Tastes Like Chicken |
everyone can use some TLC |
Links to articles too well written to miss, stuff you wish you knew, and resources you wish you knew about. |
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Saturday, January 20, 2001
_Shuttle crew comes up with street-gang motif for crew photo NASA (motto: moving the whitest people on the planet off) creates a "gang motif" crew photo and poster. Hilarity ensues.
_Good photos of the innards of a Russian sub Bucking the odds for this site, there are some genuinely rewarding reader responses attached to the artcle, such as this bit about tours of another sub: "They only allow so many visitors a day to enter, and you have to be able to negotiate the tight interior (they have a bulkhead set up inside and everyone wanting to board the sub have to be able to get through it without difficulty). Once you pass the test, it is on to the Blueback...they kept everything as it was, except for an entrance built into the side so you don't have to go in through the conning tower. You can take as many photos as you wish, and believe me, you will be making your photo processor very happy! When I visited, there was a brisk wind outside and you could feel the sub rocking with the motion of the water. The photo ops abound..my niece and I had a real picnic taking photos of each other at the helm, in the mess hall, in the torpedo and engine room...you can even book an overnight stay on the sub!"
_Irresistible Lure of Subways Keeps Landing Impostor in Jail "He has signed out two-way radios and cheerfully collected fares at ticket booths. (The radios have always been returned, and never has a penny gone missing from the till; his most costly blunder was leaving a commuter bus with a flat tire, the police say.) He has cleared debris from tracks and put out fires. In full uniform, he has glad-handed commuters and has even reported sick to the transit authority's infirmary to get aspirin for a headache."
_Johnny "Jackass" Knoxville and his dad's wiener "My dad's name is Phil, too, and he was always pulling pranks on me when I was growing up. When I was seven or eight, he would get a hot dog and microwave it for ten seconds, get it lukewarm and flaccid, and run it through my lips when I was sleeping. I'd wake up and he'd be, like, zipping up his pants. I'd be, 'What're you doing?' And he'd explode with laughter." That probably didn't taste like chicken. Friday, January 19, 2001
_But did it taste like chicken? Hmm, bad beaver will make you go blind? Is that why Scooter would never go near beaver?
_Do antipiracy measures rob consumers? I feel a rant coming on... I haven't been as diligent as normal because I knew this would require my full attention to pull together some disparate threads, and it wasn't until now that I had the oomph to do it right. What is the purpose of copyright? Well, funny you should ask, because it's right there in the Constitution of the United States of America(Article 1, Section 8): "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Handy, eh? Now, despite George Dumbass Bush's insistence to the contrary, it is the role of the courts to interpret law, and they have over the centuries since the Constitution was ratified, ruling on the existence of citizens' rights that form boundaries against the expansion of copyright, including the first sale doctrine (short version: a purchased copy of a copyrighted work is the property of the buyer, who is free to use, lend, give, or re-sell the work at his own discretion) and fair use (short version: copyrighted materials be freely used and reproduced for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research). The first sale doctrine is an extension of the Founding Father's well deeply held distrust of monopolies and their power to censor. The fair use doctrine is a reinforcment of the core purpose of copyright as stated directly in the text of the Consitution, to have the public benefit from the works produced by authors. That's important! The purpose of copyright in the US is NOT to protect authors from having their works "stolen," it is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." There is no room for interpretation there. In fact, this is the only one of Congress's enumerated constitutional powers that has it purpose specifically laid out. The Founding Fathers made an effort to be MORE explicit about the purpose of this than any other of the powers given to Congress! Originally in the US, copyrighted materials were protected for 14 years, with an option to renew fo another 14. Now it is for the LIFETIME of the author PLUS 70 YEARS. Exactly how much extra motivation to create works that will eventually be free to the public do you think Ernest Hemingway feels while mouldering away in his grave now 30 years after his death? PRECIOUS LITTLE! These terms are wholly at odds with the express purpose of copyright, to make the maximum amount of creative works and knowledge available to the public. Hemingway is DEAD and no amount of money will extract further words from his self-shotgunned corpse, but the public that is supposed to be served by copyright law still is not free to access his works! This is a total perversion of everything that motivated the creation and codification of copyright law directly into the defining document of our nation, the US Constitution. DISGUSTING! Oh, but it gets better! Now, the monopolists (holding a copyright creates a monopoly on the copyrighted work), unsatisfied by their already staggering achievements in warping copyright into something that shields the fruits of creative labor from the nation, are maneuvering to undermine the small protected havens of fair use and first sale. There are two interlocking prongs in this attack, one being licensing of creative works and the other being the anti-circumvention provisions of the truly odious Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Licensing is the attempt of the monopolists to deny that a sale has ever taken place. You didn't "buy" a copy of work, you "licensed" it. Guess what, that means you don't have any rights that the monopolist doesn't decide to grant you, especially those rights associated with the first sale doctrine. Right now if you go out to a bookstore and lay down $20 to buy a novel, you own that copy of that novel. You can read it or not. You can read it today or tomorrow. You can read it once or a hundred times. You can read it at work and you can read it at home. You can read it to your children as a bedtime story. You can can read it twice and then give it away. You can read it twice and then SELL it to whoever you choose. These rights are flow to the buyer via the first sale doctrine. But now we are seeing the appearance of digital books, aka ebooks. Ebooks are not sold, they are licensed; when you unwrap and use the physical media it was distributed on (should you be so fortunate as to even have that), according to the monopolists you are agreeing to a license which grants the monopolist what rights it enumerates in the license with no opportunity for negotiation on the part of the buyer (whoops, make that "consumer" since nothing has been "bought"). But even if you could negotiate, it would be universally fruitless because you are negotiating with a MONOPOLY and monopolies do not negotiate, they dictate.. So now, you have licensed a book on the terms dictated by the monopoly. Do not assume you will be allowed to sell your copy when you are done with it. Do not assume you will be allowed to give away your copy when done with it. Do not assume you will be allowed to read it more than once (welcome to the legally enforced pay-per-view world). Do not assume you will be allowed to read it tomorrow or the day after that. Do not assume you will be allowed to install it on the required reading device at both work and home. Do not assume you will be allowed to read to others, such as reading to your own children. But you're a crafty rebel, unbowed to will of the corporation and wielding the law to protect your rights, including those that flow from the first sale doctrine! SUCKER. You have been sold out. Any attempt to make the ebook function in a way that goes against the terms dictated by the monopoly, even if your goal is to achieve parity with what rights the first sale doctrine grants to you, is a CRIME thanks to the other prong in this attack on the public's free access to knowledge, the previously mentioned Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA makes it crime to circumvent any protection, no matter how laughable the "protection" or how legal the end result of the circumvention is, including quoting or excerpting the work for criticism, commentary, education, etc., the previously protected domain of fair use. Imagine this scenario: the monopolist sells a "movie box" that contains a compact screen and a VHS tape of a movie sealed in a cheap locked plastic box. The box will play the enclosed movie once and only once because the player has no rewind function. You pay your money, take your box, and after you have played the movie once, the box will no longer play it. Yet, there is the tape, you can see it through the case. Now, in this imaginary scenario the monopolist has had some mental breakdown and actually performed the anachronistic act of actually "selling" you the movie box instead of licensing it. You think "It's my box, I'll snap the lock and get the VHS tape out to play in my normal VCR." WRONG. The anti-circumvention aspect of the DMCA makes that a CRIME, even though you are acting on your own property, the copy of the movie you purchased. This is because in our scenario the locked plastic case is the stand-in for whatever legally qualifying, least costly, flimsy protection the monopolist has selected to protect his work. This means that even if the monopolist deigns to actually "sell" you something, you are still denied your first sale rights by the monopolist's application of even the most symbolic of protections. So where does that leave us now? It leaves us in a world where the explicitly stated intent of the Founding Fathers has been so perverted that copyright terms have expanded every time major corporate copyrights approached expiration so essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain, the first sale doctrine has been completely vacated for whole classes of creative works, and that sole remaining island of free access to the monopolist's material, fair use, is already disappearing into the shadow of the destructive tidal wave that is the DMCA. Taken individually each of these developments is a manifestation of the monopolists attack upon the freedoms of US populace. Taken together, they represent the total perversion of the will of the Founding Fathers as UNIQUELY HIGHLIGHTED in the US Constitution. Have a nice day.
_The Railgun, The Weapon I Hate To Love For First Person Shooter players only. Steve Gibson, proprietor of The Shugashack and a damn fine Quake and Counter-Strike player, sounds off on the railgun, a weapon with perfect accuracy, zero travel time, infinite range, and the capability to kill a healthy player with a single shot. Yes, tagging someone with the railgun is fun, but it's a guilty pleasure. And of course the guilty pleasures are the hardest to give up.
_Not Safe For Work: Two girls on Jenna This article, which because of small graphics and explicit discussion of porn stuff could be inappropriate for your workplace, is a solid balance of titillating and insightful. Nothing life changing, but rewarding enough of your time. Both parts of this story are online now.
_Shocker: Having use of your senses found to be good! This is a story that advances the startling concept that giving people use of their sense of sound is beneficial. Hopefully, this is not particularly startling to you, gentle reader. However, there is a boisterous, if not literally outspoken, group of people that claim the opposite, that giving hearing to one that previously lacked it robs that person of their place in the deaf community. Bullshit! Does giving a poor person a job rob them of their place in the poor community? Some deaf people are also pushing for it be written as Deaf. Perhaps they are looking for the same accomodation I would afford to a religious community? You've got it. Was there ever a greater chasm with a smaller demarcation than the gulf between "catholic" and "Catholic"?
_THE DECSYSTEM-20 AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Advanced notice: This is a long way to go for the potential payoff of little more than a smirk, but with tech humor, it helps to think of the journey, not just the destination... So Slashdot linked to this, but they neglected to mention that buried within the heart of this long document is the history of the world's second most portable program, Kermit. How do we know for sure that Kermit really is the second most portable program in the world? Because the canonical list, a list three entries long, conveniently maintained by the creators of entry number three, found at the bottom of this page, tells us so. Duh! The Infozip people are probably correct, though. Look at the list of computers and operating systems Kermit runs on. Thursday, January 18, 2001
_A peaceful picture  Anyone notice that the SF Gate website is ripping off Star Trek's LCARs interface? Hmm, The Chicago Sun Times is trying awfully hard, too. Wednesday, January 17, 2001
_Johnny and Luther call it quits Read the article, then check out the other pictures of the world's most cuddly terrorists.  So what's the follow-on for that kind of career-opener? I heard that MTV has an opening.
_Ambiguously provactive news story of the day Cops can't punish a convicted pedophile for having young boys in his house, so they arrest the boys. Hmm.
_Hubbard and Scientology This is a damning history of both L. Ron Hubbard and his gift to the world, Scientology. This convincing book-length work paints a thoroughly unflattering (children locked the holds of sea-faring vessels) portrait of the organization and its founder. The overall work is compelling, but the author's recounting of his personal involvement with them (Part 1) is the least so, and could be skipped with little ill effect. I linked to this sort of as an aside in another entry, but it merits its own entry, too. Any one noticing the rough time religion is getting around here lately? Think it's got anything to do with being shut out by a girl I'd been seeing because I don't practice her religion? Nah.
_Being excommunicated by the Mormons Just in time to alleviate the shakes I felt coming at the thought of not having any new Jim Morrow books for a while, I sit down and read this piece of genius by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, an essay on the surreal process of being kicked out of the Mormon church. I'd love to pick out the sparkly bits and quote them here for you, but that would be the whole damn thing, and it's too long to paste in to here gracefully, so you'll just have to go read it already! Moroni. Is that more or less fun than saying Xenu? I can't decide. Hmm, Mormons. Makes me contemplate my favorite happy fascist, Orson Scott Card. Do you think it's the funky underwear that makes him so prickly? Settle down, Orson, I just laid out cash (which, of course, flows from my non-income) for Shadow of the Hegemon. However, I might have waited for the paperback if I had known that Jim Morrow has three chapters of his next book available online.
_$95,000 Adventure Old enough to qualify as a net.legend, but unknown enough to merit listing for both of my readers: Man receives sweepstakes style fake check showing how much he could get, but it turns out that a quirk of financial law means that, despite disclaimers, the check is legally valid. So he cashes it. Hilarity ensues. The guy is much nicer about it than I would have been. I would have had the cashier's check made out to a charity, or if I was really feeling evil, the "Church" of Scientology. I would have loved watching them fight it out for $95,000.
_Lebanese trampolinist breaches Israeli security "A Lebanese man has apparently used a trampoline to jump over the heavily-defended border with Israel" despite the fact that "[h]eavily-armed soldiers guard the border and use sophisticated night vision equipment to spot potential breaches of security."
_Designed for Demolition Explosives Technicians That's a link to a, hmm, "specialized" Gerber multitool. They also have a more direct competitor to the Leatherman Wave called the Multi-Plier 800.
_XFL tweaks rules for added excitement "On a punt, the kicking team cannot cross the line of scrimmage until the ball is punted, fair catches will not be permitted and any punt traveling at least 25 yards can be recovered by either team." "The XFL also abolished point-after kicks following touchdowns. Instead, teams will be forced to throw or run for an extra point from the opposition's 2-yard line. Because the clock will run on all extra points, the defensive team can earn a point by returning an interception or fumble to the other team's end zone." They are definitley aiming to make it a spectacle. Maybe it will go over better than the XFL blimp.
_Television Raises IQ's! "But if IQ tests are any measure -- and even critics say they have some value -- then there is evidence people are making mental gains. For the past two decades, researchers have collected information showing that IQs around the world rose steadily over the past century. "The rise has been too swift for genetics or evolution to explain. And researchers cannot precisely say what's driving the phenomenon. But many suspect that the very same TV-watching, video-game-playing cultural trappings we blame for 'dumbing us down' may also be partly responsible for raising our IQs." It was on the web, so it must be true! Kids keep scoring better year over year on IQ tests, with scores progressing at a rate that can't be explained by biological causes such as nutrition, evolution, etc. This is a provocative article with background on the testing procedures, the patterns they have yielded, and the interpretations thereof.
_Shocker: violent xenophobia found in South Africa Poor South African blacks rioting and attacking immigrants darker skinned than themselves. "[Y]oung toughs went after anyone who 'looked too black.' ...Police have detained people on the street, the group asserts, for 'walking like a Mozambican.' And last year, a member of South Africa's national softball team was arrested four times for 'looking too African.'" Tangent 1) A decade or more ago Jimmy Walker had routine about Ireland, saying that the Catholic/Protestant violence showed that when it comes to prejudice and there are no blacks, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans or Chinese around, "white people will IMPROVISE." Tangent 2) A buddy studying mining engineering spent a summer interning in a South African mine. He sent me a letter that started "I'm a kilometer and a half underground and four kilometers from the nearest way back up." He also mentioned that there are no safety catches on the mine elevators because the weight of the falling cable would crush everyone to death anyway.
_Batman kicked out of the Justice League "Batman in the comics began to devolve to his roots as a mysterious creature of the night. The 1989 Tim Burton movie helped cement in the public mind that the Gotham Guardian was a brilliant, tormented, driven man. And now, as Darth Vader would say, his turn to the Dark Side is complete. Batman in the current world of DC Comics is a grim, taciturn man who is so single-minded that he has foregone the usual pleasures of life to train himself to perfection in body and mind. He is thought to be an urban legend by the general public, but sincerely and deservedly feared by the underworld. His relentless logic, free of worldly distractions, makes him the world's greatest detective and tactician -- and the Justice League's indispensable man." Despite ignoring the huge influence of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (believe the hype), reading this review of current doings in Batman's world made me want to believe again. Hmm, news of a sequel due in mid 2001...
_Book Review: The Lecturer's Tale "This is, let me say again, a dazzlingly entertaining novel, spirited in all ways, and really, really mean." Well, all right! Maybe something to tide me over until Jim Morrow unleashes a new work (even though Jim's latest was actually the kindest to his characters). Tuesday, January 16, 2001
_Hopkins May Get Digital Makeover For Next Lambs Sequel This sounds like a colossally bad idea. They're making one sequel without Jodie Foster, but they are so unwilling to take a real casting risk with the Lecter character that "British news reports indicated today (Monday) that de Laurentiis intends to use computer technology to take 20 years off the age of the 63-year-old Hopkins. The technology can reportedly give him a full head of hair and shave inches off his waist." Not to mention that it's a remake of a movie that was interesting, but not up to the level of Silence of the Lambs. Bad omens, even though I'll be right there in line for Hannibal.
_Sidrial That's a screenshot from Sidrial, an animated feature from Fountainhead Entertainment created using the Quake 3 game engine. Spiffy! The screenshot is newer than the trailer on their site, and it shows in the definition in the shadows and other touches. Additional screenshots can be found here and here. So, who is Foutainhead? Oh, that's who that is. Katherine Anna Kang, who carries four major credits on the movie, is married to John Carmack, the maniacly gifted programmer mainly responsible for the tech behind Doom and Quake and all the games descended from these, including HalfLife/Counterstrike. (hey, who's the "Reznor" guy in that picture?) Not too surprisingly, Carmack also makes a prominent appearance in the promising trailer for Gamers, a video documentary about the head-to-head computer gaming scene, also from Kang and Foutainhead.
_How about a little bang? "We're creating the universe each time," he said, explaining that in reality just a few crucial elements of the early universe were produced, rather than an entire Big Bang. "We're going to do that billions and billions of times." This is an article on the early successes of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the particle accelerator some peeps had previously claimed would get the earth sucked into a black hole or turned into a blob of strange matter or something.
_'Survivor' Mom To Wed Stepson Woody Allen style non-incest, plus the Survivor angle. How can you go wrong?
_The Arnold Schwarzenegger prank calls Thanks to the joys of computer audio, the world gets to hear what it would sound like if The Oak took it upon himself to prank call Hooters or pick a fight with a real estate agent. Too funny.
_Mad Cow Threat to U.S. Blood Supply More reasons to think of mad cow as AIDS for carnivores: there are striking fears of tainted human blood spreading the disease throughout the medical system. And now, much like the HIV rules on potential blood donors who have visited Haiti or Africa, people who lived in the United Kingdom or Ireland for more than six months between 1980 and 1996 have been banned from donating blood, for life. This article details these developments as well as the prevalence of related disorders in other American animal populations, many of which are sources of meat for human consumption, such as lamb, deer (15% infection rate) and elk. Updated: The Red Cross has expanded their blood donation ban to include any person that lived in any part of western Europe since 1980.
_How Ben turns sinner from saint An interesting interview with Ben Kingsley. Jews, Indians, mad scientists, gangsters, bar fights, naked ladies, and the recycling of hairpieces.
_Infiltration "Off-limits tourism" or "infiltration" means people going where they aren't quite supposed to be: in abandoned buildings, atop structures people don't bother to look up at any more, or in the hidden tunnels under the normal world's sphere of action. Infiltration and geocaching are interesting in that their existence reinforces the importance of place, in the midst of a tech environment that has as one it's implicit goals minimizing the relevance of place. "Consider them the secret keepers of the cities, above and below the ground. As Deyo puts it, 'People have their own lives to lead and don't feel much of a need to look up at architecture, which is a shame and is part of the reason why we're doing it -- it forces us, if no one else, to view the city as more than just a milieu for the mundane aspects of our lives, a place to work and live. It's also an environment, and like any environment it can be explored.'"
_Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now A review of an exhibit featuring artistic representations of dissected human bodies, written by a physician that has performed dissections himself. It touches on developing attitudes toward the body, sexism, elitism, art history, and lots gruesome details.  "The entrance into the exhibit was dimly lit and ominous, with a soundtrack playing long, low notes from an organ. At the end of the corridor a brilliant glass box pierced the darkness, with antique surgical instruments twinkling as though lit by their own sterility. The 'raven's beak' forceps and amputation saw filled me with dread. It was not anatomy's gore I feared, but art's obsession with using medicine to shock."
_Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World "Traditionally, girls (often sold by poor parents) entered a geisha house for training in dance and the shamisen at six years, six months and six days. At the age of eleven, they became maiko, elaborately adorned apprentice geisha, who, by the age of 15, had undergone the ritual deflowering necessary to become fully fledged geisha." This is a book review that relates interesting historical details and looks skepticly at the future of the practice.
_Britney Spears: a nice pair Two lovely stories about Ms. Spears. That one up in the main link concerns the Oops girl walking around with her boyfriend and a big "Virgin" sign. The next link, which is NOT SAFE FOR WORK, concerns Britney's past work with adult film makers. Monday, January 15, 2001
_Picture of the new presidential limousine  The fugliest car since the Aztec. If they show it at the inauguration, look for the tags; they will likely be DC's "Taxation without representation" tags that Clinton had put on the presidential vehicles. Too bad about that Constitution thing, eh DC residents?
_Progressive thinker of the day A house suddenly becomes already rented when the landlord finds out that the white couple has black son. A court case ensues: the idiot landlord gets tapped to the tune of $78,000.
_Miami Herald: Homemade video confession dares police to catch crook "'Brazen is not even the word for Alex,' said Miami Police Lt. William Schwartz. ...He sent police a 20-page confession, a video and a scrawled message on a napkin daring them to catch him. In the homemade one-minute video dated Dec. 30, Peña... appears to be smoking marijuana and tells police to 'read the following pages very slowly and carefully.'" "Also enclosed was a photo torn from an unidentified newspaper that shows a woman choking a chicken. ..."
_Now at the Mall: 'Parking Lot Rage' "Police and residents say a battle over a spot can turn into bad words, vandalism and fisticuffs. One Tustin, Calif., woman even admitted getting her 9-year-old nephew to urinate on the door handle of a car whose driver stole her spot." Here's a hint: honking at someone as they settle into their car will not get you into the space faster. Got it?
_Advanced argument techniques Climb atop railing of cruise ship, at night, to make an impression on the girl you're fighting with. Falling into the water and dieing are optional (though not for this Darwin award prospect).
_Skull pierced in Paris William Tell circus act "[A] performer trying to shoot an apple off his wife's head with a crossbow hit her under the eye instead. ...She can't be operated on for another week, so it's especially important that she does not develop an infection."
_Why back up your web site when there's Google? "Just ask Jake Savin, a San Francisco programmer who recently lost an entire website -- and three years' hard work -- but found a copy of his entire site in Google's online archive." Not exactly a recommended strategy, kids.
_The Million-Dollar Nose "With his stubborn disregard for the hierarchy of wines, Robert Parker, the straight-talking American wine critic, is revolutionizing the industry -- and teaching the French wine establishment some lessons it would rather not learn." The LONG story of a how one American man has changed the wine industry. This rewarding read has lots of background, including the story of his first trip to France, which was his first airplane flight anywhere: "The flight was due to arrive in Paris at 10:30. Parker woke up (on the plane) at 10:45. When he saw the time, he jumped into the aisle and yelled, 'Shit, I've missed my stop!'"
_A machine called Z "Under a ring of water in a sealed chamber in the middle of the New Mexico desert lies the heart of a machine that could change the world." The story of The Quest. A slightly over-the-top, but inarguably gripping, article about a group of researchers and techs reaching for fusion power.
_Youth a real-life version of 'The Natural' The backwoods innocent thrust into the major league's spotlight. A modern day fairy tale in the making, or an onrushing train wreck? Thank God Don King doesn't do baseball. Sunday, January 14, 2001
_Prostitutes used to tempt IT staff into jobs In his own words "the young lady left me in no doubt as to where she was from, what she was offering and why." This is a recruitment tactic I've yet to come across.
_People experience "now" differently "Stone was surprised to find that some people reported the events as simultaneous when the light preceded the sound by up to 150 milliseconds. Others did so when the sound came before the light." Variations between people may approach a quarter of a second.
_Terror at 6,000 feet The story, as told by the crew in intimate detail, of a hijacking in which the attacker jumped (?) from the flying plane, with a home-made parachute. "When he opened the rear door...(t)he wind pressure swept Cabel off his feet and he found himself flying in the rear passageway, held in position only by the shoulder harness he was clinging on to. A flight attendant strapped on a pullback chair nearby grabbed his belt to keep him from flying off. He was half a meter from the door ledge."
_Dramatic post-landslide photo  Wow, just horrendous. Here is another of the same slide, and here is one more that shows people for a sense of scale. |
