TPM: How The Obama Camp Should Respond
30 August 2008
Once again, Josh Marshall is politically astute; their best weapon against Sarah Palin is Hillary Clinton.
John Kerry, Bad-Ass Biker
29 August 2008
“But man…O’ man…John Kerry descended like he stole the friggin’ bike from the GOP.”
danah on Palin
29 August 2008
“As a woman, I’m offended by John McCain’s decision to select Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.”
Deliciously Invasive
26 August 2008
Debs’s blackberry stories (and blackberry pie recipe) make Mark Bittman’s NYT blog!
Robert Dunne, Was 59
21 August 2008
John McCain Doesn't Know How Many Houses He Owns
21 August 2008
“I think—I’ll have my staff get to you … It’s condominiums where—I’ll have them get to you.”
America's Next Vice
21 August 2008
The Medium Lobster is now writing for the Guardian?
See also Doc; Knol is a community site without community.
Vimeo Commits Suicide
27 July 2008
Insulting and expelling their biggest users in a Friendster-esque move.
Always Use Zipcode
22 July 2008
Experimental postal hacking.
Farhad Manjoo Misses the Point of the Long Tail
15 July 2008
It’s not the height of the curve that matters, but the area under it .
Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest
14 July 2008
Some biting entries, but why are all the scientists white males?
A Still Life in Google
8 July 2008
Philipp Lenssen is an Internet treasure.
Brad DeLong Is Confused About His Western Themes
28 June 2008
Best use of embedded YouTube videos in a blog post ever.
Stopping Google
22 June 2008
The Boston Globe discusses search engine law policy; don’t miss the illustration, which makes Google look like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
How to Make Icons
18 June 2008
A/k/a “Andy Pressman’s Sexxx Farm,” it’s old but still amusing.
Raymond Smu-LOL-ion
16 June 2008
ICHC has been on a roll: clever, cute, and silly.
Oil-Making Bacteria
16 June 2008
Don’t invite them to the same party as the bacteria that eat oil.
TV Tropes Wiki
8 June 2008
Amazing resource of common writers’ devices. I love that they feel the need to say, “This is not Wikipedia. We’re a buttload more informal.”
Stanford’s Fair Use Project wins again.
Time: Is It Time to Invade Burma?
10 May 2008
Because the invasion of Iraq and the response to Katrina both went so well.
Return to Dark Castle
27 April 2008
I’m not sure which is more impressive: that they made another sequel to a brutally hard 1986 game, or that they persevered for twelve years in making it. That’s even longer than The Fool and His Money, Half-Life 2, or Duke Nukem Wait Forever
Forgotten Atari Games
22 April 2008
I didn’t have Magna Carta or Wild and Groovy Moon Combat, but they sound better than some of the real games.
Microsoft to Shut Down MSN Music DRM Server
22 April 2008
Translation: the music you “bought” from MSN Music will go bye-bye when your current computer dies.
Winter in Sea
13 April 2008
A Carissa’s Wierd rarity, from a 1999 live set!
Totally Real Number Fields
7 April 2008
Studied by mathematicians who get defensive whenever anyone accuses them of making it all up.
Fafblog is Back!
1 April 2008
New art, too, which suggests that this is for reals, and not an April 1 joke.
m0serious, the SEO Rapper
28 March 2008
Dropping rhymes about keyword selection and tuning ad text.
Road-Coloring Conjecture Proven
21 March 2008
I read the problem statement and thought it sounded infeasible, but no! And the algorithm is cubic in the worst case.
Paul Scofield, Was 86
20 March 2008
Creepily, Netflix sent us A Man for All Seasons yesterday.
Arthur C. Clarke, Was 90
18 March 2008
I hadn’t known the bit about communications satellites.
Gary Gygax, Was 69
5 March 2008
Penny Arcade has the best tribute; and see also
Movie and TV Football Helmet Designs
28 February 2008
There’s a web page for everything.
ForumWarz: An RPG About Posting to Web Forums
27 February 2008
Extremely well-done; extremely profane. See Waxy’s interview with the creators.
The D.C. Circuit Diagrams a Sentence
16 February 2008
Try it yourself; the relevant part is “[Whoever] knowingly … uses … a means of identification of another person … . [shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 2 years.]” What does “knowingly” modify?
Public Library of Law Launches
14 February 2008
Things are moving very fast now in the open access law space.
Your Point of View
6 February 2008
Ken makes a funny about the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal.
Proving yet again why he and they are the best in their respective businesses.
Yankee Doodle, Was 57
30 January 2008
Where are the Tastys of yesteryear?
Kaltura Goes Open-Source
22 January 2008
Think of it as doing for video what a wiki does for text.
My Tiny Life: Now a Free Download
16 January 2008
Julian Dibbell’s classic book about LambdaMOO; don’t miss the trials and tribulations he went through in trying to release it under a Creative Commons license.
Radio Killed the Telephone Star
13 January 2008
Stereo broadcasting predates radio!
Google Calculator Understands the Potrzebie System
13 January 2008
I’m guessing that it went live on Knuth’s birthday.
The Obama Logo's Many Faces
12 January 2008
Damn, they’re good.
Charles and Ray Eames Stamps
9 January 2008
I’m going to stockpile them so I can use well-designed stamps.
That New Xerox Logo Looks Awfully Familiar
8 January 2008
Their old logotype was getting stale, but the new one throws too much of the brand identity overboard.
SnūzNLūz Alarm Clock
4 January 2008
Donates money to a cause you hate each time you hit the snooze button. Ian Ayres would be proud.
Benazir Bhutto, Was 54
27 December 2007
A complex, courageous figure.
Those Threats by Apple? Fake Steve Faked Them.
26 December 2007
Cosmic justice would be done if Apple sued him now over his false claims that they were going to sue him last week.
Self-Waterboarding
22 December 2007
Straight Dope forum poster tries it on himself; concludes it’s unquestionably torture. Required reading.
Apple Threatens Fake Steve
22 December 2007
Someone can’t take a joke.
Chicken Soup for the Soulless
17 December 2007
I’m not the first to ponder zombie philosophy. Thanks, Brian!
T-Mobile Blocks Twitter
15 December 2007
Wireless network neutrality now!
Tales of Beedle the Bard
15 December 2007
I was right about J.K. Rowling’s next project! But will she publish it?
Eugene Volokh Claims Never to Have Heard of "W00t"
13 December 2007
This has to be a joke. Please tell me it’s a joke.
Cory Ondrejka Leaves Linden
12 December 2007
“Irreconcilable differences?” Uh-oh.
SLFC Sues Verizon Claiming FiOS Violates GPL
12 December 2007
It’s the boldest use of the GPL I’ve yet seen.
Passage
7 December 2007
A five-minute, low-fi, emotionally wrenching computer game. The most eloquent counterexample to Spielberg’s fatuous comment yet.
Survey on Search Problems
5 December 2007
Having trouble finding documentation online? Help Andy help developers help you get help.
Vivendi Buys Activision, Renames Itself Blizzard
3 December 2007
Actually, “Activision Blizzard,” but either way, we know what the most valuable brand in this deal was.
SixApart Sells LiveJournal to Russkies
2 December 2007
The sale makes even less sense than their purchase of LiveJournal in 2005.
Great news; CC-BY-SA is an excellent license and this will have good standardizing effects for lots of other projects.
Verizon Wireless to Open Its Network
27 November 2007
The tide is turning.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Shooting Script
25 November 2007
Compare the first draft; methinks I see Gondry’s romantic fatalism in the revisions.
The Superest
24 November 2007
Two talented cartoonists (and guests) draw a chain of hilariously offbeat superheroes, each created to take advantage of the previous one’s fatal weakness. Start here.
Milo Radulovich, Was 81
23 November 2007
His case was as much about the enduringly idiotic capriciousness of unchecked bureaucracy as about anti-communist hysteria.
Amazon's Kindle E-Book Reader
19 November 2007
Neat, but a name suggesting that books are kindling is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Beware of Céline Dion
9 November 2007
Half vampire, half zombie.
Hear the Hearsay
4 November 2007
My latest radio appearance is online.
The Brontothropic Cosmic Principle
31 October 2007
One of Brad DeLong’s commenters absolutely destroys the anthropic principle—in one sentence.
And then publishes the list of banned addresses in his blog. It includes Adam Thierer, who might not like being blacklisted by Chris Anderson, but would fight to the death for Anderson’s right to blacklist him.
FSEvents in Mac OS X 10.5
29 October 2007
This section of John Siracusa’s longer review of Leopard is an outstanding example of good technical software writing.
Avis Bullies Lawblogger
28 October 2007
Their Associate General Counsel posted a baseless trademark takedown request as a blog comment; the most charitable interpretation is that the comment is a forgery posted by someone not affiliated with Avis. (via Trademark Blog)
Mythbusters Slash (NSFW)
25 October 2007
Rule 34 validated again.
Actual Historical Eiffelbahn
23 October 2007
Well, okay, never built, but still, does Dan Simmons know?
Little Bonus Room (MP3)
23 October 2007
As referenced by Jonathan Coulton. I’d been looking for this for years!
Roy Rosenzweig, Was 57
13 October 2007
Advocate for digital history, experimenter with new media, thoughtful theorist of Wikipedia
Writers' Guild Announces Award for Videogame Writing
11 October 2007
Just in time for the strike.
Real-Life Eleanor Abernathy
10 October 2007
130 cats in one apartment; the video is a thing of beauty.
Tim Wu on iPhone Unlocking
6 October 2007
Cf. Gruber’s cow that makes cheese.
Andersen v. Monsoon Multimedia Complaint
26 September 2007
You don’t often see legal documents in Computer Modern.
The Only Healthy Response to Ahmadinejad's Visit I've Seen
26 September 2007
Everything else reminds me of nothing so much as a Two Minutes Hate.
MIT Prank of the Year
26 September 2007
They turned the John Harvard statute into a Master Chief for the Halo 3 launch. (Via Steven)
Amazon MP3
25 September 2007
Remember how the iTunes Music Store blew away all that had come before? Amazon’s MP3 downloads do the same thing to iTunes.
Bender's Big Score
22 September 2007
Submit to the Hypnotoad on November 27!
I Take It Back
21 September 2007
Gosh, you know, I thought maybe I could trust news accounts of what the “fake bomb” actually looked like. Silly me.
Boston Authorities React Appropriately
21 September 2007
MIT student walks into airport wearing a device made out of a circuit board, wires, and Play-Doh, and is promptly arrested. No shutting down the airport, no hysterical press conferences. Maybe they’ve learned something since the Mooninite Menace. While it doesn’t sound like the student intended to “cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort,” and thus she probably didn’t violate the Massachusetts hoax device statute, it was an incredibly dumb thing to do.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to Resign
20 September 2007
This week’s Onion: Mike Johanns Only One Showing Up to Cabinet Meetings Now
Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz
19 September 2007
Classic musical notation joke; someone very clever put a lot of time into this.
Everything You Thought You Knew About Harvard Final Clubs is True?
18 September 2007
Now-deleted Craigslist ad: “I hate to sound so harsh, but I have expectations to live up to. No Black, Asian, overweight, or unattractive women please. Ages 18-22 only.” Could be a hoax, but it has the ring of truth. (Disclaimer: final clubs are not representative of Harvard as a whole.)
Chemerinsky Un-Un-Hired
17 September 2007
Seems like a nice thumb in the eye to those crowing about having derailed the appointment.
Jottit
16 September 2007
Incredibly simple, incredibly polished wiki using Markdown syntax. Fall in love with wikis all over again.
The Big One 3
16 September 2007
Savage Steve Holland to direct a movie that will create a “trilogy of sorts” with Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer!
Michael Mukasey Nominated as Attorney General
16 September 2007
Man bites dog. Color me impressed.
UC Regents Un-invite Larry Summers
16 September 2007
I supported Summers’s ouster as Harvard president, but this is ridiculous. WTF, UC? Trying to prove that your problem is cowardice, not political bias?
Better Off Dead Camaro
14 September 2007
Tracking down the car from a sixteen-year-old movie: now that’s fandom.
stevenf: Bugs Are Magic Tricks
13 September 2007
It is satisfying when you realize how your program is tricking you.
UC Irvine Law School-to-be Fires Inaugural Dean for Being Too Liberal
12 September 2007
Usually, schools wait until they’re in existence to violate academic freedom. This could well destroy the school.
Blendo
10 September 2007
I’d never realized that Blendo was built by the Mythbusters guys. Until now.
Madeleine L'Engle, Was 88
7 September 2007
Author of three books I’ve read and more than fifty I haven’t.
Bad Day for a Limo Driver
6 September 2007
But a good day for cosmic justice.
WiFi-Enabled iPods
6 September 2007
But will they stream to an Airport Express?
So-Called Tetris Fight
28 August 2007
Cute, but the one in blue isn’t a Tetris piece. (via bb)
Burning Man Burns Early
28 August 2007
They should charge the perp with reverse arson.
Gonzales Resigns
27 August 2007
Just in time to save me from blogging that rumors of his impending resignation were implausible.
Bush to Invoke Vietnam in Arguing Against Iraq Pullout
22 August 2007
Remember when the official line was that it was treasonous to compare Iraq to Vietnam?
I Am So Smart! S-M-R-T!
21 August 2007
That’s, um, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit.
Tyler Cowen on Norman Mailer
14 August 2007
“I believe that Mailer has become a quite underrated writer, especially his Harlot’s Ghost. But wife-stabbing is not the main reason why he has failed to win the [Nobel] prize.”
World Fantasy Award Nominations
13 August 2007
Go Susan!
NYT: Console Hope Springs Eternal
12 August 2007
“I’m on my third 360, and it’s working great for me.”
New York Times on Clearview
11 August 2007
Coming soon to a highway sign near you.
Police Question Man Who Smuggled Marmoset onto Plane
8 August 2007
What did he do wrong? Was the marmoset on the no-fly list?
Minesweeper: The Movie
7 August 2007
Parody or satire? (via Blogoscoped)
iWork '08
7 August 2007
iPhone, eh. iWork, wow.
Paul Graham on Stuff
7 August 2007
“A cluttered room is literally exhausting.”
Stevenf: Internet > Hollywood
7 August 2007
“So who do I think will win the high-def format war? TCP/IP.”
Democrats Still Cowards
5 August 2007
Thank you oh so much for giving into the lunatics in the GOP yet again. I’ll miss my privacy.
Ghana Freedom
4 August 2007
Scroll down to listen to one of the jauntiest songs ever.
This Iz Just to Sai
4 August 2007
Good lolcats never get old.
Fafblog Still MIA
3 August 2007
Perhaps it is now a HAUNTED blog?
Why Do Doctors Have Long Waits?
24 July 2007
Tyler Cowen asks a good question; many of his commenters miss its import.
Harry Potter and the Product Placement
23 July 2007
Marty Schwimmer: “You have to wonder how much Scholastic Books had to pay to get the White House to make Voldemort president for a few hours on Saturday.”
Checkers Solved
19 July 2007
Played perfectly, it ends in a draw. A good occasion to remember Marion Tinsley, the greatest player of all time and an amazingly good sport about the advance of computer checkers.
Web 3.0 Sites
13 July 2007
Another perfectly poker-faced one-joke post from Philipp Lenssen.
Neil Young Wearing John Popper's Clothes
2 July 2007
Oh yeah, good cover, too.
Gang Leader Commutes Underling's Sentence
2 July 2007
Impeach Bush now.
Lost Pants Suit Dismissed
27 June 2007
Good news, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an award of attorneys’ fees against this vexatious litigant.
iPhone New York
19 June 2007
This tribute to New York is so good it makes the idea of deaf people getting excited about a phone seem natural.
The General Counsel is Predisposed
13 June 2007
Two painfully embarrassing typos in a three-sentence letter! (If this blog post is accurate, the ONDCP’s Daniel Peterson is both a doofus and a jerk.)
Richard Rorty, was 75
10 June 2007
He died the day after he was scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Harvard. He was too ill to travel, so no degree. That’s Harvard for you.
Working at Google NYC - Nina: Software Engineer
8 June 2007
Go go Google Nina!
Movable Type To Be Released Under GPL
5 June 2007
Outstanding news.
Matt Damon Rags on Bourne DVD Extras
2 June 2007
Yeah, “Bourne in Car, Writing in Book” was decidedly unexplosive.
If I Were Harry Potter's Publisher's Lawyer
1 June 2007
I’d anonymously flood the Internet with vaguely plausible but inconsistent putative spoilers.
Coca-Cola Lobbied for a 7.5-Cent Nickel
28 May 2007
Did they get the idea from Groucho Marx?
Using a product named “Evidence Eliminator” to cover your digital tracks is like cleaning up the bloodstains by burning the place down.
How to Draw the Euro Symbol
21 May 2007
Officially, it’s based on a circle.
Mark Helprin Wants Perpetual Copyright
20 May 2007
Anything that would take this right-wing crank’s novels out of wide circulation can’t be all bad.
Lloyd Alexander, Was 83
18 May 2007
His Chronicles of Prydain are among the very best fantasy novels ever written.
Boston has finally come to its senses: in exchange for community service and an apology, the charges were dropped outright.
Florida Law Restricts Used CD Sales
11 May 2007
Stores can’t pay cash, must thumbprint sellers, and have to hold CDs for 30 days before reselling them. The only bright side is that the law sounds like such a restriction on your first sale rights that it might well be preempted by federal copyright law.
Financier (Pastry)
4 May 2007
A tasty tea cake. I wonder how many financiers enjoy financiers.
Michael Bubble at Last.fm
3 May 2007
343 spelling-impaired listeners; similar artists include Michael Bubblé and Michael Bublé.
What goes around comes around.
The King's English
2 May 2007
From page 255: “The exclamation mark is a neat and concise sneer at the legal profession.”
Roy Pearson Unfit to Serve
27 April 2007
The man is an administrative law judge in DC; he’s suing his dry cleaners for $65 million over a lost pair of pants. He’s turned down a $12,000 settlement offer, and one element of his damages claim is so he can rent a car every weekend to take his clothes to a different dry cleaner. Bringing the kind of outrageous claims he’s bringing shows either a shameful lack of legal knowledge or a shameful disregard for others. Either way, the man is engaged in barratry and should not be a judge. See also Canon 2A. (via)
Mac Tip: Zoom Into Any Area on the Screen
25 April 2007
Why I love OS X, reason number 803 in an ongoing series.
Mass Violence is Central to American History
24 April 2007
My mother was objecting to the incessant description of the Virginia Tech shootings as “the worst massacre in American history,” pointing out that there had been much larger race riots and slaughters of Native Americans. “You should write this up as an op-ed,” I said, and she did.
Get Hostile
23 April 2007
Profoundly addictive online version of Acquire.
Penrose Tile Tattoo
22 April 2007
Badass math, math badass.
Yale Bans Realistic-Looking Swords in Plays
21 April 2007
Response to tragedy: lame, lamer, or lamest? (UPDATE: Yale has rescinded the policy; the dean behind it is still unfit to serve.)
Bézier Curves
19 April 2007
Beautifully elegant animations; watch them and be enlightened.
Castles in the Virtual Air
18 April 2007
Astoundingly ill-informed op-ed about Second Life; it misspells Philip Rosedale’s name and just gets worse from there. As Brad DeLong would say, if the Crimson wants to survive five years, it needs to fire Noah Silver, along with the editor and fact-checker who let this one through.
"Wiki" is Not a Proper Noun
17 April 2007
Do not capitalize it without good reason. “Wikipedia” is a name, but “wiki” is not.
E.V.O.: Search for Eden
15 April 2007
Mysterious time stream evolves you.
Kurt Vonnegut, Was 84
12 April 2007
Interesting trivia: His original master’s degree thesis was rejected; Chicago gave him the degree decades later, on the basis of Cat’s Cradle.
The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures
11 April 2007
Donald Knuth wrote for MAD Magazine!
Mazes and Monsters
10 April 2007
One could view Tom Hanks’s later career as a form of atonement.
Yesno
9 April 2007
Most languages choose consistency over completeness. But not all. (via λ the Ultimate)
Microsoft is Dead
9 April 2007
90% spot on, but what flavor of crack inspired him to write, “The software business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about 2005?” What about minicomputers, where IBM was hardly dominant?
The Virgule
5 April 2007
Know your punctuation; separate lines of poetry with a virgule, but divide fractions with a solidus.
A Doubtful Guest Movie?
5 April 2007
“It would carry off objects of which it grew fond / And protect them by dropping them into the pond.” (Thanks, Keith!)
Pepsi Invaders
4 April 2007
A Space Invaders clone, privately developed for Coke, in which the letters P-E-P-S-I replace the invading aliens. How many kinds of IP trouble can you spot in three minutes?
The $15 Basketball Sneaker
4 April 2007
NB: Total sneaker expenditure could go either up or down.
Aislinn: “For someone who’s basically happy, you have quite a taste for sad music.”
Chocolate Jesus Exhibit Cancelled
31 March 2007
And this is different from Russell Stover’s caramel-filled chocolate cross how?
Online Gamer Makes Endangered Species Policy
30 March 2007
“But mobs never go extinct!”
They Didn't Study
29 March 2007
Via Daring Fireball, the best bad test answers ever.
It's Now Official: Microsoft is Doomed
26 March 2007
I’m being deliberately obscure; I’ll be surprised if even one of my readers makes the connection I have in mind. (Via Searchblog.)
Worst Canned Herring Ever
25 March 2007
Be forewarned; you cannot unsee these photos. (Even if I hadn’t read the Elder Ones jokes at Metafilter, the word “Lovecraftian” would have come to mind.)
And Just What is the Plural of Octopus?
25 March 2007
“Octopuses” seems to be the consensus pick for the best choice. Don’t say “octopoda”; that’s the taxonomic category (the order, to be precise).
Organization of Octopus Arm Movements: A Model System for
Studying the Control of Flexible Arms
25 March 2007
Octopuses extend their arms by sending a bend towards the tip. “Every few trials, the animal was rewarded with a piece of crab meat tied to the target.”
Paul Cohen, Was 72
25 March 2007
He invented forcing, one of the great and beautiful techniques of set theory, and one that I barely understand, even on good days. My appreciation (read down); Wikipedia.
Rampage
25 March 2007
Sometimes, the simple photo manipulations are the best.
The Mathematics of Turfgrass Maintenance, 3d ed.
24 March 2007
Perhaps the most boring book title of all time.
Three Models of Law Review Competition
23 March 2007
And a comment to a post at Concurring Opinions about whether it’s harder to publish at top-N law reviews than in the past. Raw submission and rejection rates don’t provide sufficient information to tell us what’s happening.
A Model of Law-Review Submissions
23 March 2007
A comment of mine to a Conglomerate thread on law review rejection rates. The law review system as a whole can push good scholarship into more prestigious journals even if the editorial process at different journals is indistinguishable.
Throw Him Down, McCloskey
22 March 2007
One of Michigan Jay’s ditties, but check out the lyrics that didn’t make it into the cartoon.
Best. Holdout. Ever.
22 March 2007
With a lateral-support issue, for good measure.
Letterhead Fonts Seals Its Doom
20 March 2007
Slaps DRM on its fonts, with predictably bad results: designers can’t send fonts to printing companies, can’t embed them in PDFs, and can’t use standard font-management software. You can fight the digitization of the world, or you can embrace it …
iTunes Gets Sort Fields
20 March 2007
Great feature, but don’t use it yet. It can corrupt your library database and cause duplicate entries.
Prison Fact of the Day
20 March 2007
The total percentage of institutionalized adults is roughly constant since 1953; back then they were primarily in mental institutions, while today they’re overwhelmingly in prisons. Critical question: how else have their demographics changed?
Mako Has a Worse PHL Experience Than I Did
20 March 2007
I won’t spoil the punch line, but his reflections on what happened are a must-read.
John Backus, Was 82
20 March 2007
We’ve come a long way since Fortran, but nowhere near as far as his team went in creating it.
Ben Edelman Buries the Lede
18 March 2007
He’s defended his Ph.D. and will be joining the faculty at the Harvard Business School. Congratulations, Ben!
University of California Absolute Pitch Study
16 March 2007
Or call 1-800-TUNED-IN. There’s an online test; I most emphatically do not have perfect pitch.
Moderation Strategies
14 March 2007
Great resource, ironically overrun by spam (And have I kvetched about how hard it is to print out a wiki?)
New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest no. 88
13 March 2007
For once, all three of the captions are great.
The Long Lines Building
28 February 2007
At first, I thought it was a prison from the far future.
Naive Decision Making [PDF]
19 February 2007
T.W. Körner strikes again.
Don't Eat the Squirrels
19 February 2007
(More than twice a week)
Enviga Sued for False Advertising
9 February 2007
Zero calorie, negative taste.
Mooninite Menace Press Conference
1 February 2007
Mark Frauenfelder: “The press accuses of them of not taking it seriously but, in a sense, they’re taking it just as seriously as they ought to.”
Steven Frank's zep.pl
31 January 2007
Code as speech.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Shuts Down Boston
31 January 2007
Silly marketing campaign + idiot cops = terror scare.
Patry on Copyright
27 January 2007
My review at LawMeme.
Wikiworld
26 January 2007
“Jimmywhale” is going into my lexicon.
The People's Mario
23 January 2007
The most genuinely socialist video games are Space Invaders and Lemmings.
New Tropicana Carton
5 January 2007
So pretty I had to drink some (see also)
Douglas Wolk on Numa Numa
14 December 2006
Infectious happiness, I say.
E.G. Daily
27 November 2006
Babe, Buttercup, and Tommy Pickles
Midnight Zamboni Run Prompts Firings
23 November 2006
Perfect headline writing.
Myspace Login Page Spoofs
29 October 2006
User-supplied HTML can defeat the “look for a myspace.com URL in the address bar” heuristic.
Cross-Site Request Forgery
29 October 2006
The scariest security issue you’ve never heard of.
Meatbeard
27 October 2006
Word of the day.
Muffler Men
26 October 2006
Too creepy to make me want to buy anything.
Google Blog on "Google" as a Verb
25 October 2006
Quite fairminded, as these things go. (Their NDA for visitors is also surprisingly reasonable.)
Wilco Live at the 9:30 Club, 2006-10-19
23 October 2006
They’re incredible live.
Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-Up
18 October 2006
Jaw-dropping. There’s a book in here.
Habeas Corpus, Was At Least 700
28 September 2006
Farewell, Great Writ. The rule of law was good while it lasted.
Podcast Ready C and D
26 September 2006
PODCAST READY for podcasting is fine with Apple.
El Diablo Con Dinero
24 September 2006
Chavez calls Bush a “devil;” but the Simpsons got there first and better.
Apple Sends Cease and Desist to Podcast Ready
23 September 2006
This one’s easy. “Podcast” is generic.
Amazon Industrial and Scientific
19 September 2006
Just how small is our stainless-steel hypodermic tubing?
The Girl with Error-Message Eyes
15 September 2006
Not a snow crash?
Mary Sue
12 September 2006
Proxies for the author in fan fiction.
The Mountain Goats: Dance Music
5 September 2006
Very Sifl & Olly (via Lady Grey)
Simpsons/Star Trek Themes Mash-Up
30 August 2006
Does justice to the strangeness of both.
Theatrical Schedule A etc. (PDF)
24 August 2006
Way more than you wanted to know about screenwriting credits.
The Muppet Show
10 August 2006
I was curious.
A Hero of Our Time
7 August 2006
The Nabokov translation (out of print, sorry) is excellent.
TV-B-Gone
6 August 2006
Works as advertised. Highly recommended.
Rankine
2 August 2006
is to Fahrenheit as Celsius is to Kelvin.
O Grab Me Act of 1807
24 July 2006
I was curious.
A Foreign Affair
24 July 2006
More great Garin journalism.
Eugène Grasset
24 June 2006
I was curious.
Futurama to Return to TV
22 June 2006
Yay, but they’ve burned me before.
Paper Density Explained
22 June 2006
I was curious (see also).
Uses off-the-shelf crypto primitives.
NewsHour Theme Party
18 June 2006
It does run on the same station as Sesame Street.
Bell Labs Holmdel Building to be Demolished
14 June 2006
I made punch cards there.
Juggling Inside an Inverted Cone
1 June 2006
Geometry in action.
PaperPro Staplers
24 May 2006
Best. Stapler. Ever.
Freedom Defined
2 May 2006
A general definition of “free content” (collaborative work-in-progress).
John Kenneth Galbraith, Was 97
30 April 2006
A man of unconventional wisdom.
Wes Anderson American Express Ad
27 April 2006
Can you do a .357 with a bayonet?
Jane Jacobs, Was 89
25 April 2006
Her books and her cities live on.
Silver Needle in the Skype [PDF]
8 April 2006
Why does Skype hate debuggers?
Upside-Down Total Eclipse
8 April 2006
First Hurra Torpedo, now this.
Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing
8 April 2006
Corbato, Licklider, Roberts, Kahn, Heart … wow.
Thanks, Ken!
One extra Morse code dot = $20,000 loss
Stanislaw Lem, Was 84
27 March 2006
“Pirx’s Tale” is the best sci-fi short story ever, with the possible exception of “Terminus.”
The Jerker Shrine
21 March 2006
I loved that desk.
The Glaucoma Hymn
23 February 2006
Halted by progress … progress of science. [via bb]
Wendy Wasserstein, Was 55
30 January 2006
I’ve successfully blocked most of my memories of working on Isn’t it Romantic?.
Nam June Paik, Was 73
30 January 2006
Not to be all grinchy, but his work never really did much for me.
Hospital Sign Captions
25 January 2006
Ninja victim reassembly et al. (via Lady Grey)
Raoul Bott, Was 82
9 January 2006
Unhelpful explanations of the math heighten the pathos.
Vincent Schiavelli, Was 57
27 December 2005
Farewell, Mr. Kerber.
Cats in Sinks
15 December 2005
At first cute; then numbing.
Six-Figure Bar Mitzvahs
12 December 2005
Today I am a wastrel.
The Secret Ambition of Racial Profiling
29 November 2005
Go, Steven!
UL on Turkey Fryers
24 November 2005
There is no great fire-safety genius without some touch of pyromania.
Engineering Mechanics for Structures
20 November 2005
Lucid, informative, and entertaining.
The Time-Travel Story and Related Matters of SF Structuring
14 November 2005
By Stanislaw Lem; thanks, waggish!
Elton John, Vampire
7 November 2005
Read the caption.
GET.RICH.NOW!
6 November 2005
How many of you remember this one?
Worst. Lip-sync. Ever.
27 October 2005
What’s amazing is not so much the lip-sync itself as that the director must have been in on the joke.
The Shining Trailer Remixed
29 September 2005
Makes you appreciate the importance of editing.
The Phlogiston Theory
25 September 2005
Given the available data, it was actually pretty smart. (See also)
Bohemian All Your Base Rhapsody
8 August 2005
The mashup works because neither work makes sense in the first place.
Russia's Largest Spammer Killed by Offline Robbers
26 July 2005
The story reads like a bar exam fact pattern.
Hollywood Query Letters Blog
13 June 2005
These are the scripts that get redlit.
July 11th is Fair Use Day
2 June 2005
FUD is perhaps not the best acronym and … hey, I had dibs on July 11!
The Complete New Yorker on Disc
2 June 2005
Scans of every page … but will there be text-only versions?
Phil Spector's Not Looking Good
29 May 2005
He has such lovely, crinkly hair.
Deere John
24 May 2005
More jaunty machinery.
How to Make Pruno
10 May 2005
Also: more project ideas from the same author.
Time Traveller Convention
1 May 2005
Based in part on a reference to Cat and Girl
Eggs Benedict XVI
25 April 2005
A one-joke URL.
Saunders Mac Lane, Was 95
25 April 2005
Some folks call category theory “abstract nonsense,” but I like it.
Strangest "Total Eclipse of the Heart" Cover Ever
24 March 2005
The performance involves smashing a stove.
Deuces
7 March 2005
Spinny wheels for your bicycle.
We Built This Starbucks
4 March 2005
Shockingly awful MP3, thanks to the The Stranger. Pure Seattle Zen.
2,000 Ton Burning Manure Pile Extinguished After Four Months
23 February 2005
The exact opposite of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Numa Numa
21 February 2005
Euphoric, incomprehensible, and quite possibly copyright infringement.
Captain Hooke Silver, Attorney at Law
19 February 2005
I’m an attorney who does not like ninjas.
Cover of O'Reilly's Open Source Licensing Book
2 February 2005
Sad but hilariously true.
Anime Popeye
24 November 2004
Seriously, Popeye: get help.
Strong Bad Gets a Virus
22 November 2004
Did the quadratic formula a splode?
Shatner Sings "Rocket Man"
15 November 2004
The past is a strange place. Espcially the 1970s.
Another Korner Index
7 November 2004
X, marks the spot, 590
Cobra Commander for President
1 November 2004
Has G.I. Joe made you safer?
JibJab's Return: Good To Be In DC
28 October 2004
Note the obviously public domain song.
Hey Hey 16k
28 October 2004
Strange Flash returns!
The Dan Quayle Center
23 August 2004
Of the five U.S. vice presidents from Indiana, Quayle is the most famous.
Spider and Web
21 August 2004
A marvelous modern text adventure.
NYPL Online Style Guide
15 August 2004
XHTML and CSS are your friends.
How to Use Dashes in HTML
15 August 2004
Yes, I am a punctuation snob.
Character Code Tutorial
15 August 2004
For starters, don’t say “character set.”
No Starch Press
7 August 2004
Nice people, nice books.
Environmentally Conscious Burial
5 August 2004
Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth?
Nancy Lebovitz Buttons
11 June 2004
Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Fighting Games Hey Ya
29 April 2004
The banana cracks me up.
Death Studies
27 April 2004
Not to be confused with …
The Journal of Near-Death Studies
27 April 2004
It’s had one of its own.
Mail-Order Leeches
25 April 2004
Never reuse a leech.
How Big is an Acre?
24 April 2004
It follows that there are 16 mules in a square mile.
Futurama to Return
15 April 2004
Too good to be true.
Clay Shirky on New York
9 April 2004
“What [Dale] Peck writes is distilled envy, sanitized for your convenience.”
One-Legged Dance Dance Revolution
22 March 2004
Proof that DDR kicks ass.
Murder Suspect 'Best Dad Anybody Could Ever Have'
15 March 2004
Just like Zeus said about Kronos.
Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
23 February 2004
When lawyers meet internet quizzes, the results aren’t pretty.
Spot the Fake Smile
11 February 2004
No, this is not a quiz about British dentistry.
D.C. Primary Results
15 January 2004
Vermin Supreme?
This Postmodern World
6 January 2004
This one’s for Tim.
The Cat in the (Officially Licensed) Hat
22 November 2003
The mind boggles; the gorge rises.
John Hart Ely, Was 64
31 October 2003
For a constitutional theorist, he was pretty good.
The Evasion-English Dictionary: The Extended Edition
27 October 2003
Feel means am. The relationship means you. Like means think, brain, think!
Surname Distribution Maps
23 October 2003
The regional variations can be stunning.
Occidentalism: The Extended Edition
13 October 2003
Coming soon to a bookstore near you.
The Fool and His Money
6 October 2003
Dang! Postponed!
Droid Quest
6 October 2003
I loved that game.
Edward Said, Was 67
26 September 2003
His sun has gone down.
George Plimpton, Was 76
26 September 2003
No more Mousterpiece Theater.
Garrett Hardin, Was 88
21 September 2003
Depleting the commons no longer.
Idiot Legal Arguments
13 August 2003
You can’t hack the law.
Presidential Approval Chart
31 July 2003
The linearity is striking.
Barney as Torture
21 May 2003
“I never want to go through that again.”
Michael Kelly, Was 46
8 April 2003
A man who symbolized everything that was wrong with not one, but three magazines.
H.S.M. Coxeter, Was 96
7 April 2003
The very spirit of symmetry.
Battleground God
4 April 2003
Atheists can be inconsistent, too.
Dolphins at War
25 March 2003
I still say they’re doing it with Photoshop.
Sea Lions at War
22 February 2003
Sounds fishy to me.
My Name Is Blanket
17 February 2003
Paul Ford is a genius.
It's Your Ring
17 February 2003
Darth Vader's Psychic Hotline
2 February 2003
Featuring a cameo by Mike Jittlov.
Tuesday Morning Quarterback
13 January 2003
So that’s where it went.
Charismatic Megafauna
8 January 2003
A metaphor in search of a referent.
Oolong Dead at 8
8 January 2003
Wear a pancake in his memory.
World on Fire
4 January 2003
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Fundamental Particles
30 December 2002
Color-coded for easy reference.
Hello Tarot
30 December 2002
Hello Cthulhu meets Stick Figure Tarot.
Optical Camouflage
30 December 2002
Must be unseen to be believed.
The Wilhelm
30 December 2002
The scream that wouldn’t die.
Teach Yourself Quenya
28 December 2002
Because Sindarin is for wimps.
Flash Flash Revolution
8 December 2002
Completely missing the point.
Phillip Berrigan, Was 79
7 December 2002
The Man wins again.
Flaming Text
1 December 2002
Ruining the web, one font at a time.
Sierra Game Soundtracks
1 December 2002
Oh, the memories.
MIT's $30M Bribe
1 December 2002
HOWTO: rig a standards-setting process
Kikkoman Man
25 November 2002
Orrin Hatch Sings!
22 October 2002
He hates the RIAA, you know
Randall Terry Sings!
22 October 2002
Krisha preserve us.
Star Wars 419
22 October 2002
Best. Spam. Ever.
TinselTown Club
14 October 2002
Free the Mouse in 4/4 time
Stephen Ambrose Dead at 66
14 October 2002
God hates plagiarists.
Camera Zapping
14 October 2002
When lasers are outlawed, only outlaws will have lasers.
International Animal Noises
12 August 2002
How to translate “moo,” “oink,” “bzzz,” and so on into major world languages.
Fight Your Virtual Right (of Contract)
12 August 2002
A bunch of California geeks have built a profitable business using eBay to sell characters and items in Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot. Predictably, the game-runners came in and shut down the auctions, and now the geeks are suing. My heart is with them, I guess, but their case looks awful damn shaky.
OnOccidentalism
12 August 2002
Militant Arab Muslims aren’t the first to hate the “West.” This article describes the common threads of Nazi anti-semitism, Russian pan-Slavism, Japanese mysticism, and fundamentalism of all flavors.
Montezuma's Revenge
12 August 2002
An awful Apple II platform run-and-jump game. Terrible control, lousy graphics, and unsatisfying gameplay. Why did I like it so much thirteen years ago?
Paramilitary Flash
12 August 2002
Most depressing link of the day: AUC, Colombia’s murderous right-wing paramilitary faction, takes its propaganda war to the Web with this shooting-gallery game.
Taxi Two Thousand
12 August 2002
If we ever get “a personal rapid transit system of computer-controlled, three-passenger vehicles on slim guideways operating on-demand and nonstop direct to any station in the network,” these are the people who’ll bring it to us.
Shadow Government
12 August 2002
For real. Bush has dispatched ~100 administration officials to secret undisclosed fortified bunkers, to ensure government continuity in the event of a massive terrorist attack. Not in itself necessarily a bad idea, but note that “only the executive branch is represented in the full-time shadow administration.”
Memoirs of King Birendra
12 August 2002
King Birendra of Nepal, along with much of his family, was killed a few months ago, apparently in a murder-suicide carried out by his lovelorn son. The email I recently received promoting this biography of Birendra is, without question, the most interesting spam I have ever received.
Kaiju Big Battel
12 August 2002
Kaiju Big Battel is the world’s only live monster wrestling spectacle.
Oranges and Graphic Design
12 August 2002
They Might Be Giants, ever playful, wrote a theme song for The Chopping Block, the design firm behind TMBG.com
Plush Yak Doll
12 August 2002
Because there aren’t as many yak toys in the world as there ought to be.
Spare Change
12 August 2002
An old Broderbund game for the Apple II. The gameplay mechanics are strangely catchy: you and a pair of mutants chase each other around an arcade, trying to steal tokens and feed them to jukeboxes, slot machines, and other devices.
Social Science at 190 MPH
12 August 2002
An article on the social dynamics of NASCAR races. Not the social dynamics of NASCAR fans, which seems to be the usual angle. No, this article is about the cooperative and competitive tensions in the races themselves: the fact that cars drafting off one another go faster than cars on their own, apparently, gives NASCAR races a unique texture, characterized by the emergence of temporary coalitions and sudden, dramatic, rearrangements of loyalties. That the article is written by someone who is clearly a major NASCAR fan adds to the appeal. (Thanks to Gus for pointing me at First Monday, where I found this gem, along with all sorts of other neat articles.)
Hole in the Wall
12 August 2002
An Indian scientist set up an Internet kiosk in a New Delhi slum. Local children, using it without any adult assistance, mastered computer basics at a remarkable speed.
Behind the Robes
12 August 2002
While attending law school, future Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and William Rehnquist dated each other. Ewwwwww. (Sorry for the Google-cache link: the original seems to have gone missing from
Commercial Terrorism
12 August 2002
A Utah law, held unconstitutional by a federal court, that would have had the effect of classifying protests outside of businesses as “terrorism.” The act made it illegal to enter business premises to interfere with the business’s operation — so far, so good — but then defined “intrusion” to include sound waves and light rays. We are not making this up.
Chocolate French Fries
12 August 2002
And that’s not even the worst of it. Heinz — the green ketchup company — is also planning to bring cinnamon french fries and sky blue french fries to market. They should be shot for the marketing campaign alone, which features the incoherent press release header “Ore-Ida puts Fun Into Funky With the Introduction of Funky Fries” and also includes the flavor name “Sour Cream and Jive.”
Tribal Workers
12 August 2002
A reasonably interesting article on the job-centrism of succesful affluent twenty-somethings. Perhaps laden with overgeneralizations, but fairly thought-provoking.
The Art Of MEMRI
12 August 2002
The Middle East Media Research Institute translates articles in Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew for a Western audience.
Ashcroft Sings!
12 August 2002
John Ashcroft, singer/songwriter. Warning: he’s a surprisingly good vocalist, but as a lyricist, he could use a good ass-kicking. Contains the phrase “like she’s never soarn before.”
Best. Walkthrough. Ever.
12 August 2002
A walkthrough to the classic Infocom text adventure Leather Goddesses of Phobos that goes far above and beyond the call of duty.
And Then There Were None
12 August 2002
Good old-fashioned anarchist sci-fi. Probably reproduced without permission, which seems oddly appropriate.
Tough Luck, Detainees
12 August 2002
The first of the lawsuits over the Guantanamo Bay detainees was shot down a couple weeks ago by a California federal court. I finally got around to reading the decision, and whoo boy, I’m not sure that the court’s reasoning is such a good idea. You see, the court went back to the original lease to assert that no American court has jurisdiction … because Cuba retains sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay. Is it just me, or is this an open invitation to the Cubans to come in and demand the detainees’ release?
Tiny Polemics
12 August 2002
Micro-propaganda, 285x290 style. Quality varies from pithy to pathetic.
Up With People Goes Down
12 August 2002
Old news, but I just found out about it now. The relentlessly peppy touring production-number company Up With People closed its doors in late 2000. Apparently, their business model — in which you pay to go on tour with them — was just unsustainable. I especially like the line that they were “facing increased competition from mainstream acts.”
Wings of Fury
12 August 2002
A somewhat better Apple II game of World War II fighter combat. The controls and gameplay were clearly very extensively playtested, because the mechanics just work. All the same, it hasn’t held up so well: perhaps it’s my Internet-addled attention span, but I can’t play it for more than five minutes at a time. In this day and age, it’s boring.
The Complete Newgate Calendar
12 August 2002
An 18th-19th century English volume of ghastly true-crime stories. Learn about timeless con games, botched executions, unlawful marriages, and much much more.
The Kentucky Navy
12 August 2002
Yes, Kentucky is landlocked. But State Representative Tom Burch wants the state to buy the USS Louisville and deploy it on the Ohio River to sink riverboat casinos.
Voodoo on the School Board
12 August 2002
A parent representative to a Manhattan school board was dismissed for allegedly practicing voodoo on the superintendant. Her supporters are claiming she would never stoop to using voodoo powder, which bothers the scientist in me. Shouldn’t the response be “and so what if she did?” (Link thanks to Gus)
Fall Into The Gap
12 August 2002
The major investment rating services have downgraded The Gap’s debt; the company’s bonds are now considered junk. Hey, protestors: pile-on time?
Beer Riots
12 August 2002
In American news culture, when blacks riot, it’s scary. When whites riot, it’s funny. So funny that even an impassioned article about the double standard for coverage of riots can’t resist cracking the jokes. My favorite line: “With apologies to the National Rifle Association, beer doesn’t riot, people riot … white people, to be precise.”
Drunk White People Rioting Again
12 August 2002
This article has an interesting focus on police reactions; by “interesting,” I mean that it raises more questions than it answers, especially about the author’s preconceptions. For fun, figure out what the throwaway reference to “social injustice” is doing in there.
John Poindexter, Riding High
12 August 2002
Yes, that John Poindexter. One of the wobbliest of the bumbling brains behind Iran-Contra is back, heading up the Information Awareness Office (high-tech spying) and the Information Exploitation Office (high-tech shooting).
With You Always
12 August 2002
Jesus is with you always, whether you’re selling insurance, welding, or playing the french horn. The sort of earnest sincerity displayed by these pencil drawings is one reason why irony deserves to exist. (link courtesy of Chris Rugen at The Ranting Forum).
Props by IDM
12 August 2002
IDM manufactures a line of plastic imitation televisions, computers and stereos for furniture stores to use on their display models. The Props collection also includes a realistic-looking “surveilance camera” which rotates, thanks to an internal battery.
Where There's a Whip, There's a Way
12 August 2002
A song from the 1980 animated version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Return of the King. Note that this is the third book of the trilogy; Rankin-Bass skipped the first two. The lyrics are most definitely not taken from the book.
Project Grizzly
12 August 2002
Troy Hurtubise has a dream: to create an armored suit capable of standing up to an attack by a grizzly bear. He and his suit are the subject of this documentary film.
Polygamy Porter
12 August 2002
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the beer label that launched a multi-year freedom-of-speech lawsuit between Wasatch Brewery and the Utah office that regulates alcohol advertising.
Post Office Sells Mail on eBay
12 August 2002
There was a Simpsons episode about this.
Project Grizzly, Round II
12 August 2002
Troy Hurtubise, inventor of an anti-grizzly suit of armor, has announced that he will test it in action against a real, live Kodiak bear on the 9th of December.
Reading Hieroglyphs
12 August 2002
A self-study beginner’s guide to Middle Egyptian and the culture that produced it. Its examples are drawn from the collections of the British Museum.
Shlonglor's Driving Page
12 August 2002
In a previous existence, Shlonglor ran one of the most important Warcraft II fan sites on the Internet. Now he works for Blizzard, clips headlines, rants about the world, and races his Civic on the freeway.
Albanian Pyramid Schemes
12 August 2002
“At their peak, the nominal value of the pyramid schemes’ liabilities amounted to almost half of the country’s GDP. When the schemes collapsed, there was uncontained rioting, the government fell, and the country descended into anarchy and a near civil war in which some 2,000 people were killed.”
Very Large Hammer
12 August 2002
There are two jokes here waiting to be made. One is about $400 hammers; the other is about the search for nails.
Van Halen and M&Ms
12 August 2002
The urban legend that Van Halen would trash their dressing room if they found brown M&Ms backstage at one of their shows is in fact true.
Age of Consent
12 August 2002
You know, like Age of Empires and Age of Wonders.
Watchmen Screenplay
12 August 2002
After the publication of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s graphic novel Watchmen in 1987, Terry Gilliam and Joel Silver optioned the movie rights. This is the screenplay version that Sam Hamm wrote for them. While many of the characters and events are familiar, Hamm altered the ending and side plots radically enough to fundamentally alter the meaning of the story.
Skotos Tech
12 August 2002
Text-based gaming lives at Skotos, a low-profile start-up developing the tools to marry Infocom-style text adventures and MUDs. Brian Moriarty — an Infocom alum and the author of Trinity, the most emotionally moving text adventure ever — is their Director of Game Development.
Treason and Sedition
12 August 2002
Chapter 115 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code governs actions against the government of the United States. Generally, “sedition” is defined so as to include only violent acts and plans, but the “aid and comfort” clause in the definition of “treason” is considerably more vague.
Saints' Days
12 August 2002
An index of saints’ feast days, indexed by date. For example. the 26th of October is Saint Bean’s Day, and the 27th is Saint Polycarp’s Day.
Say It In Yiddish
12 August 2002
An elegiac essay by Michael Chabon, inspired by a Yiddish phrasebook for travellers. If there existed a country where such a phrasebook were useful, what would that country be?
Star Wars Plush Toys
12 August 2002
A set of plush dolls based on Star Wars characters produced in Japan in the early 1990s.
Transcopyright
12 August 2002
Ted Nelson’s 1995 proposal for transcopyright, in which a publisher allows free virtual republication of documents, in the form of instructions on how to get and assemble them. The actual bits need to be purchased directly by each reader.
The World Around
12 August 2002
The Library of Congress prepared these 101 studies of countries around the world for the Army. Each includes a detailed history, together with political, social, and economic information.
The Ruby Programming Language
12 August 2002
Dave told me about Ruby, an object-oriented scripting language with a syntax that actively encourages good code. In addition to a distinctive module system and an automatic marshaller, Ruby prominently features anonymous lambda closures, like any good functional programming language.
Super Mario: Final
12 August 2002
This was linked from AOL’s “AIM Today” page. The game has nothing to do with Mario, other than the use of various (presumably copyrighted) images from the Nintendo game. The game is also abysmal, verging on unplayable. AOL’s reasoning is unclear.
How Companies Manipulate Information
12 August 2002
Richard Posner has commented that truth is like a product with a ninety-five percent market share and that falsehood like one with a five percent share. What happens when people — and large, rich, corporations — start taking that metaphor seriously?
Structural Package Design
12 August 2002
A reference book for package designs, showing how various kinds of boxes and cartons, familiar and unfamiliar, are assembled.
Corporate Identity
12 August 2002
A sample book of corporate graphic design, showing how companies’ visual images are constructed by imposing a consistent design aesthetic on everything it makes, owns, sells, or touches.
Governmental Use of Facial-Recognition Software
12 August 2002
Smith is most concerned about safety and privacy, but consider also accuracy. Think of everyone denied a loan because of a mistake in the credit-bureau databases, and imagine that they’d been thrown in jail instead.
Digital Lighting Control
12 August 2002
This patent is the foundation for modern theatrical lighting. In one fell swoop it presents the idea of digitally controlling light intensity and lays out a complete protocol to make that idea work.
DeLillo on Terrorism
12 August 2002
“In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that’s filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.”
Flat Eric
12 August 2002
Flat Eric was the puppet star of a series of Levi’s Sta-Prest television commercials in Europe, in the most memorable of which he bobbed along to techno while riding in a car. Just another piece of culture that never really made it to the U.S.
Fear and Trembling
12 August 2002
Perhaps Kierkegaard’s most influential work, Fear and Trembling is a philosophical treatise about faith its opposition to ethics, presented in roundabout and discursive fashion. (But see the Hong translation for a more precise version of the text).
Tare Panda
12 August 2002
Tare Panda is a Japanese cartoon character in the Hello Kitty tradition: cute, mouthless, and the center of a vast merchandising empire including clothing, stationery, and plush toys.
Elena Sisto
12 August 2002
Elena Sisto’s paintings hover somewhere out beyond mythological portraiture, somewhere hazy and quiet, with a little of the contemplative calm of early Renaissance profiles.
High School Whistleblowing
12 August 2002
A student who reported threats (allegedly) made by a classmate was then personally sued by the classmate after the school district expelled him. The district refused to pay her legal bills, and a court agreed. Note that had she not reported the threats, she could have been disciplined herself by the school.
Joseph Mitchell
12 August 2002
A Russell Baker article in the New York Review of Books about Mitchell, containing the quote, “I believe that the most interesting human beings, so far as talk is concerned, are anthropologists, farmers, prostitutes, psychiatrists, and an occasional bartender.
Pirates Kill America's Cup Skipper
12 August 2002
Contrary to first impressions on seeing the headline, he was not killed during an actual America’s Cup race.
Planetarium
12 August 2002
An online story/puzzle in twelve parts. The story is presented one week at a time; each week contains three puzzles. At the end of the twelve weeks, the answers to the thirty-six puzzles can be put together to solve a metapuzzle, which ties back into the plot of the story.
The Evasion-English Dictionary
12 August 2002
Chapter six: “Feel” = “Am.” Example: “Man, you’re doing all the work yourself. I feel so lazy and unproductive.”
Balance of Power
12 August 2002
Chris Crawford’s breakthrough 1985 game about power, responsibility, and unexpected consequences. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. contend for international influence, but the trigger-happy player will quickly discover how frustratingly easy it is to blow up the world in a minor dispute over an insignificant third-world nation. Both the PC and Mac versions are available as freeware and more relevant than ever.
Moby Dick as Prophecy
12 August 2002
A study of equidistant letter sequences (best known as the basis for the “Bible codes”) in the text of Moby Dick that appear to foretell various major assasinations.
Artists' Rights
12 August 2002
The Artists (sic) Rights Foundation is dedicated to bringing moral rights to the United States. Filmmakers have been especially interested in moral rights — the colorization controversy dramatically illustrated what can happen when the rights to movies escape from their creators’ hands.
Eichmann in Jerusalem
12 August 2002
Hannah Arendt’s book on Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial introduced the phrase “the banality of evil.” This Library of Congress page links to facsimiles of the book. Also available are the complete transcripts of the trial itself.
Jewish Law
12 August 2002
An online repository about Jewish (Halachic) law and its tricky interactions with secular law in the U.S. In addition to some off-the-beaten-track church/state cases, the archive features lots of material on balancing the demands of two distinct legal cultures.
Las Vegas Weddings
12 August 2002
A search interface to the Clark County marriage records. Don’t remember what you did that one night on your trip to Vegas? Punch your name into the system just to make sure.
Beehive Collective
12 August 2002
The Beehive Collective is best known for its anti-FTAA and other activist line-art posters, but the Maine-based group is also working in hand-cut stone murals, which it sees as a way of creating long-lasting art with a close connection to nature.
MacArthur Awards
12 August 2002
The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2001 Fellows. On the list are novelist Andrea Barrett (author of Ship Fever) and artist David Wilson (curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology), who share, in their very different ways, an interest in the historical intersection of the scientific and the human.
Brand-Name Recipes
12 August 2002
A book that tells you how to make Twinkie clones and faux Big Macs in your own kitchen.
Skip Intro
11 August 2002
Hi-Ho
11 August 2002
Hyakugojyuuichi
11 August 2002
Rabbit Want Pointer
11 August 2002
Driving Tips
11 August 2002
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
11 August 2002
Yatta Yatta
11 August 2002
We've Got Your Name
11 August 2002
Dog In ACoat
11 August 2002