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There were two heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book.

Good point for people who want to ban book from libraries.

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I like the music listened to by Hispanic people in their late 40s and early 50s... not afraid of challenge or victory.

(Wonder if it could be related to the Roslindale Parade - my street band (on a float) had to compete with loud Latino music - this one car with a truly ridiculous amount of speakers on top, spread like moose antlers...)

This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

(Not a subtext-laden anything, just a song that the God of Shuffle Play graced me with this windy morning.)

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JP Honk at the Thomas M Donahue Roslindale Parade...

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LOL. I love that I'm on dev teams sweating load time scores because Google the Almighty has really made it a point of emphasis, lest our SEO ratings plummet, and I'm starting at a gmail loading screen (weirdly rebranded "Google Workspace" for like over a minute.)

If I could have it back
All the time that we wasted
I'd only waste it again
If I could have it back
You know I would love to waste it again
Waste it again and again and again
Well, I've got to ask

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Atari Games that never were (via)

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Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

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its okay to have a bad week guys. its okay if you dont achieve anything for a month or three. it's okay if a few years are just a total write-off. it's okay to have a bad life . its okay to go to hell and squirm forever in the flames like a little rat

Got a new iphone (my craving for the bestest camera leads to this, one of bigger indulgences) I took this picture half asleep and in the dark last night.... was impressed by how much it got at so little light but now i see it's made the cat a spooky faceless thing....

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People say age is just a number, yet this truth glosses over the fact that number refers, rather crucially, to the number of years one has been alive.

A good pun is in the oy of the beholder.

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"'They need freedom, but they also need protection,' Skaife says of his ravens, as a soldier would speak of the British people."

Interesting thought. Paternalistic as heck, obviously, and I think about what some of my more liberal friends would think of it. "Your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins" is the fundamental challenge in free societies. There's always that contradiction that for freedom to work everyone has to submit to the overarching system of rules for it to not become a seething bed of endless injustic. Either intrinsically and voluntarily, because they recognize it as the superior way for a society to be, or becaause of some measure of enforcement - and either extreme is fraught with the potential for abuse.

(Kind of like how you can't have a society that is both purely free and a meritocracy, because of the natural instinct of humans to favor their own progeny.)

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Hah, I was thinking "huh, this book sounds a bit like 'H is for Hawk'" and I realized the author of that book is Helen Macdonald, the author of that review. On my devblog, What Perl Taught Me

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I kind of hate that while the primary task remains legitimate sorrow for every victim of the tragedy and their communities, the secondary task is sorting out does this support or undermine my worldview viz a viz Guns Culture is a Serious Problem VS. We Gotta Watchout for Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists. (And to repeat, more sacrifices to our great god Gun)

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Also I can't imagine it's an easy statement to write or the easiest adjective to think of, but "warmest" condolences?

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2017102 - today is a bit of a palindrome.

Less isn't more; just enough is more.

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Also via O'Reilly's "Understanding Industrial Design", Naoto Fukasawa's clever tea bag marionette:

This concept comes from the motion of dipping a tea bag in hot water, which reminds him of a marionette dancing. The handle on this human-shaped tea bag looks like a marionette handle too. When the bag is dipped in hot water, the leaves swell to fill the bag, creating a deep-hued roll. Repeating the dipping action, the user is engaged in a wondrous world of puppet play. Thus, design intrigued with the unconscious emerges through the medium of an action.

Music I added last month... 4-stars in red, the first four videos are worth a watch.

• Downtown (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis) -- fun song, bringing in a few different genres, beautifully. The video is cool too, especially the chariot of motorcycles.
• Like a Boss (Amy Kucharik) I saw this artist busking at Davis Square before a School of Honk event... actually I played along on tuba with her ukelele. This video has lots of fun business-speak innuendo.
• Epic Rap Battles of History - Everything's a Product (Honest Movie Trailers) - funny mini-parody of "Everything is Awesome"
• This Land is Your Land (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings) Crazy good R+B cover of a fantastic song.
• The Noncommittal Love Song (Amy Kucharik) -- shades of Weird Al's "You're the woman that I've always dreamed of -- Well not really, but you're good enough for now"... but with more ukelele.
• Inertia Creeps (Massive Attack) A dark electronic-ish piece with some middle eastern overtones.
• I Am Mine (Pearl Jam) This song had big signifigance in this tragic story of a 38 year old with Alzheimers.
• Hand Clapping Song (The Meters) Some nice R+B
• Suplex (feat. Northern Voice) (A Tribe Called Red) I dig the blend of first people's music with some modern stuff
• Worth It (feat. Kid Ink) (Fifth Harmony) Cool klezmer-y bits
• Wanna B Ur Lovr ("Weird Al" Yankovic) Weird Al takes on Prince. Leaving a nation asking... "she has yugoslavian hands"? What?
• Goin' Up the Country (Canned Heat) Weird surfer-ish 60s bit.
• Tetris (Seinfeld Remix)(SynaMax) burbly cover of the old russian folksong, known to a million gameboys.

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It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

(just to have it in text) Why Atheists Should Be Less Spock and more Kirk. Kirk was an anti-Deist who violated his own "Prime Directive" overthrew what seemed like a perfectly functional symbiotic society because at its core it had some computer claiming godhood - which by the villagers standards, it was. (Alright, there was something about a tractor beam and saving the Enterprise but whatever) I'd argue that people making a case for atheism need a good dose of McCoy to complete the Freudian Trio...Kirk is rational and intuitive, Spock is cold and logical, but McCoy is emotional and humanistic.

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Style tips from Julia Kite: deodorant is the answer to questions we have not yet begun to ask.

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Engrave this upon your heart: there isn't anyone you couldn't love once you heard their story.

A lot of Youtube rips this month. Emeli Sandé's "Heaven" is the only 4 star-- great song, that.

• How You Like Me Now (The Heavy) Decent neo-James-Brownian feel (James Brownian Motion would be a good name for a band.)
• Where Do I Begin (Away Team mix) (Shirley Bassey) Powerful remix.
• Q.U.E.E.N. (feat. Erykah Badu) (Janelle Monáe) A favorite of mine and FOSO's... took a while for the song itself to grow on me, and not just the line "is it peculiar that she twerk in the mirror?" (pre-Miley) but it's really pretty great.
• Africa (The Amalgamates) -- Toto cover by a Tufts A Cappella group. Had it for a little under 20 yeears, hearing the original made me like this version more.
• Oh Shit (The Pharcyde) Ugh. Catchy song despite the Transphobia.
• So Watcha Want (Arsenio Hall 1992) (The Beastie Boys + Cypress Hill) I've gotten into Youtube rips!
• Roar (Katy Perry) Not much to say. Like that shouty chorus.
• I Beeped You (Father) Old school hiphop I missed back in the day... good Jackson 5 sample
• Sweet Brown - Aint Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix) (The Parody Factory) I like this even though I'm worried it might be racist.
• Straight Lines (Dawn Landes) Sweet and gentle.
• The Fox (Ylvis) I think I like this-- unironically? Like not for the comedy, it just has a good sound.
• Heaven (Emeli Sandé) It was probably the tight funk beat that first grabbed me, but the vocals are so powerful.
• Compliments (Kollektivet) Comedy bit... but I know that feeling.
• Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon) My street band is putting a version of this together, and everyone else in the group is surprised I never heard this. Good for halloween!
• Sweet Child O' Mine (Step Brothers) A clip from the movie -- I think the blatantly mediocre a cappella resonates with me!

The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity...

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So glad the last step in my microwave entrée suggestion is 'enjoy.' If it was 'deplore,' the entire meal would be ruined.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox - Simpson's Paradox just blows my mind. A > X and B > Y but A + B < X + Y? So weird.

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Generally speaking I have found that most things do not get simpler over time.

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I have a theory that the Red Line in any city with a subway is always the worst.

For 24 Hour Comics Day, I decided to try doing a "graphic novel" version of The Skeptic's Guide to Morality, and will serialize it here...
--The robot for the 24 Hour Comics Day entry I'm not writing.
I'm writing something much crappier and more self-indulgent instead!

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I'm glad [Dunkin Donuts] doesn't call munchkins 'donut balls'.

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About to start 24 Hour Comics Day! @cobiegoesboom will be over soon. Precious little idea what I'm going to make my comic about.

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http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/creative-examples-of-infographics.html - nice examples of infographics

Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

I was noticing he has kind of a crooked mouth. If I was an idiot birther or something, I'd probably try to get cheap points by saying "see? He's ALWAYS talking out of the side of his mouth".

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http://www.offworld.com/2009/09/one-more-go-why-halo-makes-me.html - the humanist heaven of Halo (the game)

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For only $23,000, you can buy [Montblanc's] Mahatma Gandhi pen. "18-carat solid gold, rhodium-plated nib, engraved with Gandhi's image, and 'a saffron-coloured mandarin garnet' on the clip."

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Why do I know who Tom Green is? I mean I think I knew him before "Freddy Got Fingered" but can't remember anything he did...

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http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/vine.htm - wow, 17th century tentacle rape poetry?

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Yo mama so fat I feel terrible even bringing it up.

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I was kind of hoping for Chicago or Tokyo for the Olympics. (At least the latter got some much needed handicapped-access to its subways.)

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http://www.acontinuouslean.com/2009/10/01/the-original-ibm-thinkpad/ - never put together IBM's old "THINK" campaign w/ "ThinkPad" name... Yay Red Sox! Wonder if they have LAA's postseason number as deeply as it looks?

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Passage of the Moment

I like "Howl" a lot. Who wouldn't? It just doesn't have much to do with me or what happened to my friends. For one thing, I believe that the best minds of my generation were probably musicians and physicists and mathematicians and biologists and archaeologists and chess masters and so on, and Ginsberg's closest friends, if I'm not mistaken, were undergraduates in the English department of Columbia University.

No offense intended, but it would never occur to me to look for the best minds in any generation in an undergraduate English department anywhere.

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Image of the Moment

--Cookie Monster slayer, via boingboing and laughing squid.

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<<had it been another day / i might have looked the other way / and I'd have never been aware / but as it is I'll dream of her>>

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Lionessque So when a turtle has that kind of problem, is it colloquially "the runs" or just like "the walks"?

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Unabashed geekery: learning of "Levenshtein distance", a measure of how different two sets of characters are. And the Perl module for it. Man. Today is so not Friday.

But, I get my new glasses today. It kind of weirds me out how the other pair just vanished, but still. Stylin'.

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Conversation of a While Back
kirk i guess i should be up
kirk got the disc that should let us play dr. mario et al on wii
evil b nifty.
evil b more fun than a cow on laxatives.
kirk err
evil b yes, its a great metaphor, don't you think
kirk that's the kind of thinking that gave us conker's bad fur day!
evil b my god, I must a billion selling game some where inside of me
kirk you fail at verb
--2007.07.02. "Conker's Bad Fur Day" is a fun but sophomoric game with a rather prolonged cow-and-prune-juice scene.

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Advice of the Moment

So that's why you wrote this: I've read stories where the most precise language and evocative imagery is saved for the all-important pudenda-shaving scene as the heroine gets ready to go to the library. I'm not knocking your kink, I'm just wondering why so much word-weight is put into a personal hygiene choice in a story about tracking down Shoggoths.

The other week I saw the most amazing alarm clock. I don't recall the brand name, but what impressed me is that in a lower part of the display it showed what time the alarm was set for, in much smaller numbers than the current time, and I think a different color. So you could tell at a glance, and didn't have to fiddle with any buttons. What a great idea! Such an obvious idea, but I'm not sure if I would have thought of it. I guess that's why there are patents, but I still think we're a bit patent-happy in this country.

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Rant of the Moment

[On receiving a job at the Appalachian Regional Commission, one of the "antipoverty agencies" setup during the Kennedy and Johnson eras] You see, poverty was actually recognized as a real problem, and the government actually tried to help people to overcome it. How crazy is that? What were we thinking? It was obviously a wrongheaded idea, and I am so glad that we got rid of all those agencies. Look around. Everyone seems to be doing so well, especially those Appalachians who live in places called Hollers. And if they aren't doing well, let me tell you, it's their own fucking fault. Besides, I am sure they are happier not being burdened by cash, which leaves them plenty of time to whittle shit to their heart's content.

You have to kind of hear it in his voice for it to work. That book is a biography of sorts... he was more of an artsy 60s type than I would have guessed. Geekery of the Moment
So, looking over Ksenia's shoulder as she used her Mac laptop, I had a bit of an epiphany that helped me "get" the dock-centric UI a bit more. I was asking her if she wanted to get rid of some of the apps that she doesn't use from the dock...I know in her place I would want to keep it as uncluttered as possible. She declined because she kind of like the way it looked, but something about the exchange let me finally "get" the Dock a bit more...it ties together the way that most users probably only use a small number of applications on a regular basis, and the original Mac idea of being an "information appliance"...I now understand the concept of a user not really caring if they had windows open in that application or not, because...well, I guess the tasks are more strongly grouped than that. Only if you press the yellow button does it give that window its unique place on the Dock, so you explicity kind of say "I'll come back to this later", whereas the Windows view kind of assumes everything is a task you want to come back to, because the user is multitasking. Windows' taskbar is all about, well, tasks, but Macintosh has a view that's more application-centric than that. I think I still prefer the Start Button / Taskbar combo however.

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Joke of the Moment

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."

"OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!"

His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.

Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"

Quote and Game of the Moment

My, Earth really is full of things.

That game is the current big sleeper hit (Sold Out in many places, but I found it at EB for $20)

This Review is as good as I've seen...the basic idea is one night The King of the All Cosmos got drunk and wiped out all of the stars. So now he sends you, his princely son, on missions on Earth to roll around a sticky ball...anything you run into that's smaller than your clump gets added to your clump, and thus the Katamari ball grows and grows until the level is over. If you meet the level's size goal, the ball gets converted into a star and placed in the sky above.

The change of scale is amazing...on some levels (actually I haven't made it quite as far as this) "you start out picking up nigiri sushi and strawberries, and getting beaten up by mice, and end up uprooting trees and grabbing entire houses" (That's according to Nick B's journal...his praise of the game got me to check it out, in fact, and the insane man wants to try an Atari 2600 version of it.) The entire game is soaked in Japanese weirdness, from the music (supposedly singing about the game itself, though I haven't heard one of the tunes in English yet), to the regal but alien mindset and "Royal We" of the King of All Cosmos, to strange cutscenes straight out of a stylized early 60s cartoon about a Japanese family.

You can get some cool desktop backgrounds on the official site's download page, here's a good gameplay movie with some neat music, and then there's the brief Japanese Commercial.

It does seem like one of those games that could end up in your dreams...

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Quote of the Moment

I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

I think he was speaking sarcastically/rhetorically, explaining that a judge can't mix up personal views on social issues with their courtroom decisions, but I'm not sure... So for the past few evenings I've been taking some time and playing all the way through some old "Nintendo 64" games: Diddy Kong Racing, Battle Tanx and its sequel "Battle Tanx: Global Assault". These games are kind of like comfort-food, I know I can beat their campaign modes with out too much strain, and they're a good time all around. But it hits me that I've rarely been so aware that I am so consciously practicing escapism. This week has been a real roller coaster, and immersing myself in these goofy and fun worlds (where I'm highly confident I'll come out on top in the end) is very soothing.

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Article of the Moment
Slate.com on how American parents also have a preference for sons over daughters, looking at marriage and divorce rates. The article, and the report it based, decline to speculate why that is, but my theory is this: men just don't how to relate to little girls. I think few would argue that the mother-child bond isn't stronger than the father-child bond. Therefore I'd guess that a lot of these breakups and what not happen because men just aren't emotionally in tune enough with young women, they just don't know what to do.

Just a guess.

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Brag of the Moment
Another 5 or so seconds off of my 15 minutes of Warholian fame, Popular Science just asked to copy my text for this Link of the Moment ("Murphy's Job") for a new blog area they're adding to their magazine's Reader Feedback section. (I suggested cleaning up the phrasing a wee bit, I must've been in a hurry when I typed it.) I'll have to look for it in the December issue--which will come out, when, early November or something? It's odd how so many magazines always beat their cover date by like a month.

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List of the Moment
MIT's Technology Review has Bruce Sterling's Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die. While I don't agree with some of them (in particular, I think he forgets about the random access qualities and special features of DVDs, along with the side benefits of material objects that look good on a shelf (as opposed to elecronically distributed alternatives)) I was struck by the one reference to "your American internal visa (formerly known as a 'driver's license')". He's got a point, for what it's worth. Business Link of the Moment
The other day I went to a Harvard Business School Alum Seminar (Lena recently got her MBA there, so I was her guest.) on networking (the human kind, not the online type.) It was focused on how to work one of those networking events, and I don't get to go to many of those, but still, there were some ok tips. Anyway, the leader mentioned this article on the Rolling Stones in Fortune magazine, about what incredible business men they are. (Especially in terms of how they've used connections in the past.)

Ah well. I've often said that "Selling out is the new integrity."

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Geek Link of the Moment
Ahh, the dulcet tones of the IBM 1403 Printer. Actually, it's kind of amusing; back in 1964 they figured out what characters to print to get what notes, and recorded some songs. A great hack, I love abuses of technology like that.

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Quote of the Moment

It is a wondrous human characteristic to be able to slip into and out of idiocy many times a day without noticing the change or killing innocent bystanders in the process

Man, it seems like tons of people are getting sick... I think I helped to give a cold to Erin and John, and everyone at Mo's office was going home early the other day. I'm pretty confident it's just one of those things, but the timing is so ominous.

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Link of the Moment
This is Nasubi. From the link:

Nippon Television's (NTV) producers have obviously never heard of the Geneva Convention. If they had, they wouldn't have treated poor Nasubi the way they did. They wouldn't have stripped him naked and shut him in an apartment, alone with no food, furniture, household goods, or entertainment. They wouldn't have kept him there for over a year until he had won $10 000 in prizes by sending in postcards to contests. They wouldn't have cut him off from the world and they would have told him that he was on nation-wide TV.

Japanese Entertainment: the world's finest! A very comprehensive webpage.

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Quote of the Moment

I cannot condone a society in which to eat a sheep is acceptable but to fuck a sheep is a crime...