❮❮prevnext❯❯

So I freely admit that my reluctance to use both straps with a backpack - because that was just tragically uncool in the late 80s - is ridiculous (counter arguments: a lot of backpacks properly worn make for a sweaty back)

But as I look at a "fanny pack" I had in a closet (part of my band outfit, especially useful when I was favoring a "sexy copy onesie" that had no pockets whatsoever) - I think about Men's "sling bags" which are like... reflecting a parallel prejudice? Like, hip bags/fanny packs are uncool. But put it over one shoulder? Kinda ok! (and I will ignore the whole genderization of purses thing)

That said I think a good courier bag wins out for looking ok and not sweating up your back - but it might not be enough to stash a hoody in.

---

Just a note that some email phishers are getting more sophisticated. I help administrate an activist band organization, and the following email with subject "Tаkе Aсtiоn Nоw: Aрреаl Pаgе Susреnsiоn - Cорyright аnd Cоmmunity Stаndаrds Viоlаtiоn". That includes an actual Facebook link, and the landing page there is a little sparse but plausible, but the next link in is to something like "https://lnkd.in/dyT8hAQx", which is a semi-obvious scammy URL but a very legitimate looking page.

Time was spammers didn't work too hard to look legit, the logic being you can filter out the non-gullible, but this one put in the work to have fewer early tells.

And of course, disregard everything purporting to be from Best Buy Geek Squad unless you really know you're doing something with them. There is a scam there absolutely frightening in its use of screen sharing and refund scams, making it look like you're getting a refund and then turning the tables and putting you on your back foot by accusing you of stealing from them. (A relative of mine came scarily near not catching on in time.) At the SoWa Vintage Market with Melissa -i realize for a mindfully non-judgemental guy like me it's tough, I feel like I'm accidentally implicitly low key judging everything I walk past, or worse look or poke at and move on. "oh you put your whole self and soul into these art pieces? and then you spent more money on a booth now are sitting in the blistering heat hoping to make a fundamental human connection through your craft and works? cool, cool."

---

Man! I think there's something to this.

For me, value is an emergent property of groups. (Could even be a group like a couple.) We can - and must - still attend to our personal needs, and if a group is consistently ignoring our personal needs, we gotta bail! But I think evaluating everything by what's the most good for the most people - with us as one of those people - is a more moral way to be.

---

Related:

I've reached the halfway point of Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" where he pivots from the physiological to the cultural. The duality he focuses on (left hemisphere / rationalized / focused on what we want the world to be VS right hemisphere / intuitive / focused on what the world is) has a lot of names and manifestations: Nietzsche said Apollonian vs Dionysian, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance said the Classical way of knowing vs the Romantic (nice summary here.)

As always I'm distrustful of "intuitive" side. (Come to think of it, "I don't think my gut feelings are particularly trustworthy" is one of the earliest self-reflective tropes I remember making.) I think it's too easy to romanticize the intuitive - like I understand that our subconscious has a wisdom that the cleverness of the merely rational side lacks - the intuitive self has a viewpoint that is bigger and slower to form - but it's a product of its environment just like everything else is, and it doesn't have a special mainline connection to the Truth.

So combining that tweet dialog with "divided brain" thinking: siding with the "rational" brain, despite its emotional immaturity (frustration and willingness to confabulate when things "don't add up") is a form of radical, wide-ranging empathy. The rational brain is more about the exteriority - the surfaces where we connect - than our own murkier interiorities. It says the most important reality - the best place to draw our values from - is consensus reality. Rationality has error-correcting mechanisms and - in theory - the rationalistic brain is better posed to take other viewpoints into account (even though it also seems more likely to throw temper tantrums when its assumptions and desire to control the world are being challenged! Recognizing the source of that anger is a newer insight for me)

---

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

That "subject to argument, and amenable to reason" is a line that has stuck with me. I think it should apply to both ideas that spring from religious belief and that spring from personal intuition.

A sword can last a short time, but the warrior has to last a long time. That is why he must not let himself be fooled by his own capacity and so be taken by surprise. To each thing he gives the true value that it deserves.

Often, when he is faced with serious matters, the devil whispers in his ear: "Do not bother about that, that's not serious."

Other times, when he is faced with trivial matters, the devil whispers: "You need to spend all your energy on solving this situation."

The warrior does not listen to what the devil is saying. He is the master of his sword.

Pay attention to your allies

A warrior does not associate with anyone who wishes him harm. Nor is he seen in the company of those who want to "console" him.

He avoids whoever is only at his side in moments of defeat. These false friends want to prove that weakness has its rewards. They always bear bad news. They always try to destroy the warrior's trust, under the disguise of "solidarity".

When they see him injured they break into tears, but deep in their hearts they are happy because the warrior has lost a battle. They fail to understand that this is a part of combat.

A warrior's true companions are at his side at each and every moment, in times both difficult and easy.

Negotiating with the enemy

When the moment of combat draws near, the Warrior of Light is prepared for any circumstance. He analyzes each possibility and asks himself: "What would I do if I had to fight against myself?"

This is how he discovers his weak points.

At this moment the adversary approaches, carrying a bag filled with promises, agreements and negotiations. He has tempting proposals and easy alternatives to offer.

The warrior analyzes each of these proposals; he also seeks an agreement, but without losing his dignity. If he avoids combat, it is not because he was seduced – but rather because he decided that this was the best strategy.

A Warrior of Light does not accept presents from the enemy.

On the defense and on the attack

The warrior is careful with people who think they can control the world, determine their own steps, and are certain that they know the right path. They are always so confident in their own capacity of decision that they do not realize the irony with which fate writes everyone's life.

The Warrior of Light has dreams. His dreams carry him forward. But he never commits the mistake of thinking that the road is easy and the door wide.

He knows that the Universe works like alchemy: solve et coagula, say the masters. "Concentrate and disperse your energy according to the situation."

There are moments to act and moments to accept.

In the face of defeat

The Warrior of Light knows how to lose. He does not hold defeat as something indifferent, using phrases like "well, it wasn't all that important", or "to tell the truth, I did not really want that".

He accepts defeat as a defeat; he does not try to change it into a victory or an experience. He suffers the pain of his wounds, the indifference of his friends and the loneliness of loss. At such moments he says to himself: "I fought for something, and I failed to get it. I lost the first battle."

This phrase will give him strength. He is aware that nobody wins all the time – but the courageous always win in the end.

I hunted this down via a tattoo "Existem momentos de agir, e momentos de aceitar", on a tattoo in this article on Survivors of human trafficking becoming coders

---

Unused concept art for the Atari 2600 game Breakout. Between the beefcake and the rainbow colors of the game it's kind of perfect for Pride Month!

via A while back I wrote

One other line from "Fear of Flying" has stuck in my head, and that's Adrian saying "Courage is the first principle" as he cajoles Isadora into running away with him. [...] I think he might be citing Aristotle, actually, the quote sometimes given as "Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others."

This idea has been stuck in my mind today, and I was reading some summaries of the Aristotelian roots.

I have friends and loved ones afflicted with industrial grade anxiety, and it's so hard for them to deal with. And so often I have my own troubles with courage, this fear of proving less capable than I need myself to be resulting in a lack of productivity and a plethora of avoidance behaviors.

Some of the difficulty comes from the way we use emotions to think with. I'm not sure if it's even physically possible to spur ourselves into any action without some level of emotional energy - but we overdo it. It's so, so hard to find that space between "this doesn't matter, nothing matters, who cares" and "this is so important, if it doesn't go well things will be just awful - awful!"

My best suggestion is to try to encourage the stance of "Everything matters, but nothing matters that much".

(I acknowledge there's the "first world" vibe to this problem, privilege involved in having a place in the world that seems fundamentally comfortable and stable - but I also know every person tends to have a hedonistic setpoint, that people from a really wide variety of circumstances end up able to adapt and end up with a similar level of subjective contentment whatever their external circumstance.)

---

"We here at Weyland-Yutani Corporation would like to wish a happy Pride Month to all of our LGBT colonists on LV-426."
via

---

While looking up the design, I found this site: https://speculativeidentities.com/ - lovely deep dives into the typography and logo design of future companies.

---

I think most "time management problems" are really emotion management problems.

Mac Users! Tired of seeing an ugly "ransom note" effect when you copy and paste some text, and the system "helpfully" tries to keep the old font and color info? Try this:

• Open up System Preferences Keyboard
• Go to Shortcuts (tab) App Shortcuts (left column) All Applications (right column)
• Hit the + button
• Enter "Paste and Match Style" (exactly as it appears in the Edit menu dropdown) for "Menu Title" and then hit cmd-V in the "Keyboard Shortcut" box, then click "Add"

Voila. Any app that supports "Paste and Match Style" will now just paste the damn text as text, and you can stop pasting into an intermediate text app (or in my case, browser address box) to avoid your document from devolving into a crazy pastiche of colors and fonts. (Why this isn't more of a clipboard-level default, I'll never know. It's hardly ever helpful - just feels like OS developers trying to show off.)

---

'Words are just an invitation. Actions are the party.' Dang, that's some sage wisdom. I kind of want to write that out in my fanciest lettering over a poignant photo.

---

DeVos: Safety commission won't look at role of guns in school violence

"Will your commission look at the role of firearms as it relates to gun violence in our schools?" Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked DeVos.

"That is not part of the commission's charge, per se," DeVos responded.

"I see," Leahy responded. "So, you're studying gun violence but not considering the role of guns."

"We're actually student school safety and how we can ensure our students are safe at school," DeVos said.

LOL Republicans. They are billboards of their own bullshit. The runner ups for best of 2016... (hmm is that 'third best of 2016?')

---

To feel that life is meaningless unless 'I' can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.

"Street photography is like fishing - catching a fish is more exciting than eating it."

Speaking of which, I saw the opening of my cousin Bill's one-person showing at the Watertown Public Library today - check it out if you're in the neighborhood, up on the 2nd floor (You can get a feel for some of it at his website wdj3.com but there's different stuff at the show, and the larger scale of the prints has a big impact.)

The reason for this is not so much an inherent American goodness--although I would argue that our motives in world affairs are generally more altruistic than those of most other large nations--but because of our unique position as a liberal democratic superpower that embraces an aspirational, rather than ethnic or confessional, national identity.

I once went out with a guy with a 'DTF' neck tattoo, so no, I'm not really interested in watching your hilarious dystopian future comedy.

having kids is basically saying 'I want someone else to have to feel like an idiot for a long time and then die, too'

---

Kim Jong-il's Sushi Chef. Man, that would be a weird job.
--Sounds Good!

---

Sex life getting boring? Try a trail of rose petals that leads toward your bed but veers into walls and over some marbles, because ahahaha.

---

I took a nap and dreamt I was sleepy. Really, brain?

---

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0605/Transit-of-Venus-What-to-expect Judging by previous transits, Venus is pretty crap at making eclipses. Another quarter gone by, another 40-odd songs discovered, or rediscovered...

FWIW, I slightly modified how I listen to this music. For a long while I've been building resetting my seasonal playlist at the start of each season. But that led to songs added late in the season not getting as much play, which in turn led to stuff like me holding off on downloading a song 'til the beginning of the next quarter, which kind of missed the point of an ongoing "new music in my life" playlist. So, now I mostly listen to a rolling playlist of the last 25 songs added. I also added a "last 25 songs, 4 stars or higher", which makes my the ranking a little more meaningful...

Anyway!

One five star track last season:

• If You Kiss Jesus - Robin Skouteris. The "My Little Pony" video put to this mashup was played at a Pax East panel on "Playing to Win" (For no particularly good reason, except it rocks.)

A few 4 star songs:

• Something Bigger, Something Better - Amanda Blank, used on some youtube video or other. Love the line "my ladies who got their own cash / know how to swing they hips fast"
• Make Some Noise - The Beastie Boys. I'm on their email list. "here we go again / give you more, nothin' less-a / back on the mic is the anti-depress-a"
• S&M - Rihanna. Amber digs this tune - there should be more videos this playfully sexy. "I may be bad / but I'm perfectly good / at it" ... "sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and wips excite me"
• King Creole (Viva Elvis) - Elvis Presley. Played during the final days of the Copley Square Borders (sigh) "He lay downs a beat / like a ton of coal"
• Wild Wild West (Album Version With Intro) - Will Smith. Amazingly catchy song-- Will Smith's delivery is so much fun.
• Satellite (Live 1. Runde) - Lena Meyer-Landrut. Like I posted a few days ago, Veronika and Volker introduced me to this Eurovision winner... "i bought new underwear they're blue / and i wore them just the other day"

Other songs I liked enough to want to put into my collection:

• Star Lake Pep Song - Star Lake Camp. I kisrael'd about this. One of a small collection of MP3s where I'm listening to myself.
• That's Some Dream - Good Old War. Heard this at the Copley Square CVS.
• Roam - The B-52's. Old favorite from college a capella days. Love the line "hip to hip, rocking through the wilderness."
• SOS - Rihanna. On one of Amber's play lists, dig the Tainted Love samples
• Immigraniada (We Comin' Rougher) - Gogol Bordello. Boingboing debuted this song -- it's the story of legal immigrants who are still given the short shift in this land.
• Just A Little Lovin' (GB Remix) - Carmen McRae. Heard this on that racy (if heteronormative) Sealy's Mattress Ad. So sweet.
• Blow, Gabriel, Blow - Ethel Merman. (The version I have is higher energy) Might remember this from my mom's musical days...
• Harvey & Sheila (LP Version) - Allan Sherman. This was on a Dr. Demento a family friend (Captain Shenk I think) made for my dad when he was sick.
• You Can't Hurry Love - The Supremes. Classic!
• Here I Come - Fergie. Fun.
• Spirit In The Sky - Norman Greenbaum. I think I heard a radio piece on how many movies use this song, it didn't make Greenbaum rich but he was able to retire.
• Take Me Home - Holly Cole - beautiful retelling of a Tom Waits classic... I've had this for a while, but it was a bad MP3 rip.
• Beatles VS James Brown We Can Work - found this while researching my last musical roundup.
• Mad Men Theme With a Twist - Found this interesting mashup of Mad Men and "Nature Boy".
• Step On My Trip - Dub_Fx. I think I put the live version of this here before; the studio version loses something with the polish, but still good.
• Move - H-Blockx. Found when digging up their version of Snap's "The Power". High energy 90s silliness.
• White Rabbit - Emiliana Torrini. The soundtrack to "Sucker Punch" had some intriguing covers.
• I Want It All / We Will Rock You Mash-Up - Queen+Armegeddon. From the same movie.
• Do The Mario (clean Version) - Hiimrawn & Hi Im Rawn Producer. BoingBoing linked to one of the related videos.
• One More Minute - Weird Al Yankovic. A memory from my even more geek youth...
• Feelin' Alright - Joe Cocker. Heard at Whole Foods.
• Yo Marco El Minuto - Mala Rodriguez. There's a sexy bit of strip tease to this in the movie "Sex and Lucia"
• Give me the seventies - Jean. Fun "Sex and Lucia". Then the guy does a more playful dance to this song in the same move...
• Express Yourself (Album Version) - Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd. Street Rhythm Band. Now seen in a coffeemate commercial.
• E.T. (feat. Kanye West) - Katy Perry. Recommended by my buddy JZ. (No not that JZ)
• Just Can�t Get Enough - Black Eyed Peas. Ditto.
• Sesames Treet (Vocal Mix) - Smart Es. Had this one for a long while, finally looked up the artist to get a legit copy.
• Peppyrock - BTK. I remembered writing down this title in the 90s, forgeting about it, looking it up, realizing it was a song and video, forgetting about it, then remembering it again for no good reason. Catchy song.
• Saturday Night Live Star Wars - Bill Murray. This one I've known about for years.
• Runaway - Del Shannon. Coworker Jon, with leaky headphones, was listening to this. Plus I think it was on one of those old McD's "Shake Burger and Fries" mix tapes I had growing up.
• One Of Us - Joan Osborne. One of those 90s songs. Mighta heard it again in a CVS.
• Ass-n-Titties - DJ Assault. This horrendous little ditty was stuck in the head of Felis Demens a long while back
• Insane In The Brain (Explicit Album Version) - Cypress Hill. Reminded by the movie "Havoc"
• Crazy Vibes - Selah Sue. Heard this in a grocery store in Paris.
• Wonderman (Feat. Ellie Goulding) - Tinie Tempah. They were playing this at the H+M on the Champs d'Elyesee
• Still D.R.E. - Dr. Dre. Ditto.
• Where do I begin (Away Team mix) - Shirley Bassey. I think the cabaret Lido might have been playing this.
• 7 Years and 50 Days (Radio Edit) - Groove Coverage. I don't think Lido was playing a different song by the same folk. Europop fun!

--forget where I grabbed this from but I love it

---

Anti-slack messages I've posted on my monitor: "click like you mean it" "what are you waiting for?" and "is it angst?"

---

Apartment in Cambridge: Old and Busted. Apartment in Arlington: the New Hotness. Old and Busted, New Hotness. (Pretty easy move at that!)

---

Amber enjoying her favorite part of IKEA:

---

"Braintree" (whether in mall or city form) doesn't quite live up to the coolness of its name.
--Via Jacques Demien, Max Fleischer: Dancing On The Moon (1935)

---

Oddly sensual dream involving a big hicky on the base of my spine, which felt better in the dream than it sounds.

---

A few years ago "Berts Horrible Cookies" from Pickering Wharf, Salem... dunno if they're still there... basically a brownie in a cookie- mmm

---

https://www.testmybrain.org/index.html - famous face test, I got 3/14. I think I'm a bit face blind, I've always recognized people via hair. Bruce Schneier writes about the You've Been Left Behind service, a supposedly secure way of getting critical information to your heretic loved ones after you're swept up into heaven.

I guess the scheme relies on their good Christian employees checking in on a regular basis, and their failure to do so will indicate a Rapture-ish condition.

I think they just need some honest and helpful Hindus or Buddhists to work there instead! (And boy, won't that be a wakeup call for those employees!)

Like what if one of the "Christian" employees is actually a backslider, or the standards for being raptured are tougher than they expect? You know they'll totally be in denial "no that couldn't have been the rapture -- I'm still here!"

Of course, that whole "pre-Tribulation" line of analysis, that all Christians get a free pass to dodge 7 years of Hell on Earth, seems to me to be a peculiar bit of wishful thinking... and because of it, some of our politicians are a lot more wreckless than they might otherwise be. As a good rule of thumb, in movies and in life, PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BRING ON THE END OF THE WORLD AREN'T THE GOOD GUYS. Even if they think true believers dodge the worst of it, it's still damn rude towards everyone else! Abraham begged God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, I think Christians should have a bit less righteous glee than they seem to.

---

Video of the Moment

--Cellphone vs Microwave.

---

Exchange of the Moment

Hipster #1: Awwww! I never noticed it said "love" all over the cement!
Hipster #2: It doesn't.
Hipster #1: Oh, I guess the shrooms kicked in.

---

Ugh. My ability to find a place for shtuff has undermined, but not removed, my get rid of shtuff mojo. Still it makes me unhappy.

---

muddling through some decluttering but wish i had a combination coach, personal assistant, and field marshal to get me through this...

---

iphoning google to get free trivia thursday coffee at souper salad probably is a bit cheaty but this iced coffee tastes mighty good I want to run for public office on a platform of changing the city name of Washington D.C. to, I dunno, Washington D.U.S.A. or some such. I mean why should Colombia get all the blamecredit for what goes on there?

(Yeah, Yeah, I know, not the same thing but still, a bit odd. Not "Electoral College" odd, but odd.)

---

Link of the Moment
I was thinking about the similarities between Zen life practice and Getting Things Done when I found a nifty site ZenHabits.net. They even offer ZTD: Zen-To-Done, a somewhat Zen-ified version of the GTD methodology.

---

Image of the Moment

--Found online, on jj.am, a kind of archive for 4chan.org. Neither site for the faint of heart or delicately-sensibled. I've been on an animated GIF kick as of late.

Ksenia and I really dig "Sex and the City" and ever since we watched the complete run I've been looking for an adequate substitute. Recently I stumbled on "Ally McBeal" (after seeing its quotes page on IMBD (when did they start having interstitial adds anyway?)) Oddly, the only DVD release in the USA is a 6-episode selection Ally on Sex and the Single Life. Ksenia and I watched that and she loved so as a gift i want to get more of it. People on that Amazon page point out that it seems like Fox is being weirdly ornery by having the full boxed set in the UK and not the USA. And of course the UK set is Region 2, so I'd have to get one of those region free DVD players, or turn to this one graymarket distributor. I guess it's the copyright holders who can do what they want, but I hate when an arbitrary decision kind of leads me to circumvention... I'm perfectly willing to pay for this, but it's just not available.

Bleh. Nintendo did the same thing with not making a USA port of its Puzzle Collection, with 4 player Dr. Mario, Tetris Attack, and Yoshi's Cookie. I'm really surprised they decided it wasn't going to be worth their while to port to the USA, especially given how game-starved the Gamecube has become.

---

Popculture of the Moment
Not sure if i ever kisrael'd the tale of Nasubi... he was in some weird Japanese reality show, locked in a room, naked, allowed to have only what he could win from raffles and contests, slowly going a bit nuts. Seems like it would be really compelling television.

---

Video of the Moment
Amazing Katamari-themed HIV-awareness PSA. Almost sacrilegious, but terrific, and brings home the message of what kind of impact AIDS can still have. I wonder if it makes sense to people who don't know about the game? (thanks NickB)

I often thought a photorealistic Katamari game would be interesting, and this is pretty much it.

---

Feh of the Moment
Someone leaves printouts from ESPN's website around. Today I was really amused by this piece on "before their time" baseball innovations, but a little bit of thought and some googling seems to confirm that I was duped for a few minutes... it's written fairly convincingly (though I was a little suspicious at the tone in the "Fantasy Baseball" letter) and has some clever ideas, especially the Instant Replay and blogging, but still, I'm pretty sure it's a delayed April Fools. June Fools. Something like that.

So, Feh.

Head a farewell-to-Sawer's FoKN'A (Friends of Kirk's Nintendo Association, the goofy name for my video game get-together group) yesterday....Sawers and Cordelia were there, Andy and my cousin Ivan, Rick showed up as well. A fun group and we had a lot of laughs and played a lot of games and ate a lot of strawberries and other great stuff.

I'm really wanting to try to revive the group, or even expand it a bit especially since some people are gonna be leaving. 4 player games are just the bomb-diggity, though sometimes if its only like 4 or 5 people you don't have quite enough because someone doesn't like that game's genre. I don't know how to expand it properly though...I guess I should make sure it's open to any gamer friends I can think of before doing something weird like posting on Craig's List.

Forgot to haul out the new "Star Fox" before everyone but Ivan left...it was a good head to head deathmatch, might've been tons of fun for four.

---

Anecdote of the Moment
The other week I was over at Ksenia's family's friend. At one point the TV was on a Russian cable station. At one point I saw a dubbed show which was odd for two reasons...one was I think it was a German show, some 70s detective or action drama (taking place at a small amusement park, I think part of the plot was about sabotage or poor maintenence of a small roller coaster leading to one of its cars being thrown into a concession stand with a guy in it.) And of course it was being dubbed into Russian. The other thing was the dubbing method...it wasn't subtitles or attempted lip-synching...instead, the original audio track was on low (which is how I knew it was in German) and a guy repeated what the actors just said in in Russian, and I think did any other needed translations, like of onscreen text. It wasn't quite as simple as one guy acting as the translator/narrator, they also had a woman who would repeat the women's dialog in the show...but besides that there was no attempt for the translators to switch voicees.

I know I'm horribly conditioned to think of English as a default, either for translation to or from for media, but still there's something odd in hearing two different languages you don't understand piled on top of each other on TV.

---

Videos of the Moment
Kind of like porn for people who are into car accidents, Crash Test Videos from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. If you're in a hurry (and using Windows, I guess) check out 2005 VW Beetle Side Impact...multiple camera angles and everything!

So managed to get small groups of people coming at various times this weekend...hopefully it should be enough to get every damn thing into boxes...

---

Quote of the Moment

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

---

Video of the Moment
Don't know how long it'll be before the lawers smack this down (assuming it's not officially endorsed), but this Flash video to Come Together featuring John Lennon and the other Beatles is wonderful.

---

News of the Moment
As LAN3 put it, an example of life imitating Police Academy Four. Travel Photo of the Moment

We stumbled on Hamleys, a wonderful seven-story toyshop in London. For my money it has FAO Schwarz beat hands down. Here's the Hulk and Lego Boba Fett.

• Ancient Art of War was a great little war game. Someone should remake it.
• If you're really into blurry pictures of women's boobs as they flash the keepsake camera on amusement park rides, then the Splash Mountain page at flashmountain.com is for you. ('Course, I was accidentally doing the same thing at Six Flags in this scary, scary photo with me and Peterman.)
• VGMuseum.com has the biggest collection of screenshots I've ever seen.
• These are the voyages of the Starship Exeter...a pretty decent fan creation in the spirit of the original Star Trek.
• The Washington Post on pitfalls for critics.

Link of the Moment
An amazing page on the science and art of flirtation. Or, as they put it, "To save the human race from extinction, and preserve the foundations of civilisation, Martini commissioned Kate Fox at the Social Issues Research Centre to review and analyse all the scientific research material on interaction between the sexes, and produce a definitive guide to the art and etiquette of enjoyable flirting." It's got me analyzing all my little social gestures, and being so introverted and observant is exhausting after a short while! Warning, the article might make you feel like a lab monkey for a bit.

---

Quote of the Moment

Jeffrey Dahmer said he was temporarily insane and ate seventeen people. That ain't temporary. Somewhere around the fourth person you've got to think, "I don't think this is going away, I'm crazy."

Qoute of the Moment

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"

He also decided it would make a good brand of hot sauces and salsas.

---

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.