MemeMachineGo!

=v= I know, it sounds like spam, but when I was thumbing through that highfalutin' Harper's and saw an ad promising to end all relationship mistakes, I was naturally intrigued. Even moreso when I went to the advertised website and learned that it involved something called "panelling." This is a bit counterintuitive to me, since of course everyone knows the 1970s were the heyday of panelling (walnut-grained, in particular), and that's when all them lib'rul Baby Boomers were wreckin' marriages left and right. But the website assures me that it works:

Throughout history arranged marriages matched future couples using everything from astrological charts to family history. That very process meant unsuitable mates were automatically screened out. ... Panelling is a new way to separate the cast-offs from the keeper. Read the Find a Keeper ebook and discover the confidence of panelling.

I have a better idea: get Sunset's Basic Carpentry book. It starts by explaining what hammers and nails are (there are illustrations), and only 100 pages later you're building an entire house. I never realized it would prevent relationship mistakes, but panelling tips are in there too. Jym Bob sez check it out.

A billboard in LA:

Did you know that no woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, and that only two have ever been nominated? That 94% of the writing awards have gone to men? Or that only 3% of all the acting awards — lead and supporting — have ever gone to people of color.

The first volume of Alan Moore's wonderfully fun series superimposed diverse fictions on one world, so we had Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Allan Quatermain, and Nima (from Dracula) trying to recover Professor Cavor's stolen cavorite from Fu Manchu.

With the second volume, he superimproses diverse fictions on another world: Mars, which is simultaneously the Mars of Burroughs, Wells, C.S. Lewis and more. Get the comic, read Jess Nevins' exhaustive annotations and wonder which is more remarkable: that Moore did all this, or that someone decoded all that.

(Via Linkmachinego)

Even before my recent trip my workout schedule was screwed up. Ironically, studying for my personal trainer exam was one of the things that did it. So I'd been feeling really out of shape. Which is to say that a single intense aerobics class could make me feel tired, when I'm used to needing two back-to-back intense aerobics classes for that.

So this week, I dove back in. Resumed doing the Five Tibetans daily, and did a step aerobics class Saturday, upper body strength training Sunday and today, funk aerobics Monday and Wednesday, lower body strength training Thursday. And boy are my abs tired. Seriously, I sneezed a couple of times today, and it sounded like this: "Achoo! owwww...." as my abdominals protested. (One uses the core stabilizing muscles during everything.) I'll do aerobic interval training on an elliptical cross-trainer tomorrow morning, lower body again on Saturday, and on Sunday I'll rest.

I'm roughly following the exercise regimen of Body for Life, but freely substituting aerobics classes for aerobic interval training, and totally ignoring his nutritional advice, which acts as anti-vegan propaganda. (All foods are classed as one of: protein; carbohydrates; vegetables. You are to have six small meals a day, each of which includes protein. Everything defined as protein is an animal product. Beans are relegated to carbohydrate status. And forget correctily distinguishing fruits from vegetables, he defines mushrooms as vegetables.) I eat three meals a day, and I'm fairly strictly avoiding sugar, flour and refined carbs.

Already I can see and feel the results. When I'm eating well and getting a lot of exercise everything is better. I'm happier, I have more energy, I feel stronger, I sleep better, food tastes better, I'm more creative, more productive. The time investment is ultimately paid back with dividends.

I will finally lose the last of my spare tire. I've got multiple fitness certifications and I'm a hypnotist — god knows I know more than enough about exercise, nutrition and motivation as to have less than no excuse. I'll keep you informed.

=v= Somebody figured out how to parlay Google's search term color highlighting into multi-colored ASCII art (not viewable on all browsers). They post some seemingly incomprehensible art to a Usenet newsgroup (like this), but when you follow their instructions and search for it at Google Groups, you see a full-color illustration (like this). A total hack, and I mean that in a good way.

There's now an online gallery devoted to this new artform, but at present it's very difficult to reach because it's been slashdotted. Slashdot has pointers to a few early creations, though.

(Via Slashdot, unsurprisingly.)

A monkey troop rescued a kidnapped orphan monkey in India. A farmer shot a langur, a protected species, as she suckled an infant. The infant wouldn't let go, and police ultimately brought the infant and corpse to their station.

Officers allowed it to stay the night, but around 30 monkeys laid siege to the station — gathering outside and on the roof.

Officers were surprised when some monkeys managed to sneak into the station and quietly take the baby away with them.

Inspector Prabir Dutta told newspaper Pragati: "What we saw was absolutely touching. It was as if the monkeys had made up their minds to take charge of the orphan. One of the females in the group held it close to its chest and even offered its teats to be sucked.

"The monkeys behaved in an exemplary fashion and impressed us with their show of solidarity. Human beings have a lot to learn from them."

(Via Vegan Porn)

So last night I went to see "Riot Grrrl on Mars" at the Berkeley Opera, an updating of Rossini's "Italian Girl in Algiers" by David Scott Marley. It was tremendous fun, and I'd recommend it to you all and consider seeing it again, except last night was the closing night. Doh.

I notice I've really enjoyed all the opera I've seen. Maybe next year I'll get season's tickets.

I am in the midst of a feat of incredible daring, fantastic accomplishment, and incalculable consequence.

Since Saturday, I've had 5/6 of a chocolate bar in my freezer.

I know some of you are waiting for the punch line, or wondering if that was intended as some incredibly lame punch line.

Others, I know, will understand. Some time I'll make the time to explain to the former group.

It's becoming increasingly apparent that how I read ill suits itself to maintaining a meaningful "currently reading" list. Yes, everything in the sidebar is a book I haven't finished and intend to. Attitude I've been reading a little bit at a time, and am within 4 pages of finishing. Everything else I haven't much looked at in a while, having spent more time lately reading The Big Book of the Weird Wild West, Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction, 18th Annual Edition (last year's: stories from 2000), Ted Chiang's new collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, and reading entirely Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret and, yesterday, Bradley Denton's Blackburn.

Deep Secret strangely capsizes itself by having its climax offstage, then backfilling it in an epilogue. Blackburn is a blast. I understand why Avi recommended it to me: its title character has a voice and psychology much like that of the protagonist of one of my stories. And, um, is a serial killer.

Today I started Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction.

One morning after a wild electrical storm, Amanda woke to find a strange inscription on the palm of her hand: a single "word" written in some obscure alphabet.

All during her yoga exercises; during her garden-pagoda breakfast of poached salmon, strawberries and cream; during her astrological plottings down on the creek bank, she puzzled over it. She considered it as she and her baby rolled and giggled in the yard grass, she pondered it during her lunch of frog legs and coconut milk — even that afternoon as she circled the lake in her orange and purple sailboat, a choir of eight peyote buttons singing in her head, she probed its enigma — though, in truth, the inscription seemed less mysterious than funny to her then.

The following day — the inscription would not wash off — she researched it in the Library of Anthropological Yearnings. To no avail. She sent photostats of it to young Jewish scholars who had loved her. She tried tvelve times to decpiher it during trance. Pleading letters she wrote to the Ministry of Esoteric Knowledge, Division of Archaic Titillations.

She never did learn what it meant, although one night years later in an Armenian restaurant, a very old musician took one glance at it, handed Amanda a heavy iron key and ran down the fire escape.

Gotta love it.

Unfortunately, the entries in the guest bar at Boing Boing lack permalinks, but while it lasts, I'll call your attention to this, posted and co-written by the hardest working guest blogger on the web, Xeni Jardin:

(9) You Google him and click on the "Images" tab. See also #10.

(10) ...and on the off chance he might do the same, you Google your own name and click on the "Images" tab to see whether or not the results are flattering. Does this JPEG make my butt look big?

We don't stop needing to know Mr. Rogers' message:

When the video was over and Mr Rogers had changed his sweater, he launched into his end-of-show spiel. You know, the one that goes something like, "You are so special and important. You're the only person just like you in the whole world. You make the world a better place, just by being in it." (Keep in mind, Mr. Rogers is far more eloquent and poignant than my crappy memory permits me to be.)

It was at this point in the show that I lost it. My eyes welled up ridiculously and I started to cry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I found this show aimed at pre-schoolers to be far too touching. It was like Mr Rogers was talking directly to me.

(My awareness of She Speaks Good English via Eclectica which has been chock full of good stuff lately)

This is probably extremely peculiar to my tastes, but I got a big kick out of this deliberately fangirlish review of a Mark-Jason Dominus tutorial.

I was there. The dawn of an era. Where it all began. Iterator value 0. Generator value 'rand()'. The unveiling of Mark-Jason Dominus's "Iterators and Generators in Perl" tutorial was up to MJD's usual exacting standards, carrying the audience with both his dry humour and generally renowned technical aptitude. What has always amazed me about his presentation style is his ability to both move quickly through content and still present explanations carefully and methodically... in such a way that builds up to a crescendo that is both completely unsurprising, and totally cool.

[...] He shows us iterator implementations using perl object-oriented features, using closures, and a hybrid approach using both. Tricky things such as scope and duration with regard to closures (Why do the variables stay in memory?!), and anonymous subroutine pointers were addressed. MJD explains variable references and garbage collection! What a man.

(MJD is a talk.bizarre oldbie, perl guru, and friend of mine.)

This morning I locked my bike on one of the racks on the sidewalk in front of the YMCA. They're just simple steel upside-down U-shapes stuck into the sidewalk, good for one bike on each side, parked parallel to the street.

Coming out of the Y (facing into the sun, mind you, and not wearing my corrective lenses), I saw there was something funny about my bike. It was too wide or something. And was that a helmet hanging from the handlebars? (I'd carried my helmet in.)

As I got closer, I saw someone had parked a Rans Rocket recumbent next to my Vision. I see other 'bents on the road on a fairly regular basis, but this is the first time one's been locked up next to mine.

I felt very silly when I realized that the "too wide" effect was because the Rans had above-seat steering, when my bike has had under-seat steering for years now.

BlogTree.com is a blog genealogy site. Here's MemeMachineGo's pedigree. I cited Boing Boing as MMG's parent, being my most direct inspiration, which gives me a lot of siblings.

MMG doesn't have any children. That it knows of. Hyuk, hyuk. Aw, jeez, that joke is probably being told everywhere.

(Via Eclectica)

This vague notion about how time travel might work has been bouncing around in my skull. I've been giving it free rein in my unconscious, without looking straight it at, 'cause, y'know, when you turn on the kitchen light, all the cockroaches scurry out of sight, but if you just let things compost, you get volunteers. This morning, doing my morning pages, it finally emerged fully formed from my skull, like Athena emerging from Zeus. Well, maybe that's carrying it a bit far, but I thought I hadn't quite mixed enough metaphors.

It's plausible enough for science fiction and is, to my knowledge, original. But though my reading of sf is fairly broad and deep, no one's is comprehensive. Wouldn't really surprise me if Poul Anderson had used something similar in 1954. (Here's a meaningless teaser: it's sort of Asimov's The End of Eternity meets Crowley's Great Work of Time with some parallel universe interpretation of quantum physics hand-waving.)

Ah well, one can't worry overly much about whether one's specfic gimmick has ever been done before; having a grip on what's been done to death is the important part.

Gotta get writing. 'specially since there's other stuff clamoring to be finished first... finishing "A Dog's Life" and "Factoring 59"; revising "Replacement" and "The Miller's Daughter." Not to mention getting "Do Over" out to market.

It's really hard not to go where my whims urge me to go
but I know what sort of person I'm longing to become
if I want to help anybody in the world before I die
if I want the suffering all around me to subside
I have got to be more conscious of the things I do and don't do
every little seed in time will flower
plant the ones that lead me down a path towards really helping
I am the garden but I'm also the gardener

In this very moment I reap fruit from choices past
choices for the future are made now
certain habits, deeply rooted, flourish in the heart of me
repetition, like the seasons, comes naturally
some of it's good, some of it's not
right now this is all I've got
but that doesn't mean it's all I'll ever be
choosing which part of me to act from
is easier when I know what I want to become
I am the garden but I'm also the gardener

— "Gardener" by Rebecca Riots

Listened to that last night. It's been feeling especially relevant.

First make some pasta topping:

2 cups brewer's yeast
1 cup almonds
1 tsp. salt
(optionally) 2 tbsp. ground flax seeds

Blanche the almonds by putting 'em in a pot with enough water to cover them, bringing the water to a boil and boiling it for a minute or two. Strain them, skin them (just squeeze them and they'll pop right out — this is the most tedious step.) Throw in a blender or food processor with the other ingredients; chop 'em up fine.

Then it's:

1 bunch of fresh basil
a cup or so of pasta topping
probably something like 3/4 of a cup of olive oil
3 cloves garlic

Wash the basil and cut the leaves off. Throw them and the garlic and some olive oil and pasta topping in the food processor or blender and chop it up. Start slow with these so you can add more as you go, adjusting the proportions till you reach the desired taste and texture. The result should be smooth.

Serving suggestion:

Over a small serving of kamut pasta alongside some sauteed shitake mushrooms, like I just had. Yum!

One of the things I enjoy about summer is free theatre in the park. Saw the San Francisco Mime Troupe's current show, Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan today. As always, the singing and production were great. This was one of the productions where they pretty much stuck to taking down people in power. As usual when they do so, I agreed with them completely. (When they advance their own alternatives I tend to disagree with them completely.) There're plenty more shows the rest of this month — if you're local, check it out.

And today was the kickoff of the Berkeley Arts Festival and it is to be hoped that some time really soon that link won't return a 403 error. Anyway, with information obtained from an old-fashioned paper flier, I found out about a Woman's Will production called "That Takes Ovaries" which turned out to be dramatized readings from a book of the same name, whose subtitle is "bold females and their brazen acts," which ought to give some idea what was up.

Woman's Will puts on all-women productions of Shakespeare's plays every summer (mostly: one year they had men play the women's parts), and I go every year, and I'm looking forward to their Pericles next weekend.

In between, I was biking by a yard sale when I saw they had a few books. While not especially optimistic, I still compulsively stopped to look. And they had China Mieville's The Scar, the brand new sequel to Perdido Street Station for $1. Score!

And it's a good thing I could find a cheap book, 'cause I'm a sucker and paid through the nose for all that free theatre. Reciprocity, dontcha know.

Michael Dare explains:

Tom briefly explained how he wrote his books. He treats writing like a nine-to-five job, writing eight hours a day, Monday through Friday. No writing allowed on weekends. He gets up in the morning, makes himself breakfast, lights a cigar, and sits at his typewriter.

When he starts a novel, it works like this. First he writes a sentence. Then he rewrites it again and again, examining each word, making sure of its perfection, finely honing each phrase until it reverberates with the subtle texture of the infinite. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes an entire day is devoted to one sentence, which gets marked on and expanded upon in every possible direction until he is satisfied. Then, and only then, does he add a period.

Next, he rereads the first sentence and starts writing a second, rewriting it again and again until it shimmers. Then, and only then, does he add a period. While working on each sentence, he has no idea what the next sentence is going to be, much less the next chapter or the end of the book. All thoughts of where he is going or where he has been are banished. Each sentence is a Zen universe unto itself, and while working on it, nothing exists but the sentence. He keeps writing in such a manner until he eventually reaches a sentence which he works on like all the others. He adds a period and the book is done. No editing or revising in any way. When you read a Tom Robbins book, you are experiencing the words not only in the exact order that he wrote them but almost in the exact order that he thought them.

On Salon, Scott Rosenberg reviews "Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan." I hadn't realized it was co-written by Josh Kornbluth, local monologuist and filmmaker.

There's something I forgot to comment on before. The plot concerns a rigged election in a former Soviet Republic, Obscuristan. The U.S. is sponsoring the same man who'd been in charge since they'd been under the Soviets, a corrupt, petty-tyrannical boor. The opposition candidate, Ralif Nadir, has to hide from arrest just for announcing his candidacy. (The Mime Troupe paints with broad strokes.)

Anyway, during the incumbent's song and dance about his candidacy, the music was very distinctly and deliberately sounded like U.S. campaign music.

During Nadir's, the music was Middle Eastern.

I found it interesting that they were using U.S. music to score a message of hypocrisy and tyranny and Middle Eastern for sincerity and trustworthiness.

So on Monday nights in August, BATS is doing TheatreSports Raw: anyone can show up and try out to make teams that compete on stage. Performing is free; watching costs you (yes, even if tried out and didn't make it.)

So tonight I was hurriedly testing and committing my latest code (heh — I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've made a concrete reference here to what I do for a living), eating dinner quickly, biking the mile and a half or so to the Ashby BART station in 11 minutes (sure, that'd be trivial on a track, but keep in mind Ashby is one of Berkeley's three freeway connections and this was early rush hour), dealing with one ticket machine going out of order, and a line at the other one, catching my train, dealing with the thrice-damned slow elevators at Embarcadero, biking through the City during rush hour proper, and finally arriving at Fort Mason with time to spare.

There was a long line. They only let in the first 50 people to try out. I was the 51st. Damn it!

Had fun watching the show, but that ain't why I skipped Funk Aerobics and busted my butt to get there.

I'll listen to Bruce Sterling rant just about any ol' time.

William Gates? He's my age. He's a gentleman of my generation. We're a few months apart in age. I've never met him. I hate to pick on him. Really. He's obviously a very smart man. And he's a nicer guy, as a human being, than a lot of his competitors. But I have to pick on Bill, instead of Bill's competitors. Because Bill physically killed and ate all his competitors.

The older Bill gets, the uglier he gets. He's a guy riding a white horse, that turned into a runaway bronco bull, that turned into a scaly crocodile, and now, it is turning into some kind of diseased revenant. It's like the Steed of the Nazgul, those black, flying zombie horses that explode when exposed to fresh water. That's what Microsoft is like now. These guys, these Nazgul ... They used to be kings. They were originally human beings, they had wives and children and futures, they had their own little nations to govern and manage. But then there was the One Ring — One Ring to Rule Them All. One. And they couldn't resist. And they gave in.

(Via Boing Boing)

There is a proposal in my fair city to make A=A the law.

In a philosophical effort to come up with a city law that no one could ever break, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats wants Berkeley to legally acknowledge Aristotle's law, commonly expressed as A=A.

He's probably just trying to impress the babes, like in Charles Atlas Shrugged.

(SFGate link via Metafilter, where the entry was titled: 'Tautology isn't just a good idea, it's also the law.')

I have a Palm m500. I have a minor case of lust for the Palm m515. 16M of RAM and in color! But like Charlie says, there's no actual reason to upgrade (though I find his downgrading to be incredible — I do like the reduced weight and thickness of the 500 series.) I figure the m500'll probably last me until there's an affordable palmtop that's wirelessly net-ready and doubles as an MP3 player.

But that doesn't stop me from occasionally checking prices on the m515. This morning, Amazon was claiming an 'an unusually low price'. So low they just can't show it to you before you add it to your cart — an awkward updating of the time-honored sales technique of physically placing the merchandise in the mark's hands.

Their usual price? $399.99. Their 'unusually low price'? $399.94. (Meanwhile, Pricegrabber shows a few places selling it for under $300.)

Fuck you too, Amazon.

Cat and mouse who have never watched Itchy and Scratchy.

(Via Eclectica)

A favorite album of mine is Dire Straits' Making Movies. Unhappily, my CD of it went south and skips mightily, especially on "Solid Rock."

Recently I built and have been configuring a new computer (about which I'll probably geek out more here later.) I installed EAC, Exact Audio Copy. It keeps making passes over a CD until it gets it.

In a little over 3 minutes, EAC had copied the whole CD to my hard drive (in .wav format, no compression), and I was listening to a perfect rendition of "Solid Rock." And on the one copy-protected CD I used it on, it readily ignored the protection. And it's free (postcardware)!

The Radified Guide to Ripping and Encoding CD Audio is a useful article that discusses EAC and more. Good to know, especially for Windows users, considering how much Windows Media Player sucks.

I predict much CD ripping in my future.

Mark Morford nails my fantasies:

...wouldn't it be great to have both, the woodsy small town lodge-like summer pad and the funky City loft, bounce back and forth at relative will, a couple months here a couple months there, with travels to Turkey and Spain and NYC and maybe oh let's say Peru in between.

Wouldn't that be the life, you imagine it briefly and feel it and maybe even visualize the potential, because it seems remotely possible, maybe, someday, if you aim everything just right and plan carefully and enjoy a surprise multimillion inheritance.

I'm currently comfortable with having chosen the city and having the happy problem this weekend of how to choose among Improvised Shakespeare, Pericles, Visible Stories (a comics lecture at the Berkeley Library,) B-Movie Night (a play), Extreme Elvis, the Improv Jam, and more, not to mention working out at the Y, going to the Farmer's Market and my other beloved weekend habits.

But sometimes it'd be really nice to get away from the traffic and the noise and the car exhaust and the people and the busy-ness and breathe some fresh air and be quiet.

Unlimited wealth and teleportation. Basically, that's what I really want.

(Via Cogito Ergo Sumana)

I've spent a lot of time in the past few days building and configuring my new computer. This is the first one I built from scratch. It wasn't so bad, but it also impressed on me how much computers still haven't made consumer appliance status: how anyone who isn't a computer professional installs new hardware I don't know.

It was significantly cheaper than my last computer, bought 4 years ago, and, naturally, incredibly more powerful. 4 times as much memory. A better processor running 3 times as fast. 15 times more hard drive space. A DVD-ROM instead of CD-ROM. Considering how to move my old files over, it occurred to me to just physically move the old drive. Ta da. I have the best of intentions to sort through all of the old files and organize them onto the new drive, then reformat the old one and see if I can find anyone I can even give an 8G drive to. Of course, now that it's there, I have access to the files, and the box is sealed, well, I wouldn't hold my breath as to when that'll happen.

More best intentions: build a Linux box from the old machine. But besides having no hard drive, I took out its power supply too. Its fan has been crying its death screams for months. It now lies stripped, hollow and dark, after all its years of faithful service. How ignominious.

I'm running Windows 2000. Why? you ask, shocked, shocked. To the why are you running an Evil Empire OS and not Linux or maybe BSD like a right-thinking individual? part, because I want to do voice recognition and audio editing and the Unices aren't up to snuff there yet. And there are advantages to using the platform that everyone supports. To the why a revision out of date? part, because the first year and a half or so of any Microsoft release is a public beta. I downloaded the recent Service Package 3 for Win2K, taking advantage of the pain and suffering of all the Windows users before me, instead of participating in the pain and suffering of all the bugs and security holes XP users will continue to endure. And I could buy it used on the cheap and at least not directly benefit Microsoft. One drawback to 2K, though: there's no Annoyances book for it, and there won't be.

Both my video card and sound card's installers arrogantly set up my system to automatically on startup run controllers taking up screen real estate. Additionally, the sound card had another program that sprung up whenever you put the cursor near the upper right, something I do all the time to minimize windows I'd maximized. It took a few minutes of annoyance to disable these. I hate arrogant software. Almost as much as I hate software that knows better than you do.

Besides EAC, which I already mentioned, I've downloaded Mozilla (browser), Zone Alarm (firewall), AntiVir (antivirus), Proxomitron (web proxy), WinAmp (multimedia player), Monkey's Audio (lossless audio compressor), LAME (MP3 encoder), Acrobat Reader, Xemacs (programmer's editor, cult), CygWin (UNIX environment), NetHack (game, controlled substance), ActiveState Perl (programming language, way of life), ShareAza (gnutella P2P file sharing client), TeraTerm Pro (terminal emulator) and TTSSH (ssh extension for TeraTerm). Total cost of all of the above: nada.

Why am I detailing all this? To ask you, my collective readership, for advice: what else might I like? With the exception of Emacs over any other editor and Perl over any other language, I'm not particularly attached to any of the above — are there better Win2K applications for them?

Back in December Cory mentioned a reasonably priced duplex printer, the Panasonic KX-P7100. Having been lusting after it since, and my venerable HP LaserJet II giving up the ghost again, and having already spent what added up to a couple hundred dollars repairing it in recent years, I finally got a Panasonic KX-P7105 — twice the vertical resolution, and its memory is expandable.

It actually prints each sheet, spits it almost all the way out, then sucks it back in to print the other side. I'd wondered how duplex could be this cheap...

Anyway, so far, so good. I'm a happy geek.

New World Disorder is soliciting funds.

In development is the New World Disorder quarterly e-magazine. In the magazine will be interviews with cutting-edge writers, artists and thinkers as well as experimental fiction and articles exploring the strange new world disorder we find ourselves in.

I'm always amazed at how much great weird stuff Jason finds, and without pilfering from other blogs like the rest of us — instead it's stories from Pravda, or the Times of India, or a South African newspaper site. I assume he works for a living, but how he fits it in around the websurfing he must do, I don't know. Anyway, if you've taken even half the enjoyment in NWD that I have, then you've enjoyed it a hell of a lot, and I hope you'll consider supporting Jason's new endeavor.

Meg calls for professional bloggers:

What I propose is slightly different: make it a commercial endeavor and hire an experienced blogger. Engage someone who's already proven they can filter, condense, and write. Work with someone who can blog day in and day out for more than a month or two. The idea here is to find an enthusiast, empower them, and fund them, not to dump blogging onto someone's day job, or it's not likely to succeed.

Think of what some of the best bloggers could do if they were financially able to do focused, full-time blogging? Pick a topic you're interested in, now imagine someone had 40 hours per week to cover everything related to that topic, and you get the idea.

How 'bout it? Anyone want to throw money at me to cover the environmentalism, privacy, writing, science fiction, health, fitness, memetics, improv, hypnosis, conspiracy, technology, Berkeley, science, magick, bicycling, vegetarian, recumbent, comics, philosophy, books, Palm, Perl, sustainability, politics, futurism, Buddhism, Taoism, organic, mind machine, nutrition, bodywork, alternative medicine, libertarian, Green, anarchist, and whatever the hell else I feel like at the moment beat? Y'know, with flexible hours and I get total editoral control.

I didn't think so. But what the hell — I've got all that already without the pay.

The Free State Project seeks to get 20,000 activists to move to some single small state to be named later with the intent of enacting sweeping libertarian reform.

We don't want to wait decades for most citizens in the U.S. to realize that the nanny state is an insult to their dignity. For those of us who already understand the debilitating effects of a government bent on reducing liberty rather than increasing it, the Free State Project aims at liberty in a single state.

What do we mean by liberty? We believe that being free and independent is a great way to live, and that government's only role should be to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud. To quote author L. Neil Smith, we believe that "no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation."

What can be done in a single state? A great deal. We will repeal state taxes and wasteful state government programs. We will end the collaboration between state and federal law enforcement officials in enforcing unconstitutional laws. We will repeal laws outlawing drugs and guns. We will end asset forfeiture and abuses of eminent domain. We will privatize utilities and end inefficient regulations and monopolies. Then we will negotiate directly with the federal government for more autonomy.

I don't plan on joining them, but I wish them luck. (And, for the record, if a bunch of socialists were planning the same, I'd wish them luck too.)

(Via Post-Atomic)

Once upon a time, there was a funky little Berkeley ISP called DNAI. And I worked there as a web developer for Rael Dornfest (since gone on to fame and fortune at O'Reilly.) And the pay was somewhat substandard but the environment was great, and my co-workers were great, and the management was great, and we had a great time. Then we were bought by RCN (cue thunder and lightning.)

The pay was still substandard but the managers were idiots, my new one in particular the spitting image of a pointy-haired boss. He insulted my abilities on our first meeting without having any basis for evaluation — some kind of dominance display, I guess. When I said one of the things I liked about my position was the variety of my tasks, he told me I could expect to be required to specialize so I would make a better cog in his machine. Then there was the loss of control of my computer environment so IT staff could administer my box (you know, for efficiency, not to mention the ability to monitor my keystrokes).

They were disorganized enough that it took some months for the corporate bullshit to really trickle down to my level. The very day it did, in the form of my boss trying to require me to attend their big expensive corporate meeting where they'd strap us to chairs and wire our eyes open to watch executives beat their chests and tell us how happy we should be to working for a company that had millions to blow on this bullshit but couldn't grasp what a competitive salary was, I quit on the spot. I have no tolerance for groupthink. This being the tail end of the boom, I took a long lunch that day and had a new job.

RCN is still making news.

RCN Corp., which provides cable, phone and high-speed Internet connections in the Putnam County area, lost $1.05 billion during the second quarter and cut back on expansion and capital spending plans.

The net loss was equal to $10.46 a share, compared with a loss of $7.38 a share, or $639.3 million, during last year's second quarter.

And they'd been trying to pull the put up with your sucky salary and idiot bosses because of our generous stock grant gambit, too.

I got this link from the DNAI alumni mailing list. In the ensuing discussion, someone sensibly pointed out that it'd be more useful and fun to spend some time talking about what was good about DNAI instead of trying to find how many ways we could say RCN sucks. And that was a good point.

But, y'know? I still like saying it. RCN sucks. RCN sucks. RCN sucks.

=v= I've been on the road lately. Well, actually on the rails, enjoying Amtrak while there's still some left to enjoy, though I've also been contending with a meme. When it comes to the Grateful Dead, I'm only a fan of a handful of their greatest hits, and this meme comes from one of them:

Trouble ahead
Trouble behind
And you know that notion
Just crossed my mind

Trouble behind I've got plenty of, so I'm understandably worried about what's predicted ahead. Apparently it involves red attire that I'd be well-advised to avoid.

Breathe more deeply.

Bridges —build —burn.

Reverse

Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left? Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance.

Use something nearby as a model.

Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies deck is back in print. There are also several free software versions including one for the Palm.

Fred Carpenter is stalking the same game I am in his LiveJournal, but about a thousand times more concisely. Check out his 8/9 entry "on memes." Maybe I should take up poetry. (No quote — it would do the short poem injustice to quote it partially, and I'm feeling too impatient to wait to get permission to quote it fully.)

Updated 9/23/2002: I just realized Livejournal's comments links double as permalinks to entries. So, then, On Memes.

Check out these cool collaborative comics created at one of Comic Relief's Bay Area Comix Saloons.

Words fail me.

Bumper stickers that say "No Baby Dumping" are causing lots of controversy [...] Santa Cruz's Deputy District Attorney wants the stickers placed on trash dumpsters thoughout the city. The idea is to discourage child abandonment.

(Via Morons.org)

The mayor of La Lavandou, France has banned death.

The mayor of a French Mediterranean town, faced with a cemetery "full to bursting," has banned local residents from dying until he can find somewhere else to bury them.

In Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy, a politician gets elected on a "No More Death and Taxes" platform (RAW anticipating extropianism.)

All things considered, I'd've been more impressed if Monsieur Mayor had banned taxes.

(Thanks, Geoff!)

Quoth the New York Times (use 'annoying' for login and password):

He walked to the car and, from a stack in his hand, took out a card colored the bright orange of a New York City parking ticket and imprinted with the word "violation." He slipped it under the windshield wiper.

The owner of the car was in for a bout of that stomach-dropping feeling that accompanies the discovery of a ticket. But Mr. Edmonds and Ms. Benson, friends in their 20's, are not with the Police Department. The card was a message from people who hate sport utility vehicles, and the "violation" was owning one.

"Did you get excited when you saw that ad for an S.U.V. in the remote wilderness?" the text on the fake ticket read. "Did you want to sue the manufacturer for false advertising when you started driving it to the shopping center instead?" It went on — at some length — to castigate S.U.V.'s for their gasoholic tendencies and S.U.V. drivers for buying them.

Shady Cove, Oregon serves up some cheap irony.

The queen of the town’s Spam Parade and Spam Jam is a vegetarian. But Queen Charlotte Boehm does admit she ate Spam earlier in her life.

[...] Nine members of Her Majesty’s Mosquito Court rode behind the Queen of Spam on yellow ATVs. [...] Liz Anderson is the Mosquito’s token Spam eater. "It’s good," said Anderson of a new, low-fat turkey Spam. No one else in the court admitted to Spam consumption.

(Thanks, Timprov!)