April 2006 Archives
He said that to his face?
Colin's Law: On the Internet, everyone will get mashed up with everyone else eventually.
"Straight out of London: lunatike freke namede Geoff C,
From the covin callede 'Kynges Affinitee.'
Men who confronte me, my dagger beth killynge them
Hange them on a hempe-rope lyk ther name was Tresilian-"
... Dagny Taggart and John Galt? But really, this is just an excuse to put a picture of Ms. Jolie from this WSJ artist:
I'll be on the road for a couple of days, so here's some very disturbing links to keep you happy while I'm gone:
- White Men Can't Rap. Via robot filter
- Cake Pony. "Don't worry, all our ponys are 100% legal and waiting to eat cakes just for YOU." Via Table of Malcontents.
- Pimpfants clothing. So, so wrong. From Mark.
The race for Duke Cunningham's seat is on, and TPM notes that the National Republican Congressional Committee has launched a particuarly nasty attack ad against the Democratic nominee, Francine Busby.
Here's what the ad says:
“Busby even praised a teacher reported to have child porn, saying he was always willing to lend a hand. That’s dangerous. Liberal Francine Busby. Poor management. Poor judgment. Dangerous.”
Oh my gosh! Busby supports child-porn using teachers?
Well here's what she actually said to a reporter, right after the teacher was arrested:
“He is a teacher who put in a lot of extra time. He was always willing to lend a hand. I was shocked at the investigation.”
The whole story is here.
I am reminded of a book I finished recently,
In one passage, Nogaret, who was the Karl Rove of the 14th century, talks with Philip IV about the political use of calumny:
The fact is, that if you go at it hard to defame a man, and malign him; to say all evil of him and above all to lie -- for to take off his reputation leaves him alone before others, but to lie while you do it, that leaves his will paralysed. It bewilders him; it astonishes him; he is dumbfounded; hamstrung; then the fact is, Sire, he is then as much at your mercy as if you had put out his eyes, cut out his tongue, and taken off his hands and feet.
At the time I read this passage, I immediately thought of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
I think calumny is a word we need to re-introduce into the political lexicon, at least as long as it is used as a political weapon we should recognize it for what it is.
How can we export democracy when we've got a shortage at home? Read 20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The United States and then read None Dare Call It Stolen:
The evidence that something went extremely wrong last fall [2004] is copious, and not hard to find. Much of it was noted at the time, albeit by local papers and haphazardly. Concerning the decisive contest in Ohio, the evidence is lucidly compiled in a single congressional report, which, for the last half-year, has been available to anyone inclined to read it. It is a veritable arsenal of “smoking guns”—and yet its findings may be less extraordinary than the fact that no one in this country seems to care about them.
Emphasis added to indicate that MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE BECAUSE DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN SLAIN.
I've seen 80% of Roger Ebert's 101 Movies You Must See -- "the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies."
This Week in Big Ink! First, the bad news. This might sting a little: the black helicopters of the corporate media are about to get their dirty mitts on your Internet (but, for a nominal fee, you won't notice a thing). Michael Savage makes his bid for worst person of 2006 (and at the moment, he's number one with a bullet). Meanwhile, the Decider Two-Step is all the rage in D.C. But wait! It's not all doom and gloom! My close personal friend Kos dropped by for a chat. I debate the Public Sphere on the topic of Al Gore and the Internet. We take a sneak peek behind the Democratic political strategery and how it gets processed from officials to reporters to bloggers. Carl Bernstein goes where Bob Woodward never can. And the Pulitzer Announcements are positively adorable. Never surrender!
Broken down into 19 handy categories!
List of films by gory death scene:
# 1 Death from being eaten
# 2 Death by bisection or dismemberment (excluding decapitation)
# 3 Death by blendering
# 4 Death by burning or other extreme heat exposure
# 5 Death by crushing
# 6 Death by chainsaw
# 7 Death due to contact with a caustic or otherwise deadly substance
# 8 Death from decapitation
# 9 Death from decompression or over-pressure
# 10 Death by disintegration
# 11 Death from a fall into a molten substance
# 12 Death by fluid extraction
# 13 Death by freezing
# 14 Death by gunfire
# 15 Death by impaling or crucifixion
# 16 Death due to an improper use of explosives
# 17 Death from ocular trauma
# 18 Death from slicing by a sharp object where it takes some time for victim to fall apart
# 19 Death by violent organ removal
Via Cynical C, which notes that "this, ladies and gents, is what the internet is all about."
And while you're just sitting there, you might as well organize your library. Please enjoy: LibraryThing.com.
Rating books is so six minutes ago. I prefer to just plop right down amongst the canon.
... the "book is always better," send them to this list: The titles that leapt off the page. Via robot wisdom.
Unlike, say, rating movies, I find rating books to be difficult. Is there such a thing as a "three and a half star" book? Perhaps if I were as widely read as some people I could rate books that way.
I think in general, movies are easier to rate because our experiences of a movie are more or less standardized. You sit and watch, either at home or in the theater, and your ~2 hours is pretty much the same as anyone else's ~2 hours. Music, on the other hand, is situational. There's the song that was playing on the car radio as you drove over the bridge, the album you played over and over again your junior year of high school, etc. And books are similar. The book you read when you're 15 is not the same book when you read it at 35.
So while I've been gleefully rating movies here, I've declined from attaching stars or letters or cute stickers to book reviews. However, I am inspired by the Anvil and Sprocket Rating System which classifies films as "Keeper," "Renter," and "Bomb." Similarly, I am going to classify books (from this point on, I don't think I have the stomach to retroactively go through all my old book reviews) as:
- Books to Buy. You'll want to keep this book. Maybe to re-read it. Maybe for shelf appeal. Maybe as part of the mental furniture.
- Books to Borrow. Worth reading, but you need not buy a copy. Borrow it from the library. Or from me.
- Now the third category I'm having a little trouble naming. Bomb works well for movies, less so for books. Books to Burn? Far too Savonarolian. Bleahh? Blecch? Book to Bin? Books that are Bad? Books that I will Bookcross? Suggestions welcome.
And hey all, what're you reading these days?
Update: I decided to go with Books to Eschew. It's just fun to say.
And
Lots of blogs have "What I'm reading now," ususally with a picture of the cover. Same for music. Here on Ish we have the Conspicuous Consumption mini-blog. I figured, why not have little pictures there? I mean, shouldn't Ishbadiddle be as visually distracting as possible? (Note to self: redesign?)
Started putting pictures in by hand, then realized that was a PITA. I'd seen this site on coding Amazon images, including his weird results. Using his techniques, I came up with a quick regex that will produce images automatically for us.
<amzimg>1896597718</amzimg> will now code to:
If the item isn't square, the shadow will look, well, stupid. So use <amzimgns>B000E1NXJ0</amzimgns> to produce:
In case you're interested, the code is below the fold.
Continue reading Another Shortcut.
You too can be a Chinese Propaganda Poster Hero. Felix, do you need one of yourself in this? Via Longboard.
McClellan is out. Can the twins be next?. (Via Patrick and TMN respectively.)
Tune in, etc. Bicycle Day
The very first prototype He-Man was black haired with a deeply tanned eastern European or Middle Eastern appearance. His helmet had no horns. Later, at the direction of Tom Kalinske, then in Mattel's upper management, He-Man was made more clean-cut and changed to a blond... Plus, He-Man's skin was lightened, though definitely still tanned.
-- The Sneeze
The Shape of Song. Via TMN.
But if you have some leftover Easter candy, why not make an Easter turducken?
Help!
So we are now officially launching the Blogger Challenge! And I need your help, O Loyal Ish Readers:
1) If you have your own blog, start your own Blogger Challenge. Help public school kids!
2) If you have your own blog, link to the Blogger Challenge. Help spread the meme!
3) If you know bloggers who might want to start a challenge, or who might think this is a cool idea and want to blog about it, either contact them directly about it, or let me know their contact info and I'll send them an email. Send me an email at bloggers@donorschoose.org.
Thanks!
This week in Big Ink! Maybe newspapers are dying; maybe they aren't; then again, maybe they are. 9/11 ripples and I am so mad I can hardly think straight. Billmon: The world is so strange right now, we might just be able to invade Iran without anyone really noticing. Digby: In fact, we might have already done just that. We get a big shipment of red herring that causes WMD flashbacks. A Harvard Law prof says privacy is a virus and seems to not be kidding. A quick hit on the future of television. And, for those of you joining the Bush administration late, a recap of the story thus far. Spoons!
Lynn Harris writes:
More installments of Polly Frost's hilarious satirical soap about life and lust in Hollywood. Read by talented actors, and "actors," as in: me.
Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street
6 PM
$6 includes free house drink
More fun from the "What could possibly go wrong?" files: "According to Miller, within the next couple of centuries humans should be able to make any creature they want."
So meta it makes my head hurt. Via Adventures in Ethics and Science, and from Greg.
Thanks y'all for giving to my first DonorsChoose challenge. Now here's a new one! Help fund these two projects at the June Jordan School for Equity, aka Matt's school. One project is for a yoga / pilates project (hey, this is San Francisco!) and the other for a service learning trip to help in New Orleans. Give to the Help Matt's School Challenge today!
Security has been tight this week at the Central Park Zoo, with ticket takers, staff, and guards on the lookout for suspicious packages of cookies, pretzels, hot-dog buns, and pound cake. Observant Jews have till Wednesday to clear their houses of hametz (leavened products) before Passover, and every year many of them take their castoffs to the zoo. Baffled zoo staff note that the snow monkeys are the main beneficiaries of the pre-holiday pig-out, apparently because the polar bear’s glass wall is too high and the sea lions would only be interested if offered gefilte fish.
How long did they search before they found Rabbi Moshe Elefant to quote for this article?
Happy Passover everyone! (Oh, and if you're in a hurry, you can use this 2-minute haggadah tonight.)
Via Robot Filter.
In an infinite universe, I suppose this was bound to happen: Dwarf Kiss tribute band spin-off stalking claim PR stunt report refuted.
Since I spent much of the last week in scenic Athens, Ohio, I've got only a quick news recap, but we do cover: Joe Wilson on Libby, Cheney and Bush; Fox News, not so much; ear-plugs as global warming policy; McCain's deal with the devil; Hersh is dropping bombs; at Salon, the truth dawns on Bush, or perhaps nearby; meanwhile, turns out, the calls are coming from inside the (White) House (Mehlman denies everything. Of course.); and just for Mike, the MBA president gets graded. Also, a meme-based tour of the conference I just attended, featuring such exciting concepts as: chain gangs; ChicagoCrime.org; transparency; accuracy, or not; strikethrough as discourse; the Cluetrain Manifesto; copyright; BitTorrent; anonymity; donuts; citmedia.org; BoingBoing; WizBang; The Dumpster; The Scream; Habermas; Clooney; Critical Publicity; 92%; 60 to 70%; Habermas; salmon or roast beef; Habermas; "war is a dialectic"; EMP weapons; hazing; Fast Eddie Felson; and Goth homeschoolers. Hey, whaddya want fer free?
I missed this when it ran but Matt had another NYT article: For the Culinarily Obsessed, a Big Helping of the Jitters
Scabbers has his own Flickr pool!
As previously reported, I've been working on ripping my albums and tagging my MP3s as part of the Mikebox project. Exact Audio Copy is my program of choice for ripping (you'll also need LAME to compress WAV's into MP3s).
For tagging music that I haven't ripped myself (or for correcting the sometimes-wrong information from cddb), I've been using MusicBrainz to auto-tag files, and Mp3tag (and sometimes MP3 Tag Tools) for manual edits, using information gleaned from allmusic.
And then there's album art.
The afore-linked Album Art search engine is pretty good at grabbing album art, although it won't find "customer images" from Amazon which are frequently better quality. For tagging a whole album at one go, I don't mind finding the art, saving it, and then using Mp3tag to tag each track with it.
But singles? You must be joking if you think I'm going to find art for singles one at a time. I may be stupid but I'm not crazy.
Enter the Album Cover Art Downloader. It's slow and sometimes crashes but it does exactly what I want it to do: try to find the cover art for a tagged song, and if a match is found, automatically write it. It got about 75% of the Mp3s I ran through it. The other 25%? I'm willing to let that slide.
Oh and all this stuff is free. Did I mention free?
Over at Savage Minds, Prof. Michael Wesch outlines his philosophy of "anti-teaching" and describes a really interesting sounding global simulation using cereal boxes, the above-mentioned stuffed animals, and play money. (Continued here.)
I remember playing an international relations sim at PGSIS but this looks better thought out and a lot more fun. Shades of Eschaton....
Alert SPEW: The Library Elf will tirelessly remind you that your books are due soon, or that you have a book on hold, via email and/or RSS. Via Rebecca Blood.
Haven't read it yet, but I had no idea that there were any Asian American activists so prominent and so close to the Black Power movement:
On February 12, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom, Yuri Kochiyama cradled Malcolm X in her arms as he died, but her role as a public servant and activist began much earlier than this pivotal public moment. Heartbeat of Struggle is the first biography of this courageous woman, the most prominent Asian American activist to emerge during the 1960s. [Link]
KittenAuth. More on this here.
The Serenity Prayer (which was written by Reinhold Niebuhr? Who knew?) + Venn diagrams = The Ser-Venn-Ity Prayer.
Via Rebecca Blood.
DOT employee steals from parking meters. DOT employee faces jail time. The headline... wait for it...
Continue reading Your Tabloid Pun-Based Headline of the Day.
Then at last, we could look at a new logo and understand, “Ah, a young telecommunications company with sales over $100 million/yr which has merged with a digital company and is transistioning into the entertainment industry. I see.”
Hammer Time is over. (We can stick a fork in him, but somehow I have the feeling that, zombielike, he'll be back.) Andy Card, chief of cheeseburgers, falls on his sword. School's in session with Glenn Greenwald on Congressional abuse-victim psychology; Digby on propaganda v. standards; and Lara Logan on real reporting in Iraq. Meanwhile, ABC goes all Renfield on the White House; NPR has a fun little Abramoff link tracker; and the New York Times goes... to the future. Semper Lassus! (Which might translate roughly as "I am always tired.")
I made the mistake of eating at Bob Evans today for lunch. Yeah, I know I should have known better - it's a long story involving having my car serviced. But it made me think - why do most chain restaurants suck? I'm not asking why they're unhealthy, I'm asking why they're untasty, at least to me.
I know that very good food is unlikely to come from a chain, but I think that chains can deliver decent service in multiple areas. There are decent chain book stores and clothing stores, for example. While I miss my small bookstores, I rarely shop for clothes at boutiques. There are even good chain grocery stores - I prefer Fairway and Zabars, but you can do well at Trader Joes and Whole Foods. So why is it that I can only think of a handful of decent chain restaurants?
Why aren't there more stores at the quality level of Starbucks, Peets, Krispy Kreme (which I don't like personally) and Panera? Why is it that so few food chains rise even to the level of Subway? Why does my $8 at Bob Evans bring me something dripping in fat that was bland and not even enjoyable as a fatty experience? Why is Outback such bad steak? Why isn't there a good chain steakhouse?
Sure - most Americans want something different from me, but there are still lots of chains that I can use, that I find passable or decent. And I know that good food can cost more. But the same $8 would have gotten me something far better at Whole Food's food court ... why isn't that a restaurant?
End rant, but not end indigestion.
Lynn Harris writes:
"The Rebbetzin! The Rebbetzin!" Telling the Untold Story of Rabbi's Wives
Your headliner is the smart, insightful, and charming Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, author of a new history of the role of the rabbi's wife, which I wrote about here. Which is why they invited me to join the program, even though I'm not listed on the original blurb, which you can find -- with reservation info -- here. But I promise I'll be there.
The JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
7 PM
$7 members, $10 non-members
[13:35] ishbadiddle: check out the gift catalog (scroll down)
[13:35] ishbadiddle: http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/gallery7.html
[13:36] molanphy: Oh. my. god.
[13:36] molanphy: Is that a rug?
[13:40] ishbadiddle: wall hanging?
[13:51] molanphy: Am still marveling at the Apple catalog. Wow. Provides further evidence for my contention that the early '80s were an uglier time than the '70s.
[13:52] molanphy: Back then, I actually wasn't an Apple user; Apple was The Enemy, as was Commodore. My PC of choice was an Atari 400.
[13:53] ishbadiddle: i had an Atari 800!
[13:53] molanphy: POWER, BROTHER!!
[13:53] molanphy: ...and Atari had a similar catalog where you could buy rainbow-hued T-shirts with the logo.
[13:53] ishbadiddle: tape drive and all
[13:53] molanphy: YUP!
[13:54] molanphy: Remember the buzz the computer gave when you wanted to load from a tape? You'd type CLOAD, I think, and then this loud BUZZZZZT! would emanate from the machine, telling you to hit "Play."
[13:54] ishbadiddle: right
[13:54] ishbadiddle: i actually went to ATARI COMPUTER CAMP
[13:54] molanphy: Oh. my. god. I'm so jealous!
[13:54] molanphy: In '82-'83, I dreamed about that camp.
[13:55] molanphy: I also used to dream about having an 800 with a full-stroke keyboard rather than my pitiful membrane-keyboarded 400.
[13:56] ishbadiddle: i got it with my bar mitzvah money
[13:56] molanphy: Nice.
[13:57] ishbadiddle: you didn't miss much with the camp, btw
[13:57] molanphy: You benefited from being older than me. By the time I had my score with the Catholic equivalent (confirmation), it was the fall of '84 and we'd already upgraded to the 800XL
[13:57] ishbadiddle: http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/star-raiders/
[13:57] molanphy: Glad for me/sorry for you that the camp was lame
[13:58] molanphy: WOW
[13:58] molanphy: First computer game I ever played.
[13:58] molanphy: (not counting Atari 2600 games at friends' houses)
[13:58] molanphy: Hyperspace was the shit
[13:59] ishbadiddle: grab an emulator here you can play it again sam http://ch.twi.tudelft.nl/~sidney/atari/
[13:59] molanphy: Thank you
[14:01] molanphy: Just played all the sound sample. [sniff...wipes away tear]
[14:01] ishbadiddle: you never forget your first game
[14:01] molanphy: [lights cigarette]
[14:02] molanphy: Changing subject: Do you guys watch the Colbert Report?
[14:02] ishbadiddle: yes
[14:02] molanphy: http://www.eskimo.com/~vecna/truthiness.html
[14:03] ishbadiddle: omg
[14:05] molanphy: Skip to part about "balls."
[14:06] ishbadiddle: flat out hilarious
[14:33] ishbadiddle: hey can i blim this?
[14:34] molanphy: Sure!
[14:34] ishbadiddle: too much good stuff :)
[14:34] molanphy: The Atari convo especially
[14:34] ishbadiddle: yup
[14:35] molanphy: Rereading the whole thing, I expect you will make fun of my "full-stroke keyboard" comment. ;-)
[14:37] ishbadiddle: isn't that a piano-only strokes cover band?
[14:38] molanphy: It's actually a new side project of Howard Jones and Tony Banks of Genesis, playing covers of Strokes songs on giant Yamahas.
Really? Because the machine says that I am.
- No Pants Update. "This past Wednesday in a Manhattan criminal court, the 8 Improv Everywhere agents nabbed in the “No Pants 2k6” Mission were found guilty of “Disorderly Conduct” and sentenced to the maximum sentence of 15 days in prison at the Riker’s Island Correctional Facility (five male agents) and the Rose M. Singer Center (three female agents)."
- Chuck Berry ♥ Sylvia Plath. "They conversed for an hour about the underpinning of rhythm by the human heartbeat and Berry invited the flushed and excitable Plath to join him at a nearby motel. College friends provided a cover story for Plath in the next two weeks as she accompanied the band on a tour of Maine, New England and Maryland, occasionally helping with cooking and washing duties, before returning to Smith."
