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JP Honk played for the Haley House Block Party today! Great cause. (Huh, maybe we should start mentioning this stuff ahead of time?)
Anyway here's the official premier of our new cover of "Ring of Fire" along with our "Hurricane Season" - EAT! MORE! KALE!

First night of summer (meteorological - look it up nerd), after having added some music to a Somerville housing rights vigil, on the porch, a summer shandy by my side and hacking on porchfest sites. Living my best life! So glad we got a porch.

In the 70s it was black and minority ethnic people, in the 80s it was gay people, trans people are just the latest to get it in the neck from comedians who can't be bothered to try at their jobs anymore. I *cannot* stand there and watch another dogshit comedian go: 'Ooohh if a woman can identify as a man, maybe I'll identify as a chair!' Why don't you identify as good comedians, you hack motherfuckers?!

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A case for deregulation under Trump as the cause of the baby formula shortage.

Republicans think the unregulated market can solve its own problems when it has proven ridiculously unable to do so. Monopolies grow - the rich get richer is a general rule (and a large scale player can take localized losses to muscle out a regional competitor) and the resulting monocultures is incredibly vulnerable to changes in condition - as happened with baby food. Also, health and safety regulations don't exist for the fun of 'em, or to give agencies something to do - they exist because people died.

(That seems to be a whole thing on the right these days, not accepting that stopping some long term serious problems does entail some short term inconveniences? They just look locally and don't think of themselves as part of trends. Statistical innumeracy combined with unempathetic not giving a shit and general muleheadesness)

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Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

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"In the same way that magic cannot be magic if it is perfectly understood, people can only be hot if they look a little weird."

"These things are related"

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bees live beyond gender

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New optical illusion. Nothing is moving, but I definitely see the black space as expanding... like I can see the shadow dark as I watch.

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hot take: The Form Element was a mistake, one from which society may never recover Tweet thread on why holding contradictory impulses ain't a problem in Trump-land. Because what it is the freedom to believe whatever the hell you want regardless of facts... "COVID is a Chinese plot but also a hoax"? Why not both? "The Capitol was attacked by antifa but Ashlii Babbit was a hero patriot." OK! "Trump should be praised for giving us the vaccines! And the vaccines are dangerous!" Sure!

As long as you're in on the support for the guy at the top, the ringmaster of this circus of full-throated nonsense, you can do all the clowning you want and feel great about it! Trump will tell you you're the best.

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For such an interesting time (vaccines! birthday! new house!) kind of a mundane second every day...

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Mesmerizing how steady juggling is... also The Kid Should See This looks like a great resource of kid-friendly science and culture videos.

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I LIKE being stupid. You see things clearly. Being stupid is like squinting through the sunlight.

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An object falling to earth, for example, is being continuously accelerated by the force of gravity. It has no fixed velocity for any finite interval of time, even one as brief as a thousandth of a second; every "instant" its speed is changing.

This raises an interesting question for me: are there any places where we really notice gravity is an acceleration, really feel that it's not just a constant speed applied once an object topples from its support?

I suppose the way a thrown object arcs is one, and we can trace that with our eyes.

Sometimes it seems unsurprising that flat-earthers exist. There are a lot of physical phenomenon that our monkey brains use the crudest approximations for. (Also, I think of my despair that I don't know of a good kitchen sink science demonstration that would clearly show how matter is divided into atoms...)

I worry that the way our senses can be fooled - that we need to be taught round earths and atoms and accelerating gravity (tempered by air resistance and terminal velocities!) bodes poorly for our intuition in other matters, such as morality.

I guess one could argue morality is different, maybe its definition arises from our collective intuitive feelings? I don't find that view very satisfying, it seems like the old parable of building on shifting sands.

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(Earlier I had a further thought that everything is a simplification. Like in theory you can't TRULY describe the arc of a ball without describing every atom in it (for a moment I toyed with the idea of a comic or movie villain whose power was access to a computation source powered by... I dunno, like the multiverse or something-- enough of an overwhelming multiplicity that the villain COULD run simulations of every atom, and through this power of simulation, complete in both scale and detail, conquer the real world.) Huh. Plenty of new music, but not much that I really loved. 4 star stuff (all low 4s) in red:

• See What I Mean (feat. Aiza Ntibarikure) (Beat Market) - music on "Tuca and Bertie"
• River Shiver (Pomplamoose) like the little rewindy sound
• The Big Noise From Winnetka (Haggart, Bauduc)
• Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (Lauryn Hill) Heard the original in a movie, found this version
• Jamirobeegees Mashup: Stayin' Alive / Virtual Insanity (Pomplamoose)
• Cielito Lindo (Pedro Infante) I remember singing a "ay yi yi yi / sad farmer's daughter / it's love you know makes a valentine grow / and not a pail of wa-ter" in elementary school.
• trust in lies (rick & craig ) This sounds like a commercial song as background music in "Brokeback Mountain" but I guess it was a studio group
• Everybody Talks (Neon Trees) A friend pointed to a cover of this but I like the original.
• Lonely Feelings (LOVE SUPREME) Some HBO background music
• Supersonic Rocket Ship (The Kinks) In the Avengers movie. I sort of hate that you probably wouldn't call a faster than light vehicle "supersonic"...
• Doom and Gloom (Jeff Bhasker Mix) (The Rolling Stones) More Avengers
• Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic) Avengers again
• Tobacco Road (Nashville Teens) Keillor wrote about the "Tobacco Road" as a cultural thing, this song is probably a parallel reference
• Listen Here (Dave Frishberg) Quirky song about our inner voice referenced in a Daniel Klein book
• Dueling Banjos (Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell) Just wanted the classic.
• My Superstitious Brain (DJ Crazy J Rodriguez) Nice mashup
• Appletree (Erykah Badu) so stylish
• Also Sprach Zarathustra (Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra) "Opposite People" at Wake Up The Earth played a version of this "funked up 2001 theme"
• New Orleans Music (Rebirth Brass Band) Played this with Second Line Brass Band - there is a fear that local streetbands are kind of just Rebirth cover bands...
• Slow Motion (Juvenile) - cousing of one of the NOLA bands.
• Saw Lightning (Beck) - saw a tweet saying this wasn't very good, huh, but I like it, some neat sounds.

Honestly the only way I keep track of Latitude vs Longitude is the old beer commercial (Corona?) that says "change your latitude", i.e. think in a more southernly climes way...

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i want small government, by which of course i don't mean cutting the largest military budget in the world, avoiding foreign intervention, reducing the prison population, or limiting the state's ability to imprison people without trial. mainly i'm just mad that food stamps exist

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Hot take: Jeff Bridges was in Tron, Iron Man, and of course was "The Dude" in The Big Lebowski, and is not the same person as Kurt Russell (who was in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Escape from New York) Experimenting with doing One Second Everyday by 3-month Season rather than month-- so this goes back to the snow in March, hits HONK!TX, gets lots of band stuff in, and that week of being under the weather...

(feedback welcome about 1:30 of a season vs releasing 3 30 second months...)

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Who doesn't like the Paris Climate Accord? Syria, Nicaragua (who doesn't think it goes far enough) and Republicans.

I'd feel bad about that kind of divisive simplification, but you can actually watch the Republicans do an about-face over the past ten years in this video - they used to sound almost reasonable on it, then they decided to make it a political football.

Followup: GOP rep: If climate change is real, God will 'take care of it'. Didn't he hear that old joke about the guy in the flood who passes up being rescued by a rowboat a motorboat and a helicopter saying 'god will provide' and then God points out he had sent a rowboat a motorboat and a helicopter?

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Pierre Buttin Brutalist UI Redesigns...

I kind of love some of these. It reminds me of the same problem I have quantifying what exactly makes an old website look old. "World's worst sorority"

--by @ElleOhHell

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Personal highlights are that New England Book Show thing on the 3rd, Porch-i-Oke Hey Jude on the 21st, Great Aunt memorial on the 25th-26th - some visual peaks are slomo bird on the 9th, snuck John Williams and the pops on the 12th, virtual niece ice skate spinning on the 14th, and a great big Brookline turkey gobble on the 30th. Highlights include the squirrel it leads off with, Mike vs the Bubble on the 17th, and then first person Go-Karts on the 19th...

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http://kottke.org/15/05/the-man-who-loved-only-marbles both videos on this are kind of amazing

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http://www.asofterworld.com/ - Softer World is wrapping up, sigh.

If, once a year, we had to take a bite of a homeless person, we'd treat them much differently.

My May, one second at a time:
So by my idiosyncratic, school-year based way of reckoning, Summer is here, and so I can write up the three-star-plus music I added to my collection over the 3 months of Spring.

I kind of bunched these by genre, figuring that's the best chance of making this list useful to folks looking for stuff they like, but a really coherent categorization system is elusive. "Retro" is just "old", but not 90s old, which is a certain time when I was aware of music but not always going out and buying CDs. "Pop" tends to be a bit more polished and/or electronic than "Alt", but, well, you know.

4- and 5-star songs are marked in red.

One five star song:

• All The Rowboats regina spektor. Oh man, what a song. Spektor is one of the best artists out there. So much intensity... (plus I like what I think is just a hint of vocal percussion with the hits at the end.)

Completely Random.

• Star Lake March Star Lake Music Camp. A brass band march I remember fondly; I ripped an MP3 from the youtube link, but then sped it up from 120bpm to 140bpm. (I think they were slowing it down for the timbrels, the synchronized tamourine playing that is an odd Salvation Army tradition.)

Hiphop

• I'm The King Royce Da 5'9. I was playing GTA3 on iPhone, and this was one of the songs from the car radios there.
• Rising To The Top 8-Off Agallah Featuring Sean Price & Bazaar. Royale-- again from GTA3.
• Grand Theft Auto (Joyride) Da Shootaz. Actually the theme to an earlier GTA.
• 10th Generation Supercommuter. Heard this live at PAX East.
• Fuzzy Dice Optimus Rhyme. More nerdcore from PAX East, but just as recorded filler.
• DC GO GO. Bruce Brown. Baratunde Thurston's "How to Be Black" mentions "Go-Go" as a type of music only popular around Washington DC and Maryland... it's looping percussion is great, but I had to rip this MP3 from Youtube.
• Shake Your Rump The Beastie Boys. The sadly early death of MCA made me revisit some of their older works.
• Cooky Puss The Beastie Boys. Sometimes, very much older.
• Know The Ledge Eric B. and Rakim. Nice fast hiphop (Heard it on a promo for the first "Saints Row")
• Be Black King Sun. Daniel Nester tweeted about vaguely remember seeing this on MTV, while high, at his college girlfriends. Nice bassline.
• Back In Time Pitbull. Enjoyed the Bass Drop. Not sure why it's not Will Smith though...
• The Next Episode Dr. Dre / Snoop Dogg. I like how it's acapella admonition to "smoke weed every day" was immediately followed by the Salvation Army Star Lake March on my playlist.

Funny

• The Scotsman Bryan Bowers. Maybe I heard this folksy-song on public radio way back when?
• Dog Police Dog Police. I think Auntie Pixelante tweeted about the infectious chorus of this song. Maybe a kind of parody of rock operas?
• You Can Touch My Boobies Rachel Bloom. Sexy in the goofiest way possible.
• Still Alive Jonathan Coulton & GLaDOS. I still love "We do what we must because we can."
• Bert, oh Bert! Lena Meyer-Landrut. I think I posted about this German Sesame Street version of her Eurovision hit Satellite...
• I'm Your Mailman Bill "The Fox" Foster- from his album of badly sung but bawdy "Songs Banned in Boston".
• Dracula's Lament -- The Late Late Show had Jason Segal and Dracula giving the full version of the song from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". I like it's melancholy goofiness, punctuated by the second voice in the back.

Retro

• CoinJar-Gettin Booty With It Jason Ricciardi. Super catchy mashup of Will Smith "Gettin' Jiggy With It" and Parov Stelar's Booty Swing. Recommended!
• You're The Top Louis Armstrong. Still wishing I could find a recording of the naughty version of this, but it's such a great and clever song.
• Thanks For The Memories Bob Hope & Shirley Ross. I wish my mp3 had the same tearful ending as this video from the movie.
• Linus and Lucy Vince Guaraldi Trio. The ever-hip classic.
• Hot Chocolate Shonen Knife. Such a great throwback to the mod-60s.
• On The Sly The Bamboos. Heard this in a PF Chang's men's room. Great big retro feel.
• Seven Nation Army Ben L'Oncle Soul. Kinda skinny retro cover of one of my favorite songs.
• Skinny Legs And All Joe Tex. I think I saw this on a list of "Least Essential Music Ever", and it's just a tad offensive, but I dig it.
• Love Is Strange Mickey & Sylvia. I remember people in high school doing the "Come HEAH, Luvahboy" bit (which the "Back in Time" song that samples this ignored...)
• Original Miami Vice Theme Jan Hammer. Man I loved this. I might have to make an animated GIF.
• Stop! Mashup Time [MC Hammer vs. Eurythmics vs. New Order vs. Talking Heads vs. Donna Summer] FAROFF. So many hits packed in this mashup package.
• You Shook Me All Night Long AC/DC. The group weirdly doesn't make their stuff available for download. Ah well...
• Life Is But A Mere Supply Dezma. A final GTAIII track.

90s

• Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? Paula Cole. Favorite line: "Why don't you stay the evening / kick back and watch the tv / And I'll fix a little somethin' to eat".
• Virtual Insanity Jamiroquai. Man, this is a fun video. I once saw a video of him performing live, using treadmills (kind of like a primitive OK GO...)
• How Bizarre OMC. This guy always looks irritated.
• No Woman, No Cry Fugees. They're making that Marley biopic. Figured I liked the sound and tempo of this version, though the update of the lyrics is a little wonky.

Pop

• Amanda Blank - Might Like You Better Vaski. Bassdrop-y Dub version of one of my favorite raunchy songs.
• Teeth Lady Gaga. Big stompy drums.
• Chammak Challo Akon. A really fun Bollywood video. A big people were doing synchronized dancing to it at an asian culture festival in DC. (I think the version I downloaded lacks the female vocals, damn.)
• Call Me Maybe Carly Rae Jepsen. Enormously popular, and deservedly so... so catchy.
• Feel Good Inc Gorillaz. These guys were doing that onstage hologram thing WAY before Tupac!
• Starships Nicki Minaj. Good song. And quite the sexy video. I adore the use of the Haka dancers...
• North American Scum LCD Soundsystem. Una at work suggested this. I like the Lo-Fi approach.

Alt

• Just You And Me Zee Avi. Saw her live. Love how this song namedrops Kierkegaard
• What-A-Man Lena. Just a sweet song by a German gal I think should be more well known here... not sure why it drops off after 30 seconds.
• Arkansas and Socrates The Lisps. No video for these songs of their Civil War meets Charles Babbage meets the Singularity musical "Futurity".
• Open Rhye. A sexy and polished but very human video to a sexy and polished but very human song.
• Bartholomew The Silent Comedy. They used this in the trailer for "Hatfields and McCoys"... I like the shout-y Appalachian feel of it.
• Infinity Guitars Sleigh Bells. Super lofi shouty stuff. The beginning was used as a bumper in the show "Girls".
• Jolene Mindy Smith. Softer, less glitzy cover of "Jolene".

Chiptunes

• Tron Scherzo (Sark's Revenge Mix) 8 Bit Weapon. A tribute to Wendy Carlos Williams Duh, mixing up name with poet William Carlos Williams, but with more percussion.
• Robot Sneakers Trash80. I admit I'm not super fond of most chiptunage, but this is great.
• Numbers Kraftwerk. Ok, probably more of an inspirational piece to chiptunage than part of the genre itself, but still. A use of primitive digital voices closer to when they were the state of the art...

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The GOP Sees Dead People--Voting Voter fraud happens retail (if that) and Conservatives are purging voter registrations wholesale. This is not justice.

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People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.

Ran into some new music in Europe, including this "Eurovision" winning track.

Volker and Veronika mentioned this entry was kind of promoted by Stefan Raab... that's the same guy who did that odd "wire mesh fence" song I kisrael'd a while back. He thought Germany needed a better showing in the contest, and I guess it worked! This year he promoted a song by the same artist, which led to him doing a rockabilly version of the same song live (since Lena won but couldn't perform to start the next year's show...)

Now I have 4 songs titled "Satellite"...this, Elvis Costello's, Smash Mouth's, and Dave Matthews'.

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When you land, you have to wait for your soul to catch up.

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30 Days of Super Heroes Day 1: Big Bruiser

"Luggo"
--via factlets.info/Bus, who were talking about how now bus drivers in Longxiang have a bowl of water by their side that they are expected to keep unspilled through their day. Factlets seems to be a good interesting-tidbit-a-day, I follow their twitter feed

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

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On the "stickiness" of Apple. I'm kind of glad I've shunned iTunes for music, sticking with Amazon MP3s... after being on the "new iPhone!" hype wagon for a while, now with "FroYo" coming out, I'm thinking my next phone should be from whatever carrier will let le me "tether" and use the phone as a portable wifi hotspot-- that way my iPad would be online too.

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http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/423150.html - I'm kind of stunned that there's enough sponsorship to allow "pro gaming" to exist.

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Problems with contacting LinkedIn former colleagues due to Non-Compete Agreement...article begs the question of whether the contract was enforceable or possible a "unlawful restraint on trade"...

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Georgia's motto "Wisdom, justice, and moderation" is pretty good, but I dig the scifi vibe of Kansas' "Ad astra per aspera" - "To the stars through hardships"

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http://badgods.com/zanandjayna.html - great Super Friends and Vonnegut reference in "Bad Gods"

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Bible Translation Times!
"Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?" in the KJV is "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" in the NIV. It's good advice but the KJV translation choice is a bit odd - funny that the greek must be ambiguous like that.

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Dada Chess: http://www.crummy.com/features/dada/chess/

Not all artists are chess players, but all chess players are artists.

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You know, I'm kind of irked by how chess says "the king is never captured". Such blatant monarchism - down with the king! Man hard to believe it's June already -- where Summer "really starts" by my idiosynctatic, school-calendar-based reckoning.

Yay for the Celtics getting into the finals, and setting up a return of the old Celtics/Lakers rivalry of the 80s.

If the Patriots hadn't choked in such a spectacular and humiliating fashion (and to a New York team, no less) we could be getting ahead of ourselves and looking for Boston-team championships in 3 out of the 4 major sports!

(Oh and happy 500th Manny!)

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Quote of the Moment

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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Portraits of the Moment
I took a one day, 8-hour portrait class with Melinda Bruno who also taught the Photo Composition class I took last fall.

As usual, I don't think I photograph particularly well. I was paired up with Kate (we both were getting by with midrange Canon point-and-shoots) and I tended not to dig her style, which was usually square-on and evenly lit. (In general, I think I do better with less even lighting, trying to fake my way into looking like my cherub face has something other than curves on it.) We did fool around with some more dramatic lighting on this little stage though:
Hmm, maybe a bit too emo.

This was probably around the best shot I took of her:

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pentomino 4. remember to smack anyone who tries tired "what happens in Vegas..." jokes (except meta- ones like this)

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let a friend fool with my camera's memory card, did a reset of the counting. From IMG_5662 to IMG_0001. Damn, I wanted it to rollover!

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hate hate hating google's new lower case g favicon on every google tab

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not that i am much of a "game author" but I get pangs of jealousy when i see a good implementation of an idea i was saving for later

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i hate when a well-intenioned sunday leaks away. maybe i can still get the loveblender done. W00T, Mr. Ibis and Felisdemens will be in town! Always nice to see good friends, especially with the chance to return hospitality (I visited them in February.)

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LOLCats of the Moment
Last December I posted about Cat Macros, pictures of cats with funny captions, usually in a kind of pidgin kitty talk. The meme is still around, mercifully renamed to "LOLCats" (and applied to tons of other non-Cat things).

The most canonical site seems to be I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER? I browsed its whole archive the other day, looking for this one that's been banging around my head:


I find that enormously and endlessly funny, just the idea of the big blubbery walrus voice, and the hint of walrus-y perspective... it inspired a host of sequel images, none of them very funny, alas.

As I was browsing I was a bit startled to make this discovery: That's Mo's cat Murphy, in a shot grabbed from the bottom of this page in my photbook. Memetastic! (I have no idea who assembled the final product.)

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Quote of the Moment

The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old.

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News of the Moment
Kevorkian out of prison after 8 years. Good for him! He's a creepy lookin' guy, but to say that the government needs to ban people from making difficult end-of-life decisions is just wrong.

I've never used a fire extinguisher. So, of course, they're very tempting to me now. They just seem like so much fun, all that foam at your command. Plus it seems like putting out a fire with one must be very satisfying, in that kind of manly "mastery over nature" sort of way.

I know I should kind of count my blessing in never having to have used one, but still.

I still like the other premise of Fahrenheit 411 451 (thanks Candi)... it's not just that they burn books, it's that they don't need firefighters because they just made everything fireproof.

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Video of the Moment

"What you want Natalie?"
TO DRINK AND FIGHT!
What you need Natalie?"
TO F*** ALL NIGHT!

...I think from SNL/Lonely Island. I kind of like the awareness of the exchange "'We love you Natalie!' I WANNA F*** YOU TOO!", given how she's a target of so much geek fetish. Man, I hate to sound like one of those "oh thank heavens for the BBC on WBUR" and going on and on about how myopic news coverage is in ths country, but I think France's recent "No" vote on the EU Constitution should be getting at least a little more attention on major US news outlets...

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Video Games of the Moment
Making the rounds lately has been this Gamer's Manifesto, 20 things that most gamers would like to see with the new generation of games coming out. I didn't realize that there was a patent on games during loading screens...it seems really odd because the C=64 had that a long time ago, especially in the UK where they tended to use tape drives. I don't agree with the longing for better AI, really...I think realistic AI would make these games not too much fun, because who wants it to be like real war, when you never see it coming? Hardcore gamers might be longing for "serious" competition that might prep them for combat against real people, but for casual gamers, I think some enemy dumbness is appreciated.

The slashdot conversation on it had "Dun Malg" mentioned that a

7th-8th grade algebra teacher, complained to me last night, "They can't figure anything out on their own. Even their video games don't teach them problem solving. It's all 'jump-jump-squat', over and over again."

There's something to that. Video Games aren't as cognitively challenging as some gamers like to pretend.

I shower the name of Sawers with a bajillion praises for his help with grueling packing work this weekend. He also came up with some good ideas for the layout of my new place, pointing out the center would make a very decent TV/Game room, leaving the front for an office/reading room. Go Sawers!

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News of the Moment
The last widow of a Civil War soldier has passed away...even though it was a May-December wedding in the 1920s, it's still amazing to have had a connection with the past like that for so long.

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Freaky Flash Thing of the Moment
Undertone networks might be reprehensible, but they have the coolest little daddy longlegs network-representation Flash toy I've seen. I always thought daddy long legs were pretty cool for computer animation.

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Spam Thing of the Moment
Lately I've been the victim of multiple Joe-Jobs, where SPAM is being sent out looking like it came from my not-much-used "ael at alien bill dot com" account...I think I signed up for something on some questionable website way back when. So I get a ton of bounced messages and stuff...I just hope it doesn't cause my entire alienbill.com domain to be blacklisted anywhere, other than that it's just a raise in my general SPAM volume. Does anyone else get this? I don't know if there's any kind of retribution to be had.

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Funny of the Moment
<lipsynch type="bad">Your crane move is very impressive...but it is no match for the 1000 fighting techniques of Rumsfeld....Now we must fight!</lipsynch> Travel Photo of the Moment

Mo, with the German city of Cochem below. A "skilift"-type ride to the top, then we decided to walk down, 2003.05.22

• Random observation about uniforms as worn by members of the Salvation Army: for people who don't know, part of The Salvation Army's pseudoparamilitary format in the war against sin is that full members of the church (the "Soldiers", as opposed to "adherents" who just go to a "corps" (church) as their place of worship) wear uniforms; full navy blue tunics in winter, white shirts and ties with epaulets and dark bottoms in the summer. I think this was meant to put everyone on equal footing, for a church that reached to the poor masses, you don't want competition for people's "Sunday Best". But over time, this has kind of reversed a little bit, and the uniform wearers are a bit more of an elite group. Actually it makes me think about "uniforms" worn by other elite groups, like businessmen...
• In Germany Mo and I are going to Veronika's wedding. Veronika and I went out when she was a foreign exchange student in Cleveland. I think to some Americans she reads a little cold, maybe a bit of that German reserve, but when she's in love, man, she just melts. I saw that last time we visted her and her soon to be husband, in 2000. It's cool to see.
• The cynical bad poet in me always wonder if first class airline passengers actually see a better world outside their little oval windows.
• Random memory, I'm not sure why I jotted this in my "add to blog" Todo list: walking around this footbridge over the Charles River with "Rosetta"; guess that was one of the last times I thought I had a chance with her...
• One discount kept mysteriously quiet: when I was getting new glasses, I got a much better discount showing my AAA card at lenscrafter than the puny 10% or so I would have gotten through my then employer's program...

Dang, gotta do a Loveblender this weekend, updating all my scripts to make its new look.

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Link of the Moment
It's the web's tiniest website. Wasn't too overwhlemed by it 'til I started play the tiny, tiny Flash based games...pretty cute!

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Quote of the Moment

If a painting can be forged well enough to fool experts, why is the original so valuable?

Wow, it's June. Hard to believe that the opposite end of this month I'll be married!

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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.)

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Link of the Moment
An interesting scientific study on Murphy's Law and toast landing butter-side-down-- brings actual physics into it.