14 October 2008

no promised land, no holy book, no chosen people

rss? [1] [2]



My new one-bit RWx-auxiliary blog (GgReader)

vDeep observational humor from SM Walt (FP-list)

$400 sleep 'lab' (NYT via gPost)

Pattern of Israeli links in organ theft (cFire via gRoom)

Orthodox Jews debate ethical priorities (viN)

Effing brilliant BramCohen interview (longish)

Witty review of new Cowboys megastadium (Wkbnch)

GTD workflow map (flickr via 2mm)

Judaism's 'ethic' of omerta (viN)

Crowdsourced astronomy discovers new galaxy-class (sciBlog)

Updates on Woodstock bands {list}

Simple plot-skeleton generator (php via Triv)

Quakers called 'virulently antisemitic' (JTA via niqnaq)

JulietteLewis update (longish via Jz)

that night the bats flew out / from the water and swarmed everywhere for miles / like black tongues (vD-longish)

Tim O'Brien on fiction and play (longish via 2Pass)

Journalism degrees are stupid (HuffPo via cShirk)

New OED cd (Az-$200)

6 types of connection between books and songs (dBreast)

Mary Beard on Aurelius (LRB-long)

'LoveShack' duet, B52s/Sugarland (Flash-5min)

Historical Thesaurus of the OED (ukMail via Jz)

iPhone as tracking device (shortish via /.)

Goldman's software 'unfair' (short via iSteve)

Re-editing the Old Testament (pdf-23pg via Ralph)

Rabbi: "before the Zionists came, [Arabs and Jews] lived together" (viN)

Lucid ArundhatiRoy update (UkG)

Chomsky on recent conflicts (Znet via Heath)

Plot-theory review (incl Polti) (UkG-long)

8 firstaid myths (lHack-1pg)

40pix of worldwide McD's menu items (1pg via lf)

Galileo vvvclose to discovering Neptune (sciBlg)

NudeFreedomDay at the NightOwlCafe (flickr-collage)

vBelated rave for 1987 jMcElroy (laTms)

'Mall Cop' bests 'Public Enemies' (iSteve-longish)

Actors who could play siblings (Cinem-list)

Where are we, what are we doing, / what ruined god moves us at his pleasure (vDaily)

Rabbi: Better jail than hearing singing women (jPost via viN)

Krishnamurti Foundation foundering (arcane)

Childhood movie-theater experiment in anarchy (Cinem)

Effectively haunting EdHarcourt video (Flash-4min)

Why NPR lies for Israel (mWeiss)

Don't-miss DixieChicks-vs-wBu documentary (GgV-90min)

Jacko's genius lasted about 6mos (iSteve)

'Vexel' art (1pg-loong)

What is WSJ's 'Inner Truth'? (pKrug-short)

Charming literary dustups (pHen-ukTel)

Perfectest pumpkin // in the patch, your heft on mine / is what I crave (NPR)

Fundamental crisis in capitalism (iGrd w/link)

63yo NeilYoung makes 67yo Macca look lightweight (yT-8min)

Revived mp3-blog experiment (rw w/rss)

IrisMurdoch on BBC today (8pmGMT)

RollingStone expose on Goldman-Sachs (12pg-imgs)

Dogme2010: the videogame (MTV via Cinem)

1st new Stewart-Gaskin in 18yrs (aaJ-2pg)
"Baby, that's beer money. Just push me down the stairs and we'll go out." (oDinny)
Rave w/vids for IncredibleStringBand (bgSpec)

Visualising bailout-costs (diagram via lf)

Human body's energy budget simplified (RoT)

Did gammaray burst cause Ordovician extinctions? (lSci)

CIA still hiding JFK/LHO secrets (TPM)

philG rethinks the university (loong)

Iran complexities simplified (moonAL)

rFisk on Iran complexities (ukInd)

NPR speech-impediments snark (MeFi-2007)

Is Betelgeuse about to go supernova? (sNews-short)

New Mossad-conspiracy testimony (Nation via mjb)

AliceMunro story filmed as "Away From Her" (NYer-loong)

MemeWatch: "... 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!" (Twittersearch)

Why financial teevee is stupid (list via iGrd)

Width of extended hand = 15 degrees (RoT-vshort)

Short ChrissieHynde interview (ukInd via Jz)

NyT could fix BostonGlobe (philG)

dTongue's moderated urban/wiki/dictionary/2.0 (Wordnik)

Lucid angry jScahill on bMoyers (PBS-18min w/trnscrpt)

Cruel teen-photographer snark (Onion-vshort)

Awesome photosurrealist (3000pix)

1965 PattyDuke movie dance number (yT)

Bing close 2nd in ongoing blind test (Blgscpd w/link)

Jawdropping Java demo (Base26 via lYellow)

Inspiring 100th-monkey danceparty (yT-3min via dLaugh)

'supercut' = exhaustive survey montage (links-list)

20 feminist teevee characters (Jz-1pg)

Sun moving away from Earth 15cm/yr (newSci)

Recycled-fridge-magnet bookmarks (1pg via lHack)

MemeWatch: paraprosdokian (twitter-search)

Mars rover stuck in ?dustdune (astroPic)

Pak drones inspire folklore (ukG via moonAL)

Fire Bernanke! (dBaker)

Goto considered helpful (thread-arcane)


2009: Apr/May Feb/Mar Jan
2008: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Apr Mar Feb Jan
2007: Dec Nov Oct Sep2 Sept Aug2 Aug1 July June May April2 April March Feb
[more]


no rss: cBank nDee mnftiu ljb verse


(numbers in parens are delicious linkcounts, indicating belatedness)

13 October 2008

06 October 2008

miscellaneous topics




i'm caught between two platforms...

robotwisdom.com will blink out again
at the end of this month
unless another volunteer host turns up

i was appalled to learn that google
declines to index pages with more than 100 links
assuming they're spam
(i think pages with <100 are lazy)


google-reader-shared

has killed linkblogging for me
at least temporarily

i've fallen in love with reCAPTCHA

the little boost of knowing
i'm proofing random texts
makes that burden a joy

i tried the new online Monopoly
and find it pointless
except the perspective it offers
on googlemaps AI

if it implemented a map-recaptcha
i'd love it
to fill out the googlemaps model
with geographic intelligence

(Monopoly relaunches this week
if you want to try it out

about the only strategy
is sabotaging neighbors
or not

rural areas have few/no neighbors)


it may be a dark age for linkblogging
but it's interesting times for web 2.0

with tiny tweaks from myspace to facebook to twitter
bringing revolutionary vibe-shifts

which have many evolutions to go

it has to go back to
usenet's decentralised distribution




and i've got an idea
for a new antimath symbol
probably just "+"
that represents
a hypothetical absolute moral ideal

snubbed by almost all
subbing half-measures

pursued tirelessly by one or two







.

Comicstrip trivia quiz

Which strips feature these characters: (highlight to see answers)

Hiram Flagston A: Hi and Lois

Thelma Keane A: Family Circus

Alice Mitchell A: Dennis the Menace

Jonathan Q. Arbuckle A: Garfield

Walt and Connie Duncan A: Zits

Bill and Anne Andrews A: Cathy

Brutus and Gladys Thornapple A: Born Loser

Phil and Dottie Winslow A: Marmaduke






.

Wikipedia hasbara

Wikipedia topics that omit important info because it reflects badly on Israel/Judaism: [meta]

Munich (film): omits all reference to Spielberg's omission of the Lillehammer affair

Talmud: omits law of the moser (cf omerta), inflammatory material against gentiles and Jesus







.

Visualising energy




human body = one gallon per 8 lbs
12 gallons per 100#
60% water = 7 gallons water per 100#
16% fat = 2 gallons fat per 100# (16#, 7kg)
22% protein = 2.6 gallons protein per 100# (22#, 10kg)

3.8*10^4 joule = energy in gram of fat
2.7*10^8 joule in 7kg

1.7*10^4 joule in gram of protein
1.7*10^8 joule in 10kg

4.4*10^8 joule in 100# body

4.186*10^3 joule = 1 Calorie
1 kiloCalorie per pound in human body

3.6*10^6 joule = kilowatt-hour
100 kW-hr per 100# body
half a microgram of antimatter [cite]

1.5*10^10 joules in a ton of wood [cite]
40 100# humans

10 tons per tree?
400 humans

1.74*10^17 joule = solar energy worldwide per second
400 million 100# humans per second
10 million tons of wood
1 million trees

10^36 photons/second [cite]

10^14 joule = solar energy trapped by photosynthesis per second [cite]
(10^33 photons or 0.1% cite)
20 million 100# humans per second

4*10^26 joule = energy generated by fusion in Sun per second [cite]
10^20 kW-hr (100 quintillion)
8*10^19 100# humans per second?

[Wikipedia]







.

Quotes from Renata Adler's "Speedboat"

"This is perhaps the worst book ever written but it's won prizes and is considered to be some fine writing. Each paragraph starts off with a new topic and there is absolutely no connection between any of the paragraphs." [cite]


"nobody died that year. nobody prospered. there were no births or marriages. seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. that was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I find, are the ones learned in your sleep. speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love – you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you’re over. you’ve caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. the city, of course, can wreck it. so much insomnia. so many rhythms collide. the salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. too many people have access to your state of mind. some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. hardly anyone I know." [p3]

"The host, for some reason, was taking Instamatic pictures of his guests. It was not clear whether he was doing this in order to be able to show, at some future time, that there had been this gathering in his house. Or whether he thought of pictures in some voodoo sense. Or whether he found it difficult to talk. Or whether he was bored. Two underground celebrities—one of whom had become a sensation by never generating or exhibiting a flicker of interest in anything, the other of whom was known mainly for hanging around the first—were taking pictures too." [p60]

"My friend across the hall, who owns the beagle, looked very sad all evening. He said, abruptly, that he was cracking up, and no one would believe him. There were sirens in the street. Inez said she knew exactly what he meant: she was cracking up also. Her escort, a pale Italian jeweler, said, “I too. I too have it....” Our sportswriter said he had recently met a girl whose problem was stealing all the suede garments of house guests, and another, in her thirties, who cried all the time because she had not been accepted at Smith. We heard many more sirens in the streets. We all went home." [p68]

"She was a dynamite girl and he was an aces fellow. On the day he at last agreed by phone to marry her, the switchboard operators were overjoyed. For six months they had listened, in sympathy and indignation, to the tears, the threats, the partings and reconciliations. They were so unequivocally for the girl that only the purest professionalism kept them, at times, from breaking in. On the day Tim, after calls to his best friend, his firs wife, and his therapist, gave in at last, the oldest operator, who had been on the switchboard for twenty years, actually wept. The other two told the receptionist, at lunch. All four ladies had a drink, and then bought a card of slightly obscene felicitations. They had wavered toward the sentimental, but rejected it as basically unswinging. They did not sign the card. Tim and his girl, who had been breaking up once again on the day they received it (she was packing; they were in his apartment, were appalled. As a result of the card, and discussions of what to do about it—what it implied, who knew and who didn’t—they married." [p19]

"I often wonder about the people who linger over trash baskets at the corners of the city's sidewalks. One sees them day and night, young and old, well dressed, in rags—often with shopping bags—picking over the trash. They pick out newspapers, envelopes. They discard things. I often wonder who they are and that they're after. I approach and cannot ask them. Anyway, they scurry off. Some times I think they are writers who do not write. That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all." []


“Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you’re over. You’ve caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.” []


"Sometimes I miss, or lose, the point. Late-sleeping utopians, especially, persist like mercury. I am a fanatic myself, although not a woman of temperament. I get nervous at scenes. I stole a washcloth once from a motel in Angkor Wat. The bellboy was incensed. I had to give it back. To promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—- I believe all that. I go to parties whenever I am asked. I think a high tone of moral indignation, used too often, is an ugly thing. I get up at eight. Quite often now I have a drink before eleven. In some ways, I have overshot my mark in life in spades." []

"Sometimes a stupid child would tie a firecracker to a crayfish or a frog just once, and light the fuse. Or give a piece of sugar to a raccoon, which in its odd fastidiousness would wash that sugar in a brook till there was nothing left." []

"It may be that we were retarded. We were younger. We were other people, anyway, in another world." []

"She apologized to one egg for having boiled it, to another for not having selected it to boil. Since it was impossible to know with much precision whether an egg prefers to be boiled or not to, she was always in a state of indecision, followed, as soon as she had taken any action, by extreme remorse. Since this is not far from the predicament of most people of any sensitivity or conscience, she passed for normal."

"My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions."

"My grandmother, too, used to put other people's ailments into the diminutive: strokelets were what her friends had. Aldo said he was bored to tearsies by my grandmother's diminutives."

"Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them."

"Our full professors, tenured faculty, teach H.B.A., or Hours by Appointment; that is, never."

"A 'self-addressed envelope,' if you are inclined to brood, raises deep questions of identity."

"They want to do good and to know, like people out of E.M. Forster, or Henry James."

"When I wonder what it is that we are doing-- in the brownstone, on this block, with this paper-- the truth is probably that we are fighting for our lives."

"Situations simply do not yield to the most likely structures of the mind."

“But there are cramps of an entirely other order, when even hardened doctors—- knowing it is not important, only temporary—- reach for the Demerol and the needle. It must be so in every lonely degrading thing from which one comes back having learned nothing whatever. There are no conclusions to be drawn from it. Lonely people see double entendres everywhere.”

“It is all gone, after childhood knowledge of myths, constellations, baseball scores, dinosaurs, and idioms of the tennis court and athletic field. There are outcroppings of the old vocabularies still. Pinnies from field hockey. Heels down. Bad hop. Sorry. My fault. So sorry.” []

"At six one morning, Will went out in jeans and frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. 'There's one,' it said. That was in the l960s. Ever since, he's wondered. There's one what?"

"Sanity is the most profound moral option of our time."

"The philosophers at the great universities were, without exception, failed mathematicians. When they were not examining much of the vocabulary of civilized discourse to conclude that it, after all, lacked meaning, they muttered Gödel, Russell, Hilbert, liking to imply that they themselves had chosen philosophy over mathematics to give themselves a wider, though related intellectual field."

"What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a momentum, a fact, a quality, a voice, an intimation, a thing said or unsaid. Sometimes it's who's at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life.
But if you are, for any length of time, custodian of the point-- in art, in court, in politics, in lives, in rooms-- it turns out there are rearguard actions everywhere. To see a thing clearly, and when your vision of it dims, or when it goes to someone else, if you have a gentle nature, keep your silence, that is lovely. Otherwise, now and then, a small foray is worthwhile. Just so that being always, complacently, thoroughly wrong does not become the safest position of them all. The point has never quite been entrusted to me."

"No crimes is no small thing"

"Somebody was nudging my tray along the rail at the museum cafeteria. I was trying to keep my tray from bumping the tray ahead. I held my fingers firmly on the tray top, hooked my thumbs underneath the steel bar. The pressure of the nudging tray increased. I gave in to the superior determination. Doubtless, the tray pusher had had an awful day. I let go. My tray slid into the next tray, which slid into the next, which crashed into another. At the cashier's corner, there was a pileup. Teabags, Jell-O, trays all over everything."

"I have the shakes a good part of the time (which interferes no end with taking notes)"

"Violent things are always happening to the very rich, and to the poor, of course. Freak accidents befall the middle classes in their midst."

"'I can't believe it,' people said, almost with a passion. It was that year's version of hello. 'I can't believe it,' people said, on the beach, on the slopes, in hotel lobbies, in cells, at parties. Apparently incredulous, astounded, people met. Sometimes the rejoinder was, 'For God's sake,' as in 'Harry! Maude! I can't believe it.' 'Marilyn! Well, for God's sake.' Sometimes people changed it slightly. When we had just come back to the office, a middle-aged couple, he with the heartiness of another era, she with a certain trembly superstition, met in the elevator only yesterday. 'Well, as I live and breathe,' he shouted. 'Touch wood,' she replied."

"Most women have shames or sins or crimes. But confidences, apart from the lives of schoolgirls, belong to women of timidity or power." [cite]

"or the streets cleared of traffic, except ambulances." []

"That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all." []

"It could be that the sort of sentence one wants right here is the kind that runs, and laughs, and slides, and stops right on a dime."

Some of these RA quotes may be from Speedboat:

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Fear... is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.

Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

Moral self-infatuation has its own corruptions, after all. With time, almost every other principle of the magazine acquired an ironic echo, a sort of cackling aftermath.

No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.

In the strange heat all litigation brings to bear on things, the very process of litigation fosters the most profound misunderstandings in the world.

It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.







.

Web3.0 trends




there's some webwide design principles
emerging
that i'm not sure many people
can see yet

wikipedia needs a page for every product
for every person
for every event

(it should supplant the evil classmates.com
as a gatheringplace for nostalgists)

and it should aggregate ALL links
on every topic
sorting them and rating them

so when your vacuumcleaner breaks
you go to its wikipedia page
(which you bookmarked when you bought it
like all your possessions
in an intelligent database)
and find sorted links
to all pages about that product
including diy repairs

this will put google websearch out of business

its 'best-first' algorithms can't compete




the concept of bookmarking
'to read later'
needs to be refined

we experience a continuous stream
of links we find more or less tempting
and we need to sort and rate these
so that the next-most-attractive
is always a click (or two) away




everything on the web
should be striving to connect individuals
who share common tastes and interests
(eHarmony writ large)

everyone's stream of rating/judgments
automatically compared
with similar-others queued
for speed 'dating'







.

Birth of blogging




i may or may not use this post
to aggregate debate
about the origins of blogging

my word 'weblog' was intended to summarise
some simple basic design features
that hadn't yet been recognised as such

- the best web links
- of every kind
- briefly described
- added as discovered
- top-down
- keep the page short/quick
- link direct to the juicy stuff
- everybody shares their tastes

existing models all lacked some of these
(justin hall's was long/slow
winer kept rearranging the day's items)

i avoided 'news' at first
looking far and wide for good content
most others hadn't yet discovered

it was a (small) catastrophe
when blogger.com co-opted the word
for online diaries

few people maintain proper weblogs

and i'm still waiting
for a decent online web-logging site
(delicious is closest)

twitter isn't a good fit
urls are masked
archives are clumsy

the explosion of options
has become frustrating

'onebit blogging' a la
hypemachine and flickr
seem hopeful, in their way

[mefi thread]
[Ammann]
[Rosenberg]
[Winer]






.

What flickr/Twitter could learn from HypeMachine




others' faves should be 1stclass streams
with a variety of views

who-subscribes-to-who should be public

more-than-onebit blogs
should be supported too
(eg featuring a content-creator a day
giving background on them)

merge subscriptions to new content
and subscriptions to others' faves
into one stream

prominently feature the count of faves
for each content-item
and conceal/reveal the 1st dozen or so faver-names
within the content-stream

clicking on a faver-name
shows their faves stream
and offers their subscriptions-list
and a single click adds/subscribes-to them




a few things hypem should add:

visible indication of which tunes
you've already tried

onsite user blogs

suggestions of users/blogs/bands/tunes
you'd likely like






.

Appreciating 'Hype Machine'




i imagine that the hype machine
chose their awful name as camouflage
for their true purpose
of free-mp3-blog-aggregator

but as these things go
they seem to be cuttingedge state-of-the-art

the design-theme is giddy redundancy
everything is one-step-or-less away
and infinite reversibility
(try anything, no commitment)




it took me embarrassingly long to figure out
how to play the tunes
and find the hidden mp3s
(click rightpointing triangle to play
(player at bottom even lets you change pages
without stopping the current song)

open 'read full post' link in new tab
to find mp3 link)




finding new music

start with a song you love
that you think defines your special taste
search for it, 'love'-heart it
go thru everyone else who's hearted it
and sample their recent faves
'follow' them if there's any overlap
(watch which blogs they find good tunes on
and 'follow' these too
or sample them as radio stations)
(following individuals with similar taste
is the general solution to
the longtail fail)

search for favorite artists
and 'follow' them
(it seems you can't yet backtrace
who else follows an artist?
or find generalised most-similar recommendations)




needs:

5star ratings scale

best-first priority-queue







.

Calculate your blogscore

[i want to tweak this until it accurately reflects mature blogging habits-- eg losing points for deleting unread posts...]

[i think it needs to be broken down into categories: pix, music, vids, tweets, news? humor? gossip?]

[i'm a newbie myself in some of these areas]

[some domains have better filtering tools available]

[you should score higher for finding meta-sources than straight sources]

[there may be objective network-math definitions possible: mathematically optimal coverage]

[each domain has a global average new-content rate;
each user has a time/value tradeoff curve for that content;
each filter delivers some average value per time]


# of rss subscriptions

# of flickr subscriptions
# of flickr-faves subscriptions

# of mp3-blog subscriptions

# of twitter-faves subscriptions

# of youtube-faves subscriptions

Wallace Stevens Walk

Hartford Connecticut has marked Wallace Stevens' daily commute with thirteen stones offering the verses of "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" [backstory]


View Wallace Stevens Walk in a larger map [map]


I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird. [pic]

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds. [pic] [pic]

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause. [pic] [pic]

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you? [pic]

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds. [pic]

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying. [pic]

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs. [pic]







.

Embedded Ulysses test

New GoogleBooks feature:

April/May 2009 links


40k pix document kegger fire (Onion-3min)

Loong survey of scant biz-press bubble-warnings (CJR via jGerm)

iPhone multitouch synthesizer (yT-10min via Waxy)

Inflation vs deflation, again (pKrug)

Rerererebooting StarTrek (dontmiss via OTI)

crystallizing / on frangible blades of grass (vD-arcane)

'ignore list' = known distractions (HBR via jAqi)

Lovely eWurtzel meditation on fading beauty (4pg via Jz)

Major media silent on 'Hate Crimes Prevention Act' (GgN-search)

'post-traumatic embitterment disorder' (dTongue)

1st BBC leCarre radio drama (starts early) (90min-Real-limited-time)

dBaker: To audit the Fed (ukG)

Password-creation trick (Risks#)

The rarely-seen Georgian language, in the wild (flickr)

Google's AdWords revolution (sLevy via kMarks)

Twitterbased JamesBond ARG (meta via @twitterapi)

Black hipsters (Root via dTongue)

Detailed litany of bhOb's foreign failures (loong via Niqnaq)

Clubbing in Berlin, how-to (flickr-caption)

Awesome astronomy timelapse (48sec via Ellen)

Korean genius's surrealist sketches (flickr-200pix)

While you’re still / seeing more than there is to see (arcane via NPR)

The trick / is to make it seem like it really doesn't matter, / like it's merely happening this way (Poems)

Empowering teen girls via parkour class (yT-5min)

UTIs traced to childhood MrBubble baths? (Jz)

DC = culture of 'epigons' (Sam-loong)

Competent 1981 HughDowns report on rap (2Flash-12min via lf)
Dont-miss WolframAlpha screencast (15min via Waxy)
With these actions your world // takes off a layer from us (vDaily-varcane)

Ojibway writer loves Finnegans Wake (shortish)

Recent NyT headlines support anti-Pak con (moonAL-list)

Populism for dummies (jHightower via Sam)

rMcCrum profile of Sarah Waters (ukG-long)

GermaineGreer on poets laureate (ukG)

Magic colors from Italian Vogue (flickr)

"Thus ended capitalism..." (Dilbert)

I feel for ya... (oDvrwhr)

Thoughtful flickr tagging inquiry (long via angus)

Lovely southern starmap (astroPic)

US Pakistan-resource-grab scenario (aTms via Niqnaq)

'hairsharp' = hi-res pix (34hits on flickr)

'Reverent' new jLennon doc online (2pg-52min)

his white star is a constellation / of hope, which for a horse, / is like grief (vDaily-dontmiss)

The colors of fog (1pg w/pix)

VanGogh ear revisionism (ukTel via lf)

pHensher defends poets laureate (ukInd)

Craven UK Iraq update (rFisk)

Update on Israeli 'democracy' (Haaretz via mW)

dHorowitz-hitlist update (cPunch)

Interesting wBuffett update (UkG via iGrd)

Mindblowing LA hedonism (200pix-nsfw)

Stupid game-AI tricks (1pg-18yTubes)

Bagels-yogurt-granola worth making (Slate-1pg via lf)

Swineflu traced to factory hogfarm? (Grist via moonAL)

bustling amid the formica and chrome / of that small house we both called home (longish)

Mossad agent bragged about mindcontrol (viN)

China converting $$$ to gold/oil/etc (moonAL)

Flaubert's handwriting looks just like Joyce's (4500pg)

$175k 'copier' for 5min books-on-demand (UkG)

Complete 8bit tarot (1pg-Flash)

Whedon's 'Dollhouse' ?= goyhouse (blog via cShirk)

Historic sitcom crossovers (11yTubes)

Woz on gtd (intvu)

GrandTheftAuto a flop on Nintendo DS?!? (bGamer)

yTube only spots piracy of 1st 30sec of songs (/. w/link)

Jane Harman's unmentionable dual loyalty (mWeiss-short)

Lucid pKrug on wBu's evil (NyT-short)

Cool Martian sanddunes (astroPic)

he'd seen / beauty raw, // for which humiliation / was the smallest price (vDaily)

the tumble dryer just spinning, and spinning (vDaily)

rFisk rant re BBC-on-Israel (ukInd)

'Nonsexual boners' eg coffee boner (Twitter-search)

Experiments w/snorting, smoking caffeine (short via pHoule)

Blue is the tarp, blue the crane, / blue the siding of Building 6 (vDaily-short)

13 worst scientific anomalies (nSci)

'black&pink' = coffee w/artificial sweetener (dTongue)

TheEconomist: 'Israel is resiling' (oped via mW)

17yo SJP snorted coke on SquarePegs set (short via Jz)

Oodles of free dhLawrence etexts (underrated poet)

Saturn's crufty ring (astroPic)

Legal issues re Somali pirates (jScahill)

Smart debate re latest 'Dollhouse' (spoilers via mCass)

If our eyes were telescope-supersensitive (astroPic)

The bailout is misdirected (dBaker)

Kehl's "The Feminine" shaped my esthetics (Az-Flash)

Grammar fallacies in Strunk&White (Chron via Steve)

Why voice-acting in games sucks (bGamer)

Why we shld tax oil back up to $100 (bGross via iGrd)

Fine gDead-for-dummies (NyT via lNerd)

An open white page in any book was a lean white horse (vDaily)

Colorwords widget (Flash via cLovers)

Colorwords sorted by shade (Wiki via cLovers)

Oprah: 'Buy yr 14yo daughter a vibrator' (Jz-2min)

Digital radio a dud (NyT-Pogue via dTongue)

Activism even after yr head explodes (Sam-2004)

The sound of dSirota's head exploding (dontmiss via Sam)

as if she were the first one / to wear the newfangled cloth of reform (vDaily)

Believing this mud could be his altar too (NPR-longish)

dreambarren land where tawny / thyme wrestles up (Poems-short)

Don't miss today's Doonesbury (Sunday 05Apr)

China's paradox of thrift (pKrug)

I'll be faving yT-vids there (subscribeable)

PBS Frontline fronts big healthcare lie (cPunch)

'Benjamin Button' etext (1pg via olB)

Twitter's finally snapped back from post-SXSW doldrums (faves)

Lovecraft's racism gets pass (OVO via Klint)

Investigative journalism still needed vs lobbying (philG)

Awesome 2008 cHitchens rant re Falwell/Israel (yT-5min via reddit)

1st transistor made by 13yo in 1933? (Make)

Mashing up flags and vidgames (Vh1)

Enthusiastic bkgndr on boardgame 'Settlers of Catan' (long via nTndo)

ABC's Tapper falls for 'Spanish Inquisition' prank (mBistro via WRH)

Don't-miss LiarsPoker update (nyMag-6pg via reddit)

Cell is "tiny thing like jelly donut with blood not jelly" (oDvrwhr-10yo)


2009: Feb/Mar Jan
2008: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Apr Mar Feb Jan
2007: Dec Nov Oct Sep2 Sept Aug2 Aug1 July June May April2 April March Feb
[more]


no rss: cBank nDee mnftiu ljb verse


(numbers in parens are delicious linkcounts, indicating belatedness)

Best skymap/ starmap comparison




[Sky-map.org]

[Java]

[Planet Wheel]

[Flash movie]

[Space.com]

[Wunderground]

[StarGazer]

[AstroViewer] (current night sky only) [Java]

[AstroImage]

[London monthly]

[Boston monthly]

[New Mexico monthly]


[Google Sky] (where's the labels?!?)

[YourSky] (generic link only?)






.

Binary meter ontology

= 0/1 ========================================

unstressed 'dit' (a, the, is, of)
stressed 'dah'

= 0, 00, 000, 0000... ========================================
= 1, 11, 111, 1111... ========================================

tiptoeing vs stomping


= 00/01/10/11 ========================================

00: pyrrhic
01: iamb
10: trochee
11: spondee: blackboard, inside, clambake, flophouse

= ...010101... ========================================

limping

= 000/001/010/011/100/101/110/111 ========================================

000: tribrach [terminology]

001: anapest

010: amphibrach: Alaska, Hawaii, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

011: bacchic

100: dactyl: profligate, vegetable, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Oregon, Washington

101: cretic: Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Tennessee

110: antibacchic: flapdoodle

111: molossus: brouhaha, Istanbul

= ...0011001100... ========================================

= 0000/0001/0010/0011/0100/0101/0110/0111/1000/1001/1010/1011/1100/1101/1110/1111 ============

0000: proceleusmatic

0001: paeon4: Beethoven's 5th, baba ganoush

0010: paeon3: economics, politician, departmental, condescension, borborygmus, perspicacious, celebrated

0011: minor ionic

0100: paeon2: adrenaline, accordion, agrarian, amygdala, automaton, beatitude, carcinogen, contemplative, contiguous, copernican, criterion, decreasingly, dirigible, geography, competitive, microscopy, misogynist, rebarbative, synecdoche, Connecticut, New Mexico, coincidence, phenomenon, mythology, solicitor, eternity, experience, experiment, maturity, extremities, ecology, humility, mysterious, impossibly, commodities

0101: di-iamb: contrariwise, aperitif, Virginia Woolf, plutonium

0110: antipast: dehydrated

0111: epitrite 1

1000: paeon 1: miscellany, horticulture, consummately, deviances, confiscated, aliases, obfuscated, enervating, meaninglessness, stimulated

1001: choriamb: bibliophile, cavalryman, catamaran, hullabaloo, tiddlywinks, Kalamazoo, nevertheless

1010: ditrochee [xkcd]: armageddon, denotation, alderwoman, bilirubin, macaroni, mashed potatoes, moleskine, Alabama, Arizona, California, Carolina, Colorado, Indiana, ?Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, N/S Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Zapatista, premonition, belladonna, Paganini, politician, understanding, generations, polyester, resurrected, anaconda, godforsaken, helicopter, perforated, undercover, Pagliacci, education, self-indulgence, self-denial, dramatizing, sentimental, sentimental, comprehending, temporary, appaloosas, geometric, overseer, understanding, superficial, repetitious, satisfaction, complications, overflowing, independence, mathematic, liberation, cinematic, inspiration, affectations, fascination, pornographic, benefactors, everpresent, reservation, everlasting

1011: epitrite2

1100: major ionic: deprogramming, asexual

1101: epitrite3

1110: epitrite4: melancholy

1111: dispondee

= five ========================================

00010: organisation

00100: electricity, demonology, discombobulate

01000: involuntary, constabulary, apothecary

01001: deteriorate

01010: ?Louisiana, participation, apotheosis, Barack Obama, manipulation, imagination, imagination, illumination

10010: magnification, contradistinction, juxtaposition, heterodoxy, flibbertigibbet, Sacagawea, legalization, reincarnations, Spiritus Sanctus

10100: incompatible, possibility, appendectomy, abacterial, haberdashery, oligopoly, trabajabamos, Ernest Hemingway, opportunities, unbelievable, aborigine, territorial, insecurity, horizontally, curiosity, multiplicity, immortality, anonymity, Michelangelo, Ethiopian, subterranean

10101: Edgar Allen Poe, recapitulate

11000: decriminalise

11010: inconsequential, unsympathetic, decomposition, defenestration, dodecahedron, homegrown tomatoes, Constantinople, Lee Harvey Oswald, Make Way for Ducklings, Smooth Operator

11100: String Cheese Incident

= ========================================

000010: idiosyncratic

000100: octogenarian [cite], buckminsterfullerene [cite], antediluvian [cite]

010010: detachable penis

010100: phantasmagorical

011101: the kid is not my son

100010: surgical procedure

100100: verisimilitude, calculability, Mesopotamia

101000: parenthetically

101010: onomatopoeia, tintinnabulation

101100: brigadier general [cite]

110100: gunboat diplomacy

0100100: epistemological

0101010: medulla oblongata

10101010: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

1101111: Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer

========================================

100100011: this little piggy went to market

10100100: endoplasmic reticulum

001000100: phosphatidylethanolamines

010101010: Emancipation Proclamation

0100100100: electroencephalographically

1000100100: immunoelectrophoretically

01001001001: m-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i

10010000101: Neither a borrower nor a lender be

10110110101: ethylenediaminetetraacetates

100010010010: antidisestablishmentarianism

10101010101010: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

0101010101010101010: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

 
 
 
 
 
.

Best animated doppler comparison




looking over the various available
animated doppler weathermaps
(easy to miss hidden features)

msn is the surprising winner
with a 6-hour loop
that requires only one click
beyond the url-bookmark
('doppler radar' under 'animated maps')

wundergound
has nice detail
but limited animation

weather.com
very limited animation

accuweather ditto

weather.gov uses java
again very limited

intellicast
is very feeble






.

semantic web os




a semantic-web-savvy pc
will know the web's deweydecimalsystem
and the consensus 'best' web resources
for each topic-area

you will customise this
to your personal preferences

rating streams of new resources
in favorite areas

catching up on resources
recommended by
topic-experts you trust

searching for experts/streams
with similar tastes

archiving/mirroring/monitoring
your web2.0 presence






.

One-bit critics




in olden days
(pre-internet)
the function of 'critic'
(aesthete, connoisseur)
was laudable (meritorious
commendable)

trained to reject the common
and elevate the
unjustly overlooked




now that function
has been streamlined down
to clicking a
'fave this' star

anyone can do it

the honor has been
forgotten






.

Celebrity BMIs




[asterisks mean same celeb has multiple entries (variable or unreliable); heights are often from imdb.com] [adding flickr set]

9.8
Mayra Hornbacher 5'1" 52# [cite]

13.8
*Karen Carpenter 1982 5'4" 80#

14.1
Jodi Kidd 6'2" 110# [cite]

14.5
*Teri Hatcher 5'6" 90# [cite]
Esther Canadas 5'10" 101# [cite]

14.8
*Karen Carpenter 5'4" 87# [cite]
*Victoria Beckham 5'6" 92# [cite]

15.0
Tori Spelling 5'6" 98# [cite]

15.1
Amber Valleta 5'9" 102# [cite]

15.3
*Angelina Jolie 5'7" 98# [cite]

15.5
Celine Dion 5'7" 99# [cite]

15.7
Calista Flockhart 5'6" 97# [cite]

15.8
Mariah Carey 5'9" 107# [cite]
Naomi Campbell 5'10" 110# [cite]

16.0
Giselle Bundchen 5'11" 115# [cite]

16.1
Liv Tyler 5'10" 112# [cite]

16.2
Shannon Elizabeth 5'9" 110# [cite]

16.3
'Amanda 5'8" 107# [flickr]

16.4
Pamela Anderson 5'7" 105# [cite]
Mandy Moore 5'8" 108# [cite]
Carmen Kass 5'10" 114# [cite]

16.5
Heidi Guenther 5'3" 93# [cite]
Gwyneth Paltrow 5'9" 112# [cite]

16.6
*Nicole Richie 5'1" 88# [cite]
Audrey Hepburn 5'6" 103# [cite]
*Angelina Jolie 5'8" 109# [cite]

16.7
Rebecca Gayheart 5'8" 110# [cite]
Sandra Bullock 5'8" 110# [cite]

16.8
Jordan/Katie Price 5'5" 101# [cite]
Kate Moss 5'7" 107# [cite]

16.9
Jessica Biel 5'7" 108# [cite]
Taylor Swift 5'8.5" 113# [cite]
Nikki Taylor 5'10" 118# [cite]
Christy Turlington 5'10" 118# [cite]

17.0
Heather Locklear 5'5" 105# [cite]
Tyra Banks 5'11" 122# [cite]

17.1
*Teri Hatcher 5'6" 106# [cite]

17.2
*Diana Ross 5'4" 100# [cite]
Kirsten Dunst 5'4" 100# [cite]
Julia Stiles 5'7" 110# [cite]
Anna Kournikova 5'8" 113# [cite]
*Heidi Klum 5'10" 120# [cite]
Julia Roberts 5'10" 120# [cite]
Nicole Kidman 5'10" 120# [cite]

17.3
Jessica Alba 5'6" 107# [cite]

17.4
Rose McGowan 5'1" 92# [cite]
Eva Longoria 5'2" 95# [cite]
Sarah Michelle Gellar 5'3" 98# [cite]
'Mindy' 5'8" 114# [flickr]
Cindy Crawford 5'10" 121# [cite]
Elle MacPherson 6'0" 128# [cite]

17.5
*Britney Spears 5'5" 105# [cite]
Eliza Dushku 5'5" 105# [cite]
Paris Hilton 5'8" 115# [cite]

17.6
Kelly Ripa 5'2.5" 98# [cite]
Kelly Brook 5'8" 116# [cite]
Milla Jovovich 5'8" 116# [cite]

17.7
Cameron Diaz 5'9" 120# [cite]
James King 5'9" 120# [cite]
*Katie Holmes 5'9" 120# [cite]

17.8
*Nicole Richie 5'1" 94# [cite]
Jennifer Aniston 5'6" 110# [cite]
*Victoria Beckham 5'6" 110# [cite]

17.9
Danielle Fishel 5'1" 95# [cite]
Emma Bunton 5'2" 98# [cite]
Adriana Lima 5'10" 125# [cite]
Claudia Schiffer 5'11" 128# [cite]
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos 5'11" 128# [cite]

18.0
Lacey Chabert 5'4" 105# [cite]
Keira Knightley 5'7" 115# [cite]
*Salma Hayek 5'7" 115# [cite]
*Heidi Klum 5'9" 119# [cite]
Liz Hurley 5'9" 122# [cite]

18.1
Geri Halliwell 5'2" 99# [cite]
Gwen Stefani 5'6" 112# [cite]
Lindsay Lohan 5'6" 112# [cite]
Katherine Heigl 5'8" 119# [cite]

18.2
*Christina Aguilera 5'2.5" 101# [cite]
*Katie Holmes 5'8" 120# [cite]
Laetitia Casta 5'8" 120# [cite]
Whitney Port 5'10" 127# [cite]

18.3
*Christina Aguilera 5'2" 100# [cite]
Rachel Leigh Cook 5'2" 100# [cite]
Miley Cyrus 5'5" 110# [cite]
Thora Birch 5'5" 110# [cite]
Cindy Margolis 5'7" 117# [cite]

18.4
'Oscah' 5'3.5" 105# [flickr]
Natalie Portman 5'4" 107# [cite]
Faith Hill 5'8" 121# [cite]

underweight
=============================================
normal weight

18.5
Ashley Olsen 5'1" 98# [cite]
Mary-Kate Olsen 5'1" 98# [cite]
Zoey Deschanel 5'5" 115# [cite]

18.6
Kylie Minogue 5'0" 95# [cite]
Fiona Apple 5'3" 105# [cite]
Jessica Simpson 5'3" 105# [cite]
Jennie Garth 5'5" 112# [cite]
Alyson Hannigan 5'6" 115# [cite]
Claire Danes 5'6" 115# [cite]
Jewel 5'6" 115# [cite]

18.7
Joan Collins 5'6" 116# [cite]

18.8
Charlize Theron 5'11" 135# [cite]

18.9
*Diana Ross 5'4" 110# [cite]
Michelle Williams 5'4" 110# [cite]
Shania Twain 5'4" 110# [cite]
Stacy Dish 5'4" 110# [cite]

19.0
Courtney Thorne-Smith 5'6" 118# [cite]
*Jennifer Lopez 5'6" 118# [cite]
'Mindy' 5'8" 125# [flickr]

19.1
Leann Rimes 5'5" 115# [cite]
Jenny McCarthy 5'6.5" 120# [cite]

19.2
Denise Richards 5'6" 119# [cite]

19.3
Lisa Kudrow 5'7" 123# [cite]

19.4
*Jennifer Lopez 5'6" 120# [cite]

19.5
Yasmine Bleeth 5'5" 117# [cite]
Lucy Lawless 5'11" 140# [cite]

19.6
Reese Witherspoon 5'6" 122# [cite]
Ashley Judd 5'7" 125# [cite]

19.7
Scarlett Johansson 5'4" 115# [cite]

20.1
*Christina Aguilera 5'2" 110# [cite]
Keri Russell 5'4" 117# [cite]

20.2
Brigitte Bardot 5'6" 125# [cite]
Jude Law 5'11" 145# [cite]

20.5
Avril Lavigne 5'2" 112# [cite]
Neve Campbell 5'5" 123# [cite]

20.6
Drew Barrymore 5'4" 120# [cite]
David Beckham 5'11" 148# [cite]

20.8
*Salma Hayek 5'2" 114# [cite]

21.0
Courtney Love 5'8" 138# [cite]

21.1
*Ricki Lake 5'4" 123# [cite]

21.5
Kim Kardashian 5'2" 117# [cite]
Hilary Duff 5'4" 125# [cite]

21.7
Justin Timberlake 6'0" 160# [cite]

21.8
*Beyonce 5'6" 135# [cite]
Catherine Zeta-Jones 5'6.5" 135# [cite]

22.1
*Kirstie Alley 5'8" 145# [cite]
Serena Williams 5'9" 150# [cite]

22.2
Johnny Depp 5'10" 155# [cite]

22.3
*Britney Spears 5'4" 130# [cite]

22.5
Ashton Kutcher 6'2" 175# [cite]
Ben Affleck 6'2" 175# [cite]

22.8
Charlotte Church 5'5" 137# [cite]
'Amanda' 5'8" 150# [flickr]

23.3
Alicia Silverstone 5'5" 140# [cite]

23.4
*Jennifer Lopez 5'6" 145# [cite]

23.7
Brendan Fraser 6'3" 190# [cite]

24.2
Shakira 5'1" 128# [cite]

24.3
Michael Phelps 6'4" 200# [cite]

24.4
Tiger Woods 6'1" 185# [cite]

24.5
'Julia' 5'8" 161# [flickr]

normal weight
=============================================
overweight

25.0
*Beyonce Knowles 5'5" 150# [cite]
Michael Jordan 6'6" 216# [cite]

25.4
'Laurie' 5'0" 130# [flickr]
Dennis Rodman 6'6" 220# [cite]

25.5
Eminem 5'8" 168# [cite]

25.7
Tina Fey 5'4" 150# [cite]
'Shauna' 5'4" 150# [flickr]

25.9
Michael Dunn 3'10" 78# [cite]
*Oprah 5'6" 160# [cite]

26.0
Tom Cruise 5'7" 166# [cite]

26.9
Brad Pitt 6'0" 198# [cite]

27.5
'Pippa' 5'10" 192# [flickr]

28.8
*Roseanne Barr 5'4" 168# [cite]

29.4
George Clooney 5'11" 211# [cite]

29.8
Ravon Simon 5'3" 168# [cite]

overweight
=============================================
obese

30.7
Mel Gibson 5'10.5" 214# [cite]

30.8
Arnold Schwarzenegger 6'2" 240# [cite]

32.0
'Becky' 5'1" 170# [flickr]

32.1
'Joy' 5'8" 224# [flickr]
*John Candy 6'2" 250# [cite]

32.8
'BuffPuff' 5'3" 185# [flickr]

33.8
'Kate' 5'2" 185# [flickr]

34.5
America Ferrera 5'1" 182# [cite]

34.8
*Kirstie Alley 5'8" 228# [cite]

35.2
'Fillyjonk' 5'7" 225# [flickr]

36.1
'Eleanor' 5'6.5" 227# [flickr]

37.8
Verne Troyer 2'8" 55# [cite]

38.3
Mama Cass Elliott 5'5" 230# [cite]

38.4
*Oprah 5'6" 237# [cite]
John Daly 5'11" 275# [cite]

38.5+
*John Candy 6'2" 300+# [cite]

41.0
'Elizabeth' 6'0" 302# [flickr]

42.0
'Beth' 5'4" 245# [flickr]

42.9
*Ricki Lake 5'4" 250# [cite]

43.0
Fatty Arbuckle 5'10" 300# [cite]

43.7
Dawn French 5'0" 224# [cite]

43.8
'Sheana' 5'7" 280# [flickr]

45.0
Chris Farley 5'8" 296# [cite]

62.5
*Roseanne Barr 5'4" 364# [cite]

97.2
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole 6'2" 757# [cite]

186
Jon Brower Minnoch 6'1" 1400# [cite]

188
Carol Yager 5'6" 1200# [cite]

190
Rosalie Bradford 5'5" 1200# [cite]