Entries from December 2002
War
When I studied ethics in college, one of the big issues was the question of whether motives or actions were of greater importance. If I remember correctly, Kant said “both.”
The impending war with Iraq demonstrates that Kant was right. It may be the case that making war on Iraq is the right thing to do, [...]
Why blog?
I was recently asked
I’m writing a piece for the Chronicle about Austin bloggers, and I was hoping that some of you could share your thoughts with me about why you started blogging, and your perception of Austin’s blog community and its relation to Global Blogistan, that sorta thing. And for that matter any other thoughts [...]
Supercard
For the past few days, I’ve been wrestling with the problem of creating a simple order-tracking system for my side business lately, and after trying out a few different candidates, I felt as if they’d all take too much work to get something that was almost — but not quite — right. I sighed wistfully [...]
Great Leader’s gift shop
The fact that a country as backwards as North Korea has an official website (interestingly at a .com address, not a .kp address) is kind of weird, but understandable. And sure, I can understand their Central News Agency having a site (at a .co.jp address).
But a gift shop? I will leave the jokes as an [...]
Vanilla Sky
Rented Vanilla Sky last night. I usually don’t blog rentals, for no good reason, but this definitely merits an entry. The film’s proximate inspiration was a Spanish movie, Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes — starring Penélope Cruz in the same role she played in this movie) but the main underlying plot device seems pretty [...]
Visualizers
Time to present some more interesting tools for visualizing abstract relationships. I have a feeling tools like this are going to be much more widely used in the future, and much more intuitive. For the time being, a lot of them are way too slow, and somehow too abstruse.
One that is fast and not abstruse [...]
The Two Towers
Saw The Two Towers yesterday. I really enjoyed it. It’s very visual, and has been filling my thoughts ever since.
My criticisms, such as they are, are pretty much the same as they were for the first movie: the characters tend to get lost in the setting, just because the setting — the world and [...]
Smart Mob = Lazy Web
Sometimes, the zeitgeist seems to cause an idea to crystallize in multiple places simultaneously. Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner both diagnosed autism (and named it the same thing) at the same time. Leibnitz and Newton both came up with calculus at about the same time. Likewise Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin with the theory [...]
Lott, defiant
Well, now that he has apologized all over the place and lost his lofty perch, Trent Lott has essentially retracted his recent contrition for his veiled racist remarks, saying
There are people in Washington who have been trying to nail me for a long time,” Lott said in the AP report. “When you’re from Mississippi and [...]
Star Trek: Nemesis
Longish critique of Star Trek: Nemesis. The short version: could be a lot better.
