2002.11.30
- A throwaway line in "Galatea 2.2" (about teaching a computer to understand literature) mentions the idea that one of the best loved American poems might just be about a guy stopping to take a leak.
- Late last year Google cranked back its its Usenet Archives to relatively early in Usenet's life. Salon had an article about the geeks who had archived the stuff in the meantime.
- I wrote a rant (actually a bit of AIM transcript) about how I got totally suckered by a Fox news teaser "find out why you might want to avoid that second cup of coffee!"...I watch the whole crappy "news" program for half an hour and get and get a 15 seconds blurb that 3 cups or more of decaf coffee daily linked to rheumotoid artheritis in women. Right up there with my favorite Fox news promo BALLOONS: Why are they so DEADLY.
- Scholarly paper, Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python.
- A Russian's Unofficial Textbook for beginner in Web-design. I appreciate the heading of its first chapter ("Why do you need a site? No, you don't need it.") ands how it tries to talk people out of starting.
- I'm not sure what caught my attention about Alfred Edward Housman. Last Poems, IX. Maybe the idea of using the age of 24 as marking the end of the springtime of a lifespan, or maybe the closing line "Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale."
- For some reason I had a link to the trophies in the game Super Smash Brothers. Little icons you could win for completing certain tasks in this multiplayer "brawler".
- I'm pretty psyched about the upcoming Tron 2.0...though they used to have a cooler teaser site, but now there's an intersting little interactive screensaver.
- Trying to find information on how North Dakota would like to drop the word North from its name, I found this Dave Barry piece on it. It looks like they've made the attempt before, in 1947 and then in 1989. "Dakota" is a pretty cool name by itself.
- A long while back Bill the Splut linked to an article about the stories written by children in homeless shelters. This kids are inventing their own mythologies, it's pretty amazing. And sad and scary in other ways.