Lucky number…?
What are the odds: N.Y. Lottery Draws 9-1-1 on 9/11. Well, we know exactly what the odds are: one in a thousand. That won’t be good enough for a lot of people, who will be inclined to find some deeper significance in it.
Scammers get smart?
I just received the following e-mail
This mail, I know may embarrash you. By embarrashment, I mean coming from somebody you never know or met before, even coming from a country – (Nigeria) noted for dishonest and Fraudalent practises.
Well, this is not one of those Scam letters from Nigeria, but from a group of who are in distress and require your assistence. I am Mr. Ahmed Idris the credit controller of ZENITH BANK PLC, LAGOS – NIGERIA I am contacting you basen on your specialisation – PROPERTIES ALLOCATION…
What was this guy thinking? “Oh, if I say I’m different from all the other scammers, then I’ll have credibility!” The mind reels.
Our fearless leader
I was reading an article on the prospect of invading Iraq (despite the fact that it was written by Noam Chomsky), and was struck by his quote of George II, who explained the terrorists attacked us because they “hate our freedoms.” I realized, in that moment, that the administration’s response has been to limit our freedoms–perhaps so they’ll hate us less. Brilliant!
Then I decided it would be interesting to dig up the speech where Bush used the phrase. A trip to whitehouse.gov didn’t show me the speech, but it did reveal something interesting. There appears to be a complete index of Cheney’s speeches, and even Laura Bush’s, but there isn’t a complete listing of the President’s speeches in one place, and if you want more than his “greatest hits,” you need to do some digging (eventually I found it). He does have some lovely photo essays though, and those are easy to get to.
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Just finished William Gibson’s latest, All Tomorrow’s Parties, a follow-on to Virtual Light. As usual, he does an excellent job with spartan wordsmithing and big-ideaness. As usual, he leaves at least as much unsaid as said. And, as usual, he confuses “braze” with “braise.”
Twelve flowers
What makes this exhibit of flowers so interesting, apart from their beauty, is that the flowers were neither painted not photographed–they were scanned directly.
I need to go get a scanner and play with this technique.
Late Marriage
Saw the movie Late Marriage with Gwen yesterday. Interesting movie. Not particularly well acted, staged, filmed, or whatever, it was interesting for the story, of Georgian Jews in Israel, and specifically, a family’s efforts to marry their aging (31) son off to a suitable girl. Note that I’m not being gratuitously un-PC here–they were lining up 18-year olds for his consideration. Definitely an insight into a community that just plain operates according to a different set of rules than anything I’ve ever been around.
Damage control
Our fearless leader has spent 42% of his term on vacation. I realize there hasn’t been a whole lot going on that would require his attention, but this number is still surprising.
Then again, it’s probably a blessing in disguise. The more time he spends on the job, the more he can screw up.
News feeds
I recently started using Net Newswire, an RSS feed reader. What’s that? RSS is a specialized way of presenting information so that it can be digested by machines, rather than people. The little orange XML icon on my site points to an RSS version of my front page. You can think of an RSS reader as a very specialized web browser for presenting specialized files in a streamlined form.
Anyhow, you get an RSS reader, subscribe to “feeds” that interest you, and the reader sucks in that RSS document and presents it as a menu of stories. You can then quickly browse through a lot of article excerpts. It’s changing the way I read stuff online.
There are a bunch of different RSS readers out there, in the form of websites or specialized apps (even for the Newton!), but OS X readers seem disproportionately well represented.
There are also a lot of RSS feeds out there.
Update: The Guardian just published an article on newsfeed readers.
The Problem with Music
A recent discussion on Plastic reminded me of this article, “the problem with music,” by Steve Albini. I had read it some years ago, and it really stuck in my mind. Somewhat more recently, Courtney Love had some sharp words on the industry.