Feb/100
TPUTH — Socially Generated Newspaper for Geeks, Designers and Venture Capitalists
Socially Generated, Machine Filtered, Hand Polished, Electronic Newspaper for Geeks, Designers & Venture Capitalists
TPUTH lists as its captains of industry four stalwart icons of the modern era: Eric of Google, Bill of Microsoft, Steve of Apple and The Jesus of Lebowski. Niiice.
Pullin' the trigger till it goes *click*.
via Daring Fireball.
Jan/100
Two Gentlemen Of Lebowski
Thusly The Dude doth abide.
A brilliant adaptation of The Big Lebowski, including couplets to end each section. Can't wait for the zombie version...
THE KNAVE
Good sir, speak plain. I know not these villains, surely would I ne’er traffic with this man of Orient birth who so abused my rug. I have not the facility to present him with the rate of usance and demand money in kind for that which he has spent upon’t; so I entreat you, speak plain.WALTER
I speak the truth; my words are straight and true.
The man of Orient birth is not the issue.DONALD
The Orient, Sir Walter?WALTER
I speak, old friend, of truths in desert land.
The hour is nigh to draw line in the sand.THE KNAVE
Deserts? I had made it plain that he was Orient-man.WALTER
Though words in haste be only human nature,
‘Orient-man’ is not preferr’d nomenclature.THE KNAVE
Give me no further counsel; my griefs cry softer than advertisement.WALTER
I speak of this other man, Sir Geoffrey of Lebowski. Is not thy name, sir, Geoffrey of Lebowski? To be or not Lebowski, that is the question; I see we still did meet each other’s man. Shall we not make amends? A gentleman of high sentence ought to be of unsequestered location, possessed of resources fit to restore a thousand rugs from vile offence. He’s not well married that lets his wife a borrower be, such that men gravely offended bespoil another man’s rug. Be I wrong?THE KNAVE
No, but verily—WALTER
Be I wrong?THE KNAVE
Yea, but verily—WALTER
That rug, in faith, tied the room together, did it not?THE KNAVE
By my heart, a goodly rug.DONALD
And in most miserable tide did this rogue besmirch it.WALTER
Prithee, Donald! Thou too eagerly hold’st the mirror up to nature.THE KNAVE
My mind races; I might endeavour to seek this gentleman Lebowski.DONALD
His name is Lebowski? Verily, ope thine ear; that is thy name, Knave!THE KNAVE
On good authority; and his nobleness must oblige. His wife taketh up quarrel and borrows, and they bespoil my rug.WALTER
Marry, sir, my heartstrings do you tug;
They urinate upon thy damnèd rug.[Exeunt severally]
Jan/100
The Burj: Medieval Folly In Dubai
The thing about criminal lunatics who live like God’s just keeping their chairs warm is that, well, they do know how to put on a show.
via Warren Ellis » Coming Anarchy.
Dec/090
CA’s Legislature Again Plays Politics Instead Of Doing Its Job
Though not as important to Californians as things like, ya know, passing a budget, it seems that my boss at the CPUC, Commissioner Rachelle Chong, is getting the political run-around and may lose her job. Appointed to the FCC as a commissioner under President Clinton, and then to the CPUC by Governor Schwarzenegger, her job is in jeopardy not because of her record or performance, which has been consistent, rational and balanced, but because she's a Republican.
But it's whose bid the committee won't hear today that's set off a bit of a controversy.Aides for Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg said last week that the committee would not hold a hearing for PUC Commissioner Rachelle Chong. Without the green light from lawmakers, the Schwarzenegger appointee's time on the panel will come to an end later this month.
Chong, who was first confirmed to the post in 2007, has been criticized by consumer groups who say she votes at the bidding of the telecommunications industry.
Chong's supporters cried foul, saying the Senate should at least give her the consideration of a hearing. They also pointed to her voting record, which is identical to Peevey's.
Those complaints have continued, with groups representing the business and Asian-American communities sending letters in support of Chong.
This morning, representatives from several of those organizations are meeting with Steinberg's office to make their case. UPDATE 7:40 : The meeting with Steinberg's office was cancelled by the advocates, Steinberg's office said.
"They're really withholding fair due process of a very highly qualified person," said Filipino Progress board member Norm De Young, who was scheduled to attend the meeting. "Our expectation is that if we present a fair, unbiased representation of the [appointee], that [Steinberg] will do his best to be fair and earnest on her behalf. Our expectation is one of fairness."
I only worked for the Commissioner for a few months, but I can still say this about her: to her core, Commissioner Chong is an earnest, incredibly sharp, hard-working public servant.
She has a stellar record on items she's spearheaded before the Commission, and always has the best interests of the state at heart. I certainly didn't agree with all of her assumptions or opinions, but she is utterly consistent and works from a thoughtful, considered, informed base. An intense free market advocate, she's also passionate about helping minority groups, immigrants, the poor, and those in rural areas. Though she never needed to do so, I saw the Commissioner give up some time at home with her beloved twins in order to personally visit non-profits for the elderly and immigrant groups to make sure they were prepared for the Digital Television transition. Her pet project? Minimizing the digital divide by ensuring that universal high-speed Internet access is available to all. Though it's a little-known fact, only around 10% of the CPUC's work focuses on telecom regulation. Therefore, her other big interests are just as important as her telecom-related priorities: upgrading California's energy grid to increase it's efficiency as a smart grid, and expanding the state's use of renewable energy.
Sure, anti-corporate groups are never going to like her. That's fine. That's their job, and Commissioner Chong, as someone with a free market worldview is an easy and natural target. But her worldview shouldn't be any cause for holding up her confirmation hearing. Her record is spotless and her tireless leadership speaks for itself.
Get to it, Sacramento. Reconfirm Commissioner Rachelle Chong.
Dec/090
Surgery Or Metalwork?
My little brother had major surgery to repair his ankle a few weeks ago.
His bones never really grew properly in this area, so at age eight he underwent his first corrective operation. This latest was the ninth procedure on this foot.
This go round, his surgeon removed most of the assorted metal implanted in my brother's ankle (pins, staples, screws, broken screw bits, etc.). The surgeon then broke the foot and ankle in three places, inserted pins to hold everything together, stapled together the incisions, and sealed the whole thing in place with a cast.
Hopefully this will be the last surgery the kid will ever need on his ankle.
I've since taken him to get the visible metal removed, and he's asked me to document the process. He has all of the photos and while he hasn't shared many yet I've included a pic of hispre-staple-removal foot below the jump. (Not for the faint of heart). If he sends me more pics, I'll also add them here -- I know I took a great shot of his doctors yanking out the pins with a pair of pliers. Good times.
He's now staple and pin-free and has upgraded to a walking cast. A few more weeks and he'll even be off of crutches entirely. Happy holidays, indeed.
Dec/090
Ron Burgundy Goes To Iraq
A guy I grew up with is an Army MP stationed in Iraq. Here's what he posted as his Facebook status yesterday:
Walked into an Iraqi Police Headquarters this evening where they were all sitting there watching Anchorman. Strange.
Doesn't get much more surreal than that. It's the little things.
What really bakes my noodle now, though, is the trail of breadcrumbs and the use of modern communication which led up to this whole snapshot.
- A dispute over poorly-aligned, antiquated punch-card paper ballots in Florida created controversy over whether George W. Bush was our properly elected President in 2000.
- A bunch of Saudi fundamentalists, trained in remote, mountainous, largely illiterate areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and armed with simple box cutters, stole jumbo jets -- small, fuel-filled flying towns -- and crashed them into mountain-sized buildings in Manhattan.
- The Towers collapsed, killing thousands of people whose days had been spent working on computers, communicating instantly with colleagues around the world and using the very latest technology to run America's financial sector.
- The summary justification for U.S. involvement in Iraq is based on questionable satellite images and photos from surveillance planes presented to the world by Colin Powell, in classic tv anchor style, as proof that Iraq's tyrant was building nukes and/or biological and chemical weapons.
- We went to war in Iraq, quickly freeing the Iraqi people from a tyrant's grip. Saddam, overthrown and on the run, is captured and later executed. That execution is illicitly recorded on a cell phone and posted on YouTube for the world to see.
- Using jury-rigged, hand made, improvised explosives, insurgents from around the world gather in Iraq to fight off the Americans and our Western allies.
- My friend, who I haven't seen since high school, joins the Army and finds his way to Iraq.
- There, he works with Iraqi citizens who themselves are working to create order and stability. He stops by their office, a police headquarters, and finds them watching Will Ferrell in Anchorman, a movie lampooning San Diego, America in the 1970s, the absurdity of America's recent misogynistic past, and local U.S. tv news generally and on-air personalities in particular. The Iraqi police certainly have no context for any of the subtle humor, though Ferrell in that 'stache and those classic seventies' outfits goes a long, long way.
- An Army MP goes back to his barrack, fires up his computer and logs on to Facebook, updating his status.
- As Facebook is what reconnected us, I'm able to glimpse his surreal day from the opposite side of the globe, mixed-in with updates about one friend's Christmas cookies and another friend's love of cheese melted on burgers.
The mind. It boggles.
Dec/090
Lebowski’s Calmer Than Glendale
Amidst a roaring fight over whether or not cell phone wireless towers (or antennas -- T-Mobile's plan hasn't even been finalized) are a safety hazard, interested readers in Glendale turned to Lebowski quotes to tone down the rhetoric. Good times in the comments.
Pete McFerrin: because helping residential property values should be the only goal of public policy, right? If I were a T-Mobile subscriber and I lived near that guy I would urinate on his front door every day, at the very least.SecretAgent: @Pete McFerrin: And he would take photos of you exposing yourself and you would then be another perma-loser on a state wide data base.
Pete McFerrin: @SecretAgent: "8-year-olds, Dude. 8-year-olds."
SecretAgent: @Pete McFerrin: 8 year olds? That would place you yet again on another data base.
Pete McFerrin: I am considering a boycott of this blog on the grounds that not enough people get Lebowski references. This aggression will not stand!
SecretAgent: @Pete McFerrin: I'm calmer than you, Dude. Calmer than you.
And if you're going to piss on someones property then at least do it on his area rug. You know the one, the kind that really ties the room together.
If only every wish to urinate on an idealogical enemy's property turned out so well.
(via Laura, who first introduced me to the greatness that is The Big Lebowski)
Dec/090
Let Reason Guide Financial Reform
A centrist Democrat after extensive poll research and discussion with lobbyists.
Paul Krugman vents via today's op-ed in The New York Times:
When I first began writing for The Times, I was naïve about many things. But my biggest misconception was this: I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence, that they would change their views if events completely refuted their beliefs.
And to be fair, it does happen now and then. I’ve been highly critical of Alan Greenspan over the years (since long before it was fashionable), but give the former Fed chairman credit: he has admitted that he was wrong about the ability of financial markets to police themselves.
But he’s a rare case. Just how rare was demonstrated by what happened last Friday in the House of Representatives, when — with the meltdown caused by a runaway financial system still fresh in our minds, and the mass unemployment that meltdown caused still very much in evidence — every single Republican and 27 Democrats voted against a quite modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses.
Krugman then goes on to tell a short, rational, fact-based story of U.S. financial history and the events leading up to last year's market crash. Well worth the full read.
Bottom line? In all arenas -- health care and financial reform, national security, education, whatever -- Republican's continue to spout their trademark brand of crazy rhetoric. It's the so-called centrist Democrats that I can't stand. The Republicans will say anything to tear down the Dems and get their party back into power. Simple power play. I get it. They believe in themselves and, collectively, in their party. The centrist Dems, on the other hand, claim to stand by values in line with the Democrats yet believe in nothing but getting themselves reelected, by any means necessary. At best they're mercenaries, at worst nihilists. And while that must be exhausting for them, they're ruining the future for the rest of us.
Dec/090
Avatar: Revolutionary Cinema?
Navi, the CGI-stars of Avatar.
It's rare that we're treated to a big-budget, big talent film that provides a new way of sharing information, telling a story, or looking at the world.
Citizen Kane took us through windows, cut back-and-forth through time, used impossible angles, and shared the comic-book panel-gestalt with high-brow film critics and the wider, movie-going general public (or, as Michael Chabon suggests, vice versa). Star Wars removed sci-fi films from B-movie status and lit the imaginations of kids the world over. Pulp Fiction and Memento (among others) played with time as Picasso played with visual angles, and The Matrix brought anime's influence to U.S. live-action, melding time-worn effects with new technological advances and a cutting-edge story to give voice to the Internet generation's worldview, dreams and fears.
While Eric Cartman would argue that Cameron stole his story, according to the early reviews James Cameron's Avatar should be, at the very least, a visual spectacle. Through a mix of CGI and live action, most of the movie's setting is computer-generated, as are the main characters for large chunks of the film. Some segments take advantage of new 3-D technology and are so well done that Ridley Scott is rumored to have scrapped some work he'd already completed on Forever War to switch to 3-D as well.
Most telling of all is Roger Ebert's review, edited here so as to remove spoilers:
Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely."Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. . . It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na'vi, as "Lord of the Rings" did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation. . . .
I've complained that many recent films abandon story telling in their third acts and go for wall-to-wall action. Cameron essentially does that here, but has invested well in establishing his characters so that it matters what they do in battle and how they do it. There are issues at stake greater than simply which side wins.
Cameron promised he'd unveil the next generation of 3-D in "Avatar." I'm a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron's iteration is the best I've seen -- and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn't promiscuously violate the fourth wall. He also seems quite aware of 3-D's weakness for dimming the picture, and even with a film set largely in interiors and a rain forest, there's sufficient light. I saw the film in 3-D on a good screen at the AMC River East and was impressed. I might be awesome in True IMAX. Good luck in getting a ticket before February.
It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.
At the very least, it'll be better than Titanic. Happy holidays, indeed.
Dec/090
The Inflatable Defender
The Inflatable Defender: Life-Size Ben Wallace
The best part of this -- outside of the fact that it simply exists -- is definitely the advertising photo. Real-life Ben looks startled... and maybe a little intimidated? Going with the blown-out 'fro instead of the cornrows was also an excellent choice.
Though this came out in ‘06 when Big Ben and the Pistons were at the height of their game, that doesn’t take away from the fact how amazing this is. The Inflatable Defender makes for a PERFECT gift for basketball fans or your 75-year-old grandmother. Why just imagine her excitement when she wakes up in the middle of the night to a 7-foot Ben Wallace by her nightstand!
FEATURES:
- Life-size dimensions: 84” high and 65” across at the arms when inflated.
- Thick PVC material reinforced at the bottom for durability.
- Base holds water for better stability.
- Repair Kit included.
- Equipped with 2 handles for easy movement and play value.
- Um…it’s a life-size blow-up Ben Wallace, with afro, what more features do you need???
via WAXIN' AND MILKIN'.