News on the March

Couldn't figure out the red noses for a minute...

2009-07-04T23:28:00.003-05:00

...but didn't care!

Then I found this.

This is the sort of thing that makes this country great! (Oh, wait - They're not from this country. Whatever.)

Misc. items from around the Web

2009-06-27T15:32:00.005-05:00

Several things of interest that I don't think I have posted yet:

Seven robots that would be cool to see fight the Terminator. My bet would be on Deathlok or Death's Head.
Awful Library Books.
Toronto Globe and Mail series, The Download Decade. Excerpt: Despite the rapid growth of technology over the past decade, only about one in six human beings on Earth has access to the Internet. When the next billion come online, many of them will not experience the Web through a PC, but rather through smart phones and handheld devices. That new influx of ideas and perspectives is bound to have a profound impact on the next decade of Internet innovation and change how information is disseminated and consumed.
Alternate covers of Billie Jean:

Veuillez installer Flash Player pour lire la vidéo

The Bates - Billy Jean (Michael Jackson Punk Cover) sélectionné dans Musique

Watch more Sessions Under Cover videos on AOL Video

Looking forward to Green Lantern animated feature

2009-06-27T15:26:00.000-05:00

Started Wikipedia stub for Girl 27

2009-06-27T09:47:00.005-05:00

So last week we watched a very very interesting documentary called "Girl 27" about a 1937 rape case involving an MGM sales rep and an underage dance extra. (The young lady's name was the 27th listed on the call sheet for the dance extras that were unknowingly sent out as "entertainment" for the MGM sales convention.)

The other day I started a Wikipedia stub for the film; I was surprised to see that there wasn't anything about the movie, the movie's writer/director/researcher, or the incident itself there already.

One of the big points about this film was that even though it was banner front-page news for a while in 1937, MGM fixers managed to arrange it so that the incident was practically erased from Hollywood's memory, so that today, even film historians had no idea that it happened.

I really have to recommend this movie... It sounds salacious, and certainly by definition it dives deep into salacious material. (It seems like something that James Ellroy would have written about, though I don't believe he has.) My thought was "Well, what if they're just blowing things out of proportion?" - You can never be totally sure, but they present quite a bit of evidence in the doc, and also I see that when writer/director David Stenn wrote his biography of Clara Bow, that he actually debunked as urban legend a certain rumor about Ms. Bow and the entire 1927 USC football team. This suggests to me that he is not one to make explosive claims lightly.

You can watch the whole documentary here on Snagfilms. (Make sure to watch the part at about 29:30 where they show the girls dancing in the 1930s and intercut it w/ J. Lo.)

John Hodgman at Obama dinner

2009-06-21T00:07:00.003-05:00

Watch this now!

I love the distinctions Hodgman draws between Nerds and Jocks, and the specification that actual athletes are not Jocks. Kind of reminds me of this recent article about a study on how people tend to place their trust. Excerpt: Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has argued that in competitive situations, such blind confidence could drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge, reports New Scientist magazine.

Wiki Wiki Wiki!

2009-06-13T21:51:00.003-05:00

New-ish blog: The Wikipedian.

Also - reading "The Wikipedia Revolution" by Andrew Lih.

Check out Google logo for today!

2009-06-06T14:52:00.001-05:00

Happy 25th birthday, Tetris!

Two Tarantino remixes you have to watch

2009-05-25T16:24:00.001-05:00

This is who James Hyman is, btw.

4-20 rolls around again...

2009-04-20T21:52:00.005-05:00

Another year, another April 20th, and another president who used the stuff, and yet marijuana use and possession is still a crime in practically all circumstances in this country. I will repeat myself from a couple years ago:

Now we just need to think of clever double-entendre annual dates for protests in favor of minimal restrictions on immigration, abolishment of tariffs, allowances for gay marriage, and decriminalization of prostitution, and then we'll be getting somewhere.

What they need is to make Ron Paul the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

I admire this Obama response

2009-03-24T23:11:00.003-05:00

From tonight's news conference:

It took us a couple of days [to respond to the outrage du jour] because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.

I'm surprised Obama didn't follow up with "He can go about his business. Move along."

The Story of O ('Reilly)

2009-03-18T06:53:00.004-05:00

Bill O'Reilly, you old devil!.

Speaking of Mr. Welles...

2009-03-15T23:18:00.002-05:00

You have to check out this clip from the pilot of Orson Welles's 1978 interview show, never aired or released:

"How do you do, Mr. Welles."

Beware the itemized lists of March

2009-03-15T22:10:00.005-05:00

A beautiful weekend in Chicago! The ♥G♥ and I took Gilbert on two walks. Items:

Grown up Calvin & Hobbes. Make sure to check out the essay on Fight Club.
Visual and Interactive Guides to the Economic Crisis, from 10,000 Words.
Check out the Perfect Magic Cube.
Spring coming - Want to sit on back deck with Gilbert and a cigar and read: Orson Welles at Work, What Would Google Do?, and The Wikipedia Revolution. (Here's a bunch of podcasts featuring TWR author Andrew Lih.)
Snag Films - Lots of documentaries. Excerpt: SnagFilms is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve. SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web.
If you have never seen Grey Gardens, you need to. If you have seen it, check out this interview:
Mark Ford: Cartoon Genius

Been working on Wikipedia page on Booknotes interviews

2009-03-15T15:34:00.004-05:00

For almost 20 years, I have admired C-Span founder Brian Lamb tremendously, and I anticipate that he will remain one of my heroes for the rest of my life. He is such an excellent interviewer, and his whole philosophy is about making ideas and information available to any who are interested. He is very much a demythologizer of political and media processes, and treats Joe Schmoe American with the same respect as he treats heads of state and Nobel laureates.

Lamb hosted the unique author interview show Booknotes for 15 years. The questions and discussion were and are head and shoulders above those of practically any other show -- One full hour (sometimes two), no commercials, serious non-fiction books, no repeats of guests. A good number of the books and authors that I delved into during those years (and in the years since) I was introduced to by C-Span and Booknotes. It occurred to me a while ago (last June, actually) that it would be great to incorporate a list of these authors, books, and topics into Wikipedia, where much has been written about most of them, but never assembled in this context. Soooo... the article List of Booknotes interviews was born. It has taken a bunch of doing (fitting in edits and organization when I had time) but it's actually in pretty decent shape now. You also can see the to-do list at the article's discussion page if you want to pitch in on anything.

Happy Pi Day! (tomorrow)

2009-03-13T21:13:00.001-05:00

The same thing would happen with an article about the Mayor of Uckerby

2009-02-26T21:11:00.004-06:00

Something I cited a few months ago about Crystal on Survivor: Gabon --

Here's the Gutenburg of a short story called "Unspecialist", by Murray F. Yaco. This blogpost sums it up: A machine can be built to do any accurately described job better than any man. The superiority of a man is that he can do an unexpected, undescribed, and emergency job... provided he hasn't been especially trained to be a machine.

Now ask anybody, especially anybody at work , and they will tell you that I am a fan of automation when possible. But, as I mentioned the other day, sometimes silly things happen when you rely on algorithms.

So, here's what happens when you tell a computer not to allow swear words:

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T22:14:00.002-06:00

West Bank Story shows true love conquering all.

When you rely on too much on algorithms...

2009-02-10T22:10:00.002-06:00

Take a look at the text of the first sentence of the Reuters article on Intel.

Wiki White House

2009-01-31T08:17:00.003-06:00

A couple weeks ago, The New America Foundation hosted a panel called "Wiki White House" -- (Comments here from the panel's "token conservative").

Star Trek videos

2009-01-28T20:57:00.004-06:00

Commenter Sebastiaan van M. has a site with a bunch of Star Trek music videos... Check it out.

I don't know if this one is in that batch, but it sure made me laugh out loud:

Star Trek Rhapsody (Ditto) - The best bloopers are a click away

The 100 Greatest (Non-Fiction) Adventure Books of All Time

2009-01-25T09:59:00.004-06:00

Scanning through some stacks of old magazines to purge from my belongings to see what interesting things I might glean from them before they go to the recycle bin or the resale shop -- Here's a good one: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time as ranked by National Geographic Adventure about five years ago. (Better late than never.) The adjective "adventure" does not mean Allan Quartermain, for instance, but rather IRL figures like T.E. Lawrence, Charles Darwin, Charles Lindbergh, Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Richard Burton, Mark Twain, Ernest Shackleton, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jacques Cousteau, Theodore Roosevelt, and others. For example:

17. Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl (1950) Nine balsa-wood logs, a big square sail, a bamboo "cabin" with a roof made of banana leaves—thus did Norwegian Heyerdahl and his companions set sail from Peru toward Polynesia to prove a point: that the South Pacific was settled from the east. Point proved? Maybe not, but it's one hell of a ride—a daring tale, dramatically told.

(Here's a clip from the Academy Award-winning documentary about the Kon-Tiki)

Simple Complexity

2009-01-23T21:46:00.005-06:00

I love stuff like this. Simple Complexity: An Information Visualization Blog.

Where your bailout money is going:

The odds that you will die of (fill in the blank):

What were those oil prices again?

Obama images (Obamages?)

2009-01-23T20:13:00.007-06:00

So things have settled down a little bit and now Mr. Obama has been hard at work for several days. Like I have been saying, I think this has been a historic event, one that many many many people across America and around the world will remember and reflect back upon for the rest of their lives. However, as I also have been saying, he doesn't get a free pass from me and I am going to be liberal with criticisms when I feel they are merited.

Here are some cool images of our new Chief Executive:

First, the action figure (if you ever want something and you can't imagine that anyone would ever have created it, check Japan first.)

The inspirational leader:

Ready for al-Qaeda:

Now, more conventional shots from the Boston Globe -- More conventional, perhaps, but they are excellent and fascinating -- make sure to check the rest of them out!

Here are some of the famous shots from outer space 9example below).

Here's a good point: ...the GeoEye-1 satellite would be taking images of President Obama’s inauguration from 423 miles up — in space. This could only have worked on a clear day so clouds didn’t block the view. Good news: It was a clear day, and the pictures (above and below) look great.

You know, this guy just seems like he can not lose on the weather... Remember this yahoo who wanted everyone to pray for rain on the night of his DNC speech at Mile High Stadium? It couldn't have been a lovelier summer night. And I can tell you first hand that when he gave his acceptance speech in Grant Park Nov. 4th, it was fantastic weather in the Chicago area... a week later it was freezing.

Open letter to Barack Obama on what to do about Harry Nicolaides

2009-01-19T22:00:00.006-06:00

Open message to Barack Obama (for whom I voted) about how he can deal with the problem of Harry Nicolaides.

The facts:
*Tomorrow is inauguration day, which the entire world will be watching.
*In Thailand, it is a jailable offense to insult the King of Thailand. (On which I have commented previously.)
*News reports have surfaced today that Australian writer Harry Nicolaides has been sentenced to three years in prison for insulting the King of Thailand.

Here's what I have to say to the King of Thailand:
*Fuck You! You're a fucking punk! This is the 21st fucking century motherfucker!

Here's what I have to say to President-elect Obama:
*Tomorrow is one of the most important days in the history of our country because of what you have accomplished. You have been a unifying force during some very difficult times.
*Despite this, some people don't like you or trust you. (I wish you would ixnay the tariff talk, but I still like you.) Some people don't like you because they think you are a socialist, and let's be honest -- Some people don't like you because you are black.

Here's what you could do about the above situation:
*Invite the Thai ambassador to accompany you all day Tuesday, sitting right next to you.
*Have somebody start calling every NewsMax contributor they can get their hands on, have them take turns accompanying you all day, and every hour or so give them a microphone for a few minutes. Maybe invite that "Barack the Magic Negro" guy.
*After they've had the mike for a few minutes, read aloud the full text of the First Amendment; maybe invite the ambassador to read it aloud a few times as well.
*Hopefully he will get the message.
*If not, you could always invade Thailand.

OK, maybe I've been too hard on the King of Thailand and the laws about not insulting him. Tell you what - Here's a traditional way of showing respect in my country. I've added some wings on to the side of the Thai Royal Seal. The golden ring is only for added for people we really want to impress.

What Will Change Everything?

2009-01-11T20:47:00.005-06:00

"What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

That's the question posed here, and you should see all the respondents -- Brian Eno (quite the pessimist), Chris Anderson, Howard Gardner, Kevin Kelly, Michael Shermer, Freeman Dyson, George Dyson, and many many more -- Including the guy whose book I have been reading off and on for past six months, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb response excerpt: I will conclude with the following statement: you cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it. Post enlightenment science, and its daughter superstar science, were lucky to have done well in (linear) physics, chemistry and engineering. But, at some point we need give up on elegance to focus on something that was given the short shrift for a very long time: the maps showing what current knowledge and current methods do not do for us; and a rigorous study of generalized scientific iatrogenics, what harm can be caused by science (or, better, an exposition of what harm has been done by science). I find it the most respectable of pursuits.

Part of me bristles at that (the notion that having them come to put a chip in my head might actually not be something that is all the way a positive) but then I substitute the phrase "economics" for "science" and I swallow it more easily.

In addition to the index at the Edge site, see my own Wikipedia user page for wiki links to all the participants. (All of the participants who have Wikipedia articles, that is.) I haven't fread all the responses by any means, and I may not end up reading every single one. But, if I find some that jump out, I will excerpt and comment on them here.