why not sneeze?

2004-01-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

Go here.

2004-01-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Real names of Major League Baseball players:

Carden Gillenwater

Austin Knickerbocker

Ossee Schreckengost

Chappie Snodgrass (real name Anzie Beal Snodgrass -- played for the '01 Orioles, the precursor of the Yankees)

Homer Smoot

Urban Shocker

2004-01-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

Stephen Jay Gould, though deceased, has evidently just published a book about baseball, titled Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville. The Guardian thinks it's pretty swell, especially for non-Americans. The review contains the following classic description:

There is a view in Britain that baseball is little more than rounders, but it is a view clouded by our affinity with cricket and all its complexities

In my experience, rounders is a game played mainly by reluctant schoolgirls who use it as vehicle to carry on a break-time conversation.

2004-01-19T07:43:00.000-08:00

Police investigation at Union Square means an hour long commute this AM. In this spirit, here are NYC's worst subway disasters:

November 1, 1918. Derailment of a train at the Malbone Street tunnel in Brooklyn leaves 92 dead. Cause: Excessive speeding by motorman. Due to a wildcat strike, substitute (inexperienced) labor was being used and the motorman was unfamiliar with the line. Malbone Street was renamed Empire Boulevard.

August, 1928. 16 killed in a derailment near Times Square. Cause: Defective switch.

August 28, 1991: Five killed, 200 injured when a train jumps the tracks beneath Union Square. Cause: The motorman had been drinking heavily

August 27, 1938: An IRT collision at 116th street kills 2 and injures 51.

December 28, 1990. Tunnel fire in Clark Street, Brooklyn, kills 2.

August 1, 1970. Tunnel fire in Bowling Green station kills 1 and injures 50.

May 20, 1970. A train collision in Jackson heights kills 2. Cause: Defective brakes on one of the trains. The motorman, conductor, and inspector were held responsible.

June 21, 2000. Manhattan bound B train derails, injuring 89 (three critically). Cause: Mechanical Failure?

Source: http://www.nycsubway.org/faq/accidents.html (and elsewhere). Forgotten New York has a good section on the Malbone Street disaster.

A surprising number of accidents have occurred in August. I wonder why?

2004-01-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

Some time ago there appeared this article in the Philadelphia Weekly Paper about how great it would be if the libraries were all -- umm-- closed for good. And converted into public computer terminal repositories. I e-mailed the author to tell him that not everyone could afford to just go and buy the books they wanted on Amazon, and that since probably less than 2% of what's sold on Amazon in available in any form on the internet, it might be a bit premature to start clearing all those spaces out (and get rid of that "mildewey decimal smell" -- he thinks he's funny).

I never heard back from him, but I can only assume that this response from The Morning News is itself a parody of that earlier article. The uninformed optimism and anti-intellectualism are here in abundance:

Libraries, as useless as they are, cannot be turned into franchised retail venues, but that doesn’t mean millions of city dollars must be spent to keep open buildings that, in an illiterate world, are useless. As it turns out, libraries can become useful again – if they are converted into more practical things.

One possibility is a television center, where we can feed on five- or 10-minute slices of entertainment. Today’s man is a creature on the go, so clips rather than whole shows would prevent wasting patrons’ time, or worse, boring their minds. For instance, feeds might show all the various ways and reasons Homer has said ‘D’oh’ on The Simpsons, or slow-motion clips of characters being killed on The Sopranos.

2004-01-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of trademarks that are actually not generic -- that is, they are "owned" -- but are used generically. Some are expected: Jello, Frisbee, Hoover. But some are quite surprising:

Bubble wrap (for which the generic name is "air pocket wrap")

Ping Pong ("table tennis")

Popsicle ("flavored icicle on a stick")

Sheetrock ("plasterboard or drywall")
Styrofoam ("polysytrene filler")

So watch out when you use these terms.

There is also a list of formerly trademarked items now used generically:

moxie ("originally a cola")

heroin (trademark was registered by Bayer as a pain reliever)

2004-01-09T07:43:00.000-08:00

Simon LeBon is such an avid reader that he has his own book club. Evidently he is living in Russia, or something, since most of the books are either by Russian authors or are set in Moscow.

Also:

"Simon is currently reading 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon." Okay, I've just lost all faith in your club, Simon -- no one voluntarily reads Gravity's Rainbow.

2004-01-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

A cross cultural comparison of "Peasant poets."

John Clare. Surely the most famous of the lot, Clare worked as a ploughboy, potboy, gardener, lime burner, and other occupations, and was mostly self-educated. He became a phenomenon in London upon the publication of his first book, "Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery," and was the object of praise and condescension in equal measure. He fell from favor shortly thereafter, however, and appears to have suffered from mental illness (he walked 80 miles to Northborough and survived by "eating grass from the roadside") and so spent his later years in a variety of asylums, dying in 1864, at once the illustration and victim of the romantic outlook.

Shuangqing, Chinese Peasant Poet woman of the 18th Century, recalled in a memoir by an obscure artist. She was alleged to have learned to write poetry despite a repressive and patriarchal feudal regime, by sitting outside the village school. Her star has waxed and waned throughout Chinese history ever since, and she has been held up to represent the ideals of the ruling regime. She may have been wholly invented -- there are those who suggest that she was invented as an empathetic figure for those who had failed the imperial examination, and thus failed to get a job in government.

Matsuo Taseko, a woman poet from the 19th century, who has also been posthumously converted into an icon, this time for embracing the traditional social and gender roles of her era, while gently bemoaning the limitations those roles imposed on her.

Robert Bloomfield, shoemaker and/or tailor from Suffolk, also product of the Romantic era, also praised by the lights of his day, also died in poverty. He appears to have been of poor physical health his entire life.

Sergei Esenin, who lived around the time of the Russian Revolution, and wrote a poetry celebrating the proletariat and peasantry, yet tied strongly to the Russian past. He was briefly married to Isadora Duncan (?). Depression, alcoholism, suicide at 30 in the Hotel d'Angleterre in Leningrad, disavowed by the Russian authorities.

Patrick Kavanagh -- another shoemaker! (this time from Ireland). Achieved recogition in his lifetime, though he spent much of the middle period of his life embroiled in a lawsuit that he ultimately lost. However, he bounced back and was appointed to a faculty position by the same man who had opposed him during the lawsuit.

The only common threads here I see are -- hard, disappointing lives (with the exception of Matsuo Taseko), and evidence of the ability of acclaim to destroy as well as build up. Perhaps some of this is due to the one-dimensionality with which they were perceived (that is, as icons rather than individuals). Their stories lead off in fascinating directions that I wish I had time to follow.

2004-01-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I read a biography of Captain Cook, and one thing struck me. At that time, the world was still large, dangerous, and unknown, but there was no shortage of people (drunkards, petty criminals, sociopaths) that could be rounded up to staff boats and get out there and chart the sea. These people survived a great deal, but primarily because they had no choice in the matter.

The point I wish to make was that because the world was so largely unknown at that time, there was an infinite space into which the disaffected could project their consciousness and their aspirations. In some cases these aspirations involved conquest and domination, no doubt. But in other cases they would clearly have been desire for freedom in the negative sense -- release from the confines of society, intellectual and spiritual freedom, etc.

Where can one go for such freedom today? The world is explored and populated. Does one go inside? The soul is a tricky place and one that is hard to spend a lot of time in. Does on go to Mars? Not in our lifetime. It would appear that our horizons are far more circumscribed than at any point in human history thus far, and meanwhile there are ever more people. We are in the age of Captain Bligh.

2003-12-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the Vitamin q blog, here are 13 things which Google lists as "The New Black":

1. Blood
2. Porn
3. Scar Tissue
4. Brown (duh)
5. Mono
6. Pirates
7. Aubergine
8. BobbyPins
9. Orange
10. Iridescence
11. Plagiarism
12. Black
13. Not Black

2003-12-29T12:21:00.000-08:00

More Merriment!

From the recently discovered but oh-so-valuable vitamin q blog:

"The Greatest Hits: If the Velvet Underground Had Been Scottish
1 I'm Wee Free
2 Sweet Ginger
3 White Land / White Hill
4 Run Run Runrig
5 Foggy Nation
6 I'll Be You Record
7 Sandy Says
8 Pale Red Hair
9 Whit Gangs Oan
10 Caledonian Son (to Hugh MacDiarmid)
11 Sister Rhona
12 Lady Macbeth's Operation
13 All Tomorrow's Ceilidhs
14 Venus in Largs"

(runrig=Scottish folk/pop band; ceilidh=type of barn dancing; largs= Scottish town at which Alexander III of Scotland defeated the Viking King Haakon)

2003-12-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

Ha Ha Ha! Zagat Outakes. Not printable due to legal reasons (or perhaps because they are made up?). Regardless, see if you've been to any of these places:

"Eat the crayons. They taste like the calamari."

"Heart-stopping food in a life-taking neighborhood."

"My Russian mother makes better French food."

"Only an accountant could like it."

and a reference to either the White Dog, or Au Chien Qui Fume:

"Should be called barfing dog."

2003-12-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

Because the holidays are wish fulfillment time, the Guardian notes the recent settlement made to an author who was issued a financial award after being unfairly dismissed for writing a thinly veiled book about his co-workers, awkwardly titled "Little Murders Among Partners."

"The boss looked like a pig, his secretary was a brainless blonde, the computer geek was a sexual pervert and the senior broker was a chronic drunk."

Amen, brother. Who hasn't been there?

The book only sold 858 copies -- half to employees! -- but if you factor in the 50,000 pound award the author received, then that's quite a royalty rate.

2003-12-14T21:10:00.000-08:00

A really interesting treatment of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, showing the real-life elements that informed the writing. Dig the Constructivist color scheme as well. The only thing missing is an audio of Sympathy for the Devil (or perhaps Eugene Onegin) playing in the background.

2003-12-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

The new Harper's Site is pretty amazing. The "connections" section reveals a whole conceptual network -- a semantic newtork, you might say -- that can be browsed, and all the hyperlinks are tied into the semantic network as instantiations of some member of it. So you can see hierarchical relationships between concepts, associative relationships between members of the differerent concepts (and other entities to whom they are related) and navigate back and forth between the hierarchical structure and the associations whenever you choose. And it's all dynamically assembled. And built for less than $100,000, evidently.

At last it's an application that seems to fulfill some of the promise of the use of these relationships -- clearly there was an intense indexing effort behind the scenes, but it's live, and it works.

2003-12-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

Via textism, a lovely description of Windows XP.

"I always knew Windows was homely, in a worn-down industrial carpeting kind of way, but had no clue just how fucking ugly XP is. It’s like living inside a perpetual Powerpoint presentation, with sham friendliness pelting down everywhere. "

2003-11-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

Gordon Onslow Ford has died. I confess I'm not as familiar with the English surrealists as I should be -- to me "English surrealist" almost seems an oxymoron -- but his work is very much on the Tanguy/Miro side, i.e. completely non-representational. He appears to have done exactly what he wanted to for the past sixty years -- so as obituaries go, it's a happy one.

2003-11-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

Ironic, No?

Oh what a coiiiiincidence.

Seriously, what good are these code names if everyone in the whole world knows what they are?

2003-11-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

Come on, scribes, surely you can do better than that!

Ground Down Meat Loaf Collapses

2003-11-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

Time to weigh in on the Apple I-Tunes ad.

In brief, I like the concept of this ad a great deal, and the overall design concept is compelling and scales well and moves around to different media. But seeing the moving image really bugs me. Why? Because I feel that what the ad is trying to say is that having i-Tunes -- having your music at your disposal, whenever you like -- will make you want to dance around. You, the watcher. It will make you want to do a spazz dance on the subway. Again, there is nothing wrong with this idea, except that the silhouettes who are dancing on screen are obviously professional dancers. The way they move is never the way I would move. Would it have been so difficult to show someone spazzing out and falling over? Cause that's what geeks are more likely to be doing.

I feel somehow alienated by all of this. In addition, I have a lingering suspicion that the chosen individuals were chosen for their physical attractiveness, which makes no sense given the type of ads they're doing.

2003-10-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Thomas Pynchon will be on the Simpsons.

It's true.

2003-10-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

From "Berryman," by W.S. Merwin, which recounts a conversation between Merwin and Berryman that took place when the former was very young. It's in that great clipped rhythm skipping around over the line breaks. The last lines are a revelation:

"I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write"

2003-10-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

While roaming the late night cable channels I stumbled across an intriguing film called Decasia. The film maker -- his name is Bill Morrison -- has compiled a bunch of archival films that are in various stages of decay, and set them to an orchestral score (written by someone else). The decay takes all sorts of different forms -- bubbles, black spots, warpings of images, turning positive images into negatives, etc -- a dizzying array of visual effects. The films are all black and white newsreels with some dramatic film footage (silent) added in. The score is ominous and menacing.

The overall effects is strange and somewhat hallucinatory. In one scene, you can see a cameraman perched on a window ledge cranking his camera as he films Wall Street being eaten by black shadows; in another, the cars on a merry go round seem to emerge from flames at the left side of the screen; in a third, refugees from what appear to be a mining disaster emerge from the mouth of a tunnel and scramble to avoid streaks of distorted film.

The images have the strange, alien quality of dreams and like dreams seem to be menaced by incoherence and decomposition at all times.

2003-10-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

119! 119!

The Detroit Tigers have mercifully avoided becoming the losingest team of the 20th century. So yes, the team of Cobb, Gehringer and Kaline will not be mentioned alongside the team of Throneberry and Stengel.

Of course, they stink. Of course. No one expected anything else. But they did show something approaching resolve, something aproaching desire, at the end of the season, even if it only was to achieve one of the most modest goals in baseball history.

Bless you, Tram. But bring us back from the brink, Okay?

2003-09-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Brooklyn Public Library has posted the archives of the Brooklyn Eagle. You can search for articles all the way back to 1841. The implementation is amazing -- you run a keyword search and you get back a results list showing titles or representative samples of the articles, SCANNED IN. That is, you see the original layout, format, typography, illustration, etc. Click on the article and it launches the scanned version of it, with the keyword highlighted and (my favorite bit) a little arrow hovering near it! Don't know how they do it, but it's niifty.

Here is a fragment of a period parody of Walt Whitman (who pops up all the time in the archive, usualy referred to as "our townsman") Search for Walt Whitman with a date range of 1841-1860 and it's the third hit:

Look here Walt Whitman, what made you write this book, these Leaves of Grass, full of good thoughts, bad thoughts, naughty thoughts, noble thoughts

Ideas politic, impolitic, incomprehensible, insane, inexpressive, impure, invigorating, infuscatable, and infoliate?

Did you do it to make pennies, dimes, dollars, eagles, spondules, rhino.

That Walt Whiitman -- human Walt -- might row, ride, riot, regale, recuperate, refocilate

etc., etc.

2003-08-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

While searching through the American memory site, I came across this map of my hometown (Adrian, MI) which dates from 1866. The overall layout of the town is roughly the same, but of course nearly everything else is different. The college where my Dad used to teach is in the same location (extreme left of the map), although it has grown considerably.

Many of the street names are the same (though "Maumee" has become "Maple"; I guess the decision to brand the town as the Maple City had yet to be made); and they follow the same layout, but there are all these charming little single family homes everywhere... Anyway, the old map is probably not all that accurate in terms of what it depicts, but it definitely gives the flavor of how the town must have been.

2003-08-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some research about niche search engines and found a useful one -- Oyez -- which links to Supreme Court multimedia information. It has one very bizarre feature. however. If you select a specific supreme court justice, one of the links on the left that appears is called "Baseball." If you select it, you will be asked to "select the baseball player that is most like [justice x]" from among the available options.

This seems like a misguided attempt at developing interest in and acquaintance with the justices because it assumes that people searching will have an interest in both the Supreme Court and Baseball (wouldn't movie stars be more widely known?) and because the analogies don't always hold. For example, would it be meaningful to you if I told you that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was like Sammy Sosa?

2003-08-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

The Journal of Documentation is available for free online (this week only!) and it contains some interesting articles about information seeking, as well as a wide range of book reviews. Good stuff.

I was particularly interested in an article by Alan Gilchrist, titled "Thesauri, taxonomies, and ontologies -- an etymological note," which attempts to map out the origin and current use of all these terms. Among his observations are that "taxonomy" is currently used to refer to as many as five different things:

A dmoz-style web directory

A categorization scheme to support automatic indexing

A scheme to support automatic categorization

A front end filter for query processing

A corporate taxonomy (which is a sort of "megathesaurus")

In addition, he offers the following quote about origins:

"...[the] thesaurus has been the domain of information scientists; taxonomies appear to have been generated by a combination of information technologists and systems developers...; and ontologies have been adapted from the work of philosophers by people working in artificial intelligence."

Finally, he notes that the distinction between thesaurus and taxonomy is one of processing external information vs. managing internal and external information, which is not something I would have thought of but seems absolutely right.

2003-08-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

An article about a man who regained his sight after over 40 years of blindness, due to cornea and stem cell implant surgery. He can't recognize his own family members (he married and had children while blind). And he describes a flat representation of a cube as "a square with some extra lines."

What is evident from the study is that vision is a learned phenomenon. But for me it raises the tantalizing question of what, among our current observations, are to us just "squares with extra lines" that are really something else entirely? What would we know if we had new ways of knowing things?

2003-08-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

An amazing image of the blackout, taken from outer space.

2003-08-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

By way of Lou Rosenfeld....

Evidently, the mullet can be found in Homer's Iliad!

Within an hour of picking up the book, I made an Earth shattering discovery. At first I couldn't believe that I alone recognized the few lines of text that help unravel one of histories great mysteries. Countless scholars have poured over the Iliad for centuries and yet there it was, plain to see - Book 2, The Great Gathering of Armies, lines 632-33:

"The sprinting Abantes followed hard at his heels, their forelocks cropped, hair grown long at the back,"

2003-08-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Harvey Pekar doesn't draw? Then he's not a "cartoonist." I'm no essentialist, but it seems to me that being able to draw is pretty much a pre-requisite for being a "cartoonist." Does the lyricist call himself a "composer"? Of course not. What an absurd question.

Of course, it's easy to be a "character" without having to draw yourself as one.

2003-08-18T08:58:00.000-07:00

Zapped

Well, that certainly was fun. The worst part about the blackout for me personally was not the heat or the spoilage or the long walks. It was the stillness. The lack of circulation of air. Nothing makes you feel worse than not having a breeze. You might as well be gum on the sidewalk.

Here are a couple of blogs that actually qualify as witty. Not strident, not "zany," not snarky. Well, okay, maybe a little bit snarky.

Fanatical Apathy

The Minor Fall, the Major Lift

2003-08-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is a very nifty idea, somewhat compromised by a lack of available data.

The idea is to help you select books by asking you to input where you would like them to sit along certain qualitative axes: Happy/Sad, Funny/Serious, etc. THen you click "Go" and the books that are returned to you match those criteria. So you can find a book that is somewhat violent, completely predictable, and funny. Or gentle, unpredictable, and serious.

Most of the books seem to be from 1997 or later, and seem to have been published in Britain. There is no "British" criterion, however. You can't find an "Extremely British" book. There's also no "Crap" filter -- so you can't screen out all the bad books. But aside from that it's a great idea, and the Flash implementation is excellent.

2003-08-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

Take THAT, Poindexter!!

2003-07-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

Take that, Poindexter!

2003-07-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

Spiffy.

Democrat's Ad Calling Bush Misleading Misleading, Says GOP; Populace Confused By Endlessly Recursive Allegations

2003-07-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

This is interesting. Amazon plans to offer the ability to search the text of books in its archive. Copyright issues abound -- are they in fact "antologizing" their entire collection? It will be interesting to see how they spin it. I can easily imagine them telling you which books contain your results, but then not letting you actually see anything until you buy the book or some portion thereof.

The article also contains this perplexing quote:

just last week Yahoo agreed to acquire Overture, Google's principal rival in the search business, for $1.6 billion.

Overture is Google's chief rival in the search business? Man, either the reporter has no clue or the landscape is changing too quickly for me to keep up.

2003-07-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

More on word origins from a great site called Etymology Online.

toady - 1826, apparently shortened from toad-eater "fawning flatterer" (1742), originally referring to the assistant of a charlatan, who ate a toad (believed to be poisonous) to enable his master to display his skill in expelling the poison (1629).

embolism - 1387, "intercalation of days into a calendar," from O.Fr. embolisme, from L.L. embolismus "insertion of days in a calendar to correct errors," from Gk. embolimos, embolme "insertion," or embolos "a plug, wedge." Medical sense of "obstruction of a blood vessel" is first recorded in Eng. 1855.

mountebank - "a doctor that mounts a bench in the market, and boasts his infallible remedies and cures" [Johnson], 1577.

2003-07-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

The politics of usability. Or perhaps, usability in the service of politics.

What is interesting to me us that we in the interactive space are taught that when usability problems exist, it's usually because someone doesn't "get it." Now here are some people who clearly "get it," but actively want to "screw" those with "dissenting opinions."

What next, eliminating wheelchair ramps to prevent those pesky disabled from protesting?

2003-07-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

Deadscape

Wow, I guess that's the end of that chapter of Internet history. Though not, as the comments note, the end of Mozilla.

2003-07-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Lots to put up if I can find the time to do it.

First, a discussion (by the estimable Carlin Romano) about the ahistorical approach to philosophy adopted by analytic philosophers, and why this is potentially a bad thing. Essentially it arises due to the primacy of epistemology (as opposed to any other sub-field of philosopy) at the center of the analytic project, and the nature of truth (ahistorical) that arises from this stance. By this definition, most writers in the history of philosophy are simply "wrong" about truth, or have been unnecessarily "vague" about what we say.

I always thought that using all the apparatus of contemporary science and mathematics to debunk hundreds-years dead thinkers a bit unfair -- much like criticizing obsolete software code for the sin of not being sufficiently object-oriented.

The counter-movement that has emerged is well-worth keeping an eye on.

The article also contains this priceless quote:

The canon of early modern philosophy...consisted of a handful of white, male figures organized like Motown singing groups (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume formed the Empiricists; Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz toured as the Rationalists).

2003-07-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

All Hail Royton Vasey

I'm a late member to the cult of the League of Gentlemen (not to be confused with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but like most latecomers I try to compensate with an excess of partisan zealotry.

Simply put, it's a brilliant radio comedy devised by four northern English guys, populated with grotesque, outlandish characters that resonate even if you're never been to England and can't tell Yorkshire from Ypsilanti.

Favored characters include:

Dr. Chinnery, the velvety voiced veterinarian who accidentally maims every animal he touches (the incident with the panda and the penis pump is not to be missed)
Harvey Denton, the anal-retentive mad scientist obsessed with toads
Pauline Campbell-Jones, the condescending unemployment counselor
and every member of the "Legz Akimbo" travelling theatrical troupe.

Is there drag? Oh yes there is.

Get yer mp3s here.

2003-06-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

Someone recently suggested that the reason the press has been so pro-war over the past year is because they wanted to curry favor with the administration and congress for the FCC-sponsored broadcast ownership legislation, which favors media monopolies. We'll take care of your goals if you take care of ours. Since that legislation has passed, there's been a slight change in the discourse -- more unfavorable reports on Bush (I liked Slate's "Liar or Moron?" piece in particular), and a marginally more critical stance, I suppose.

This theory has a certain conspiratorial appeal, but what seems odd is that any one in Congress would have strongly opposed the legislation to begin with. Aren't they all in the back pocket of corporations? What do they care about diversity of media outlets?

2003-06-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

A quite moving description of writerly envy, or what happens when one partner gets to be a wildly successful writer -- successful enough to legendarily snub Oprah -- and the other does not. This is actually the second of Franzen's relationships to end in exactly the same manner, evidently; his earlier marriage also dissolved when there was a success imbalance in his household. His next partner should be happy that he's got nowhere to go but down.

That sounds a bit envious, upon re-read.

2003-06-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

Informational, navigational, transactional. Three types of searching. Transactional in this instance means buying something, finding a file or service somewhere. No one has really thought how to develop criteria that would evaluate this type of search, but newer search engines that analyze aggregate databases are getting better at satisfying user needs. Research is still catching up with the reality of web interaction in many ways.

2003-06-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

I use Visio and have a love/hate relationship with it (like most people who use it) but since I upgraded to Windows 2000 I am getting alot more of a specific type of error. When I zoom out past a specific point, there is what appears to be particulate matter dispersed over the drawing surface. It almost looks as though one had frantically erased a large amount of material and not bothered to sweep away the crumbs.

It's not a big inconvenience, but I am struck by the appearance of this sort of effect in this program. Next I expect to see coffee cup rings mysteriously appearing on the first drawing in a set.

2003-06-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sharon provides a fresh perspective on leftovers!

2003-06-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

Dialect

When I was growing up, there were certain American dialect terms that we learned about, to show us the rich, polymorphous nature of American English. The folks at Harvard (home of the "frappe") have conducted a study that shows regional variability in differences in pronunciation and word and phrase usage across the country. Helpfully, the web version of the study plots the differences out on a map, so that you can see when pronunciations and usage are regional.

Interestingly, alot of differences seem dispersed across the country. This could be attributable to people simply moving around, or to the influence of mass media, or other factors. So it was rather hard to find differences that actually remain regional. But there were two of particular interest:

1: In Minnesota and surrounding areas, driving around in circles in your car is knows as "whipping shitties."
2: In Wisconsin and Massachusetts (but nowhere else), the device that you go and drink from in school is called a "bubbler."

Wow. Now to find a way to use these terms....

2003-06-18T07:11:00.000-07:00

So they found out who stole the Dali from Riker's Island, and the thief was....Dali himself! Said the now-dead artist: "I believe that the liberation of the painting from Riker's defines the true paranoid-critical stance that is at the heart of all creation."

Actually, it was prison guards and wardens. The old "unscheduled fire drill" tactic.

2003-06-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

This is doubtless satire, but perhaps it is meant to be read straight (the New Yorker treads that line a lot). Regardless, I like it.

2003-06-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

Jackson Pollock, CIA Tool

As alluded to in this article, Jackson Pollock's work was funded by the CIA, at least in part. (supposedly there is a reference to this fact in the Ed Harris movie, but I don't remember it). Well. In one way, it's easy to believe this, since it makes more plausible his sudden overnight success, his appearance on the cover of Life Magazine, and so on. It also raises profound questions about the nature of the "sensation" that he caused, and the malleable nature of taste on the part of intellectuals and the public alike.

The story supposedly is that Pollock was knighted to take out socialist realism and provide an alternate, equally "modern" aesthetic that was more capitalist friendly. One could make the case that the content of his canvases is infinitely projectable -- representing nothing, it embodies whatever virtues someone (like Life Magazine) chooses to project on it -- the heroic artist, the fractured nature of modern life, rebellion against ... something. It's interesting to me that having been so chosen, he did ultimately self-destruct so publicly, and so quickly. One wonders whether the implicit message in his selection all along was "well, here's something new and fun to get excited about, but don't actually try to learn anything from it because the guy who did it is nuts."

It's a paranoid morning here at Sneeze central.....

2003-06-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

Sweet, sweet sunburn. Sunburn is a deeply satisfying pain, because you did it to yourself! You voluntarily lay yourself out like a bluefin in a pan, so you should welcome whatever transpires as a result of it. Every ... movement (ouch)... is painful. Even the softest shirts feel like sandpaper. Arrrrghoohhh.

2003-06-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

"To estranged, European eyes, there is a surreality inherent in Australia's landscape, its flora and fauna - what could be more so than the platypus? - even in the language and myths of Australia, this strange, upside-down world of down under."

I wouldn't have expected it, but there was a burgeoning surrealist movement in Australia during the 1930s-50s, spearheaded by James Gleeson. His work seems very Dali-esque to me, but with a fare dose of cheesecake-y male nudity thrown in.

2003-06-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm too credulous. At least that's what I think after reading this column about the emperor Caligula. Was he really a complete lunatic, besotted with power and its arbitrary exercize? Sort of. But the historical record isn't quite as bad, and in fact he comes out as not especially insane when compared with the other emperors.

Did he kill Tiberius? No. Was he a pedophile? No. Did he have a horse proclaimed consul? No. Did he turn the palace into a brothel? Probably not.

Of course, he did kill numerous family members, and he did attack the English channel (not England, but rather the channel itself). And he did proclaim himself divine. But this was all more or less standard practice for the emperors that came before and after him.

Now that John Hurt on the other hand -- boy is he messed up.

2003-06-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

In these troubled times, there is nothing like a comforting dose of the familiar to stave off apolcalyptic dread and existential ennui.

To wit: The revival of tinny synth pop and punk-funk.

"If the Velvet Underground are old hat, why not spearhead an Ultravox revival?"

2003-06-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a site that offers clips from a number of films about Dada/Surrealism, including "Europe After the Rain," which I've wanted to see for a while. There are also tantalizing links to downloads of the complete films, but these alas do not appear to work. Whether this is by design or accidental I can't say.

Just to be clear, these are educational films about the topics, not films by the artists (that would be too good to be true). These are the sort of films that are typically playing forlornly in a dark and underpopulated room off to the side of an actual art exhibit. But they are still worth watching.

2003-06-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

The past two weekends have been a total washout. I'm starting to feel like our little corner of Brooklyn is just a moldy shoebox with mushrooms growing in it. Still, it has been a good weekend in certain respects; Chloe was well behaved; and we got a couple of surprise phone calls from old friends who were also spending time indoors.

I've been researching Job's tomb (Nabi Ayoub) for a story. Job's tomb is ostensibly at the top of a mountain in Yemen -- I remember climbing there as a kid. Further research indicates a similar site in Oman and Lebanon. Evidently Ayoub is as widely travelled in the arab world as Paul Bunyan in ours.

2003-05-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Is it art, or is it crap?

Unfortunately, "both" is not an option in this quiz.

2003-05-30T07:27:00.000-07:00

The riveting, transgressive artwork of Claude Cahun, a true heretic even within a movement singularly devoted to originality.

2003-05-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Jayson Blair should be thankful for the example of Stephen Glass, who, a mere five years after resigning in disgrace from the New Republic, is now positioned to waltz into a highly paid legal position and to collect a tidy sum from Simon and Schuster for his fictionalized memoirs.

There's been a lot of talk about Blair, and about the putative evils of affirmative action, which is being implicitly blamed (by some) for his rise and fall. Nothing was ever said about the affirmative action that lead Glass to be hired, then fired. As editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian, Glass wrote a scathing indictment of then Penn president, soon-to-be head of the NEA Sheldon Hackney for Hackney's alleged refusal to condemn an incident in which minority students swiped the entire print run of the DP for coverage they deemed racially insensitive. The story about Hackney was (of course) largely fabricated, its sole evidence a single quote taken out of context. But it brought Glass to the attention of the publishers of the New Republic (with a little help from the Wall Street Journal), eager to condemn "political correctness" on campus in the strongest possible terms, eager to promote those who would speak their views. The rest is history.

It's truly strange how often the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is behind these political correctness stories. Would this meme even exist without the WSJ there to prop it up?

2003-05-12T05:51:00.000-07:00

If you read the newspaper, you get a sort of capsule summary of the society that produces it. A news item is next to a sports item, there's a business or real estate item on the same page. You might even see opposing viewpoints on the same page. The point is that everything happens in context.

With a weblog, of course, you have none of that. Every point that is made is a single issue position paper, with no rebuttal admissable. This can only foster thoughts and arguments that are -- how shall I put it -- extreme.

In my ideal web site there is a whole abundance of context, a whole bunch of different streams feeding into a single pool. And they are all present on the same page, so you can't help but see the context in which they occur.

2003-05-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

I hate blogs that just sort of sit there for weeks at a time and you wonder whether they are alive or dead. This one is still alive! Though perhaps on life support.

Promise to have more soon. It's hard to write when work is as all-consuming as it has been. *Sigh.* I knew I should have been a toll booth attendant.

2003-04-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm all in favor of public art, but this is a little bit too real for me. I'm happy not to take the A train.

2003-04-20T20:20:00.000-07:00

Negligent, negligent, negligent. I am so sorry. What can I say? There has just been so much gong on of late, between work and ... actually, that's it. But it has been very busy. Take my word for it.

Saw Rodger Dodger over the weekend, which was a good movie. A repellent, though somewhat intriguing, central character. Tonight was dinner party. Stuffed with lamb. Oof.

I liked this article about John Stewart in the Times by Frank Rich. But what bugs me about the article is the premise that the airwaves are chockful of ideologues who are either dogmatically for or against the war, whereas The Daily Show is not ideological and therefore stakes out a middle ground. This is patently false. There are tons of conservative ideologues with ample airtime nowadays; the reason the Daily Show is unique is because it's liberal. What virtue is there in denying this fact? Perhaps Rich feels it's strategically wise to pull the Fox News trick of claiming to be balanced when (for example) you have a liberal milquetoast offered up twice a week to be ganged up on and slaughtered.

2003-04-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

Is there honor in being an underdog? Here is Neal Pollack, in persona, channeling Mohammed Said Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister, who gets at the crux of the matter at least for me:

"The Detroit Tigers will vanquish all their foes, mightily swooping their bats into the hearts of their enemies! Even as I speak, they are demolishing the New York Yankee oppressors with their superior firepower and top-notch bullpen! The Yankees are fleeing in terror!"

Ha ha. Today's game saw Detroit squander a fifth inning lead and another great performance by Mike Maroth, bringing their winning percentage to a robust .000.

On the plus side, there were marginally more individuals at Comerica Park than appear to have been present at the Palestine Square statue toppling/photo op.

2003-04-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

This is interesting.... The banner ad above appears to change depending on the words that I use in the most recent blog entry. So the last entry mentioned "PowerPoint" and I got links to speakers bureaus and the like.

Hmmm, I wonder if.....

BRITNEY SPEARS!!!!!!!!!

2003-03-28T10:27:00.000-08:00

Intriguing entry about the origins of the current war plan.

Maj. Kevin Marcus, a SAMS graduate now attached to V Corps headquarters, helped develop the plan from a back-of-an-envelope exercise into a PowerPoint presentation that within days of being finished ended up on the desk of the president of the United States

Ah, so it's the fault of PowerPoint. Can't you just see this war existing on a PowerPoint deck? Doesn't the war bear all the hallmarks of a "PowerPoint Project"? Under-scoped both in time and resources? Fast-tracked without adequate planning? Executives (like Rumsfeld) using it to make decisions that are ill informed and unattainable? Betcha the Shock and Awe graphic had an exciting way of coming onto the page. There were probably bullet points associated with both "shock" and "awe." There were probably lots of little dark colored people outlines representing the surrendering Iraqi troops.

2003-03-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Too much work and not enough time to blog, but here is an article that caught my eye.

It's a little hard to make out what the author's agenda is. Part of it is devoted to the "wall" of surrealist objects from Breton's apartment that are to be auctioned off next month, and the protests made by Susan Sontag and others that they should be preserved. The author finds this ironic because no one could have cared less about official (state-supported) recognition and monument building than he. Perhaps. But on the other hand, we the living are free to do with dead authors' works what we choose, even if it is contary to the author's wishes. We will do it anyway. Kafka wanted his manuscripts burned. But they weren't and life is better because of it.

The author also points out quite rightly that Breton's later anti-communism caused him to be ignored by the French establishment up until the 60s, and that to some extent he is still shunned.

But here's a phrase that I just don't get. After a discussion of his opposition to the communists, who are equated with the French establishment, the author says "...I imagine Breton might have also had sharp comments on the refusal of his compatriots to support the liberation of Iraq." Because, you know, he would have been opposed to the French government.

What the hell? In an article that is otherwise fairly thoughtful, this is a shockingly superficial statement. It is unimaginable that Breton would have taken any other stance than anti-nationalist, anti-militarist, anti-colonialist, and anti-capitalist view of it. That is, opposed!!! What sort of twisted argument does it take to produce a Breton that is in favor of war in Iraq?

He also calls Breton a "neoconservative avant la lettre." In part because of his work for Voice of America during World War II. Just as an FYI, The Voice of America gig consisted of reading transcripts into a microphone; the alternative for Breton and his family would have been starvation. While it is undeniable that there is a certain libertarian (or rather libertine) flavor to some of Breton's writing, like all surrealism, any revisionist argument that casts him as a proto-neo-conservative deserves to be slapped in the face and nailed to the floor.

2003-03-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

Revolting Librarians is thirty years old. I didn't encounter this book in library school but it is quite a refreshing blast from the past. It is more or less a conscious effort to radicalize the profession of librarianship, and still has a number of highly devoted fans. Some of it is starry eyed, some of it is dated, but some of it is well worth reading.

Notes on a utopian information system cheered me up, because many of the desiderata mentioned in it have been fulfilled by the internet. The major exception is the government area:

Participatory democracy. Frequent public debates and referenda, on local, national, and world levels. Thorough information on pending bills. Automatic allocation of speaking time to individuals with original points to make. Immediate counting of votes, with breakdowns by various categories of voters, making possible passage criteria more complex than percentage of total vote (e.g., a measure fails if opposed by a majority of any racial, sexual, age, or local category). Recordkeeping. Planning (10,000-year plans: planning for conservation of resources for as long as man stays on the planet, and planning how to get off before the sun expands).

How is it that such great progress in one realm has been met with such horrible backsliding in another?

2003-03-17T07:27:00.000-08:00

Heard today....The first jackhammer of spring.

2003-03-10T21:35:00.000-08:00

Dread of something is usually worse than actually doing it. So you may dread the work you have piling up, or you may dread your chores, or that boring party you have to go to, but once you get to it and just do it, it's better. Or at least it goes by quickly and then you have it over with.

But then there is that whole set of things that are "dread-ful," but which you can't actually do anything about. The economy. The government. The weather. Your neighbors. Your genes. Your history. Is it productive to worry about these things? I would like to make the argument that yes, it is productive, since the opposite -- not worrying -- means that you are deadened, anesthetized, somehow less than completely, fully human.

2003-03-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a very busy week this past week, and the coming weeks are looking crammed pretty full as well. I have multiple work deadlines to meet by the end of this week, have the story to deliver by tomorrow night, the search paper which is also due this week, and all that leaves little time for relaxing, bloggin, eating, or sleeping. Especially sleeping. I calculate that if I begin to get eight hours of sleep a night from this point forward, I will be nearly 140 years old before I can officially be considered "caught up."

This weekend was a continuation of Jules' birthday celebration (we went here). And we saw They Might be Giants doing a kid's show at the Town Hall. It was highly enjoyable, though Chloe fell asleep! They seamlessly blended the adult songs and children's songs into a continuous whole. I admire their skill. It goes without saying that there were many many Park Slope parents in the audience.

More later, if I can swing it.

2003-03-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

The upcoming war needs branding. Personally, I like this:

"Operation Just Because."

2003-03-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

I don't get it

Viewed today! An advertisement on a bus shelter for Manhattan mini-storage. It shows a picture of a car that's just run into a tree -- crumpled front end, shattered glass, leaking fluids, etc. The copy reads "Bad things happen when you leave the city." (as I recall).

I don't get what this has to do with storage. Presumably the implication is that you should stay in the city and therefore use mini storage for all your shit. But what really makes me scratch my head is the implication that if you leave the city you will die. Does mini-storage really want a bunch of paranoiacs as customers? Perhaps they do -- paranoiacs are probably also pack rats.

2003-03-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

An absolutely exhausting day, leavened somewhat by the following article. It seems that a Dali painting that had been on display at Riker's Island since 1965 was stolen from a display case, and a copy was stapled up in place of it. Experts have valued the original as being worth over $500,000.

The backstory is the interesting part. The painting wound up there because a commissioner of the department of correction believed in the rebabilitative powers of art, and knew Dali and wanted him to come and visit the prisoners. Dali was "too sick." So he dashed off the painting and sent it instead.

The idea that art could be rehabilitative therapy seems impossibly quaint now (regardless of whether or not it's true, which it probably is). But I can't see Dali ever going to prison. Not a real prison.

2003-02-27T06:35:00.000-08:00

Pierre Matisse's recent gift to the Metropolitan Museum includes many works by Matisse pere (unsurprisingly) but also a large number of surrealist works. Some of these are by underepresented artists such as Leonora Carrington, Wifredo Lam and Yves Tanguy. I for one can't wait to see one of Carrington's spooky domestic scenes on the wall at the Metropolitan.

2003-02-26T16:48:00.000-08:00

Chayote

This is a small fruit about the size of an apple with thin green skin. Inside the flesh is pale green with a melon-y texture, but with a very mild flavor that is neither distinctly fruit-like nor outrageously vegetable-arian. Its closest analog to the gringo palate would appear to be squash, but it can evidently be used in the way that one would use an apple for salads and relishes and the like. It is evidently also known in different parts of the world as the choo choo, the mirliton, the custard marrow, the brione, the pipinella, and the vegetable pear (which captures its essence pretty well).

I made this boiled, with salt and butter. The flavor, was nice, though very delicate. It could definitely be heavily seasoned. It's exceedingly cheap, as well...For less than a dollar you get two of them (I could surely find them for less in other neighborhoods). And two is more than any human could possibly eat.

2003-02-24T05:21:00.000-08:00

What looks to be a a very interesting show about Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Roland Penrose is opening at the Getty. I sure hope this one travels.

2003-02-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, someone asked, it's not as though the tropics are all that absent from New York -- a trip to Jamaica or Nassau (County) is well within reach. And why don't you simply investigate one of the many (many many) tropical bodegas in your neighborhood? They have lots of real tropical fruit, not just fruit flavored things.

I promise to do this. I will report back the results.

2003-02-23T08:54:00.000-08:00

It is another dreary weekend in New York at the end of February -- prime breeding ground indeed for seasonal affective disorder. Prior history has taught me that it will likely continue to be wintry (or at least un-summer-like) until the end of April. So I am taking it upon myself to see what easily purchasable items can be procured to combat it.

Endless Summer, the movie. and the soundtrack, why the hell not.

The Life of Brian, plenty of desert scenes there.

A Todo Cuba La Gusta, which is described as "the world's most danceable music."

Tropical Fruit Life Savers (Mango Melon....Pina Colada...)

Eyewitness Travel Guide to Morocco. Damn, I love these books.

2003-02-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

Sort of picking up on an earlier post, here is a site that displays the stories people have about their ticket stubs. Personally I have some stubs that are priceless (old Tiger Stadium Tickets, the one from the last Replacements tour) and have very little connection with the rest of them. I do find myself wishing that my other scraps, such as bank receipts, would tell a similar story.

2003-02-16T15:38:00.000-08:00

The further adventures of Andre Breton, Director of Recreation/Parks in New Bedford, CT.

"We absolutely noticed [the grass]," Mr. Oliveria said. "It could've been because they didn't have time to cut it.
"That's not what Andre Breton says."
"What does he say?"
"I must be desperate for something to write about, walking out on the grass because the grass is tall, and it's been raining all week and that's the reason it hasn't been cut. It sounded personal."

Walking out on the grass because the grass is tall.... Possibly he was alluding to "Le Douanier Rousseau."

2003-02-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Remember, advertisers, listening to Bill O'Reilly could cost you millions.

2003-02-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

Good news for a change. The store with the most annoying name and ad campaigns in the history of retail electronics will shortly be history. No more bait and switch sales strategy; no more Founder's Day sales for a store that opened in 1976; no more "club-style lighting and music" to confuse and disorient you.

2003-02-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

An interesting article on the bizarre and perfidious practice of category management, whereby retailers allow vendors to select what they stock because the market is too complicated and stores (especially chains?) don't have the time to decide what will sell. Of course in the case of bookstores this is an unmitigated disaster, since precisely what one prizes there is depth of offering. It appears as though the chains are being driven to this tactic because of competition from all in one retailers (Wal-Mart and Amazon) with whom they could never possibly compete, selection wise. Nevertheless ... doesn't this seem like a curious abandonment of autonomy and integrity on the part of the store?

2003-02-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, O blog. I have just started working on something new of late at work and it has been consuming a bit more of my free time than expected or desired.

I have been reading some extracts of The Origins of Totalitarianism and it's fascinating. There's a discussion of the historical prerequisites for the succes of totalitarianism; these include a breakdown of the party system to the extent that political parties become meaningless; the existence of "masses," instead of classes, "large numbers of neutral, politically indifferent people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls"; the use of "indirect, veiled, and menacing hints against all who will not heed [the] teachings [of propaganda]"; an alliance "between capital and mob"; "expansion for expansion's sake" as a governing principle; and oh so much more.

2003-02-03T21:10:00.000-08:00

Someone elsewhere was writing about the ability of inanimate things to be vested with meaning across time by inidviduals -- concert tickets, passports, checkbooks, even. They weave in and out of your life, present their significance, or some facet of it, to you regularly. This made me wonder about whether this was the legacy of some sort of crude survival instinct. Does it mean that once upon a time, ten thousand years ago, someone understood the significance of a cloud formation, a weather pattern, filed it away? In some way, he or she took note of the environment scientifically -- certain features of it produce certain outcomes, typically. And yet this advance could have been accomplished with the crudest sort of projection onto inanimate things, attributions of souls or spirits to them, of consciousness, which we all know nowadays is not right.

Personally, I have always had difficulty separating the two -- the empirically observed, and that which is projected from within. There was a time when I thought that the latter completely overwhelmed the former, at least in the domain of the subjective experience. That daily existence was just this tissue paper thin layer obfuscating all the coincidences -- a whole ocean of them -- between what is observed and what is "true," internally... one's own past, one's own desire. I don' think this any more. But I do still believe that it's not houses that are haunted. It's we that are haunted.

2003-01-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

"And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida...Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained: by torturing children while their parents are made to watch...If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning..."

Only a stern, morally upright response is possible ... like sending evil to a nice retirement community with its friends and family.

2003-01-28T11:57:00.000-08:00

Capitalism and Terror

The terror has infected me. I consider myself lucky that I have gainful employment these days, but even so I find myself pre-occupied with the possibility that it will come to an end suddenly. In fact, as I sit working, I can't help but brood over this imagined state of joblessness, to the detriment of my work.

What I have to recognize is that this dread is sponsored by the state, and by the thousands of little sponsored messages that are constantly in circulation. These are fear tactics waged by capitalism itself as a way of keeping me in line, and keeping me a productive (?) member of society.

2003-01-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

Some things that would make for a better subway experience:

A means of determining the amount of time I will have to wait for my train to come -- distance divided by rate of speed. I know, it would just be a guess, but it would be just great, for example, to know whether my train was one station away or ten.
While on the train, a similar calculator. Let's say I am on a train that is stalled. Are the rest of the trains moving? Is it all gridlocked? Should I try to change to a different line?
Announcements that are logically coherent. This is not logically coherent: "Because of an incident at 34th Street, the X trains are running." Do you mean that they would not be running if there had been no incident?
Some means other than "pink tape" to designate that a platform is temporarily out of service. I hate that pink tape. This is one of the largest and most important subway systems in the world and they can't come up with signage or anything -- just that damned pink tape.
Impose the following rule. If a train is in a station with its doors open, and another train stops across the platform from it and the passengers in that train can transfer to the train that is sitting there with its doors open, then the train that is sitting there must wait until the other passengers can get onto it before departing.
The usual -- better speakers, more frequent announcements, fix the damned Atlantic Avenue Station already, blah blah.

2003-01-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

Gangs of New York is a good movie, though overlong and overstuffed with Catholic imagery. You half expect Scorsese himself to burst through the screen and beat you over the head with a bloody cross. But it is nevertheless worth your $10.50.

This film was obviously underwritten by a generous grant from the pork board, however. What other explanation could there be for the main characters talking for minutes on end about what a superior animal the pig is, how much like a human being he is? Other than that, product placement is kept to a minimum.

2003-01-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

Who needs premium cable?

Not I. Tonight on PBS: The 400 Blows at 8, followed by the original Bedazzled at 10:00. So many good movies in the world, so few shown with any regularity. Meanwhile on Comedy Central, it's Earth Girls Are Easy. Again.

2003-01-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

Adweek has posted a list of the top 20 ad campaigns in the past twenty years, to coincide with ... its own twentieth anniversary. Here is my take:

Two of the campaigns -- the Mean Joe Green coke ad and the Miller Lite Tastes Great/Less Filling campaign -- were from before 1983.
The John Hancock "Bill Heater" ad I never saw, so I can't comment on it.

As for the rest:

The Absolut Print ads, the Bartles and Jaymes ads, the FedEx fast talking guy, "Where's the Beef" , and the Energizer Bunny are all classics.
Levi's 501 spots were brilliant at first, but became borderline because they ran for too long. Toward the end I think they were having Bruce Willis sing the blues or something (sorry, he actually shilled for wine coolers, didn't he).
AmEx Membership Has its Privileges was cute but flopped on TV.
ESPN SportsCenter was undeniably clever, but functioned as a campaign so the individual commercials weren't always so memorable. The effect was "cumulative," I would say. The more you saw, the more you enjoyed (the spot about the "kid" announcer was pretty great, though).
NYNEX Yellow pages was also clever, but marred by inferior copywriting. "Civil Engineers" (engineers sitting around and drinking tea) was good, but "Rock Drills" (Marines moonwalking) is inaccurate -- funk drills would've been better if such a product existed -- and "Hair Tinting" (dyed rabbit) is shopworn to anyone who has seen a bugs bunny cartoon. I didn't know that Godley and Creme directed these though -- certainly the visual aspect was cool.

The also-rans:

BMW -- the ultimate driving machine. Memorable tagline, pedestrian commercials.
Little Ceasar's Training Camp. Excuse me? What was memorable about this, exactly?
Nike "Bo Knows." This is undercut by the lackluster end to Bo's career(s).
Saturn. The reason this was successful was due to the company, not the marketing campaign. I don't remember a single one of the commercials that were part of the ad campaign, but I do remember how refreshing the idea of the company seemed.

And now, the campaigns that should never be on anyone's list:

Apple 1984 ad. Why does this ad always make the top of people's lists? It's just one ad, without a memorable tagline, showing images that were cliched when they were first shown. Ah, I see, it's the beginning of "advertising as event." Well that's about its effect on "advertising," not its ability to memorably sell a product. In truth, I think advertisers want to take credit for the computer revolution and ths is their way of doing it.
Got Milk? This turned me off when I first saw it because of the announcer's voice over the tagline. It sounded -- how shall I put this -- productive, as though he himself had just quaffed a big mucus generating glass of the stuff. What bugs me more is that no one has the reaction to milk that these ads depict. When was the last time you were *dying* because you couldn't have a glass of milk? Many more people become violently ill because of allergies to it. Oh, wait, I see, it's an "anti-ad," stands the whole concept of advertising on its head, blah blah. No it isn't! It's just a bunch of "hype" expensively produced so that it seems "clever."
Pepsi's archeology spot. This would be more memorable if Pepsi didn't constantly flood the airwaves with commercials about how cool and hip and "of the moment" they are. Choice of a new generation, indeed. This ad preaches the complete opposite of that -- the durability and staying power of a particular brand of soda. Why do advertisers think that hyperbole is so god damned funny? A little understatement would be more memorable.
Rolling Stone "Perception/Reality." This was I believe aimed at ad buyers, which should disqualify it. But the message also galls -- "We're a bunch of yuppies now, forget all that peace, love, and music stuff." I have no problem with the execution.

Okay, on further examination, this was produced in 1998 (why is it still online?), which means Mean Joe and Lite beer are both back But here are some additions I think should be made for the next round.
The virtually silent Corona commercials; The Blair Witch project (new type of campaign altogether); Gateway Computers (a huge branding success).

2003-01-14T07:12:00.000-08:00

A lot is being made of the fact that in the album Tommy, the main character is a boy who is sexually abused by his uncle. In fact, Pete himself has alluded to the "nasty shadows" in his work that are the result of having been abused by a child. However, the song "Uncle Ernie" (you know, "fiddle about, fiddle about...") which is the only clear example of this, was written by John Entwistle. John is now dead and thus presumably immune from prosecution.

2003-01-13T08:36:00.000-08:00

Rhetorical Strategy

In a threaded, publicly accessible environment, there are some new rhetorical strategies that come into play when you are trying to make your case. One interesting strategy I've noted is the "defender of forum freedom" angle, whereby you vociferously plead that forums should be open environments -- agorae, if you will -- wherein all participants are to have an equal voice, and then proceed to belittle everyone who has the slightest disagreement with you, thus producing exactly the opposite of what you profess to want.

2003-01-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

Depth

When you are interested in something, and when you want to do it, you frequently want to join a community of people who are interested in the same thing. Part of the reason for this is the inherent sociability of human beings, or at least many of them. Part of it is a desire to lose yourself in some entity larger than yourself. I'm not saying that the group itself is the element that is larger; rather the thought that the group has accumulated and represents.

There is a certain expectation upon joining such a group that its thought is bottomless in some area or area(s) -- those in which it has some expertise, those for which it has a raison d'etre. It can answer all the questions for you, and will be with you no matter what line of thought within that area you pursue. Even if you disagree with the "conventional wisdom" of the group, at least you feel that the area in which you disagree is populated with rival opinions, sponsored by that group.

So what if you do truly hit bottom, and find yourself somewhere that your group has never been before, and where the earth seems to extend out from your position to infinity in every direction, except perhaps the direction you came from? What do you do under those circumstances? I think a variety of possible answers can be given here, the least satisfactory of which is "nothing." But "nothing" is also the easiest.

2003-01-08T12:33:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can't believe I missed this online diary that Robyn Hitchcock wrote for Slate. He spends the entire week laboring to set up the digital camera so that it can take pictures to illustrate the diary, but without success. He also has some speculative ruminations on war with Iraq and its effect on England, and some mundane details from his own life (doing laundry, having the cat around). His written voice is actually quite a bit different from the spoken, concert voice -- it is less stream of consciousness (though there is a long-ish story about someone with the head of a squirrel), and less distinctive for that reason. But it is still a pretty enjoyable read.

2003-01-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

Once again, Alan Trammell is passed over for the Hall of Fame. With fifteen percent of the vote, he actually received fewer votes than last year. This does not bode particularly well for his prospects. On the other hand, he is at least still on the ballot, which can not be said for Lou Whitaker, who had an equally distiniguished career (almost) but was not a suck-up to the press and did not execute a single backflip during nearly twenty years of professional baseball.

Jack Morris, on the other hand, received an increased number of votes this year. His response? "...a positive move, I guess." Seems a bit laconic for Jack, no? I'll bet he went off to the "snap room" and busted some pool cues afterward.

2003-01-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

Does this make one want to flee the city for a nice, lo-o-o-ong vacation in summer 2004, or does it make one want to stick around in the hope of marring the "outstanding backdrop" to renomination that the party hopes to provide?