?? November 2004 | Main | January 2005 ??
Trillian 3.0
Go get trillian 3.0, if only for the sweet-ass Wikipedia linkup feature. In the course of normal conversation, it has informed me that "asses" is the plural form of the roman coin the "as". Plus, they really reskinned the shit out of it.
You cut my battleship!
New cut of Potemkin restores Lenin/Trotsky "oysters or snails" scene.
A giant flying elephant with a furry on top.
Some incredible, haunting Eastern European stop-motion animation. Eat your heart out Dark Crystal and / or Dumbo. Via cynical-c.
For that last minute tax-deduction....
If you haven't yet, give some money to the Red Cross for the tsunami victims. Amazon has a link right on their home page, so it's one-click easy.
And speaking of Earth...
It's obviously having a bad hair week, but signs in Alaska indicate that the tundra's about to thaw. This is widely considered bad. Not only will it necessate the altering of many textbooks, but also the rotting vegetation will start releasing carbon, not unlike the stir fry vegetables I've had in my fridge since 2002. Once that happens, it'll add to global warming in positive-feedback loop fashion.
Lessons from Middlebrow Beach Reading
Michael Crichton's the sort of writer whose books are novelization of future movies. He's also quite good at making hysteria seem rational. So it's a bit odd that his latest thriller, "State of Fear," is about irrational hysteria. The premise is that environmentalists are shrill, moved by a political agenda, and global warming isn't going to happen. The New Yorker snarks it up in their "Talk of the Town" column, noting:
What ???State of Fear?? demonstrates is how hard it is to construct a narrative that would actually justify current American policy. In this way, albeit unintentionally, Crichton has written a book that deserves to be taken seriously.Of course, I think it's worth noting how spectacularly UNprecient every single one of Cricton's books have been to date. So here's the official Wacky Neighbor guide to Michael Crichton's Predictions.
What I like about Yule.
Are we taking the Christ out of Christmas? MeFite Riviera put it best:
Let's get this straight. Christmas is a jumbled-up palimpsest holiday. In the Anglo-American tradition, there has never been a purely religious Christmas, and I double-dare anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. The Puritan settlers in America didn't even celebrate it, because they thought it was a Papist (or Anglican) excuse for a piss-up in the dark days of winter. Which it was, is, and every shall be, Amen.So here's some info on Yule. And for good measure, Festivus.
El Moogo Pasa
Eddiemuerte's "lo-fi in los feliz," available for mp3 download. Trippy!
DINAJ
An electrical pattern of ones and zeroes travels from your computer to a router, gets modulated to fit on a broadband coaxial system, then finds its way to a central office. From there it's demodulated, transformed to an equivalent signal in photons and transmitted along a fiberoptic trunk, through various routers, to an air-conditioned data center with redundant power supplies. The photons are converted back to electrons and the resulting pattern is transmitted via ethernet to a host computer. There the signal is interpreted to be an HTTP GET, and handed to a web daemon. The characters in the query string are processed by an ASP script, and a SQL call is made to a database of current conditions. The process is more or less repeated in reverse, until you get your answer. All without opening a window.
Satire in 8 bits
The anti-bush videogame. Because only Hulk Hogan and Mr. T can defeat Voltron, Paris Hilton, and mecha Tom Ridge. Yeah. A little outdated already, but pretty damned funny. And you might just learn something before you're done.
Making running-suits look easy
If you ever wondered where to get Tony's casual button-downs, look no further than Dressing the Sopranos. Warning: Ban-Lon is mentioned.
Brick Booleans
Building logic gates with Lego. There's enough here to build a Babbage-style computer. Unfortunately, it'd be a bit slow and, knowing the price of these toys, very expensive.
Google is now Psychic
Google suggest anticipates your search as you type it. Freakin' sweet.
Et tu, Vicky?
Apparently Victoria's secret is that she's a flaming Republican. Blue Christmas lists the political contributions of major retail chains, so you can stop putting money into their deformed, oil-soaked claws. Calvin, Anne, Donna, Tommy are all good guys. Even preppy old Ralph's playin' for the blue team.
And yes, I'm aware that this Vicky's business was an opportunity for a swell Bush pun. But I'm not going there.
The Lights of Dyker Heights.Your Afghanistan. In English, dammit.
Remember those Claritin ads from the late nineties, with rolling fields of green and bright blue skies? Apparently, after a stint making Teletubbies, that agency is running ClearChannel Kabul now. As is evidenced by this gargantuan "Kneel Before Karzai" poster in downtown Kabul. This guy remarks how odd it is that it's in English. Personally, it's the logo that gives me the creeps. It's either from Robocop, or it's subliminally threatening benzene contamination to those who do not comply. Or both.
One small step for a saxophone
Coltrane's Giant Steps explained. Via mefi. Also check out this sweet animation based on the tune.
Buy Blue American
Not cheese. Go with the white or yellow American cheese. But here's a list of companies and their political affiliations. You'll note a lack of hardware major appliances in the blue. This is probably due to the fact that these items are still American-made, and therefore highly unionized. But that's a guess.
