say the Pledge is not permissible.
Supreme Court mentions, in its majority opinion in a case not involving the pledge, that “There is a crucial difference between government and private speech endorsing religion”. Apparently, the court in this case found (rightly so) that having a class recite the Pledge constitutes government speech.
| Religion | Pledge of Allegiance |
30 days to a more accessible weblog.
| How To | Design |
Thanks to Sandra for forwarding this.
| eBay |
"We also have to admit that a cool-sounding, glowing spear-like blast does have dramatic appeal. However, such blasts are speculative if not outright silly from a scientific standpoint."
Lasers, machine guns, exploding cars, space explosions, and why getting shot won't hurl you backwards through the nearest plate glass window. This and other fun over at Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. (Found over on the weekly link section of grrl.com, which has a review of nycbloggers.com too.)
| Special Effects |
| Ted Rall |
Just some simple statistics about world income and inequality from the BBC
Click here
| Global Inequality |
What happens when you rename your international consulting firm something stupid like Monday? And then forget to register the co.uk domain? Via monoki.
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The movie is doing poorly, but ... [story taken from Rednations.com discussion of the Windtalkers]
Hasbro Re-Issues G.I JOE Navajo Code Talker Action Figure
By Newstream.com
Web, AZ, Wed,
June 2002 (Newstream) -- Hasbro, Inc (NYSE: HAS) has announced the re-issue of its popular GI JOE Navajo Code Talker figure. This "talking" action figure honors the more than 400 Navajo Code Talkers, whose unbreakable code was instrumental in Marine maneuvers that took place in the Pacific during World War II-from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Okinawa in 1945. To this day, the Navajo Code remains the only unbroken code ever implemented in the history of war.
| Code Talkers | Dolls | WWII | Native Americans |
This is the best Thai I've had on the east coast - they make the curries fresh for each dish so the flavors are clear and quite tasty !
It's called Temduang, at 644 Tenth Avenue @45th, 307-9388. I went there with Jay and Andrea a few weeks ago, it's #11 on Robert Sietsma's top 100 list of cheap Asian restaurants. YUM ! If you're in NYC, it's worth the trip. And cheap too !
| Thai | Food | Hell's Kitchen |
Patrick writes:
While we are worrying ourselves to distraction about what the CIA, the FBI, and Arthur Andersen knew and when they knew it, nobody is asking "Who's watching the astronomers?"
Largest Asteroid in Years Misses Earth
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An asteroid the size of a soccer field whizzed by Earth at a distance much nearer than the Moon, the biggest such space rock in decades to get this close, scientists said on Thursday.
"It's a good thing it missed the Earth, because we never saw it coming," Steve Maran of the American Astronomical Society said in a telephone interview. "The asteroid wasn't discovered until three days after it passed its closest approach to our planet."
Actually, the NSA knew about it days before, but no-one translated it from Nerdspeak until after the fact.
| End Of The World | Astronomy |
So I'm in the middle of a double shift at the Park Slope Food Co-op (working off my time), working the exit door,and reading a copy of the Daily News that was kindly left there from the previous shift. The cover story, Fear Cop Cars as Bombs is about a recent (aborted) attempt by two Middle Eastern men to buy a replica ambulance with cash, launching speculation (80% of the article) that other rescue and police vehicles may be used to penetrate our defenses. An older man comes to get his receipts stamped, and nods at the paper's headline. "So are the police the terrorists?"
"No, not really," I reply, ready to offer a synopsis of the news.
"Well, then we don't have anything real to worry about then. We really should about . . . manipulation." And he gave me a Significant Look as he walked out with his tofu.
The Co-op is probably the place where you're most likely to get a conspiracy-theory lecture as you buy groceries. It's a good thing he didn't know about the recent suspicious attempt to infiltrate an Oscar Mayer Weinermobile into the Pentagon.
| Park Slope | Conspiracy Theories |
Patrick writes:
Overheard in the office today: "I need to go back home because I forgot 150 dollars worth of lingerie that I need this weekend and my roommate put it in the recycling. I need to get there before they pick it up." (I didn't overhear this really, she was actually talking directly to me)
| Overheard | Lingerie | Recycling |
"For the umpteenth time I repeat that those who plot and plan such barbarous attacks will have to answer before God," the pope said.
| Terrorism |
"I've mastered my life and traced it along the pages of Mark Twain and Jack London and all of the cynics and existentialists, the Kants, the Sartres. I've tried to pick out the best explorers and the best musicians, everybody from Miles Davis to Sarah Vaughan, from Led Zeppelin to The Beatles, and I want to be Ed Sullivan!"Oh, that wacky David Lee Roth.
Liz put my review of The House of Blue Leaves up in her brand-new, very cool book club section of her blog. That book still creeps me out.
The following is a live report from San Francisco.
If you're not already in the know, meet Emily Strange. She's the dark and dark-haired stepchild of, let's say, Wednesday Addams and, oh, I don't know, Derek Zoolander. (Though clearly it's her mother after whom she takes.) Part fashion statement, part macabre party-girl, Emily is all the rage (and I do mean rage) out here in St. Frank.
Gracing the taut tummies of hipster chicas' baby-Ts (and lunch boxes, and wallets, and...), Emily can be found everywhere from dive bars in the Haight to rural Guernville. She doesn't want to talk to you. She doesn't need your sunny optimism. She has a posse of 4 cats and a morbid 8-ball, so just back off. Irresistable, right? Right.
Can't say why we haven't seen more of her in New York yet, but personally, I can't wait. She's going to do terrible, terrible things to that damn Paul Frank monkey.
| California | Strange Products | Emily Strange |
Colette sent this:
When you have a moment, please access Imagine New York to browse this summary document. It contains ideas from hundreds of NY'ers to help rebuild our city.
I was a facilitator for one of the Imagine New York Envisioning Workshops and for the Summit. It was a truly rewarding experience.
Check out the report. One thing is clear: we need to SLOW DOWN when it comes to making decisions about that space. It's far too important to do otherwise. I hope John Whitehead reads and heeds this report.
| New York City | Memorials | 9/11 | Ground Zero |
Holy Toledo, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many Hostess advertisements from comix in one place. Perhaps this deserves its own special slot on the sidebar?
(found at Coudal)
MEL says: You can't miss the interview with Bob Rozakis, who wrote these tasty ads! We were instructed that the heroes could never eat the cupcakes, Twinkies or fruit pies, because that could be interpreted as an endorsement of the product. So, we were always pressed to come up with some interesting way to stop a crime or a riot or something else using a dessert.
So Trip, where should I put it on the sidebar? Next to the cheesecake ad?
| Food | Hostess | Snacks | Advertising |
Mayor Bloomberg has made some very minor concessions to the people who argue that trashing New York's recycling laws is bad for the city. Bloomie only sees the numbers, of course. He'd rather burn the trash, have it hauled, and save what amounts to 1% of the city's budget. Only, there are hidden costs that we'll be paying elsewhere. Here's NYPIRG's take on the situation. (Ah, NYPIRG. Remember when Nader was helping?)
| Recycling | Mike Bloomberg |
"The series was inspired in part by a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine, which found that mistakes in hospitals killed 44,000 to 98,000 patients a year."
For more, read the NYT article here
| Hospitals |
Article excerpt:
"A new and questionable diversion is being offered to Israeli gamblers as a result of the spate of Palestinian suicide bombings - betting on where the next one will be, Israeli newspapers have reported.
Police have confirmed they are investigating reports of a betting ring based in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi.
Although prohibited under Israeli law, gambling thrives in illegal hideouts and aboard cruise ships picking up passengers from Israeli ports. There are even plans for an airborne casino.
Bookies taking wagers on Palestinian attacks give the best odds to places largely untouched by the violence, newspapers report. "
| Gambling | Israel | Market Intelligence |
Via the fine blog Six Different Ways, a link to The Commercial Closet's roundup of the use of Lipstick Lesbians in advertising. Check out the rest of the site for homo-friendly ads.
| Sex | LGBT |
Watch an hour of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. Then watch an episode of Cowboy Bebop.
| Anime | Cowboy Bebop |
Intermittent Zen: Dilz and the Bone, National Heroes
Matt and I stand outside. He has a smoke while we wait for his baggage. Matt recognizes the middle eastern guy from coach. He was alone. "You're in 4F, right?"
"6F."
"Right. You know you were freaking the flight attendents out back there."
"I was?"
"Yeah, they said you had the 'look of death' in your eyes."
"Death? No way, man. I was pissed! This fat lady sat right next to me and she smelled like ass!"
"So, it wasn't the look of death, it was the smell of ass," I say.
"Yeah."
"I always get those confused."
| Security |
Why is Home Depot refusing to do business with the federal government? The implication of the AP story is that HD doesn’t want to have to follow federal laws on discrimination, but that could be just trying to rouse a tempest in a teapot. TBC . . .
| Law |
Sorry to be such a dreary poster of late. By way of a make-good, here's an old confection, bendypig, a millenium-era (ar[t)ext] love/hope note from Jessamyn, one of my favorite people in the world (to whom, randomly but inevitably, I suppose, Mike linked last week). It includes a little thing I did several years ago in a fit of Seattle-flavored pique.
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Thundercats, Teddy Ruxpin, and of course, Masters of the Universe.
X-Entertainment's Tiki Hut. Yet another link from the Shifted Librarian. This is getting to be a thing.
| Toys |
The EFF is making activism fun again with a cool-o Flash animation designed to stir your conscience (and mousefinger) against the CBDTPA. Apparently Congress is planning to play the porn starlet for Disney once again.
| Copyright |
On Monday afternoon, a man mistakenly shot his fiancee when she and her sister surprised him in his home. No doubt gun advocates have plenty of reasons why this particular incident happened (he/she should have known better, she/he's an idiot, etc.) but it seems logical to draw at least one conclusion: where there are guns, there are too often tragic accidents. (Same as cars and heart surgery? Sure, but cars and heart surgery aren't designed to kill people.)
So call me crazy, but I don't want more guns in angry hands on the streets of Brooklyn. Apparently the Mayor doesn't either. The head of the off-the-charts Jewish Defense Group, Rabbi Yakove Lloyd, who is organizing armed patrols in Flatbush and Borough Park scheduled to begin on Sunday says he's "100,000 percent ready... If we get arrested, we'll come out of jail and do it again." He apparently has between 50 and 200 volunteers, only some of whom have permits to carry shotguns and will, purportedly, only do so with weapons unloaded and in cases. Others will have baseball bats, which also makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Oh, and the cops will be watching them closely, too, which we hope is a good thing. (I'm sorry, but is this a Spike Lee movie waiting to happen, or what?) As a side note, I wonder how many of these people actually live in the neighborhoods they'll be patrolling. Lloyd doesn't seem to: at least according to the horrendously out-of-date Web site of the JDG (1997 was the last update), the Rabbi himself lives out in Forest Hills.
Iowa proves it only takes a gun and a game of peek-a-boo for someone to end up dead. Let's hope calmer heads prevail when the ultra-conservative, Arab-hating, shotgun-toting vigilantes hit the streets this summer.
| Brooklyn | Jews | Guns |
The coffee at the local cart costs 75 cents, so if I'm not engrossed in a book, I'll sometimes take the extra two bits and buy The Post. Tuesday, I was expecting a good headline on Jose Padilla ("Dirty Bum"?) but the front page was devoted to the Dapper Don's demise. And inside? Gotti's death got a twelve page spread, not to mention laudatory blurbs from Liz Smith ("he always sent me white roses") et al. Gotti and Padilla were both thugs from Brooklyn. One killed a bunch of people; he gets the celebrity treatment. The other was planning to kill a lot more people. Somehow I doubt we'll be hearing Liz Smith wax eloquent when Padilla dies in prison. I admit, though, I really like the Sopranos. Why are some criminals turned into celebrities? What makes Gotti fascinating and Padilla revolting?
| Terrorism | Jose Padilla | Mafia | Crime | Celebrity |
Is Christine Whitman the greatest patsy of all time, or did she know that part of her mandate as head of the EPA was going to be to gut anti-pollution law? Article in the AP, inter alia.
Let’s look at that one in slo-mo, shall we? The name of the agency is the Environmental Protection Agency. What part of environmental protection doesn’t this administration understand? Seriously, it’s crap like this that make me want to move to the moon.
In my moments of objectivity, I can understand the argument that there shouldn't be a cabinet post that is beholden to one political philosophy or another. (What would a peacenik president do with the Department of War Defense?) But the EPA does exist, it is supposed to be keeping the natural environment safe, and yet . . .
Read The Birth of the EPA at the EPA’s website for its founding purposes.
| Environment |
Much ink has been spilled (digital and liquid) on the relationship between blogs and journalism, but The Shifted Librarian is a great place for thinking about the relationship between blogs and libraries. Plus I found this excellent triva link there from another librarian, including 'This Day In History,' which of course made me wonder immediately if either of them have read The Gold Bug Variations....