2001 June❮❮prevnext❯❯
2001.06.01
Toy of the Moment
From the BBC, it's the Virtual Theremin. (Link busted, maybe try this or this or this) Some experimenting revealed that it's a bit "cheat"y-- at least I don't believe that the real theremin is tuned to a chromatic scale. Still, they make up for it with a really cool beat to theremin against-- slow it down to sound a lot like Portishead. (thanks to Brooke for re-pointing the link out to me.)
Link of the Moment
An interesting scientific study on Murphy's Law and toast landing butter-side-down-- brings actual physics into it.
2001.06.02
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
News of the Moment
Canada moving closer to legalizing marijuana. Man, they are so much cooler than us in so many ways. They just have a better attitude about stuff than we do. I don't smoke, I don't really want to, but it really ticks me off that I could get into so much trouble if I did.
On the other hand, from the poetic justice department, Jenna Bush may see some jailtime thanks to her daddy's draconian zero-tolerance law. Man, wasn't Bush a party-heartier 'til at least his late 20s? What is it, only Nixon could go to China and only W could crack down on heavy drinking and probable cocaine use?
2001.06.03
Quote of the Moment
The best sickness excuse is, "You don't want to know the details."
Quote of the Other Moment
A truly secure password algorithm also has to check for the Post-It Note (TM) on the monitor.
2001.06.04
Quote of the Moment
Broken hearts are broken open, at least for a while.
2001.06.05
He also decided it would make a good brand of hot sauces and salsas.If I ever decide to give up a normal life, I am going to move to SF and open a combination restaurant and bondage shop. The restaurant will feature nothing but extremely spicy food and be called "Pain is a Flavor"
Story of the Moment
(The moment being the early 1990s, actually.) When I was in middle school, my regional church had a
conference and had comedian evangelist Mike Warnke there. He told the tale of his sordid past as a drug dealer
and high priest in the satanic church (here's someone describing the Warnke spiel, jives pretty well with my experience.)
The trouble is, this guy's story was almost a total lie.
Here's a terrific, somewhat well-known
study into his actual past. These guys-- Christians all-- went back, checked his story,
chatted with the people who were with him when Warnke was 'involved with the Satanists'. And the drugs. Especially funny and damning is the sidebar: Why The Dates Don't Work. S'funny seeing him try to worm his way out of it too... I think it pretty much trashed his career, and he was pretty well-known.
It's amazing how Christians ate this stuff up. I certainly did. But-- and this is the only excuse I can think of-- I was younger then, and a much less critical thinker. I don't know what the adults' excuse is, but I do believe that 'true believers' are a lot more likely to fall for outlandish tales than skeptics who actively work to set standards of proof and plausibility.
2001.06.06
- My friend Kim sent me a note that some of these photos are helping her and her husband (Mots the Giant Swede) convince the INS that theirs is not a 'greencard marriage' (other regular photos from the same time had been discarded by INS when Kim forgot to include the fee.) Three cheers for cheap digital phtography!
- Dang, what is it with this popup ad? It seems to appear at the most random times. One of the sites I frequent must be putting it on some kind of time delay thing. How very annoying! ("Have fun / Feel safe"... I can think of the type of fun they're really trying to sell.) Follow-up: this page claims to have a link that lets you disable the ads: http://www.x10.com/x10ads.htm
- I wrote the guy who runs bar.com if he gets tons of mail for "foo@bar.com"-- ("foo" and "bar" and "foobar" are special words for the geekily inclined). The owner Mike O'Connor puts it at "about 500 spam-o-grams a day"- I'm almost surprised it's not more. This NY Times article talks about it as well.
Quote of the Moment
The purpose of conversation isn't to demonstrate one's glib intelligence; it's how we stumble and grope our way through the mists and arrive at something like intelligence.This is actually a profound insight into cognitive science. Actually, this week's column seemed to have more than its fair share of really smart thoughts and well turned phrases.
2001.06.07
How the United States Marine Corps Differs from Cults. Ok, ok, it makes some reasonable points, but the humor is in why this page needs to be up in the first place. (Admittedly not as funny as if it was hosted on the USMC site itself). It's like, if I made
a webpage "Why Kirk Doesn't Have A Weird Fetish for Meter Maids Covered in Hershey's Syrup", it would get you wondering, wouldn't it?
Bible Quote of the Moment
If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.That just seems weird to me, instructions for how to deal with a bird's nest. And your supposed to take the kids? Doesn't seem very nice. Of course, the rest of this hymen-centric, anti-mixed-fabric chapter doesn't make much more sense even in a more modern translation.
2001.06.08
When the Chinese Zen master Ta-mei was on his deathbed, he gave these last words to his students: "When it appears, don't try to avoid it. When it disappears, don't go chasing after it." At that moment, a squirrel scurried across the roof. "There's only this, nothing else," said Ta-mei. Then he died.My current thought is that I'm one of the most or one of the least enlightened people I know. Intellectually I feel I'm very in tune with the ideals of Zen-- it seems very much in tune with the "die-hard materialist" stance of books such as Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"-- but I find myself slow to adopt the rituals. Perhaps I should begin sitting meditation.
Links of the Moment
I'm not sure which is funnier.
Landover Baptist Church
is the Onion.com of Souther Baptists, but unlike most sites that take up the Onion style, it's really funny. On the other hand, in the "funny because it's true" category,
the radio show Truths That Transform had an
interview
with evangelical missionaries to far off foreign lands. In this case,
France. Mais Oui!
2001.06.09
Oh man oh man oh man. Suck.com ("a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun") is going away-- or at least "on vacation". These guys introduced the idea of daily web editorial to a lot of people, myself included. Hell, when they started in 1995 they practically invented that style of small little columns centered on the page that was a fad for a bit, and is still one of the most readable formats on the web. Not to mention their generally-insightful, smartassed style (with a big heap of point out sights that, well, suck) that made them famous.
Here's an Nov 1996 Wired news article on what they were trying to do.
And an informative
Salon article on the recent hiatus. The article mentions how Suck's parent company (man, aren't there
any rich people out there with enough money to float this stuff as a perpetual pet project?) is keeping up
their vaguely slashdot like community system plastic up-- they say that user-generated content
is one of the more viable models on the web, which I've definately found out
through the tiny portion of net fame I've grabbed with the loveblender.
Quote of the Moment
Oh fuck. If I kill this guy, I'll have millions of nerds on my case.Diamond was coauthoring an Linus' autobiography, Just For Fun (slashdot review here). The book looks like this:
2001.06.10
My fourteen-year-old daughter [Laura]'s face and arms were covered in alchemical and zodiacial symbols in iridescent reds greens and blues. ... She stared at me defiantly, as if I'd somehow express disapproval. ...
Laura said, 'Did you know that Isaac Newton spent more time on alchemy then he did on the theory of gravity?'
'Yes. Did you know he died a virgin? role models are great, aren't they?'
News of the Moment
From The Telegraph, it's the UK view on US drinking age laws. Mentions that Elizabeth Dole would like to see the drinking age raised to 24. Such unbridled insanity. I still think there's something to the old saw that when we're considered old enough to fight for our country, we should be able to get a frickin' beer.
2001.06.11
He died with his eyes open.
2001.06.12
Quote of the Moment
"So tell me Rico, what is the meaning of life?"A supremely stupid movie, but a point that might not be as trite as it sounds. I also saw that Charlie's Angels remake last night. I admired it for being so aggressively stupid. I admire the song "It's Raining Men" ('Cos tonight for the first time / At just about half past ten / For the first time in history / It's gonna start raining men) for the same reason.
"...It ends."
Art of the Moment
From an article on the artist Jan Saudek at Salon... I just wanted to say this is about the sexiest picture I have ever seen:
2001.06.13
Games of the Moment
The robotduck games page has some really decent shockwave games. In particular, ranjit (no slouch himself in the game writing department recommends
'yard invaders'. It's a unique variation on the invaders theme, your little
man (followed by his trusty duck) has to pick up apples and hurl them at the marauding aliens... and then pick them up again. I wonder if the control might be better if it used the keyboard as well as the mouse, but overall it's still a good game in a cool visual style. I really should try to get into programming in director/shockwave.
Joke of the Moment
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
2001.06.14
Funny Link of the Moment
Robert Tilton, the farting evangelist. Wow. This is really, really funny in a 3rd grade kind of
way-- but third graders don't have that sense of timing. Click the first
link under "Classic Videos". (via cruel site of the day, though I think I saw it on "God Stuff" on The Daily Show once upon a time.)
News Link of the Moment
Slate.com on helping the California energy crises by greatly expanding daylight savings time... all I can say to this off-the-wall suggestion is... ohpleasehpleasehpleasecanwecanwecanwePLEASE???
2001.06.15
Pretty addictive game: kick-ups. It's hacky-sack for your mouse, surprisingly tough, with a neat physics feel. (via memepool)
Games of the Moment
This is one of the best histories of videogames I've
ever seen:
The Dot Eaters. Few histories are so lavishly illustrated, with tons of screenshots, promotional materials, and other goodies. Covers arcade games, consoles, home computer, the works.
Quote of the Moment
Always remember, however, that there's usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.
2001.06.16
I know this is not an entirely reasonable viewpoint, though it goes along with my materialist viewpoint on the nature of consciousness.
Update: Talking with Ranjit, we figured that maybe it's not criticism per se that I can't do (as he points out "if one object of learning from history is to avoid repeating it, you have to feel free to criticize it"), but I have to make a distinction between criticizing, and actually wishing it had been otherwise.
Quote of the Moment
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
News Link of the Moment
Did you know Angelina Jolie wears a vial of her husband Billy Bob Thornton's blood? Very romantic, but really creepy.
2001.06.17
(Almost every link is to a different java braintoy...)
I've written about my ex-ex-college instructor Jeffery Ventrella and
his site in a
previous entry
There's one idea that I think I more or less came up with, but he
put into code...
there's this classic Game called 'Life', where there's a checkerboard of 'cells', where on each click of the clock, a cell lives, die, or is burn based on some simple rules about how many neighbors it has. The general name for this kind of thing is Cellular Automata... a simulation of a machine made of cells.
There's this other
idea called Genetic Algorithms... you describe potential solutions to your
problem in terms of parameters, which act as "genes", then you use an evolutionary process to breed new solutions and seperate the winning ideas from the losing ones, and eventually the solutions start looking better and better.
One famous example of a GA is Richard Dawkin's biomorphs... it's a set of parameters that draw little tree- or creature- looking patterns, and generally the user selects which one he or she likes out of 10 or so variations, acting as the hand of Darwin for aesthetic purposes, since the one selected is used as the parent for the next generation. You can breed some neat looking stuff. (Or you can let the computer run through various bouncin' baby biomorphs itself.)
So, my idea, or at least partially my idea, was to combine these two schemes. Figure out how to describe different CAs with gene settings, then breed them, allowing the user to pick which ones seem interesting. Ventrella put this idea into code, and invited me over to see it running on his empoyers SGI box. By clicking high or low, the user decided how 'fit' that CA was. Well, he's made
a cool version of this for windows. He wrapped it around a theme of trying to breed GAs that have 'Gliders', little cell collections that shuffle along the screen (many GAs tend to churn in place, while ones with Gliders tend to look a bit cooler anyway.) So check it out, it's a very cool program to play with. You'll be seeing some Cellular Automatas that no one has seen before, and probably no one will see again!
Quote of the Moment
Well, I believe in the soul. The cock. The pussy. The small of a woman's back. The hanging curve ball. High fiber. Good scotch. That the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent over rated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there oughta be a Constitutional Amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve. And I believe in long slow deep soft wet kisses that last three days.
2001.06.18
Man, I hate Harley Hogs. (Or is it "Hawgs"?) A machine that takes so much joy in being so disruptive to everything around it is just obnoxious. After one rips through my neighborhood, I try to restore the karmic balance by mocking the breed... this is easily accomplished by holding out one's hands as if they were gripping handlebars and then turning one of the hands to mime the twisting of the throttle, synchronized with making the fart noises an eight year old takes such pleasure in. (The syncronization is the key to the gag.)
Quote of the Moment
I've seen monkey shit fights at the zoo that were more organized than THIS.Seems like a useful quote for many situations.
Link of the Moment
As long as we're in a cussing mood here, it's Fucked Weblog, a kind of functional parody of FuckedCompany. The latter tracks dotcoms going down in flames, (like this report on Event Zero, where I used to work) while the former reports the shutdown of web based journals.
Blogs come and blogs go, hopefully this one will stay for a long while; I consider it a continuation of the quote journal I kept on my PalmPilot since early 1997, so there's some hope I think.
2001.06.19
"Bill, have you ever heard the expression 'It's easier to catch flies with honey instead of vinegar'?"The other day memepool.com had a link with way, way too much analysis of this show. It was pretty astounding all in all, but I do appreciate the thing a lot more now... it's almost like I have an excuse to enjoy it.
"Dave, have you ever heard the expression 'Only a hillbilly sits around and tries to figure out the best way to catch flies'?"
Navel Gazing of the Moment
In high school and college, I had a really good collection of T-shirts. I was really fussy about what I'd add to my collection, and was a Pain in the Rear to buy shirts for, since there was a good chance I wouldn't wear what was bought for me. Entropy took its toll, however, and many of these shirts became unwearable, but I was loathe to get rid of them since many were irreplaceable in a very literal sense-- I couldn't get another of most of these designs if I wanted to. I didn't want to fill my closet with a huge array of unwearable shirts, however. I finally stumbled on the idea of using digital photography to make a record of these shirts. Once I had that, I felt free to ditch the actual material object. There's a logic in here somewhere, and a study in how it's the pattern and not the object that I really find important. Admittedly it's hard to find abstract pattern in my size, but hey. So:
T-Shirt:#1 of a Series
"AIDSGATE". Reproduction of a silkscreen with Ronald Reagan's portrait, except he has pink eyes, and looks a bit daft. Bought in the NYC Salvation Army thriftstore that was around the corner from my mom's old apartment. When Mo invited me to a TTGLBC meeting, I considered wearing this as a political statement of support. Didn't wear it much besides that.
2001.06.20
> in other news, i am trying not to worry
>about having no money at all.
They say money is the root of all evil but being that "virtuous" sucks ass. I think an artist can pretend he or she is "living like Henry Miller" for only so long before that idea wears really, really thin.
T-Shirt:#2 of a Series
"Blue Man". From the Blue Man Group show, probably when I saw it NYC with Marnie, circa... 1994 or so, give or take a year. Back when making fun of the flying toasters was kind of fresh. I've gotten another, better Blue Man shirt since then. This one is odd, it's a minimalist image of them behind their welder's masks.
News Link of the Moment
From Salon.com, studies on what men and women look for in a mate. With women it's smell, which puts me in pretty good stead I think, though I'm a little worried about that 'ambition' thing. (Oh, and in another Salon piece, let's hear it for minimum sentences! Nothing like the legislature sticking its nose where it JUST DOESN'T BELONG. Cut judges some damn slack! Foolish liberals try to restrain "Maximum Bob" style punishment and all the stupid conservatives can see are judges who are "soft on crime".)
2001.06.21
From observing your site, you appear to be very self-centered.Well duh! This is my homepage. (For less Kirk-centric work of mine, go see the love blender.) This is a 'blog of sorts after all, and as far as blogs go, it's barely about me at all, it's about other people's quotes, and links, with a little bit of doodling and rambling.
I admit the T-shirts thing is a bit much, but it's just something I've wanted to do. Man, it's a good thing I haven't yet started up the Kirklopedia I've been thinking of...now that's self-centered.
Information Toy of the Moment
This image is a shrunken screengrab from the site The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy. "Pop" in green, "Soda" in blue, "Coke" in red, other in pink. Although I've adopted the standard term "Soda" of my current region, I still think "Pop" is a better word. In a single syllable it captures the effervescence of the stuff, it's not as clinical as "Soda" and not as hillbilly as calling everything a "Coke".
(via Image of the Day at cellar.org)
Poetry of the Moment
NIGHTS OF '57
It wasn't asphodel but mown grass
We practiced on each night after night prayers
When we lapped the college front lawn in bare feet,
Heel-bone and heart-thud, open-mouthed for summer.
The older I get, the quicker and the closer
I hear those laboring breaths and feel the coolth.
2001.06.22
How False Memories can be Impanted, and How the Brain Edits Out What We See. These are more than mere tricks; I don't think people realize just how subjective their views of the universe are, and how unreliable their own perception can be.
Anecdote of the Moment
[walking after getting bar supplies from Williams Sonoma]
"Man, this stuff is heavy." |
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Old T-shirt: #3 of a Series
"Carpe Diem". I never liked this shirt, and didn't wear it much. I always thought the slogan was a bit dorky, and adding the translation underneath makes it more so. A lame visual design in colors that don't suit me and the use of an inappropriate font (Gothic? For Latin?) top it off.
2001.06.23
Toy of the Moment
Remember Pat the Bunny? Well, for the rough and ready information age, it's
Poke the Bunny! Oddly satisfying (especially with the little thunk noise it makes) but be careful though, a bunny can only stands so much pokin'.
Quote of the Moment
Why do we like sports or movies? It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could actually spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game. It's a colossal phenomenon that needs to be explained, and I'm not joking.
2001.06.24
Surprsingly, I'm not sure if even this shindig has really 'brought home' the fact I'm going to be getting married in a week.
from the T-shirt Archive: #4 of a Series
"Head of the Charles". If I had to guess, I'd say I got this when my jazz band came to Boston, all the way from Cleveland. That was the fateful trip I first started flirting with Veronika, Spring of 1991. For obvious reasons it was a cooler shirt to wear in Cleveland than in Boston, but still, it had a nice design.
Quote of the Moment
I AM WORTH 530 DOLLARSThis was actually a very moving line; the golem was trying to weakly defend himself from a rampaging mob, crouched behind the slate it uses to 'talk' with. The golems are odd creations, not alive, not even undead; tireless speechless workers, clay given life by the mystical words written on paper in their heads. As the slate is smashed, one of the mob yells "Money? That's all you things think about!", and the heroic Captain Carrot steps into stop the next hammer blow, saying "Money is all you can think about when all you have is a price."
It sounds odd, but it was quite well done.
2001.06.25
| Speaking of being quiet... Mimes. Why are there so many jokes about them? There are so many not terribly amusing lines about how it's ok to kill them, how annoying they are... I mean, I haven't seen one for years and years, (the last one was doing an audience warmup at Cleveland Sea World, actually was pretty good.) but the jokes go on, and on, and on. Were they that bad? Were people traumatized by being mocked by mimes? |
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Raunchy Quote of the Moment
"Isn't that what it's all about? The work? Creating all the things you have, the accomplishments?"
"The career? It's good for one thing. You know what it all gets down to? What the notoriety and the fame are all about?"
"What?"
"Pussy! Fame gets you better pussy, kid!"
News Story of the Moment
So many motorists were concerned that a cow walking in knee-deep water in a flooded field was stuck that it caused a traffic jam near De Bary, FL. To get traffic moving again--and stop 911 calls to the Highway Patrol about a "drowning" cow--highway workers setup an electronic sign to flash the message "The Cow is OK" to passing cars. But two days later, the sign was still there, causing a traffic jam as motorists looked for a cow, which had long since walked away.
2001.06.26
A traffic light tree. Reminds me of amusing Selena with tales of the AutoBaum, where the Autos grow. Unfortunately she knew as little English as I did German, but a doodle got the idea across.
--Image from ZZZ online
President Junior Rant of the Moment
Wired had an article Just Say No to College Aid. The Bush administration sees fit to enforce the guideline that non-answers to questions about past drug use count as "Yes"es and therefore render the answerer ineligible for federal scholarships and grant funding. By these standards, Bush is A DRUG USER. So a kid can't some cash for school, but he can be the damn president? Yeesh.
Quote of the Moment
A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.You know, I don't know if it's because it's a lame quote or because I mostly know nice people, but I don't know too many people who are rude to the waiter.
2001.06.27
Link and Rant of the Moment
Working with E-Prime. The idea is that our thinking can be improved if we eliminate the verb "to be" not just from our vocabularies, but from our thought processes in general. It seems like madness to me. I can see what they're getting at, and maybe I can even see that I don't really grok it, but still, pursuing this idea that nothing "is" something else, really, just leaves us like Douglas Adam's "Man in the Shack", the man who doesn't know that it's raining outside, just that his visitors seem, to him, to be wet, that he hears what may, or may not be, rain, etc etc.
Look, I walked outside and I thought "It is sunny today". Should I say "it seems sunny today"? (And isn't that just short for "it seems to be sunny today"?) Some stuff in that link (which I think maybe an excellent example of writing in E-Prime) makes me think they want me to think of direct effects: "I feel sunshine on me." But again, isn't that short for "I feel that sunshine seems to be shining on me". (E-Prime link via memepool)
from the T-shirt Archive: #5 of a Series
Simple black and white design from a pottery place on Martha's Vineyard, where I bought a vase for my Aunt, a "sorry for making out with this chick from Cleveland in you living room" vase.
Quote of the Moment
My mind is especially empty today.
2001.06.28
Geekdom of the Moment
Poem of the Moment
At dinner their first night(2019 UPDATE: Intriguingly, now when I try and google for this poem, I find it has become a poem "Conversation's Afterplay" which changes from third person to first and second person.)
He looked at her, her bright green eyes,
In candlelight.
They laughed and told the hundred stories,
And kissed, and went to bed.
"Shh, shh," she said,
"I want to put my legs around your head."
Green eyes, green eyes.
At dawn they sat with coffee
And smoked another cigarette
As quietly
Companionship and eros met
In conversation's afterplay,
On their first day,
And late for the work she loved, she drove away.
Green eyes, green eyes.
2001.06.29
Humor of the Moment
God: And here's the next species, one I'm particularly proud of... Adam: Beetle. God: Excellent. Now here's another... Adam: Beetle. God: No, you just named the last one "beetle". This one is quite different -- look at the pattern on the wing cases, and the shape of the antennae... Adam: Beetle. God: Well, OK, though they certainly look different to Me. Now, the next species is -- Adam: Beetle.
Link of the Moment
(Hmm, haven't been posting as many links lately...) Anyway, what kind of Flame Warrior are you? I actually haven't had the chance to read through each one yet, so I'm still playing wait and see. Pretty good art at this link, and a lot of "it's funny because it's true, or close enough".
2001.06.30
Advice for the MOment
Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware of such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.(2019 UPDATE: of course this is a hoax)
Link of the Moment
Salon gave me the analysis and breakdown of the the movie Momento that I had been looking for. (You can still see the original short story here)
from the T-shirt Archive: #6 of a Series
This is from the Cleveland International Film Festival. It was one of my first really cool shirts, interesting design, referring to a relatively obscure cultural event. It was having to give up shirts like this that made me want to have the archived photos.