...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.
Unbreakable, despite some minor issues here and there, was a surprisingly good movie. M. Night Shyamalan, the director and writer of both Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, is fumbling around with this film (and, to a lesser extent, The Sixth Sense), trying to find his talent sweet spot. I get the sense that if given enough room, he's going to make a really spectacular movie in the next few years.
Print out your stock quotes on toilet paper or browse recipes on an Internet-enabled cutting board.
A just-concluded eGullet conversation with Ruth Reichl, currently editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine and former food critic for The New York Times.
How America Lost the War on Drugs, a history of the United States government's efforts to stop its citizens from using illegal substances, primarily crack, heroin, and methamphetamines. Quite long but worth the read.
All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic.
It's not that hard to see how things got off the rails here. Dealing with the supply of drugs is ineffective (it's too lucrative for people to stop selling and too easy to find countries which seek to profit from it) but provides the illusion of action while attacking the problem from the demand side, which appears to be more effective, comes with messy and complex social problems. What a waste. The bits about meth & the lobbying efforts by the pharmaceutical industry and the medical marijuana crackdowns are particularly maddening.
Somewhat related is a 9-part series from VBS about scopolamine, one of the world's scariest drugs (via fimoculous). Just blowing the powder into someone's face is sufficient for them to enter a wakeful zombie state and become the perfect rape or crime victim.
The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus. Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.
The description of the effect of scopolamine on people reminds me of what the Ampulex compressa wasp does to cockroaches:
From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it -- in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex -- like a dog on a leash.
I wonder if the chemical reactions are similar in both cases.
In the past few days, I've read two articles on men who are experts in scientific research in an area where they themselves have a deficiency. First there was the article on George Vaillant and the Harvard Study of Adult Development I linked to on Friday. Vaillant is an expert on what makes men happy; his own research shows that close relationships with family and friends is a significant factor in people living long happy lives. But those who know him best say that he has difficulty with relationships.
But Vaillant's closest friends and family tell a very different story, of a man plagued by distance and strife in his relationships. "George is someone who holds things in," says the psychiatrist James Barrett Jr., his oldest friend. "I don't think he has many confidants. I would call George someone who has a problem with intimacy."
He's been married four times to three women and has been estranged, at one time or another, from four out of his five children.
And then I was reading a New Yorker profile of V.S. Ramachandran, the noted behavioral neurologist who has worked on mirror therapy with amputees who experience phantom limb pain, the role of mirror neurons in autism, and synesthesia. Though his work with the brain doesn't focus on memory, it's still ironic that Ramachandran is almost pathologically incapable of remembering where he parked his car or when his wife's birthday is.
"Another time," [Ramachandran's wife Diane] continued, "I got a call from Sears and a woman said, 'There's a man here who says he's your husband and he's trying to purchase something on this credit card.' I said, 'Ye-e-e-s.' And she said, 'We're kind of concerned if it's really your husband, becuase he doesn't know your birth date.' I said, 'Oh, that's my husband!'"
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Ramachandran boomed. "That is a good story."
I could not resist asking whether Ramachandran has since learned Diane's birthday. They had been married for twenty-two years.
"I know she's a Leo," he said, slowly, eying her from across the table.
"I'm not Leo," Diane said, "You're a Leo."
"No," he corrected himself. "Virgo! Virgo!"
"Yup," she said. "August 18th," he said, with confidence.
"No," Diane said. Then she turned to me. "See, he gets the month, because it's the same as his."
"It's not the eighteenth?" Ramachandran asked.
"No."
"Twenty-second?" he offered.
"No."
At this point, Jaya asked, "Do you know my birthday?"
Ramachandran looked helplessly at his son and shrank into his seat. "It doesn't mean I don't love you," he said.
Beethoven was deaf. Monet had vision problems when he painted some of his most well-known work. I wonder if there's something to this beyond coincidence.
The estimated total amount of gold mined by humans would fill a cube that's only 25 meters on a side. Platinum is even more rare...all of the mined platinum in the world would fit inside an average home. (thx, jake)
Anyone in a coining mood? If one doesn't already exist, there needs to be a term for writing a blog comment or Twitter update, thinking better of it, and then discarding it by closing the browser tab without clicking "Post". As in: "Jason, I would have responded to this post in the comments, but I ________ it instead." Any ideas?
The hotel that inspired Fawlty Towers will soon relaunch as a 4-star boutique hotel.
Pro baseball player Don Carman wrote up a list of stock responses to reporter's questions...it reads like a script for almost every locker room interview I've ever seen. "We're going to take the season one game at a time."
This is a bit old (from March last year), but the most photographed city on Flickr at the time was London followed by New York, but when you take population into account, Vancouver, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas win for photos per capita.
Psychology Today talks with psychologist Robert Epstein about his book, The Case Against Adolescence:
In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring "children" well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20s. The age at which Americans reach adulthood is increasing -- 30 is the new 20 -- and most Americans now believe a person isn't an adult until age 26.
The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.
Epstein says the infantilization of adolescents creates a lot of conflict and isolation on both sides of the divide. Over at Marginal Revolution, economist Tyler Cowen adds:
The problem, of course, is that a contemporary wise and moderate 33 year old is looking to climb the career ladder, find a mate, or raise his babies. He doesn't have a great desire to educate unruly fifteen year olds and indeed he can insulate himself from them almost completely. He doesn't need a teenager to carry his net on the elephant hunt. Efficient capitalist production and rising wage rates lead to an increased sorting by age and the moral education of teens takes a hit.
You can read the first chapter of the book at The Radical Academy.
Update: Bryan writes to recommend Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood, saying that "Postman argues that the idea of childhood is a cultural phenomena that comes and goes through the ages". (thx, bryan)
Map of Manhattan made up of the countries of origin of its residents. (via strange maps)
So, how the heck do you pronounce Gnutella? I've heard people pronouncing it NUH-TEL-LA, but I thought that with its GNU heritage, it would be pronounced more like GUH-NUH-TEL-LA. Does anyone know for sure (the operative phrase here being "for sure")? I'll post the answer once I get it.
Vanilla-tini (vanilla vodka)
Espresso-tini (coffee liqueur + espresso)
Key Lime-tini (key lime)
Valen-tini (tequila rose)
Pome-tini (pomegranate)
Raspberry-tini (raspberry)
Nutty-tini (amaretto + hazelnut liqueur)
Crescendo-tini (at the orchestra)
Moe-tini (at Moe's Restaurant)
Franklin-tini (for Ben Franklin's 300th birthday)
Tut-tini (King Tut exhibition)
Mex-tini (orange vodka + tequila)
Ginger-tini (grapefruit + ginger + pomegranate)
Spa-tini (at the spa)
Blue Glow-tini (with glowing ice cubes)
Free-tini (no charge)
Champagne-tini (champagne)
Pineapple-tini (pineapple)
Sex-tini (Asian sex tonic + x-rated vodka)
Flu-tini (vodka + cold medicine)
Apple-tini (apple)
Red Lobster Butter-Tini (butterscotch schnapps + half and half + Bailey's)
Bikini-tini (low calorie)
Fire-tini (jalapenos)
K-tini (sauerkraut)
Caramel Apple Pie-tini (applesauce + caramel syrup)
Red Hot Santa-tini (chili peppers + whipped cream)
Fall-tini (apple cider)
Insomnia-tini (energy drink)
Jello-tini (lime Jello)
Peep-tini (Peeps candy)
Diamond-tini (1.06 carat diamond)
Think about all the free (or absurdly cheap) stuff you can get these days, compared to just a few years ago. Internet access. Long distance. Computers. Books. Clothing. Cable television. Why is it so cheap? Well, we're still paying for those things in the form of drastically reduced levels of customer service.
I've heard dozens of stories in the past couple months about horrible customer service, including:
- crappy DSL installs. PacBell, USWest, Qwest, Bell Atlantic, I'm talking about you here.
- not being able to talk to a real person when you need to.
- the real-life bookstore and the online bookstore not knowing how to deal with each other. Hello, Barnes & Noble.
- cable companies. The more things change....
- not being able to find basic contact information on a company's Web site.
- and the defending champion of horrible customer service....do I even have to tell you that it's Network Solutions?
Companies are lowering prices so they can get big and rich in a hurry, but their customers - the people they are supposed to be treating with courtesy and respect - are paying the price for it by being ignored, talked down to, ripped off, and generally taken advantage of.
The really disturbing thing is that these companies are pretty much getting away with it. They are offering subpar service and profiting from it. Somehow, this has to catch up with them....or is this just part and parcel of the "new economy"?
Two independent groups of scientists have recently confirmed that the universe does exist when we are not observing it.
The reality in question -- admittedly rather a small part of the universe -- was the polarisation of pairs of photons, the particles of which light is made. The state of one of these photons was inextricably linked with that of the other through a process known as quantum entanglement. The polarised photons were able to take the place of the particle and the antiparticle in Dr Hardy's thought experiment because they obey the same quantum-mechanical rules. Dr Yokota (and also Drs Lundeen and Steinberg) managed to observe them without looking, as it were, by not gathering enough information from any one interaction to draw a conclusion, and then pooling these partial results so that the total became meaningful.
That's a relief, although the head of one of the group called their results "preposterous", so perhaps we're still not really here.
Nicely designed British fruit and veg postage stamps. They come with stickers to affix to the stamps.
A short video animation of Quimby the Mouse by Chris Ware. (via waxy)
Update: Vimeo has pulled the video offline. (thx, paul)
Update: The video is back online again.
Steve Landsburg is voting for George Bush because John Edwards is xenophobic for opposing the outsourcing of American jobs. In most cases, America should have to compete for jobs, but calling Edwards a bigot is ridiculous. Is it bigoted to prefer that your spouse has a certain job rather than your neighbor? To discriminate on the arbitrary basis of marriage?
Postings around here may get a little sporadic because I'm heading up to attend the PopTech conference in Maine. PopTech is near the top of the heap of all the conferences I've attended and I'm really looking forward to this year's event, especially since I didn't get to go last year. Speakers include Thomas Barnett, Richard Dawkins, Homaro Cantu, Juan Enriquez, Stewart Brand, Thomas Friedman, Will Wright, and Ze Frank, as well as the sleepers that I've never heard of that inevitably knock everyone's socks off.
If you didn't get yourself in gear to make it to PopTech this year, no need for despair. For the first time, they're broadcasting the whole thing, live and for free. I will also be doing some blogging from the audience (as will others, I imagine), so stay tuned for that as well.
Many thanks for all the kind birthday greetings yesterday (and today). :)
Birthday wrap-up: I got virtual cards from both of my parents, a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate from my co-workers, got to bust open a pinata whilst wearing a sombrero after lunch at work (don't ask), my dad took me out to lunch (today), and Nichol surprised me with flowers, dinner, and a movie (Run Lola Run). Great day.
In the 1960s, a young Al Gore had the good fortune to study under Roger Revelle at Harvard University. Revelle was one of the first scientists to claim that the earth may not be able to effectively deal with all of the carbon dioxide generated by the earth's rapidly increasing human population. The American Institute of Physics called Revelle's 1957 paper with Hans Suess "the opening shot in the global warming debates". Gore took Revelle's lessons to heart, becoming a keen supporter of the environment during his government service.
Since losing the 2000 Presidential election to George W. Bush, Al Gore has focused his efforts on things other than politics; among other things, he's been crisscrossing the world delivering a presentation on global warming. Gore's presentation now forms the foundation of a new film, An Inconvenient Truth (view the trailer).
In organizing my thoughts about the film, I found I couldn't improve upon David Remnick's review in the New Yorker. In particular:
It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scene. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone--or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room--for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, "An Inconvenient Truth" is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. "An Inconvenient Truth" is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.
Watching the film, I realized -- far too late to move to Florida and vote for him in 2000 -- that I'm a fan of Al Gore. He's smart & intellectually curious (the latter doesn't always follow from the former), understands science enough to explain it to the layperson without needlessly oversimplifying, and despite his reputation as somewhat of a robot, seems to be more of a real person than many politicians. As Remnick says:
One can imagine him as an intelligent and decent President, capable of making serious decisions and explaining them in the language of a confident adult.
The film has some small problems; many of the asides about Gore's life (particularly the 2000 election stuff) don't seem to fit cleanly into the main narrative, the connection it makes between global warming and Katrina is stronger than it should be, and the trailer is a little silly; this is a documentary about Al Gore and global warming after all, not The Day After Tomorrow or Armageddon. But the film really shines when it focuses on the presentation and Gore methodically and lucidly making the case for us needing to take action on global warming. An Inconvenient Truth opens in the US on May 24...do yourself a favor and seek it out when it comes to your local theater.
A croque monsieur is a sandwich consisting of two slices of white bread, ham, cheese, a bit of cream (or cheese) sauce, and yet more cheese melted over the top of it after the whole thing has been grilled. I somehow missed this miracle of French cuisine the last time around, but am taking full advantage of it now. I've even written a little song about it, quite unintentionally. It just popped into my head and every time I see le croque monsieur on the menu, I can't help singing it:
Croque Monsieur, Croque Monsieur
uh huh huh**, Croque Monsieur
(repeat)
A chart topper for sure.
** The "uh huh huh" here is what I think of as typical French grunting (gathered mostly from misrepresentions of snooty French characters in movies and cartoons), a sound that when followed by a "monsieur" could be thought of as playfully condescending in tone.
John Brockman has asked his Edgy band of scientists, futurists, writers, and philosophers about "some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you", like those of Newton, Moore, or Murphy. Here are the results.
The more general of such laws are the most interesting because they can enrich our understanding of diverse subject areas and can be very instructive in how they fail. I think maybe this is what Alan Alda was getting at with his First and Second Laws of Laws:
1. All laws are local.
2. A law does not know how local it is.
Here's a few of my other favorite laws from the list, general and not:
Pimm's First Law: No language spoken by fewer than 100,000 people survives contact with the outside world, while no language spoken by more than one million people can be eliminated by such contact.
Gopnik's Gender Curves: The male curve is an abrupt rise followed by an equally abrupt fall. The female curve is a slow rise to an extended asymptote. The areas under the curves are roughly equal. These curves apply to all activities at all time scales (e.g. attention to TV programs, romantic love, career scientific productivity). (see the graphs)
Morgan's Second Law: To a first approximation all appointments are canceled.
Pöppel's Universal: We take life 3 seconds at a time. Human experience and behaviour is characterized by temporal segmentation. Successive segments or "time windows" have a duration of approx. 3 seconds.
Brand's Pace Law: In haste, mistakes cascade. With deliberation, mistakes instruct.
Kai's Example Dilemma: A good analogy is like a diagonal frog.
Rushkoff's Law: A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actually believe in it--at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.
Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer: In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.
Minksy's Second Law: Don't just do something. Stand there.
Sterling's Corollary to Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.
Statetris: "Instead of positioning the typical Tetris blocks, you position states/countries at their proper location." There are versions for the US, Africa, Europe, the UK, and more.
The main thesis of Nonzero is that social complexity of human culture has been increasing since the dawn of man and will continue to do so until forever. Wright argues that non-zero sum games are the culprit: societies get more complex (moving from tribes of hunter gatherers to mutli-trillion dollar global economy) because in order to play ever more lucrative non-zero sum games with an increasing number of people, that's the way it has to be. It makes a lot of sense.
[I'm sure this is nothing new and has been amply documented elsewhere but I'm in rant mode, not research mode, so here we go.] We're going to London soon so my wife calls up AT&T to make sure our iPhones will work in the UK. We already knew all about the ridiculous prices they charge for international data roaming (viewing a 3-minute video on YouTube would cost about $40!), so turning that feature off for the duration is not going to be a problem. After unlocking the phones for international access, the woman informed Meg of two other tidbits of mobile phone company idiocy:
1. If my iPhone is on in the UK and the phone rings but I don't answer, the call goes to voicemail. As it should. But somehow, I get charged for that call at $1.29/minute *and* perhaps an additional call from my phone to the US, also billed at $1.29/minute. Individual voicemails are limited to 2 minutes, but if I get 10 2-minute voicemails over the course of a couple days, I'm charged $25 for not answering my phone. And then I have to listen to all the voicemails...that's another $25. Insane and inane.
2. But it gets even more unbelievable! Then the woman tells Meg that when the iPhone is hooked up to a computer via USB, you shouldn't download the photos from the phone to the computer because you'll incur international data roaming charges and further that the only way to deal with this is to wait to sync your photos when you get back to the US. W! T! F! How is that even possible? This sounds like complete bullshit to me. The iPhone somehow calls AT&T to ask permission to d/l photos? Verifies the EXIF data? Informs the US government what you've been taking pictures of...some kind of distributed self-surveillance system? Is this really the case or was this woman just really confused about what she was reading off of her script?
After 10 years, kottke.org favorite New Green Bo (still the best soup dumplings in town, IMO) has changed its name to Nice Green Bo.
We're 10 years old, and we have so many nice customers, so we made it Nice Green Bo.
(via eater)
Update: My officemate Scott snapped a photo of the new signage during lunch.
Roommate Wanted: Share My West Village Pad. "Ideally, you do not have 'a lot' of friends (i.e., any). But if you do, they cannot visit the apartment at any time."
It's Friday. Let's have some fun. Our mission? To elevate the status of this otherwise unremarkable photograph to the #1 spot on Yahoo's most viewed content list. Click on the link two or three times. Post the link to your Web site and urge others to do the same. If you've got a mailing list, mail it out to everybody. Why? Because we can, I guess.
Update: the photo has made it onto the "most emailed" list. Keep clicking.
Update #2: the photo is now halfway up both the "most emailed" and "most viewed" lists. Click on!
Update #3: the photo is #1 on the "most emailed" list and #4 on the "most viewed" list. Almost there....
On King of the Hill tonight, Boomhauer mumbled something about JenniCam. On the X-Files, Mulder and Scully finally kissed. Which event is more culturally significant?
John McCain is using Mike Davidson's MySpace template (without attribution) and pulling some images directly from Davidson's server, which is a big no-no in webmaster land. So Davidson modified one of his images displaying on McCain's MySpace page to say that he'd reversed his position on gay marriage, especially "marriage between passionate females".
I just finished reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. As it happens, the subject matter of the book mirrors this business with pipe-bomber Luke Helder. Reading through the text of letters Helder left with bombs in mailboxes and the manifesto (mirror) he sent The Badger Herald, I was reminded of the writings, mutterings, utterances, and internal dialogue of C&P's Raskolnikov.
In the book, Raskolnikov writes an article for a newspaper in which he states that "extraordinary [people] have the right [that is, not an official right, but his own right] to commit all sorts of crimes and in various ways to transgress the law, because in point of fact they are extraordinary." He goes on to say that great people can do great deeds, whether right or wrong, because they bring about great change in the world. In his madness (or is it?), he tests this theory and himself. Is he an extraordinary man? Can he kill and steal because he is extraordinary? What changes might he be helping bring about? Can he get away with it? Can he drop hints about his crime and still not be caught?
There are glimpses in Helder's writings that hint that he might be of Raskolnikov's mind and considers himself an extraordinary man out to change the world, preaching his gospel. "I'm here to help you realize/understand that you will live no matter what!" "You have been missing how things are, for very long." "I'm happy because I know. I often wonder why anyonewould be so content with believing when they could know." "I'm here to help you, to expose you, to inform you, to provide for you the answers for where to look, so the 'spiritually sleepy mass' can transform themselves from believing to knowing, to have an awareness to life, and to begin understanding."
(Or maybe not. Maybe Helder is just a dumb kid that smoked too much pot and watched The Matrix one too many times. Either way, the whole situation is horrible and fascinating, as was Dostoevsky's account of Raskolnikov.)
Why children love Roald Dahl's stories -- and many adults don't. Danny, The Champion of the World is my favorite Dahl book and I've read most of the others as well.
"Shy people may be quiet, but there's a lot going on in their heads. When they encounter a frightening or unfamiliar situation -- meeting someone new, for example -- a brain region responsible for negative emotions goes into overdrive." (via mr)
A trip to Danny Meyer's new Shake Shack in Madison Square Park is in order later this month.
Three years ago, Jonathan Rauch wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly called Caring for Your Introvert, one of my favorite pieces of magazine writing ever. He recently did an interview about the piece, which is the most popular article ever posted to the Atlantic's Web site.
About two months ago, I had the rare pleasure of (unknowingly) starting a small meme and then watching it grow into something wholly unexpected. Here's what happened:
- After reading a post on Tom Coates' Web site noting the similar subject matter on our sites, Meg and I both posted the same fictional story to megnut and kottke.org about seeing a little girl riding her bike. We even misspelled the word "pedal" to add to the uniformity of the copy. We thought it would be good for a joke.
- Then something strange happened. Tom posted the story to his site, word for word (spelling error and all), without further comment. Then Heather, Steve, and a few other folks posted the story word for word to their Web sites.
- To most folks, who hadn't had time to witness the genesis of the meme before it spread, these multiple posts (seemingly made at the same time) looked like a conspiracy among a clique, trying to demonstrate their elite status or some other such nonsense. Other people thought it was a bug in the software that many of the posters used to update their sites. In the course of a day or so, the meme had spread to a relatively wide audience and, to a significant degree, had already obscured its origin.
- People then started to notice the pattern and began to comment on it, both in a group setting on Metafilter (here & here) and on their Web sites (here & here, for example). Others took the original story, put a personal spin on it, and posted it to their sites (here, here, and here, for example).
From there, it became a joke in email, was mentioned in passing in online forums, and came up in conversations. People continued to post it to their sites, probably not even realizing the full context of the situation, doing it simply because everyone else was.
There was even a smaller "aftershock" meme involving people posting "I am Jason Kottke" to their sites (like here & here). I have no idea what that was all about...except maybe that the pump had been primed and people were in the mood to repeat just about anything.
And then people pretty much forgot about the whole thing, which, I think we can all agree, is a good thing.
Photos from the 2008 International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest...AKA fancily decorated aquariums. (thx, dustin)
Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. He's not the smartest or the most clever writer but he weaves deceptively simple stories into larger statements on society and humanity with a skill possessed by very few people doing creative work in any field. I haven't gotten around to reading Moneyball yet, but Liar's Poker is probably his strongest work. It's as hard to put down as any fiction. Great book.
Long piece on the opening titles of The Wire. Contains nearly endless seasons 1-3 spoilers. The site also offers comprehensive weekly episode recaps...here's the one for episode 40.
Update: Edward Copeland also does The Wire recaps.
From an article in Monocle about the Baselworld watch fair.
Swiss watch brands are patriotic to a fault. Rolex is one of the few high-end manufacturers that does not stamp "Swiss Made" on the watch face in the belief that Rolex defines Switzerland rather than the other way around.
Now *that's* a brand.
Wikipedia has a series of maps showing the political and social boundries of the world in 2000 BC, 1000 BC, 500 BC, 323 BC and so on.
A note for those of you attending SXSW: Bryan and I were talking a while back and we figured that instead of saying "South by Southwest", which is a mouthful, it would be easier to sound out the acronym and pronounce it as "sick-sow" (you know, like an ailing pig). Go ahead, try it on, see if it suits you. I'm not entirely sold on it yet...it still sounds a little strange and pretentious when I say it.
Child molesters say Lance should never be allowed to legally wed anyone he loves..
Last 100 posts is a semi-regular follow-up to stuff that I've posted about on kottke.org recently. The last such update was from May 10. Now, on to the shiny and new.
People seemed to like the site refresh. The most popular question I received in response was, "why the heck don't you change the color on visited links?" This is a good question that I don't have a good answer for. I recall having a good answer for it several years ago, but I can't remember what it is. Or maybe it was never a good answer. At any rate, changing the color of the visited links is something I'll be looking into.
I removed the dropdown menu from the front page. From the emailed reaction to its absence, it is not missed. (But it will still be back in some form soonish.)
Apple switched to Intel chips. I suspect you've heard more than you care to about this, so I'm going to leave further research on the topic as an exercise to the reader.
Unsurprisingly, your music collections are a lot more diverse than mine. Galego, Uzbeki, Putonghua, Gujarati, Swahili, and Phil Collinese were among the languages that people found in their music collections.
Look ma, I was in Time magazine.
When I got back from Ireland, I posted a picture to Flickr of an Irish breakfast we had one morning. That got quite a discussion going about if the breakfast was in fact Irish or if it was English or even Scottish and which nation was ripping what breakfast idea from whom. In the end, Flickr user esteban speaks the truth when he says, "God bless the fry up no matter what you call it."
In case you missed it, reader Peter vanDerbeek made a 2005 summer movies calendar for us all to enjoy.
Still pursuing various rural internet options. The only thing we've learned for sure is that Verizon employees are quite nice and helpful. I'm planning on compiling all of the responses and information into a handy guide for folks looking for internet access in the rural US.
The 50 Fun Things to Do with Your iPod feature was quite popular, despite its non-appearance on Slashdot. (What, they don't like fun? Time to read How To Get Slashdotted again, I guess.) Someone suggested that with the addition of 50 more items, it would make a good book(let)...which isn't a bad idea at all.
In compiling the ordering strategies for How to order food in a restaurant, I neglected to include Chris Anderson's forthcoming book on The Long Tail. The LT ordering strategy would probably only work in a place like Shopsin's, with a menu of hundreds of different items or at places with really large wine lists.
I got sick earlier this month (I've still got a cough I can't get rid of) and wondered who got sick in June. Turns out quite a few of you, including a fairly high proportion of my friends. Many blamed allergies, which probably had something to do with my own ailment as well.
Taking a cue from auto insurance, Safeway has devised a healthcare insurance plan that emphasizes personal responsibility.
Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.
The result is that Safeway's healthcare costs have held steady over the past four years while the costs at other American companies have increased almost 40%.
A nice write-up in The Washington Post yesterday about Brijit, a start-up that hopes to make finding good magazine articles an easier task by creating a site that posts abstracts and ratings:
Brijit, Brosowsky said, aims to be "everyone's best-read friend."
Now on Brijit are summations of articles in current issues of GQ, Wired, Mother Jones, ESPN the Magazine, the Economist, Smithsonian and more than 50 other magazines. Even if you never read the entire article, just scanning Brijit could make you the smartest person at your next cocktail party.
Call me 'mildly interested.' It's not a bad idea. And I agree with David Foster Wallace's great opening essay in this year's Best American Essays, & also with Jason's reaction to it: namely, that we need editors a lot more than we think & now more than ever.
But, between the actual magazines and the individual styles, tastes, and voices of the blogs and group blogs that I already read to find what I've missed, where's room for Brijit? Maybe Brijit will reach critical mass and become a single-stop clearing-house for bloggers with more specialized tastes? One thing they'll have to do for certain is expand their currently-limited scope: if you look at their source list, a large number of the journals and magazines from which this year's crop of Best American Essays came are missing--including many that do post their content online & without a paywall.
New version of MAME for OS X that works natively on the Intel machines. MAME is an arcade emulator that lets you play arcade games on your computer. (via df)
Photo of a gigantic collaborative street art project from Australia.
Merry...er....Saturday!
When I got home last night, I picked up my mail and opened the shirt I ordered from Threadless:
It took me all of two seconds to look at Scandinavia and determine that it was impossible to construct using conventional Tetris pieces. Unless some of the little blocks had been disappeared by clearing a row. And the dialogue in my head when I was thinking about all this was spoken in Professor Frink's voice from The Simpsons. Maybe I need to start reading on the subway rather than playing my GameBoy Advance so much.
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