Snappy Patter

The End, perhaps

2010-03-22T09:43:00.001-07:00

As you may (or may not) know, Snappy Patter is where I tend to post brief items and links, because I wanted to keep that sort of thing separate from the longer posts I used to write for Sloganeering.Org. Unfortunately, that function is not necessary any longer, since I’ve decided to stop posting at Sloganeering.

I will continue to do short posts (amongst various other lengths) at the new site. But does that spell the end for Snappy Patter? Well, maybe—but who knows? I’ve come to rely on this site as a venue to explore more experimental paths. Perhaps I’ll be back here again, one day, doing something different. I don’t know.

I just don’t.

But who will they cast as “It”?

2010-03-19T12:27:00.001-07:00

A Wrinkle in Time movie? It might happen! I don’t know how to feel about that.

Your boss is sensitive, vindictive

2010-03-19T08:35:00.001-07:00

... so you may find this useful: Things you should never say to your boss. Interestingly enough, they leave off some important key phrases to avoid, like: “I can’t come in today,” or, “Fuck you, turkey.”

A web event of note

2010-03-17T18:19:00.001-07:00

It should be mentioned that the first match of The Morning News’s annual Tournament of Books has been posted. I’m a great fan. It’s like getting a sneaky peek through the windows of a rich person’s house!

This is ripe for parody

2010-03-16T12:43:00.001-07:00

From Threat Level:

The next time someone tries to “friend” you on Facebook, it may turn out to be an undercover fed looking to examine your private messages and photos, or surveil your friends and family. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has obtained an internal Justice Department document that describes what law enforcement is doing on social networking sites.

The 33-page document shows that law enforcement agents from local police to the FBI and Secret Service have been logging on to MySpace and other sites undercover to communicate with suspects, read private postings and view photos and videos that are restricted to a user’s friends, according to the Associated Press.

It pays to know who your friends are. Or, I don’t know—maybe don’t leave so much information about your life just lying around on the hard drives of companies that don’t give two shits about you, yeah?

Well of course they did

2010-03-15T10:53:00.001-07:00

From Slashdot:

"This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN), 32-page US counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks (PDF). 'The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the US government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out.' It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization.”

I can’t say I’m surprised.

It’s beta. It doesn’t have to work all the time

2010-03-12T12:43:00.001-08:00

“Hi everyone,
Thanks for reporting this. Unfortunately, this is a known issue that has been plaguing us for some time. The problem occurs when you've created, deleted, and recreated a very large number of tags. We've been trying for some time to find a fix that'll work for the majority of users without impacting performance but so far we don't have a concrete ETA for having the problem solved. I apologize for the inconvenience and we'll continue to search for a satisfactory workaround in the meantime. Thanks for your vigilant bug reporting and for your patience.”

The answer is Bloglines.

How dare you question the intelligence of the market

2010-03-12T08:32:00.001-08:00

From the Consumerist:

This is also why you're fat. A graph of inflation-adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows how the prices of different food and beverages has changed over the past three decades. The price of crap food over the past 30 years has dropped. At the same time, the food you used to try to hide in your glass of milk has gotten steadily more expensive.

Obviously Coke is better for you than oranges—we’re all rational actors, aren’t we?

Time enough for fandom

2010-03-09T13:03:00.001-08:00

The Grand Unified Timeline? Brilliant.

[Via Chaos Theory]

Playing by ear

2010-03-04T11:24:00.001-08:00

This is impressive as hell:

Jordan Verner recently beat The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. You might not be initially impressed by this feat, since it's 2010 and all, but surely this becomes more impressive when you learn that Jordan Verner is also blind, and the way he beat it is by four dedicated nerds writing down every single move a player would need to make in the game, a task that took them over two year and resulting in a (100,000 character) document which Verner's computer read aloud to him as he played.

Just amazing.

Bad medicine

2010-03-04T07:51:00.001-08:00

From the Blog of a Bookslut:

Not only is "The Poisoner's Handbook" as thrilling as any "CSI" episode, but it also offers something even better: an education in how forensics really works.

Also maybe how to poison people to death.

No, really --- it sounds interesting.

This used to be my dumping ground

2010-03-02T22:23:00.001-08:00

Work has been absolutely insane lately, and I’ve been spending my evenings just vegetating and trying to demolish my brain with whatever’s near to hand. This being the case, I’ve fallen behind on a bunch of saved links that, until now, have been cluttering up my bookmark file, of use to no one. So... here they are!

If there ever was such a thing as a “privacy war”, then yeah. We lost.
Should David Eggers edit the Paris Review? Sure, why the hell not.
The Mercury News: Hey, government, please give us the data on the gender and ethnicity of some tech companies. Google, Apple, and Yahoo: TRADE SECRET! TRADE SECRET! Mo-ooooom!
Michael Cader says that people who buy ebook readers are so stinking rich that they ought to pay high prices for ebooks. Well, why not? That’s how premium unleaded works, right?
Meanwhile, in super-secret treaty news, a new leak reveals that it’s quite, quite bad. And all this time, I thought they were hiding it so we wouldn’t see the flying unicorn ponies and rainbow lollipops that they were planning on giving everyone!
A Doctor Who trailer. Yeah, sorry – I’m required by Fan Law to link to things like this.
Bankers like money, give themselves some. What’s funny is how they’ll tell you that it’s not greedy, it’s just that the only way the system could possibly work is to hand out giant-ass bonuses; never mind that the system is what’s crushing the life out of you.
Social media is scary. I prefer one-way communication streams.
The great sleazebags of the 80’s. Too bad they had to stick to sci-fi movies, because man there were a lot of slimy dudes in suits back then.
George Lopez may be the new voice of Speedy Gonzales. I thought that dude had been banished to the land of offensive stereotypes? (Speedy – not Lopez.)
Did you know the government may have been engaged in hundreds of potentially illegal intelligence act – oh, what do you care? How’s Lost turning out this season?
Cybermen! (Sorry!)
What is the government doing with all that baby blood?
Bizarro Fiction! Is it like Gonzo Journalism? (No!)
Giant sips are what you take/walking on the Moon (if you happen to be near the polar ice cap)!
Don’t flip off the cops. They might not like it, retaliate, and there’s not much you can do about it.

I forgive me

2010-03-02T08:59:00.001-08:00

From the Consumerist:

Harold says he paid $40 to check luggage with valuable camera equipment on a multi-leg United flight from Hawaii to Tucson, only to discover his camera had been lost. When he complained, United would have none of it, claiming it's airline policy not to assume liability for camera equipment.

Policy is a magic word. It means never having to say your sorry, or do anything you don’t want to. Like my “I’m awesome” policy – you can’t argue with that! (Actually, you can... but we’ll have to go into arbitration.)

Hell is the people in your neighborhood

2010-03-02T07:47:00.001-08:00

If you’re a writer trying to get any work done, that is.

She got better

2010-03-01T12:16:00.001-08:00

From the Consumerist:

Imagine the scene: Your beloved grandmother has been hospitalized for a respiratory illness. And then comes the bad news — A nurse at the hospital calls to say your grandmother has passed away. You go to her room to gather her personal items, and that's when your dead grandmother wakes up.

Well, that's exactly what happened to a family in Brooklyn over the weekend following a mix-up at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center.

Guess what screencap they used to illustrate this article, yet?

Meanwhile, in outer space...

2010-02-26T12:35:00.001-08:00

... a writer for the Internet gets to pretend to be Tiger Woods for a few minutes. A few, glorious, glorious minutes.

Obligatory Murray Head Reference

2010-02-25T07:27:00.001-08:00

Topless Robot offers up a list of the “Most Majestic Chess Sets for Nerds”. I won’t spoil it for you—OH MY GOD, they forgot the world famous 25th anniversary commemorative Star Trek set from the Franklin Mint, the one where they would send you one piece every 4 to 6 weeks, assuming you kept up the payments! In pure pewter!

Stopping the insanity

2010-02-23T12:19:00.001-08:00

Well, I was going to link to an article here, but since the site won’t show it to me unless I log in, fuck it.

ACTA leak: bye-bye safe harbors

2010-02-22T13:29:00.001-08:00

What secret treaty? Oh, that secret treaty. From Techdirt:

Reports spread this weekend that the ACTA's all-important internet enforcement chapter had leaked. You can download the PDF from that link, or check it out below [...]

From here, you can see why this is still quite a dangerous document -- and why there's been so much misinformation from its supporters, insisting that it "can't change US law," or even (as stated by the USTR) that it won't include three strikes. It doesn't. Sort of. But it does make it very very difficult for any online service provider to get safe harbors without doing something along those lines. Let's explore deeper...

Why shouldn’t we trust an international agreement written by lobbyists and negotiated in secret?

Thank you for the useless advice!

2010-02-22T07:12:00.001-08:00

From mental_floss:

Scientists found that a Spanish-style siesta after lunch does more than just refresh the body and mind, it also makes it easier for the brain to store and retrieve items of short-term information needed for working or studying.

Wow! I’m sure that will convince my boss to let me sleep at work. Unless he wants to give me an extra hour to drive home for my nap.

Hey, this is great!

Cynical love

2010-02-12T14:50:00.001-08:00

From the folks at Cracked:

Will I ever be loved?

Don't be ridiculous. Only attractive people deserve love.

Who will come to my funeral when I die alone?

A raincloud, if you're lucky.

Love is chemicals in your brain that make you stupid, sometimes.

Thank you for coming...

2010-02-12T12:25:00.001-08:00

... we’ll get to undermining American values abroad, and killing local civilians, in a little bit. But first the whores!

Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide employees allege the company charged the government for a prostitute and strippers and kept incompetent personnel for financial reasons, part of what they call a systematic pattern to defraud authorities.

Look, the entire theme of the Iraq War has been this: The people responsible for whatever crimes, mistakes, or unethical behavior that occurred under its shadow, will never, never, ever be called to account for the dirty things they’ve done. I don’t care how many prostitutes you bring up, nobody is going to do anything about it.

Where will the nerds hide now?

2010-02-12T09:34:00.001-08:00

A roundtable discussion about school libraries at the NY Times begins thus:

Keeping traditional school libraries up to date is costly, with the constant need to acquire new books and to find space to store them.

Odd. At the schools I attended, neither of those things were a priority. Which is probably why I’m so dubm.

We don’t need no stinkin’ warrants, part 487

2010-02-11T13:09:00.001-08:00

From CNET:

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Warrantless tracking of cell phones? There’s no way this could ever be abused. Nope, absolutely no way, no how. Oversight? Who needs oversight? I mean, if you can’t trust your friendly neighborhood government surveillance apparatus, who can you trust?

[Link via Slashdot]

Good job, Mayer

2010-02-11T08:56:00.001-08:00

Now people are being asked to explain you:

Yesterday a friend of mine who is black said "So what do you have to say about your boy?" and at first I thought she was talking about a male acquaintance we have in common who I stick up for sometimes when she feels he's behaving foolishly. But no, in fact, she was talking about another male who was behaving foolishly, but the only connection I have to him is that we're both white: John Mayer. I explained quickly that we white people do not claim John Mayer in any way shape or form and I don't intend to explain him or stick up for him.

Jesus, Mayer—just, goddammit man. Get your head out of your ass.

If you’re a spy, please raise your hand

2010-02-09T10:59:00.001-08:00

Well this will make things a whole lot easier. From Raw Story:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

[...]

There's even a $5 filing fee.

Sure, you might laugh—but this has got to be at least as effective as most of the stuff the TSA does.

[Link via Bruce Schneier]

Yawn –- ack!

2010-02-08T14:40:00.001-08:00

From Yahoo News:

Boredom can actually kill you, a new study has revealed.

To reach the conclusion, researchers at University College London looked at data from 7524 civil servants, aged between 35 and 55, interviewed between 1985 and 1988 about their levels of boredom.

They then found out whether they had died by April last year.

Those who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study, the researchers found.

Greeeeaaaaat.

[Link via Slashdot]

Torture comes home

2010-02-08T08:04:00.001-08:00

From the Daily Mail:

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

This is from the Daily Mail, so I have no idea whether or not this story is entirely accurate or unbiased, but goddamn, if it’s true --- that’s really messed up.

Statistical graffiti

2010-02-08T07:18:00.001-08:00

From Inkling magazine (heard of it?), a “statistical analysis of graffiti found at the University of Chicago Library”:

The graffiti preserved in Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius provided unique insights into Roman street life. The Mayan graffiti found in Tekal and the graffiti left by Vikings also give us small glimpses into the past. What kind of insight might a longitudinal study of the graffiti on the walls at the University of Chicago’s main library provide into the lives and minds of this community of college students?

Since September 27, 2007, I have been documenting the graffiti left in public study areas in the Joseph Regenstein Library ("the Reg")[...]

Link via Slashdot

The Manchurian thumb-drive

2010-02-05T09:46:00.001-08:00

Can you trust computer equipment that was manufactured in China? From Slashdot:

"Suspicions about China slipping eavesdropping technology into computer exports have been around for years. But the recent spying attacks, attributed to China, on Google and other Internet companies have revived the hardware spying concerns. An IT World blogger suggests the gear can't be trusted, noting that it wouldn't be hard to add security holes to the firmware of Chinese-made USB memory sticks, computers, hard drives, and cameras.”

Oh, c’mon. My entire computer was built in China, and I’ve never had a 问题.

Now that’s progress

2010-02-05T08:12:00.001-08:00

From the Consumerist:

Your suffering may finally be over, fast food fiends. No more awkwardly torn ketchup packets and tomato-soaked fingers. No more dipping your fries into a dollop of ketchup on a napkin or burger wrapper. NO. Heinz has introduced the ketchup packet 2.0, and the future looks...well, remarkably like the containers of McNugget dipping sauces McDonald's has been using since the '80s.

Now that’s fancy ketchup.

I disagree

2010-02-04T11:20:00.001-08:00

From this otherwise excellent review by Jessa Crispin: “After all, no one wants to live a life without love.”

No one?

Well, no one who matters, I suppose.

Cutting edge technology?

2010-02-04T10:00:00.001-08:00

A Lenovo customer gets shanked by their packaging.

When he called customer service to complain, they put him on hold for 10 minutes before coming back to say that they would make sure it never happened again, and was there anything else they could help him with today? Christian was hoping for something more heartfelt. His email to the Lenovo COO also went unanswered. C'mon, the guy deserves a price cut on his next purchase. Or maybe at least a coupon for some bandaids.

As stupid and dangerous as it is to leave a knife in a box that’s being shipped to a customer, there’s not much you can really expect to prevent it. What, don’t they already have a rule at the factory that says, “Don’t leave knives in boxes?”

What I’m saying is that anything you receive might have knives, poison, or gross creatures lurking about in the packaging, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

As a Valentine’s day gift to the world...

2010-02-04T08:14:00.001-08:00

... please stop making everything heart-shaped. Thank you.

Geek? Not so fast...

2010-02-02T07:31:00.001-08:00

From Heartless Doll:

Michael Cera is a fucking movie star who dicks around with the guys from Jersey Shore for fun. Yes, he may play an awkward, pseudo-adorable dork in every last one of his pictures, and he may even act like one in "real life" when he is being interviewed on television and on the internet. But I am here to tell you that Michael Fucking Cera is a Fucking Movie Star, and there is nothing geeky about being a fucking movie star, so quit acting like Michael Fucking Cera is geeky, and that goes for the shit he does, too.

[10 "Geeky" Things That Are Not Geeky, So Quit Acting Like They're Geeky]

No more good food

2010-02-02T07:27:00.001-08:00

Avoid meat and processed food all you want --- your salad is still covered in pig shit.

Bill Watterson interview

2010-02-01T11:03:00.001-08:00

The first since 1989, probably:

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

(Link via the Awl – again!)

Backfatlash

2010-02-01T10:06:00.001-08:00

From the Awl: “’I am completely and utterly frustrated with rising healthcare costs due to the deluge of fat Americans taxing the healthcare system. I’m in shape and have been all my life because I don’t soothe myself with food all day,’ says one angry thinnie [...]”

Also: “What was Ethan Hawke’s problem with the way society was organized in Gattaca? It seemed fine to me. You know what kind of people are against eugenics? Weak people, that’s who.”

Avatar reviewed again

2010-02-01T07:31:00.000-08:00

From those guys who brought you that 70 minute Phantom Menace review: A review of Avatar.

iTrap

2010-01-29T07:39:00.001-08:00

This is probably the best response I’ve seen to the iPad, thus far: Why The iPad Is Crap Futurism [io9.com].

I cry for the inanimate

2010-01-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

This week's xkcd is rather touching, I thought.

(I also reflexively apologize to furniture when I bump into it.)

Using adverbs differently

2010-01-25T12:32:00.001-08:00

Has the longstanding war on adverbs finally been won? Not quite.

Chemical migration

2010-01-20T16:06:00.001-08:00

Asian industries may be the cause of a different kind of hacking:

Ozone from Asia is wafting across the Pacific on springtime winds and boosting the amount of the smog-producing chemical found in the skies above the Western United States, researchers said in a study released Wednesday.

So, wait — the putrescent cloud hanging above Los Angeles isn’t made up of lost souls that float above Los Angeles, watching their now-vacant bodies move zombie-like from to home to coffeeshop to work and back again? Oh no, of course not: souls are transparent, duh.

Then again, what about the pyramids?

2010-01-20T03:32:00.000-08:00

I still think it's kind of funny.

This is pretty close to how I feel

2010-01-20T00:34:00.000-08:00

Except for that whole sexual arousal thing.

A good thing

2010-01-20T00:28:00.000-08:00

I love this shirt: Stressed? Devour Your Enemies

The fruit of hope

2010-01-19T13:06:00.001-08:00

So, Gizmodo is running a contest: Guess the features of the upcoming Apple tablet correctly, and they’ll give you one. (I assume there are some engineers in Cupertino who’ll have a couple of extra tablets to sell on eBay, soon.)

Fortunately, Gizmodo has its own predictions. Here’s what they say about the price:

People are guesstimating a wild range. Mine: $600, and they will still make money out of it. My gut feeling is that Steve Jobs and Co. believe this will be their biggest contribution to computing since the original Apple Macintosh. And they will want it to be cheap, so it can spread quick, like wildfire.

Excuse me a moment: Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahem.

There are a few things that Apple never does:

Compete on price.
Charge anything less than the absolute maximum that the market will support
Do anything for altruistic reasons (not necessarily relevant here, just bears mentioning).

Rules in action

2010-01-19T12:04:00.001-08:00

Power will always be abused. It’s a rule. Look it up. Also, read this:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation used false terrorism emergencies to illegally collect more than 2,000 phone records between 2002 and 2006. A series of e-mails and memos obtained by The Washington Post details how FBI officials violated their own procedures and strained their communication analysis unit with non-urgent requests. In many instances, approval was granted after records had been collected to justify the FBI’s actions.

See? Also, the software and databases that your favorite online services use to make it easier for law enforcement to gather surveillance on you are big, juicy targets for malicious hackers.

Today in linkbait lists

2010-01-18T09:48:00.001-08:00

This list of “The 100 Greatest Science Fiction or Fantasy Novels of All Time.” As Choire points out at The Awl, this shit will drive you crazy, but I’m mostly linking to this because the cover images are so huge.

Don’t let it throw you

2010-01-18T09:33:00.001-08:00

The news is out: The New York Times website is going to start charging for content. Here’s the thing: people are going to pay, and you’re bound to hear a few folks declaring victory. Hold steady.

As Techdirt said: “Will some people sign up and pay? Yes, absolutely. In fact, I'm sure that there will be stories early on about just how many people subscribed. But as we saw with TimesSelect, that initial number plateaued quickly, and getting the next generation of readers to sign up? Yeah... good luck.”

As much as I want newspapers to survive, and for all of their employees to make scads of money, my main concern is that this will not work, and that it will hurt the New York Times. I hope I am wrong--and I usually am—but this does not bode well.

Telethon for Haiti

2010-01-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

Telethon for Haiti to air Jan. 22 on multiple networks | Music | Newswire | The A.V. Club

Near weekend

2010-01-15T15:21:00.001-08:00

Well, I’ve been absolutely swamped today, so I guess I’ll just close out this week by saying: Congratulations, Amanda Palmer an Neil Gaiman!

Give

2010-01-14T09:38:00.001-08:00

You know what happened. Please help if you can. Donate to Doctors Without Borders. Or find other ways to help here, and here. If you're worried about being scammed when trying to donate, there is information here that will help you.

Responding to Robertson

2010-01-14T08:48:00.001-08:00

Haitian ambassador Raymond Joseph responds to Pat Robertson’s remarks.

W. T. F.?

2010-01-13T14:51:00.001-08:00

What’s Pat Robertson up to?

US evangelical preacher Pat Robertson levied blame Wednesday for the devastating earthquake in Haiti on Haitians themselves, saying that the country "swore a pact to the devil" at its creation.

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," Robertson said on his Christian Broadcasting Network show "The 700 Club." [...]

"They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal," the televangelist said.

Hang on a minute. This reminds me of—wait, here it is:

The just-world phenomenon [...] refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is just so strongly that when they witness an otherwise inexplicable injustice they will rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it. This deflects their anxiety, and lets them continue to believe the world is a just place, but often at the expense of blaming victims for things that were not, objectively, their fault.

Also: Pat Robertson says a lot of stupid shit.

It may have gotten out of hand

2010-01-13T10:18:00.001-08:00

Guess who’s a fan of The Big Lebowski? Yes, it’s Jeff Bridges.

“Any animal can have a baby”

2010-01-13T07:49:00.001-08:00

But now humans can take the Parental Standardized Aptitude Test!

"But not me"

2010-01-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

Letters of Note has posted Kurt Vonnegut's first letter home after the end of WWII, which details the harrowing tale of his life as a POW in Germany.

Link via Fark.

And today...

2010-01-12T10:02:00.000-08:00

... I am sick.

This is not turning out to be a good week.

Time pressure

2010-01-11T12:57:00.001-08:00

Yumpin’ yimmany (I know that’s not how it’s spelt) I’m behind on everything, today. Find something else to do, and I’ll meet you back here tomorrow, okay?

Comedian Artie Lang attempts suicide...

2010-01-08T14:23:00.001-08:00

... and the Internet laughs. I feel incredibly dirty just posting that link.

Diagnosis

2010-01-07T13:21:00.001-08:00

“Well, like all forms of life, you’re a fragile and temporary machine. One that will stop working some day.”

Really not funny

2010-01-07T12:52:00.001-08:00

From the LA times:

A onetime top attorney to former President George W. Bush is accused of trying to kill his wife at their Connecticut home by beating her with a flashlight and choking her.

Fifty-seven-year-old John Michael Farren is charged with strangulation and attempted murder. He was ordered held Thursday on $2 million bail.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Attempted murder? I thought we all agreed to call it “enhanced interrogation” now. (I know. I hate myself.)

I can’t believe it’s science!

2010-01-07T12:14:00.001-08:00

Meanwhile, at mental_floss:

Big news in the field of alcoholic fruit fly research—when fruit flies are offered unlimited amounts of alcohol, they drink until they pass out. They don’t know when to say when, much like their human counterparts, alcoholics.

The list of various fraternities to which the fruit flies belong has not yet been released.

I wanna party with those horses

2010-01-07T12:10:00.001-08:00

Latawnya The Naughty Horse, Learns to Say “No” to Drugs. I bet all her normal friends think that she’s boring now.

Replicant rodeo

2010-01-07T07:56:00.001-08:00

From Techdirt:

Last month, we noted that Philip K. Dick's daughter was quite upset about the fact (at the time, unconfirmed) that Google was going to call its new phone, the Nexus One -- insisting that this was a ripoff of the Nexus-6 robots from Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It's difficult to see any legal basis whatsoever for the claim, but we wondered if Google might just choose a different name anyway. Instead, it launched with the Nexus One name, and it took little time for the Dick Estate's lawyers to send a cease & desist, claiming that it will sue Google for "trademark infringement." There are a few problems with that, of course. The Dick Estate does not have a trademark on Nexus anything.

When reached for comment, the ghost of Philip K. Dick responded by transmitting a beam of soft, pink light from a satellite out in space.

This should be fun

2010-01-06T11:50:00.001-08:00

From Bruce Schneier’s blog:

Let's do it. I'm announcing the TSA Logo Contest. Rules are simple: create a TSA logo. People are welcome to give ideas in the comments, but only actual created logos are eligible to compete. (When my website administrator wakes up, I'll ask him how we can post images in the comments.) Contest ends on February 6th. Winner receives copies of my books, copies of Patrick Smith's book, an empty 12-ounce bottle labeled "saline" that you can refill and get through any TSA security checkpoint, and a fake boarding pass on any flight for any date.

Get yer crayons and get to it!

Money ruins everything

2010-01-05T16:06:00.001-08:00

This shit is why I blog for fun, and not for money. Also: No one has ever offered me any money, ever.

Coast to coast (over the ocean)

2010-01-05T13:27:00.001-08:00

I’ve always wondered exactly what kind of accent Cary Grant had; turns out it’s something called “Trans-Atlantic,” which is described as half-British, half-American. [Link via mental_floss]

Fiction is a world of danger

2010-01-04T15:23:00.001-08:00

“Congratulations. Now you’re a real writer because your family hates you.”

In loving memory of OMNI

2010-01-04T14:49:00.001-08:00

Oh, how I loved OMNI magazine when I was a wee lad:

The magazine was a lushly airbrushed, sans-serif, and silver-paged vision dreamed up by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and his wife, Kathy Keeton. It split the difference between the consumerist Popular Science—which always seemed to cover hypersonic travel and AMC carburetors in the same page—and the lofty Scientific American, whose rigor was alluring but still impenetrable to me. But with equal parts sci-fi, feature reporting, and meaty interviews with Freeman Dyson and Edward O. Wilson, Omni's arrival every month was a sort of peak nerd experience.

I did not know about the Penthouse connection. [Link via Slashdot]

Ugh

2010-01-04T07:15:00.001-08:00

You ever wake up in the morning, see the latest Google doodle, and realize that, yup, it’s going to be that kind of day?

The Litella Files: TSA dick-swinging edition

2009-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

December 30th:
TSA: "You bloggers who posted our new screening guidelines are going down! Subpoenas for the both of you!"

December 31st:
TSA: "We're going make you lose your job! And get you declared a security risk! And--uh, what? You told on us? Whaaaa! No fair! And, uh, well--never mind."

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T14:59:00.000-08:00

Hey, I just wanted to wish everyone a happy New Year. So: Happy New Year!

Requiescat in Cracked

2009-12-30T10:57:00.001-08:00

Over at Cracked.com, in this most celebrity-deathly year of them all, they’ve got a list of some overlooked celebrity passings.

Baby, here’s the best

2009-12-28T11:29:00.001-08:00

... of this decade, anyway. The best of everything, including music:

John Mayer started it with this song. And yes, that is an official statement of blame. If you know anybody that wears two-hundred dollar slacks but no shoes, it is John Mayer's fault. If you know anybody that brings a guitar to a coffee shop instead of a laptop, it is John Mayer's fault. If you've ever had a girlfriend who has asked to see your poetry, and been disgusted when you had none to show, it is John Mayer's fault. If you've ever had diarrhea, it is John Mayer's fault (possibly).

Hell yeah.

Precise terminology

2009-12-28T09:36:00.001-08:00

From Techdirt:

Lots of folks have sent in various versions of Amazon's hyped up press release about how it sold more ebooks on Christmas than physical books. While this ought to make some publishers reconsider their hatred of ebooks, there are two points that make this rather meaningless. First, how many physical books are usually sold on Amazon on Christmas day? My guess is not very many. Books are purchased before Christmas day. However, I'm sure plenty of people did get new Kindles on Christmas, and quite a few then went and "purchased" an ebook or two to test it out.

But, again, since this is the Kindle we're talking about, shouldn't Amazon make the distinction between purchased and rented?

Yeah, Amazon—what the hell?

Ebook privacy round-up

2009-12-21T17:48:00.001-08:00

The EFF has published a privacy-oriented buyers’ guide to ebook readers.

UPDATE: They've published a new version.

Santa Hacked!

2009-12-21T15:37:00.001-08:00

From Precision Blogging:

You're probably talking about this terrible security disaster already: the largest database leak ever. Arweena, a spokes-elf for Santa Claus, admitted a few hours ago that the database posted at WikiLeaks yesterday is indeed the comprehensive 2009 list of which kids have been naughty, and which were nice. The source of the leak is unclear. It may have come from a renegade reindeer, or it could be the work of a clever programmer in the Ukraine. Either way, it's a terrible black eye for Santa. Arweena promised that in the future, access to this database would be restricted on a “need to know” basis. And you know who that means!

Via Bruce Schneier.

How badly do you want to get fit?

2009-12-21T15:31:00.001-08:00

From Mental Floss: 10 Strange Celebrity Exercise Videos. Estelle Getty FTW!

That’s when I realize it’s over

2009-12-21T08:35:00.001-08:00

When Michael Bérubé hears words like genome, that’s when he reaches for his revolver. [Via the Bookslut Blog]

Holiday fear

2009-12-15T11:07:00.001-08:00

Over at Mental Floss, they’ve posted a list of 9 holiday characters from around the world. Some are the benevolent gift-givers that we’d expect. Others, however, are not:

Krampus: This terrifying horned monster is part of the Christmas tradition in Austria and other surrounding countries. If children are good, Saint Nicholas brings them toys. If they’re bad, though, they’ve got to face Krampus’ wrath. The clawed, hairy beast is said to punish naughty children by stealing their toys, smacking them with a birch rod, and even tying them in a sack and chucking them into a river. Getting a lump of coal in your stocking doesn’t seem like such a terrible fate in comparison, does it?

That must be a fun Christmas Eve: “If you kids don’t go to sleep right now, I swear that you’ll be drowned in a sack by morning!”

30 years ago today, phony Beatlemania bit the dust

2009-12-14T08:10:00.001-08:00

I was delighted to find out this morning that today is the 30th anniversary of the release of the Clash’s London Calling album. There was a time in my life when I used to basically listen to London Calling on endless loop. Or, at least it was the only album I would select whenever I felt like listening to some music. Great, great album. There are some who prefer Sandanista!, but they just like being contrary.

Rules is wha?

2009-12-11T08:00:00.001-08:00

Reuters headline: U.S. teens ignore laws against texting while driving.

Wait, let me fix that for you: Everyone ignores laws against texting while driving.

Hold on, I can make it better: Everyone ignores anything that’s inconvenient.

There, all done.

Caloric Expansion

2009-12-10T12:33:00.001-08:00

Mental Floss has a post up about the dramatic increase in food portion sizes over the last 20 years. I have to admit that most of the list I found unsurprising—except for the thing about bagels. They only used to be three inches across? Too small!

All or nothing

2009-12-10T12:18:00.001-08:00

The new Facebook privacy policies. Choose only one: You can either be invisible or naked.

And I thought Californians were bad

2009-12-10T07:42:00.001-08:00

From Francesco Explains It All: “A light snowfall gently dusted the Southeast, delighting children but reversing 10,000 years of human civilization in the process.”

Also, people in Los Angeles are freaking out because it got cold and it rained.

Meanwhile, the Midwest is under a cloud of locusts that have blotted out the Sun, and whose keening drone has the power to drive men mad. A local resident, when reached for comment, said, “Mmm-hmmm.”

They should have called them “moral offsets”

2009-12-09T22:54:00.001-08:00

Buying locally grown, organic tomatoes might mean that you’re a jerk. At least, according to some scientists...

[...] virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.

That’s why you often overhear things like, “Hmm... I did get the organic kale today, I guess it would be okay if I robbed that bank.”

Does anybody know?

2009-12-09T12:18:00.001-08:00

What the fuck was that thing in the sky above Norway? (Via Fark)

UPDATE: Oh, that's what that was!

All is vanity

2009-12-09T09:47:00.001-08:00

This Cracked list of the 7 most pointlessly horrifying plastic surgery procedures is very probably something that I shouldn’t have read this early in the morning. I think I’m going to be ill.

Only crooks want privacy?

2009-12-08T09:59:00.001-08:00

Do you value your privacy? Well, you must be a bad person. So implies Google’s CEO. From Slashdot:

In a surprising statement to CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This will only fuel concerns about Google's behavior as it becomes an ever more powerful gatekeeper of information; though Google says it is aware of these concerns and has taken steps to be transparent to users about the information that is stored.

Looks like someone needs to brush up on their Schneier. This whole “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear” argument is, to put it simply, bunk. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I have to take a shit every now and again, but I still close the bathroom door when I do.

A review of the Nook

2009-12-07T08:57:00.001-08:00

Slashdot links to this review of the Barnes & Noble Nook ebook reader, at the Technologizer:

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: The Nook isn’t a Kindle killer–not in this initial form, at least. For all its pleasing touches, intriguing innovations, and clear advantages over the Kindle, it feels like a less-than-perfectly-polished 1.0 product, just like Amazon’s first e-reader did a couple of years ago. The user interface is surprisingly sluggish, there are some usability gaffes, and I encountered a major bug with the device’s most-touted feature. Even the much-hyped lending feature has a major gotcha: You can lend a book once. Period.

Too bad.

Juarez

2009-12-07T07:59:00.001-08:00

From the NY Times:

''Not one person murdered yesterday,'' Ciudad Juarez's leading newspaper proclaimed in a banner headline. It was big news in this border city, ground zero in the drug war -- the first time in 10 months that a day had passed without a killing.

But by the end of that day, Oct. 30, nine more people were riddled with bullets.

Tales from Juarez pop up in the news from time to time, but it never seems to get any better.

Exploratorium at 50 (or is that 40)

2009-12-06T11:11:00.001-08:00

I love the Exploratorium. And now it’s 50 years old! (Maybe—read on:)

It was 51 years ago that a former Berkeley physicist named Frank Oppenheimer came back to the Bay Area from his Colorado ranch to transform his dream into a reality he would call the Exploratorium.

It would be a place of wonder, he told a Chronicle reporter, "where human perception and awareness of the natural world" would awaken curious young minds to the phenomena of physics, the structure of chemical molecules, the behavior of living organisms and the workings of the human mind - all manifesting themselves in what we see around us.

Growing up in Sacramento, our school field trips were usually to the Railroad Museum and the Capitol Building. Not bad, but the one year we went to the Exploratorium was a revelation: a museum where you were allowed to touch the exhibits! Don’t know why their website says it’s been 40 years, the Chronicle says 50.

Monoculture musings

2009-12-04T12:34:00.001-08:00

The news of Susan Boyle’s debut album’s sales sparks an examination of a cultural phenomenon. Remember when everyone used to listen to the same music?

[...] Boyle's album I Dreamed a Dream sold 701,000 copies in the U.S.! In one week! That gives it the best first-week album sales this year, beating out superstars such as U2 and Eminem. And, most surprisingly, this puts Boyle's numbers on par with Snoop Dogg's 1993 album, Doggystyle, for the best sales of a debut artist ever.

[...]

What interests me, more than it being Susan Boyle who is selling so many albums, is that it's anyone at all. It seems like it's been ages since a bunch of people were all listening to the same band or artist. Remember when that happened all the time? Remember when 24 million people bought Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill? Now, in 2009, more than 47 million people own that album! What does that even mean? For one, it means that the entire population of California owns that album, or that everyone in Wyoming has 85 copies.

A funny comic strip

2009-12-04T11:12:00.001-08:00

The Unshelved Blog calls the “Read” poster in this Sheldon strip the best ever – I’m inclined to agree!

Bhopal factory might still be making people sick

2009-12-03T15:53:00.001-08:00

In 1984 a Union Carbide chemical in plant Bhopal, India leaked poisonous gas, which killed thousands of people. (Union Carbide is now owned by Dow.) Twenty-five years later, the factory may still be poisoning people. From Reuters:

A quarter of a century on, the derelict factory stands abandoned, but behind its locked iron gates lies what environmentalists say is "a disaster within a disaster" -- a highly polluted site which, according to a new study, is slowly poisoning the drinking water for thousands of Indians.

Performance/activist group The Yes Men have been among many of the folks out there who are trying to get Dow to do the right thing. You can read about it here.

Editorial/Sales

2009-12-03T14:32:00.001-08:00

Is it a good idea for a newspaper’s journalists and sales staff to have the same managers?

John Obeidin points us to the news that The Dallas News has basically wiped away the standard "church" and "state" separation of journalists and ad sales and has reorganized such that editorial and journalism positions now report to ad sales managers (nicely renamed "general managers"). Of course, historically, newspapers have always been clear to separate the two. There's no reason why this needs to be the case, but it can certainly raise questions about the objectivity of the reporting.

Interesting, no?

Writers on ebooks

2009-12-03T12:18:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times: Writers on ebooks:

Mr. [Joseph] Finder said he found the screens quite readable, but grumbled about the typography. “Given the importance of typeface in books as signifiers — they tell you a huge amount about the book you’re reading, whether it’s traditional literary, contemporary and so on,” he said. “It surprises me that the fonts on the Kindle are all pasteurized and homogenized.”

“John Updike, who was so enamored of Janson and insisted that all his books be set in that font, would have been appalled to see all of his books set in Caelicia, the same font used in, say, Nora Roberts.”

Well, at least the article defies expectation—usually, exposing writers to technology results in heavy doses of squeamish, effete snobbishness. And it’s true what Finder says about Updike: He once saw a mockup of The Centaur done in Comic Sans, and he threw up for a week.

The price of surveillance

2009-12-01T17:06:00.001-08:00

It’s easy to assume that anyone who doesn’t respect our citizens’ privacy is motivated either by ideology or fear; but it pays to remember that some of them are just in it for the money. And they’re a little embarrassed about it:

Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

Yahoo and Verizon are probably right—the data probably would be used to “shame” them. Of course, the fact that they are so unwilling to reveal how much we taxpayers are spending on their surveillance services is pretty darn shameful in itself, isn’t it?

UPDATE: The "price list" was leaked to the Cryptome site, and of course yahoo has issued a takedown.