Published by marco on in Miscellaneous
Learning by example in Bush’s America leads to the list in Everything I Know I Learned Since Jan. 20, 2001 by Neal Starkman (Common Dreams). Some examples are cited below.
“Rich people hire everyone else to work for them, making our economy robust.
“Scientists’ opinions are neither better nor worse than anyone else’s.
“The fall of communism is the best evidence that providing everyone in this country with free health care is doomed.”
There are a lot of versions of this, but this one is pretty neutral and to-the-point.
Here’s a neat (rhyming) poem for those learning English (or think they already know everything they need to know), found on I thought I had it ruff, er rough! by David Bogner (Treppenwitz)[1]
“I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh* and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?“Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For... [More]”
This is a cool presentation of English accents. I can verify most of the American ones (I guessed the state before she said it), and the British/Irish/Oceanian ones sounded about right too. It’s about two and half minutes long.
21 Accents by Amy Walker (YouTube)
The Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon Sitting in a Tree… (earthli News) video soared to over 8 million views on YouTube. Kimmel, Silverman’s boyfriend has responded with a video of his own.
Jimmy Kimmel is F@cking Ben Affleck Response to Matt & Sarah (YouTube)
It features Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Macy Gray, Robin Williams, Josh Groban, Huey Lewis, Harrison Ford, Joan Jett, Perry Farrell and many other famous faces. Looking forward to Silverman’s response.
Published by marco on in Programming
Microsoft recently released documentation for their binary office formats in both PDF and their own XPS format. The PDF for Word weighs in at 2.8MB and has 210 pages. Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? by Joel Spolsky, provides a lot of good reasons for why the formats are so complicated (most rooted in history), like speed, complexity of the task, purely internal formats (until now), etc.
Where Spolsky veers off the path (and he almost always does) is in reaching a bit too far with his... [More]
Published by marco on in Technology
Webkit, the rendering engine on which the Safari browser is based has been quite aggresive in its support for advanced CSS3 features. Since the engine is used in many Apple applications and on all of their platforms (e.g. the iPhone and iTouch), the need for slickness there drives innovation everywhere.
The trend lately has been to move to flashy effects done with JavaScript libraries that can manipulate the DOM and address elements using CSS selectors. There are many top... [More]
Published by marco on in Quotes
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
About a week ago, the Obamians released a black and white video (YouTube) supporting their candidate. It features an acoustic guitar as accompaniment to snippets of Obama’s most inspiring words[1] as spoken by him and sung or intoned by various other famous persons. It was pretty schmaltzy, but not horrible. Since McCain didn’t come up with a video response of his own, the crew of Election08 threw one together for him, using a very similar style. This one’s a lot shorter and a lot funnier; it starts going... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
There are a lot of online surveys to help voting Americans figure on which of the candidates in the quickly dwindling field they should pin their hopes. Though USA Today has taken it on the chin over the years for their vastly over-simplified graphics—usually prominently featured on their front page—their Candidate Match Game (USA Today) is tour-de-force of design. It compresses a huge amount of information into a very understandable form. It also has only 11 questions, which vastly increases the... [More]
Published by marco on in Quotes
“History doesn’t repeat itself—at best, it sometimes rhymes.”
Published by marco on in Technology
So you’d like to watch TV shows whenever you like, but you’re too lazy to Tivo them yourself? Or maybe you live in a foreign country and would like to stay up-to-date on American culture? Let the magic of newsfeeds maintained by Tivo-using obsessives and the Miro Player do your work for you. It works like this:
Published by marco on in Programming
The article Two-Party Threaded Chat by Peter Arrenbrecht addresses the problem of multiple threads of discussion within a single conversation. Without face-to-face contact, the threshold for interruption is much lower and answers will not always neatly line up under their questions. A conversation may have many of these “threads”, though individual ones are usually quite short-lived. Chat clients are currently limited by their purely serial approach to inserting text into a conversation.
The solution proposed in... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
First the Tom Cruise video and now this one: Yes We Can − Barack Obama Music Video (YouTube). OMFG! Famous people *heart* Obama! Game, set and match to you sir. There is also a Letter from an Obama supporter by Jesse Last (3QuarksDaily) making the rounds and people who should know better are guzzling the kool-aid at a majestic pace and are completely gaga about this gentleman, philosopher, poet and bridger of cultures.
Here are some excerpts with snide commentary.
“I cheered with hundreds of people from all backgrounds and thought... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“A distinguishing feature of the modern state is that it claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory … the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.”
Citation found in the article Weber and Legitimate Violence (Crooked Timber).
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
The State of the Union 2008 wasn’t all boring. In addition to essentially declaring war on Iran, Bush demanded that Congress pass the new FISA legislation tout d’suite[1]. He naturally couched the demand in a way that failure on Congress’s part to do so would play directly into the hands of the terrorists and make America unsafe. Congress, for their part, has agreed to the legislation, but dared to take exception to the provision for retroactive immunity for telecoms companies that aided in... [More]
So this weekend, one mildly out-of-touch ex-pat discovered that:
To celebrate their anniversary (and his show’s), Silverman showed Kimmel a video she made for him, called Sarah Silverman “I’m F*cking Matt Damon” on Jimmy Kimmel (YouTube). It’s hilarious. Silverman is fully... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
Jonah Goldberg has been doing the “book circuit”, attempting to pump up interest for his latest and greatest “Liberal Fascism”. His interview on (a) Daily Show with Jon Stewart didn’t go well for him at all—well, because Jon Stewart is not stupid enough to believe his premise and is both well-read and quick-witted enough to refute him in real-time. Goldberg was intellectually defrocked within minutes (but at least managed to chuckle good-naturedly—albeit nervously—instead of getting... [More]
Published by marco on in Technology
Here’s a great diagram of the Fibre-optic Submarine Cable Systems (The Guardian) encircling the globe. In addition to an map of the cable systems throughout the world, it provides some statistics about the recent shipping accident that severed four of those cable lines, killing the internet and business traffic for almost 80 million users. The government of Egypt was exhorting its citizens to lay off downloading movies and songs for a day or two so that “more important” business could use the bandwidth. If... [More]
Free Rice ScoreInstead of chasing down video references in YouTube, you can expand your vocabulary for a good cause using FreeRice, all while remaining glued to the internet. The initial levels aren’t bad, but the game nicely adjusts to your level of vocabulary and, after a while, you’ll find yourself using educated guesses almost exclusively as they shovel words at you that you’ve never, ever seen before. The word list is maintained and expanded by a “team of professional lexicographers from the firm of Lexiteria... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want? Get... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“To clarify, add detail. And, clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. Don’t start to throw out information—instead, fix the design.”
Published by marco on in Video Games
Of late, there’s been no better place to go for a quick review of the latest games than Yahtzee. His review of Crysis (Escapist Magazine) is a beauty.
The plot is summed as follows:
“Your task is to infiltrate some island in the South Pacific and slaughter Koreans. There’s probably more to it than that, but I found it hard to sympathize with the heroes when they’re using expensive, top-of-the-range hardware and are backed up by the entire armed forces of the entire United States while most of the enemy have to... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
Now replace the word “economics” with any other discipline and you have yourself a pretty good rule-of-thumb.
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