I've had a bit of time to retool things around here. First, I think that the comments function is finally working. (FYI, the CAPTCHA didn't like the "Preview Only" option on comments, which isn't necessary now anyway because of the CAPTCHA.) It still seems to take forever, but MT isn't exactly lightning fast.
The archives are also cleaned up. One thing that was slowing everything down was rebuilding archives with every post, comment, etc. Now that the blog has over 2800 posts, this gets quite resource intensive. So category archives now only have full-text for the last 25 articles; the rest are just excerpted. Likewise, author archives are truncated: full text of the last 10 posts, excerpts for the next 40. The rest, as they say, is history. (Only six Ishbadiddlers have 50+ posts, and the author archive was getting waaay to massive as it was essentially building the entire blog from Day One.) The monthly archives should be functioning. If anyone is trying this at home, the CatEntries plugin does not appear to work in the context of a date-based archive. Oy, that was a headache figuring that out.
As always, any suggestions can be left in comments.
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Dear Sen. Clinton:I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" series.
I'd like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.
I'm talking, of course, about high school football.
-- Los Angeles Times: Hillary vs. the Xbox: Game over
| Games | Grand Theft Auto | Grandstanding |
I wish I could remember who recommended this book to me, so I could tell them to stop recommending me books. This is the worst thing I've read in recent memory, a children's science fiction book which will fail entirely to appeal to children and will annoy readers of science fiction. If you're afraid of spoilers, then skip this review, but since you shouldn't bother reading the book anyway, why go on ahead and read.
The story plunges right in: time has stopped, and only Max Quick is able to move among the frozen-in-time adults. Max is a character familiar to all readers of children's books: the Mistreated Orphaned Boy. I was hoping that he would not turn out to be the Mistreated Orphaned Boy With A Special Destiny Laid Upon Him (yes, Harry Potter is only one of a long line of these orphans), but as with most things with this book, I was disappointed. Max isn't the only child who can move about -- there are some other Good Kids who join him on his quest, and a Bad Gang who tries to stop him. All these kids can not only move, but also have super powers -- they can run faster, jump higher, etc. It's kind of a neat fantasy, but the novelty of it quickly wears off for the reader. (The description of the fight between Max and his Sidekick, and the Bad Gang, in a field of "frozen" fog is one of the only interesting things that the book does with the stopped time schtick.)
The other main element of the story is Max's Special Destiny. This is probably the most entertaining part of the book, when they discover just who's stopped time, and why. I won't reveal it here -- not because I'm afraid of spoiling TPATP, but because I don't want to reveal the Sumerian sub-plot of Snow Crash, from which this book rips shamelessly. The author thanks Stephenson in his acknowledgements, perhaps as a way to stave off a lawsuit.
My biggest problem with the book, however, isn't that it's derivative. There are some entertaining ideas in here (hiding in mirrors, magic books as both portals and future history, etc). But the characters are entirely flat. I didn't care about Max, Ian, or Casey because they were entirely unbelievable. Max pales beside such heroes as Lloyd Alexander's Taran Wanderer, John Fiztgerald's J.D. (of "The Great Brain" series), or, yes, Harry Potter. Mark Jeffrey, the author of TPATP, seems to have confused "character" with "collection of tics". Ian is the Smart!British!Kid!Who!Says!"Bloody"! Casey is the Scared!Girl!With!A!Crush! And Max himself is really a nonentity. None of the characters really seem to matter, they're only around to push forward the plot.
Finally, if you're going to self-publish a book, for Strunk's sake hire a decent book designer. I'm not talking about the cover art, I'm talking about typography. Someone who knows something about leading, margins, etc. An editor probably would have urged the first-time author to put less than a third of the book in italics, as well.
The Pocket and the Pendant reads like a treatment for a movie that desparately needs rewriting and good casting.
| Children's Books |
... but it will be marketed as a hot sauce!
Former Black Panther associates of Huey P. Newton, the late co-founder of the militant organization, are seeking to trademark the phrase "Burn Baby Burn" so they can slap the words--long associated with conflagrations that left cities like Watts and Newark in cinders--on hot sauce.
What's next? A Weather Underground meteorological service? Oh, wait.
| Black Panthers | Huey P. Newton | Advertising | Badvertising | Political Marketing | Food |
| Games | Stupid Criminals | Economics | Sweatshops | Online Communities | History | WWII |
Patrick writes:
"... and by 'involved' I mean anyone who is who is indicted, tries to hide behind executive privilege, exhaust all appeals to extend executive privilege to themselves, tried, convicted by a jury of their peers, exhausts the appeals process, finally resigns to write their memoirs and then hits the lecture circuit.
I am a man of my conviction!"
| Karl Rove | Valerie Plame | Plamegate | Guest: Patrick |
I'm away on vacation (most of last week) and then until next week, so no posts from me. I'm sure my fellow Ishers will pick up the slack.
Our local Evel Knievel of the skateboard, Danny Way, went to China to jump the Great Wall at Ju Yong Guan Gate. He did it four times, three times with 360-degree spins mid-air. Rock on, Danny! What leapt out at me from the article, though, was this tidbit:
"A crowd of several thousand people, including China's ministers of extreme sports and culture..." I really want to see a picture of that minister...think he's got a Mao tatt and dyed red hair?
That is all.
| Brooklyn | New York City |
A couple of articles on the hypothesized Rove/Miller Axis of Evil that might be worth a read.
From the L.A. Times...
From the irrepressible Billmon, of the Whiskey Bar...
Personally, based on nothing but sheer speculation and gossip-mongering, I suspect she's taking the jail time and hoping that worse problems don't shake out of the investigation. She's more interested in her career than in journalistic ethics (clearly), so I can easily imagine her seeing this as a convenient legal passion play that will let her cop a martyrdom posture as she transitions to the next phase of her career. Sixteen weeks, max, and she's Saint Judy of the 1st Amendment. That's a better entree into the talk circuit than "Ahmed Chalabi's Mule" or "Karl Rove's Bloody Cheerleader." And you know she's already working on her book.
| New York Times | The Media | Media Criticism | Free Speech | Journalism | Karl Rove |
I can't bring myself to watch the news from London. As most of our regulars know, I was trapped in the subway on 9/11, and still suffer from PTSD effects.
One way to mitigate those effects is to try and organize against them. Mentally, this make me feel less anxious, and in the (hopefully) unlikely event that I need something, I'll be (hopefully) prepared. I ask my shrink if carrying all this crap around makes me paranoid, and he assures me that these days, it's merely prudent. "Even paranoids have real enemies" (which I thought was a Woody Allen quote but is really Delmore Schwartz.) And of course reading what other people carry around assures me that it's all relative.
We of course have the family emergency package at home, and other stuff in the car. But today I'm enumerating what I carry in my "go bag." This is a small bag that I carry with me, usually in what ever other bag I'm carrying. By having it all in the go bag, I can easily switch from satchel to backback to diaper bag to suitcase to briefcase, without transferring handfuls of stuff from one to the other. I can also use it as an impromptu day pack as needed. The bag I'm using is an Eagle Creek camera bag I picked up at B&H (where I will never! shop! again!). Can't find the bag online now (discontinued?) but the Columbia Departure Bag looks pretty similar. (Note, all product links are to Amazon, but you can probably find cheaper elsewhere if you Froogle.) The stuff in the bag is a mix of Emergency Prep and General Stuff I Might Need.
Continue reading "Survival" » | Preparedness | Paranoia | Tools |
The World according to Livejournal. "A graphic representation of the moods reported by Livejournal users in their posts during the last days, updated every 10 minutes."
Via emily.
| 7/7 |
Horrible, horrible, horrible news.
Still waiting on news from Arly. Am emailing some other classmates in London to see if they're OK.
Horrible.
Update: Arly is fine. For any G'ers reading, Charles, Miriam, and Julie are OK too.
See also the Wikipedia page on the attacks, which is being updated about once a minute.
| London | Terrorism | United Kingdom |
Today's the day of the big move -- we're going a whole six blocks away. I'm right now sitting in our car, holding a parking spot for the movers. First time actually wardriving in a car. You know, the driving part.
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Yes, that's right, holy water. And not just any old holy water, but Kabbalist holy water:
Researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test "Celestial Drops," promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order" and "high energy and low entropy."
That the state of Florida would dabble in faith-based science is little surprise -- hey, Kabbalah is in! That Katherine Harris would be involved in a pork project comes as little surprise either -- hey, that's what pols do, right?. But Rabbi Hardoon, isn't pork treyf?
'Celestial Drops' no cure for canker. From thepoorman.
| Katherine Harris | Kabbalah | Judaism | Political Pork |
“Firefox?” The Rabbi stops and thinks for a minute, rubbing his beard. “Ah yes! The one that blocks all the schmutz.”
-- The New FireFox Tagline, via Gadgetopia
| Your Blank of the Day |
I've just finishing reading The Confusion, Volume 2 of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. (This was part of the Neal for Neil loan/trade I made with Liz and Mark a while ago.) So far (a mere 1,792 pages into the Cycle) so good -- a rollicking good plot (ok, make that six or seven rollicking good plots), extremely fun characters (both Historical and Fictional), a fine balance between the Intellectually Stimulating and the Page Turn Inducing. Some of the anachronisms are amusing, others merely distracting. And as Jay pointed out, Stephenson can't seem to write an ending, so it's fine to delay said ending for as long as possible. I'll post up a full review after I finish the damn thing.
Much of the book is about the Royal Society and Isaac Newton and Alchemy. So I pleased to see that the RS has recently unearthed a Lost Newton Ms. dealing with matters of an Alchemickal nature. I loved this part of the article: "The text is written in English, but it is not easy to work out what Newton is actually saying."
| Alchemy | Neal Stephenson | History |
David.com considers Podcasts and their relationship to Big Media. Am I the only one who's thinking about Max Headroom here?
| Radio | MP3 |
low culture puts forward its pick for O'Connor's Supreme Court replacement.
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This week's edition brought to you by robot filter:
| Religion | Lists | Judaism | Star Wars | Games |
