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My thanks to those who mentioned that commenting in javascript wasn't working. And here I was wondering why I had so few comments relative to my readership.
I fixed it, and removed the non-javascript option, in a blatant act of discrimination against those using antediluvian browsers. Actually, the simple version still exists, I just haven't had a public link to it in some time.
This Saturday, February 8, is the deadline for advance registration to Potlatch, a small sf convention in San Francisco February 21-23, before the membership price goes up to the at-the-door level.
If you're an sf reader, you should check it out, even, or especially, if you never thought you were interested in cons. Potlatch is a bunch of thoughtful, very intelligent, very well and widely read people talking about books and ideas. See for yourself with these notes on some previous Potlatch discussions.
One event I'm excited about is a panel on "Smart Mobs and Civil Polity," whose ringleader is Cory Doctorow, and which concerns issues discussed in Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs, and more. Panelists include sf writer Rudy Rucker, and yours truly.
Hope to see you there!
This coming Saturday, February 8th, is the second Saturday of the month, which means SF Improv is returning to Cafe Eclectica in Albany (just north of Berkeley) for a night of improvised comedy, starting at 8 PM.
Absolutely no scripts were harmed in the production of this improv show: the performers have absolutely no idea what we're doing.
Admission is free. How can we possibly make money when we're just giving away high-quality comedy, you might ask? It's simple, really. VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME.
And if seeing improv has ever made you think "Hell, I could do that!" then go for it! 'cause the next night, Sunday, 2/9, we're holding auditions for new members.
Improv: the most fun you can have with your clothes on? You decide.
Friend, n. Extrovert's definition: Someone who makes sure that you're never alone. Introvert's definition: Someone who understands that you're not rejecting them when you need to be alone.
I sent this to a good friend, an Introvert whom I haven't talked with in some weeks. The entire body of the message was the URL. The entire body of her reply was "Works for me."
It's all we needed.
(Via Sore Eyes)
Teen girls' "wacky eating behaviors" inspire a lame beef propaganda website:
According to a new study from market researchers at Teenage Research Unlimited, one in four teens now considers vegetarianism "cool." The study indicates a rise in vegetarianism in the teen population, particularly among girls.
[...] Enter the folks at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, who have responded to the looming vegetarian crisis by launching a website, Cool 2B Real, in an attempt to link meat consumption with some degree of hipness. The site, which looks like a cross between a Barbie fan page and a Taco Bell ad.
[...] "We hope the 'Cool 2B Real' campaign helps girls make healthy decisions about food and exercise," [chyeah, right] says Mary Young, a registered dietician and Executive Director of Nutrition for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The NCBA, says Young, is concerned about the nutritional shortfalls of vegetarianism, which Young refers to as one of the "wacky eating behaviors" teenage girls tend to favor.
Cool 2B Real must be seen to be believed. "Poll — What type of beef do you most like to eat with your friends?" "Fun Snackin' — Check out these great ideas for after-school snacks, sleepover parties, or just plain fun with friends: Nacho Beef Dip,
Beef on Bamboo,
Beef Taco and Cheese Pockets,
Easy Beef Chili,
Cheeseburger Mac.." And on-line games like Burger Boggle and Chillin' & Grillin'! Are we having fun yet?
Throughout, of course, it's doing its best to marry teens' notions of idependence, authenticity, and fun to being a beef-eater. Because, of course, if you're not doing the same thing as the mainstream, then you're a brainwashed dupe.
(Via Vegan Porn)
In the Eighties, Bruce Feirstein followed up Real Men Don't Eat Quiche with the very funny Nice Guys Sleep Alone. It included a chart of a relationship's happiness over time, from the peaks of initial infatuation and first sex to the valley of "he reveals his entire sexual history" and the off-the-bottom-of-the chart "she reveals her entire sexual history." Of the labels of the y-axis for happiness, I remember only the one at the bottom, representing basest depression: "willing to clean closets."
That association has remained with me since: closet-cleaning as canonical expression of despair.
Last Sunday, I cleaned my closet.
It has been a notably non-utile storage space, filled mostly with clothes I don't wear, whether because they didn't really fit, they needed mending, I didn't have occasion to wear them anymore, or, in many cases because they were just plain ugly. The top shelf was a jumble of sheets, blankets, towels and clothes that I couldn't even get to because the floor was a jumble of old shoes. (When you're an aerobics junkie and your feet are a principal means of transportation, you go through shoes pretty quickly. After a few years, it adds up.)
I recently read Julie Morgenstern's Organizing from the Inside-Out. It contains a lot of good advice. Much of it seems obvious once stated. Choose a discrete target area. Keep at it without getting distracted by all the other targets or other projects that will continously suggest themselves. Sort it all first; purge only after everything's sorted; find a home for everything (you can't have everything in its place without a place for everything); only after all of these things should you consider getting new containers; finally, maintain order.
Getting distracted is a specialty of mi -- oooh! shiny!
Um, I'm back now. (In seriousness, writing this took more than one sitting, and you will never know of how many entries, even the short ones, that's true.)
So, with nothing else scheduled for the afternoon (so I didn't have excuses to stop), I took it one item at a time, and decided one of: throw away; donate to the Free Box in People's Park; bring to a thrift shop; get mended.
Of invaluable assistance in all this was my girlfriend, Pocahontas (not her real name, but, by her request, her nom du MemeMachineGo!). Whenever facing up to old clothes seemed overwhelming, just the presence of someone else for whom they had no psychic weight was extremely grounding, reminding me that, with any degree of objectivity, it was a very silly thing to feel overwhelmed by. And she's personally experienced in de-cluttering and so was ready to call me on any temptation to put off a decision. (She calls it, correctly enough, 'purging,' but having had a good friend in Overeaters Anonymous, the word has alarming connotations for me.) Plus, she has actual fashion sense, so I could defer those decisions.
I've been greatly enjoying having a functional closet full of only things I actually have use for. I forget where I heard that removing clutter from your life makes room for new good things to enter, but I believe it, and will probably write more about it later.
Regular readers might be forgiven for having been sidetracked back there. "Wait, girlfriend?"
Yes, for several months now. Why, yes, I have been holding out on you. And if said regular readers are now making the obvious speculations as to why posting frequency has declined over the past several months, they're largely correct.
I returned a book to the library unread. I knew I wasn't going to have time to get to it before it came due.
=v= Today's Contra Costa Times has a cheery report that the (San Francisco) Bay Area Rapid Transit system is helpfully preparing for a peace rally crowd for this Sunday's antiwar protest in San Francisco. BART will be selling "flash passes" to speed things up.
My inner privacy activist tells me to inform people that if they use ATM or credit cards to buy flash passes — or round trips converted to flash passes — BART will have data on probable protesters which they must by law give to the Office of Homeland Security upon request.
My inner bike activist was alarmed at the part about bikes being banned from East Bay/San Francisco BART between 10:00am and 6:00pm that day. I bike to these protests as a quiet statement against oil wars.
For any who wish to complain about Hallmark's commandeering of the day, know that it's always been about the cards.
In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.
But all of this is a distant descendant of the Roman Lupercalia. So for all you Latin lovers out there, here's my greetings for the day.
----------------------------
| |
| Nonne magnus sum?* |
| |
----------------------------
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| |
| |
| |
----
* "Aren't I great?"
Happy Vain Latin Sign's Day! (I just know Jym's kvelling over the ASCII art.)
On a personal note, Pocahontas and I exchanged Anti-valentine's day cards.
I think my improv troupe's performance last Saturday was our best yet (since I joined.) I had less feel for whether it was good or bad during the performance itself than I've had before, but in a good way — I was too much in the moment to judge. At the end, strangers were telling me it was a great show. One person even tipped us a dollar unbidden — we don't solicit donations.
This week we reviewed the tape, with sound, even. I avoided getting stuck stage right, but someone pointed out a clichéd arm movement of mine. And we found some things worth working on, but it had been a good show.
In the cosmic scheme of things, performing in a free monthly improv show to a crowd of about 30 isn't all that much.
But it makes me really happy to be a part of offering local, live, original theatre for people to gather for, to offer an alternative to sitting by ones or twos in front of the tv.
Gratuitous plug: next show is March 8, same bat-time, same bat-place.
I've seen most of the big theatrical film adaptations of superheroes, out of a combination of curiousity, fondness for the characters, and the spectacle. Generally I've been disappointed. The first Batman was dumb, a triumph of style over substance. The second I saw on video, and left no impression on me beyond it having been a great moment in PVC catsuits.
X-Men had plot holes so large as to be offensive, but Wolverine's movement and fighting were perfect. That his blades had no sockets, but ripped through his flesh and hurt every time, was an interesting innovation. And there hasn't been a better depiction of superhero team fighting.
Spiderman had its moments. Peter getting off on the adulation of the crowd -- I'm genuinely impressed with how much emotion Maguire expressed through a mask. In one way it improved on the Lee/Ditko origin, by giving a reason for Uncle Ben to be in the same place at the same time as the thief Peter allowed to escape -- that he just happened to burgle the Parkers' home always seemed contrived. I was disappointed by his webs being a superpower rather than an invention: the latter kept his being a knurd central to his being Spider-Man. Unfortunately, the villain was awful. Most of the fight scenes ignored his spider-sense and became two guys swapping round-house punches like it was a bad western. Ultimately, my greatest enjoyment was the short CGI sequence at the end of Spidey webslinging through Manhattan.
And now there's Daredevil.
I really like Daredevil. I read Miller's Born Again story as it came out -- a high point in mainstream superhero comics. I've read the collections of the early Miller Daredevil (volumes 1, 2, 3). I was disappointed in his retelling of the origin, though -- Lee and Kirby moved me more in 12 pages than Miller and Romita did in 5 issues. And I'm greatly enjoying Brian Michael Bendis' current work on the series.
But the Daredevil movie.
Ben Affleck in a leather-fetish suit.
I just can't do it.
A Zen koan:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted!
I really, really love strawberries. And I get most of my produce from the local Farmers' Market -- bananas are the only fruit I eat that aren't grown locally.
So, besides biking in the rain, and lamenting the lack of sunshine, the biggest hardship of a Berkeley winter is going without strawberries. But yesterday, the Market had them. In mid-February. Nice and plump and juicy. I had them with banana in my oatmeal this morning.
Northeasterners, don't hate me 'cause my climate's beautiful.
Been going through Ursula Le Guin's translation of Tao Te Ching again. Chapter 18 struck me as relevant to the times:
In the degradation of the great way
come benevolence and righteousness.
With the exaltation of learning and prudence
comes immense hypocrisy.
The disordered family
is full of dutiful children and parents.
The disordered society
is full of loyal patriots.
Quicktime trailer for a forthcoming Robert Anton Wilson documentary.
Two activists have been arrested for the unspeakable crime of humanizing the collateral damage. They’re part of Baghdad Snapshot Action, which has been postering New York City with photographs of Iraquis.
(Via Cheese Dip)
Michael Chabon comments on McSweeney’s No. 10 in this Guardian Article on Dave Eggers.
I had this fantasy of some day running my own magazine that would attempt to revive the grand tradition of the epiphany-free, genre (sci-fi,crime, mystery, thriller, romance, suspense, macabre) short story, a tradition that proudly claims Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton, Robert Graves and so on. I went on about this and finally, to shut me up, Dave said I should guest-edit McSweeney’s. I couldn’t pass up this wonderful opportunity to try and revive a rich branch of English-language literature, one that I want to see flourish again,’ Chabon says. ‘Anyone who has ever wondered why the contemporary short story, while extremely diverse in theme, subject and voice, is so limited in form and structure and so oddly devoid of story might find something to interest him or her in this issue.’
Uh-huh. Yup. Here on Earth Bizarro, fiction magazines on newstands everywhere are just packed with storyless epiphany-based short fiction. To find genre fiction, you need to track down obscure genre quarterlies from university presses with circulations in the triple-digits.
Of course, Chabon himself knows that this is an exercise in getting the literati to read genre fiction rather than resurrecting a lost and forgotten form. But when the heart of the problem lies in genre fiction just being entirely off their radar, I don’t see how agreeing with them that there’s nothing there helps.
The British gov’t is encouraging young teens to have oral sex.
It aims to reduce promiscuity by encouraging pupils to discover “levels of intimacy”, including oral sex, instead of full sexual intercourse.
Excellent. Can the remainder of the Church of Euthanasia ‘s Four Pillars be far behind?
Once upon a time, there was a little non-profit organization called the Cult Awareness Network, which operated a hotline to advise concerned friends and family of people who had joined cults. The Church of Scientology was among the groups they considered a cult. And the Scientologists sued them to bankruptcy and bought what was left . You can call the Cult Awareness Network today, and odds are pretty good you’ll be talking to a Scientologist.
A lot of people were disappointed with Google when they caved when Scientology threatened a DMCA lawsuit and demanded that they cease linking to Operation Clambake . But here’s a scary scenario for you: Google made themselves the test case, fought the legal battle, went bankrupt, was bought by Scientology and Google’s results became what the Church of Scientology wanted them to be.
(Yes, there are several reasons this scenario wouldn’t be likely to play out exactly like that, but I still found it a scary campfire story for geeks.)
For a long time, I’ve wanted to have a sidebar where I could just put quick links to news and things of interest, while reserving the main body of the blog for original content or things I wished to excerpt or comment on. If only I could just dedicate one category to headlines, and have the main body select everything but that category, I thought.
Unfortunately, a shortcoming of Movable Type is that it doesn’t let you select categories exclusively — you can restrict with logical ANDs or ORs but not NOTs. I’ve continued to be surprised with each new release that it hasn’t been implemented.
It was almost a year ago Mena remarked on asking Ben about it :
Here’s my question: What are the technical limitations behind why we can’t have an exclude category in MTEntries?
Kevin Shay verifies there’s demand
One feature that seems to be requested fairly often on the MT support forums is the ability to specify categories by exclusion—NOT in addition to AND and OR—in the MTEntries tag. Well, this plugin doesn’t do that. Sorry. […] I don’t think there’s a good way to implement category exclusion without modifying the code of MTEntries itself.
There’ve been some previous implementations. David Rayne’s and Milbertus’ solutions are similar, but from reading the code I think they implicitly require all entries to have categories as entries without a category would be excluded if entries from any category were excluded. And I have a lot of category-less entries. There are some php approaches but as one implementer notes: “Might noticeably slow down your site, because there’s PHP for each entry” and I don’t have PHP installed anyway.
So taking Kevin’s word for it that I couldn’t look forward to a plugin any time soon, I just modified the code. And so now I have the headlines sidebar I always wanted.
I am a happy geek.
Since sending this story to Boing Boing , about the INS arbitrarily deporting a Canadian citizen making a flight transfer in the U.S., I‘ve been meaning to comment on it here, too. But Danny O’Brien already did the heavy lifting (via Cogito, Ergo Sumana .)
The US detained Maher Arar, a Canadian telecoms engineer who had a connecting flight from New York after a family holiday in Tunis. They deported him to Syria. That was in September of last year. They got around to telling his government in mid-October. Eventually Maher’s family tracked him down to a Syrian jail. He’s still there, being held without charge. It seems that the US was a bit suspicious because the Mounties interviewed him once about the Syrian community in Ottawa. Perfectly understandably, the Americans accused him of being a member of Al-Qaeda — then sent him straight to a country on their own Axis of Evil shortlist.
When I heard about Canada’s travel advisory to the U.S. for citizens of Middle Eastern origin I’d vaguely hoped it was an overreaction to the national climate. I mean, you know how those Canadians are always going off half-cocked. And that’s been shown to be the wishful thinking it was — the advisory came after the Arar incident.
Sumana also offers this imagined dialogue between Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, and his father, Colin Powell.
Michael: (comes home, hangs his jacket on a chair) Hey, guess what, Dad! I’m FCC Chairman!
Colin: That’s great, son! I’m proud of you.
Michael: Now I’m a Cabinet-level official, just like you!
Colin: Uh, I’m sorry, son, the FCC isn’t a cabinet-level department.
Michael: But you can make it one, right, Dad?
Colin: Well, only with Congressional approval.
Michael: Bush never needs Congressional approval for anything!
Colin: Yes, but we’re black, son.
Five major grocery chains in California post warnings about mercury in fish :
The signs mark the first time that any retailers in California — and perhaps the nation — have issued such a strong warning about the health risks associated with a food product. The warnings, posted by Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Kroger’s and Albertson’s, were prompted by a lawsuit filed last month by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The signs, hung near fish counters, advise women and children to not eat swordfish and shark, and to limit consumption of fresh tuna.
A lot of people are boosters of fish for its being high in protein and generally having a favorable fat profile. And they’re right about those things. But what we’re doing to our waterways makes me really concerned about whether fish eating is safe. (Not personally, of course — haven’t had fish in over a decade.)
Operation Pipe Dreams — Ashcroft is keeping the world safe from Internet bong-retailers (I know they were keeping me awake at night.) This Voice of America article says:
Mr. Ashcroft says customers who want to visit some of their favorite drug paraphernalia websites are in for a big surprise in the days ahead. They will be automatically redirected to the website for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
I tried some of the sites named in this Guardian article on the subject, but it’s not happening yet — they’re just down.
And given the national climate, now I’m wondering whether I should’ve used my anonymizer subscription to even look.
Driving while talking on a cell phone is worse than driving under the influence — in fact, driving continues to be impaired after hanging up .
So clearly it’s a great idea for drivers to watch TV .
The monitor itself can swivel up and down and toward the passenger or the driver. “You’re not supposed to be watching while your driving,” Cho warns. Such an admonishment, in fact, flashes on the screen whenever the monitor is turned on. But monitors are popping up all around the driver’s seat. “I’ve seen TVs inside the steering wheel and even in the rear-view mirror,” said Daniel Carranza, owner of The Paint Store Automotive Finishes in Modesto. “I think at some point there’s going to be some sort of law (that limits the driver’s view of monitors).”
We are so dead.
Christ was into body piercing. He only did it a few times, but what a statement he made with his piercings!
When geeks open restaurants: college town Fort Collins, CO has a restaurant called Avogadro’s Number (which I learned because Sam Shaber is playing there in April.)
Thank to the wonders of legislation, meat from livestock fed non-organic feed magically becomes organic again if actual organic feed would have cost too much .
What a great idea. I mean, if they went to all the bother of pricing the difference, well, that shows they meant well, and that’s the most important part. That deserves full credit. I look forward to many more exciting applications of this reasoning.
“Oh, yes, this car is safe. It meets all federal standards for safety. “
“I heard their bumpers fell off.”
“Well, yes, but it would have cost more than twice as much to keep them on, so it still satisfies the standards.”
(Via Vegan Porn )
Last May :
A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed.
Microsoft on Friday signed a pact with the Chinese government to reveal the Windows source code, making China among the first to benefit from its program to allay the security fears of governments. In addition, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates hinted that China will be privy to all, not just part, of the source code the government wishes to inspect.
(Via Slashdot )