Random Walkings
Something to make you sick to your stomach: DC 9/11: Time of Crisis (2003) (TV), starring "That's My Bush" star Timothy Bottoms. The script was written by Bush associate Lionel Chetwynd, in cooperation with Karl Rove. An excerpt:
Bush: If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and ge me. I'll be at home. Waiting for the bastard."
Secret Service Agent: But Mr. President...
Bush: Try 'Commander-in-Chief.' Whose present command is, 'Take the President home!'
It will air on Showtime a few days before the second anniversary of 9/11, and just two months before the presidential election.
It's not a Canon A70, but I'm considering buying a
Fujifilm FinePix 1300 for $70, hacking in a radio shack 555 timer chip and a 128MB flash card to make a rig for time-lapse photography of my
Melty Man project.
Foresight Exchange: an online "game" in which players buy and sell "idea futures" -- shares of a claim that may or may not come true at some determined point in the future. For example, claim
Bush04 pays off if George W. Bush is still president in February of 2005. Claim
SARS pays off proportionate to the log of the number of deaths attributed to SARS.
FutureMap: a real-money information futures market for predicting terrorist action. I think this was actually a pretty good idea. It created a reliable channel for collating the resources of the open source intelligence population, the first step in reforming our broken intelligence infrastructure. As a secondary effect, it would have also created a channel for informants to get paid for reliable anonymous tips, without the risks associated with becoming a CIA asset.
Too bad some
sensationalist reactionaries threw a hissy-fit and had this experiment deep-sixed before it could even get off the ground.
Decision Support Systems, Inc. publishes lots of interesting papers. See the world from an intelligence analyst's perspective.
Mollie Stone's Market: sometimes mispelled "Molly Stone's"
via boingboing,
this patent reminds me of
blipverts, or, more specifically, their effects on certain segments of the television viewing audience.
"Sometimes, people just explode."
The Dead Milkmen can relax.
Bob Hope is dead. Finally, there is enough beer for the rest of us.
Love yer
uggabugga blog. More politics.
A wealth of information about the
Lost City, a recently-discovered hydrothermal field on the Atlantis Massif. Unlike volcanic vents, the Lost City's heat is generated by the reaction between seawater and the
olivine on which it rests. I wouldn't mind a big block of olivine for my bathtub.
Learn to play
guitar. Rock and roll.
EFF: now has database of individuals being subpeonaed by the RIAA available for searching. Are you on the list?
Reading:
"Promise?" she asked.
"I promise."
"You won't hurt me?"
"I won't hurt you."
She looked down at her shoes for a while. Plain black loafers. Compared to mine, lined up next to them, they were as tiny as toys.
"I'm scared," she said. "These days I feel like a snail without a shell."
"I'm scared too," I said. "I feel like a frog without any webs."
She looked up and smiled.
Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog. I held her close against me. Our tongues met lightly. I felt her breasts through her blouse. She didn't resist. She just closed her eyes and sighed. Her breasts were small and fit comfortably in the palm of my hand, as if designed solely for that purpose. She placed her palm above my heart, and the the feel of her hand and the beat of my heart became one. She's not Shimamoto, I told myself. She can't give me what Shimamoto gave. But here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her?
But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.
Everybody needs to read this book.
It's been a while since I heard the conspiracy theory about the Bush administration using airport security regulations as a tool to harass political opponents? I never believed it -- too wacky. But wait, it's
true. Oh heck.
Saddam Does Not Have "Weapons of Mass Destruction" - By Timothy Noah: A discourse about what is or is not a WMD, and how the phrase "WMD" has been perverted for propaganda.
A work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of southwestern New Mexico, The Lightning Field is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles, two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet by 7 1/2 inches in height, are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane.
Lightning Field (emphasis mine).
"... and take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God whose Ark it is."
Mark A. R. Kleiman: another good poli blog -- lots of details about under-reported stories, such as the Plame burn.
Late Brooklyn city councilman James Davis, coincidentally a graduate of
Tilden High School, my mother's alma mater,
has been shot and killed at City Hall.
James E. Davis is the founder of "LOVE YOURSELF" Stop the Violence, a not-for-profit, voluntarily run organization dedicated to stopping violence in urban America. His mission in life is to rid violence from urban communities. He is the Councilmember for the 35th Councilmanic District. Mr. Davis won this office in the November 2001, General Elections. He is a Minister of the Gospel and the Democratic State Committeeman (Male District Leader) for the 43rd Assembly District. Mr. Davis won this political position in the September 2000 Democratic Primary.
Summer reading:
To us, for whom so quickly "time doth transfix the flourish set on youth," there is something strange, even a trifle ludicrous, in the thought that Zeus, after all these years, is still at the beck and call of his passions. And it seems anyhow lamentable that he has not yet gained self-confidence enough to appear in his own person to the lady of his choice, and is still at pains to transform himself into whatever object he deems likeliest to please her. To
Clio, suddenly from Olympus, he flashed down in the semblance of
Kinglake's "Invasion of the Crimea" (four vols.,
large 8vo, half-calf). She saw through his disguise immediately, and, with great courage and independence, bade him begone. Rebuffed, he was not deflected. Indeed it would seem that Clio's high spirit did but sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form--a recently discovered fragment of
Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen . . . One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in reading history. These dry details of what had actually happened were a relief, she told herself, from all that make-believe.
-Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
In the proper spirit of the thing, I recommend eschewing the
Gutenberg text in favor of the
recent illustrated edition, which is chock-a-block with Beerbohm's snide little doodles. (It's nicely printed, too.)
MENDEL'S: carries a line of spray-on fabric paint for "juniors."
SpeedRing Indoor Kart Racing: a possible birthday event?
Infineon Raceway: Hey, I get 50% discount on tickets, nifty!
American LeMans Series: possible activity for this sunday.
Marked for Debt - The Bush administration says we'll grow out of our deficit. But the Bush tax cuts make that impossible. By Daniel Gross
nebkamp: my burning man camp
