December 27, 2004
What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?
Find out what your "dominant intelligence" is with the What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have quiz. Depending on how I answer the quiz, I get either linguistic or musical.
27 Dec 22:56 | Link | Category: Interactive
Asia tsunamis
It looks like the recent earthquake & tsunamis in Asia will rank as the single worst natural disaster in years. Please visit the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies or your favorite disaster relief organization to see what you can do.
27 Dec 0:15 | Link | Category: Current Events
December 24, 2004
The Christmas Truce
I always thought the story of the WWI "Christmas Truce" was an exaggerated legend, but then I noticed this post that linked to a Snopes page that shows it's true.
It's a perfect Christmas story. This page has more details than the Snopes page. Also, The Observer ran a story about the last survivor. All worthwhile reading.
(via Cynical-C)
24 Dec 0:57 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits
Playlist Magazine
One person mentioned Playlist Magazine in a response to my 75 songs post. I'm already familiar with Playlist - I stumbled across the inaugural issue at a newsstand a few months ago - and thought it deserved a quick mention.
It's a useful resource for finding information about music services, players, accessories, and the like. (They call it a "complete look at digital music, the technology, the musicians, and the lifestyle.") They also have a playlists feature that has quite a few excellent playlists. (I enjoy their Artist Playlists section where artists share their lists - the first issue included Robyn Hitchcock, Joe Pernice, Franz Ferdinand, Rosanne Cash, and others.) You might also want to check out their free downloads list.
They've offered their debut issue available for free download (PDF). If you're interested in a magazine about digital music, I recommend checking it out.
24 Dec 0:40 | Link | Category: Music
Download live Dylan performances
Bob Dylan fans who have enjoyed his concerts in recent years should check out the songs at Cowboy Angel. It's a nice selection of live performances from 2002 - 2004. (There are also a couple from 1995 and an interesting version of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" from 1981.) If that doesn't satisfy, check the links section as you can find other sites with downloadable performances from there.
24 Dec 0:27 | Link | Category: Music
December 23, 2004
Cruel - but funny - e-mail prank
A prankster decided it might be interesting to impersonate the Starbucks CEO / President and send e-mails to a new employee at the corporate office. You can read the results. It's a long and painful exchange, but very funny. (Found at BoingBoing)
23 Dec 21:55 | Link | Category: Humor
75 free songs... suggestions?
This is so cool! In a stroke of luck, I won a drawing at CompUSA for 75 free downloads from the iTunes Music Store. Although I have an iPod and think the iTunes Music Store offers a nice experience, I still think $0.99 is a bit much and I don't like that it provides DRM-crippled iTunes/iPod-only files. (I prefer emusic because it's cheaper and you get unprotected mp3 files.) So this will be the biggest chunk of songs I've ever downloaded from iTunes. If any of you have brilliant suggestions, please send them to me. Otherwise I'll probably browse around the store a little and then just resort to downloading stuff from my favorite old artists.
23 Dec 16:54 | Link | Category: Music
December 21, 2004
Holiday Newsletters: STOP!
Since I figure world peace is out of reach this year, here's my holiday plea: Please stop sending holiday newsletters. I don't care about the pointless details of your perfect life. If I did, I would already know those pointless details and wouldn't have to read about them in a long, impersonal form letter.
This year, I actually resorted to writing my own ridiculously upbeat, bragging newsletter and sending it to my immediate family members as a joke. I wasn't the only one with the idea. Check out Phyllis Humphrey's LA Times editorial and Bob Schwartz's parody.
21 Dec 0:35 | Link | Category: Humor
Coltrane's 'Giant Steps' visualized
Take a look at this clever little Flash app that plays a snippet of John Coltrane's 'Giant Steps' illustrating the progressions.
21 Dec 0:24 | Link | Category: Music
The Sgt. Pepper's Cover
Have you ever wondered who every person on the Sgt. Pepper's cover artwork is? (I've previously referred to my childhood fascination with the album's cover.) Now you can just roll your mouse pointer over a face, click, and find out who it is. Cool link.
(via Cynical-C Blog)
21 Dec 0:18 | Link | Category: Music
Scared of Santa
For some reason, this is very funny: Scared of Santa, a gallery of kids terrified of Santa. (I don't blame some of them... quite a few of those Santas scare me.)
21 Dec 0:11 | Link | Category: Humor
December 20, 2004
Calvin Remixed
I love when cartoons can sum things up in four panes. Today at waxy.org, I noticed this: Calvin (The ADD Remix).
It reminds me of a recent report on 60 Minutes about how pharmaceutical companies have now turned to marketing ADD drugs to adults. (Transcript here.) It noted that there's "speculation that some great figures in history had ADD and led tortured but productive lives -- Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Winston Churchill. And, ADD websites claim that Thomas Edison had ADD." It also mentioned Richard Branson and Bill Clinton.
Morley Safer interviewed Jet Blue CEO David Neeleman who said he scored so low on the verbal portion of the ACT that his counselor told him he would have done better if he had just answered 'C' on every question. "He spent years in various jobs, in a sort of limbo, before he realized he had a clear-cut case of ADD. Even so, he's a huge success. He's CEO of Jet Blue, the low-cost, no-frills carrier that has shaken up the airline industry." He credits many of his out-of-the-box ideas to his ADD. While he understands why people choose to take pills, he worries that if he takes drugs for the condition, "it may kind of cure me or something and then I'd be like everybody else," and he might become "dependant on something that, you know, may or may not be the best thing for me. So why even mess with it?"
Safer concludes: "It's an interesting question. But that fact is Americans demand cures for everything from shyness to sexual dysfunction. They believe in better living through chemistry -- a drug-riddled behavioral utopia where all problems can be solved by a pill."
20 Dec 23:56 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts
December 19, 2004
More for the "This is America... right?" file
So, an artist in New York City created a portrait of President Bush that, when viewed closely, is seen to be made up of monkeys swimming in a marsh. That was enough to lead to the closure of a New York art exhibition:
"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."
You can find a better image of the portrait here.
This is nearly as ridiculous as the Secret Service investigating high schoolers who decided to sing Bob Dylan's 41 year old Cold War protest song "Masters of War" at an assembly. (For those of you who missed that particular bit of craziness when I posted it to Quick Links last month, look here, here, and especially here.)
19 Dec 21:39 | Link | Category: Current Events
Bill Moyers on Christian Fundamentalists
Bill Moyers made his final broadcast this past week, ending "a 33-year run on public television that has brought awards, attacks and almost uncountable stories." His retirement will undoubtedly be lamented by some and cheerfully welcomed by others.
But let's not go there. The reason I'm mentioning Moyers is because I ran across some comments he made after winning the Global Environment Citizen Award:
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Please read his full comments.
19 Dec 21:10 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts
December 18, 2004
Lunatic / Non-Lunatic
Greg Knauss has some interesting thoughts on the "political divide". Some excerpts:
There is a divide in this country today, miles wide and fathoms deep. It has cleaved our great nation, and has only grown — and will only continue to grow. But it's not a left/right split, or Democrat/Republican one. It's lunatic/non-lunatic.
Our culture has been swept along in a tide of emotionally-resonant, steadfastly anti-rational entertainment, and politics is at the head of the wave. The course of our country, the future of our people, is being determined by lizard-brain responses to images designed to trigger sub-rational responses.
This determined emotionalism — which is another way of saying anti-rationalism — is what drives us today. You can find it distasteful, you can find it depressing, but it's most important impact is that we have turned over the direction of the country — our future — to the part of our psyche that doesn't want to think.
18 Dec 18:59 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts
Singing the Virtues of Idleness
Read Mark Slouka's excellent essay from the November issue of Harper's, Quitting The Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness
18 Dec 18:54 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits
December 16, 2004
Are you on drugs?
I had gathered a small collection of links for comment on a story from a couple of weeks ago about how over 44 percent of all Americans take at least one prescription drug, and 16.5 percent take at least three. Then I found a story by one of my favorite columnists, Mark Morford, who summed it all up quite nicely:
All of which means one of two things: either it's the goddamn finest time in history to be an American, living as we are in the age of incredible technology and miracle medicines and longer life expectancies and $5 coffee drinks and a happy synthetic chemical to match any sort of ache or pain or lump or rash or spiritual crisis you might be facing.
Or it's the absolute worst, what with so many of us heavily drugged and over half of us massively obese and IQs dropping like stones and our overall quality of life deteriorating right under our noses and shockingly huge numbers of us actually finding Shania Twain somehow interesting. Which perspective is right for you? Ask your doctor.
I certainly don't think it's such an either/or proposition (can't it mean both?) but I still enjoy Morford's spin.
What I would like to see is a breakdown of prescription use by type - for example, to see what proportion of the population uses drugs like Prozac or Zoloft. I personally know handfuls of people who are on them - usually unnecessarily. (Oddly, these people generally tend to think an occasional glass of wine is of the devil, support the costly & innefectual failure that is the war on drugs, and oppose even medicinal marijuana use - but maybe it all makes more sense when you're on anti-depressants.) But my state leads the nation in prescriptions for anti-depressants, so maybe I have a skewed perspective.
Update: Someone sent me a link to this interesting blog entry: Flatlining Our Problems Away
16 Dec 19:28 | Link | Category: Current Events, Science
Las Vegas
Xeni (of BoingBoing) has this to say about Las Vegas, in an entry titled The Fertile Valleys:
I'm not sure why it's so compelling right now, but it is. Sometimes, a thing swells to a scale so tasteless, so grotesque, it crosses a magical threshhold and becomes beautiful. Like matter to antimatter. Beauty from antibeauty.
16 Dec 17:13 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits, Travel
Kristof's mission continues
Last week, I mentioned Nicholas Kristof's mission to drum up more troops for Iraq from our coalition partners. He continues in Brother, Can You Spare a Brigade?. You can also watch a video feature.
16 Dec 15:46 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts
Current Playlist
This month's installment...
| Luna - Black Postcards >> Another finely crafted song from Luna. "Marigold & Tangerine" to brighten up your dull gray Decmeber days. (I listened to this album a lot during warm nights in June and July, but for some reason never put any of the songs on the list back then.) |
| Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham - Moonshot >> A haunting, beautiful rendition of Buffy Sainte-Marie's song. Perfect. |
| U2 - City of Blinding Lights >> Yes, they've written much better. While it doesn't really hold a candle to many of their better songs, it's still an enjoyable tune full of old-school U2 sound (think 'The Unforgettable Fire'... or better yet, just listen to that album). |
| Clem Snide - I Love The Unknown >> An odd song with a chorus that'll almost certainly get stuck in your head for a good long while. (A strange thing, though... when Eef sings "allure" - and that word only - doesn't he sound exactly like Bruce McCulloch? Or is it just my speakers?) |
| Ween - It's Gonna Be (Alright) >> A cheesy but heartbreaking 80s soft-rock ballad... from Ween. Believe it. |
| Cat Power - Maybe Not >> A paralyzing selection from the beautiful 'You Are Free'. |
| Concrete Blonde - Mojave >> A bleak, burning, sprawling spoken-word piece that evokes desolate desert sunsets. Johnette Napolitano's singular voice sounds great even when she's not singing. |
| Built To Spill - I Would Hurt A Fly >> There's so much good to say about this song. From the impeccable guitar to the cello to the 2-minute feedback-drenched jam at the end of the song. |
| Morcheeba - Big Calm >> Title track to Morcheeba's excellent 1998 album. Ironically, the least calm track on the album. A hearty soup of funky sounds and hip-hop grit. |
| Pixies - The Holiday Song >> Most of you are probably used to hearing this by now, I'll just say it... here's another perfect Pixies song. |
| The Clash - I'm Not Down >> A great old Clash tune, because you know you're in need of one. |
| Pernice Brothers - Let That Show >> Skillfully crafted pop that will grab you by the ear. |
| Barenaked Ladies - Conventioneers >> A ridiculously catchy song (about co-workers having a one night fling on a business trip). It has a nice 70s cocktail lounge vibe. |
| Jim O'Rourke - Life Goes Off >> A mellow acoustic-driven song with typically odd O'Rourke lyrics. The highlight is the pedal steel. |
16 Dec 11:48 | Link | Category: Music
December 11, 2004
Today's Photography Links
11 Dec 23:01 | Link | Category: Photography
Road Rage and Cell Phone Cards
For years, I've talked about some system (either paper cards or electronic) that would allow me to shout at bad drivers when shouting isn't possible (on the freeway, for example). It seems someone has already beat me to the cards idea: Road Rage Cards. The flip book contains cards with useful messages such as "GET OUT OF THE FAST LANE" and "WAIT YOUR TURN!" Helpfully, all cards have a mirror image on the back side so they are viewable through the rearview mirror of someone in front of you.
Another, perhaps more useful item: this very cool SHHH card set (PDF) for cell phone users. Simply print and discreetly distribute the various cards to obnoxious cell phone users.
11 Dec 22:17 | Link | Category: Humor
Cheesiest film lines
About three weeks ago, I mentioned the AFI's poll of top 100 quotes from U.S. movies. On a related note, I noticed a story today at BBC containing a list of the top 10 cheesiest film lines.
11 Dec 15:37 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment
Yuschenko was poisoned
Several weeks ago, I asked 'What Ails Viktor Yushchenko?' Doctors have now determined he was poisoned with dioxin.
11 Dec 15:28 | Link | Category: Current Events
December 8, 2004
What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
Fans of Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies might enjoy this quiz: What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
I'm George, Smothered Under a Rug. ("You will be smothered under a rug. You're a little anti-social, and may want to start gaining new social skills by making prank phone calls.")
08 Dec 23:28 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment, Humor, Interactive
The Big Leak
Another Big Dig fiasco. Now the tunnel's leaking. The Boston Globe provides this convenient set of frequently asked questions, chief among them "Is the tunnel really safe to drive in?"
08 Dec 23:16 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits
Coalition of the Willing
"To help raise troops for President Bush," Nicholas D. Kristof visited one of our coalition partners, Estonia, to see if he could drum up more troops. Turns out that Estonia only has 4,000 troops in its entire army. And the prime minister says:
Concerning public opinion here, of course, nobody is for war - this is quite obvious - and 60 percent were not very much in favor of Estonian participation. ... We contributed as much as we can at this moment.
So what are they doing in the 'coalition'?
A student named Sven Kukenelk put it like this: "It's like an investment for us."
By this logic, Estonia invests troops in Iraq, and then the United States will be morally bound to rescue Estonia if it gets in trouble with Russia.
Triin Tael, who was out with her baby along the cobblestone streets of Tallinn, said that many Estonians considered the U.S. and Russia to be equally bad. But, she said, they want to cultivate ties with distant Washington to protect them from neighboring Moscow.
"It is in our interest to be friendly to the U.S.," she said, "because we are hoping that the U.S. and NATO will protect us if Russia attacks."
So, on the basis of those 55 soldiers in Iraq, the U.S is now committed to using its full economic and military force to back Estonia?
"Yes," she said. "That's exactly what we think."
Kristof continues:
Estonia's contribution is not unusual. Eight of our partners in Iraq have fewer than 100 soldiers there.
I'm afraid that my campaign to assist Mr. Bush in raising troops is, so far, proving no more successful than my past missions to help Mr. Bush find W.M.D. in Iraq or Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. No wonder Mr. Bush never calls, never writes.
You can watch a video of Kristof's interview with the prime minister of Estonia.
08 Dec 20:42 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts
Gross National Happiness?
A short piece in Wired claims that current economic guages don't tell us enough about how the economy is doing, and also argues that happiness is an economic indicator:
True, the federal government maintains a $2 billion, 10,000-person statistical apparatus to track the blips and dips of our national well-being. But here's the problem: The current economic gauges don't tell us enough about how the economy is really doing. And just as important, how the economy is doing no longer tells us enough about how the nation is really doing.
We still divide workers into two categories: Farm (2.2 million) and Non-Farm (137.3 million). We still track productivity by the amount a person produces in a given time period:
But how much does that reveal about the sectors of the economy in which coming up with a single insight is far more valuable than cranking out pallets of uniform products? We're far from figuring out how to measure intangibles, although smart designs, compelling experiences, and brilliant code matter more to our national wealth than bushels of corn or grosses of widgets.
But the author argues that merely overhauling statistical machinery isn't sufficient, because "the state of the economy may not be the best way to gauge the state of the union." He mentions that while the U.S. per capita GDP has tripled over the last fifty years, we're "not one jot happier."
There's ample evidence that in all postindustrial societies, material wealth and broader happiness are no longer closely in sync.
He mentions that two prominent social scientists have proposed creating a national index of well-being.
Of course, critics may scoff that it's silly to calculate gross national happiness (a metric now used in Bhutan). But it's no sillier than spending nearly $150 million a year collecting agriculture statistics, as the US does, even though 98 percent of our workforce long ago transitioned to "nonfarm" pursuits.
08 Dec 20:14 | Link | Category: Science
Ugh.
The last few days have been the kind in which I see the news and I get the consuming feeling of sad weariness but nothing else. Combine that with the late hour and the fact that I should have been sleeping an hour ago, and I'm not in the mood for thinking about the world. So no comments or thoughts... just a few links:
A Fundamental Change in America
Pakistan and the True WMD Threat
Report: CIA chief paints bleak picture in Iraq
Edwin Black: Iraq election results will reflect longtime divisions
Economic 'Armageddon' predicted (also see When America Sneezes, a story I linked to from Quick Links back in November)
08 Dec 0:20 | Link | Category: Current Events
December 7, 2004
Social status quiz
Yet another silly online quiz for you. (Sorry, I haven't been in the surfing or blogging mood, so you end up with links like these.)
My highest score was Alternative, followed by Middle Class:
You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don't take drugs ok?
07 Dec 23:22 | Link | Category: Interactive
December 6, 2004
You, too, can learn to be nice
Last week I linked to a New Scientist story about how you, too, are capable of committing torture. This week, they're reporting happier findings: Humans can learn to be nice.
06 Dec 1:14 | Link | Category: Science
"I will find a city, find myself a city to live in"
This is odd. I took the Find Your Spot quiz, and apparently my "best places to live" are:
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Denver, Colorado
- Seattle, Washington
- Providence, Rhode Island
- Carlisle, Pennsylvania
It's baffling that good ol' SLC, my hometown and current residence, topped the list. I really don't know what to make of that. Kinda disturbing. Hmmm. Anyway. The other places sound pretty nice (though I have no idea what Carlisle, Pennsylvania is like).
(Note: The site makes you register, but if you're like me you might make a few minor errors entering your information. They think I'm someone named Jerry Falwell living in Schenectady, NY 12345).
Another interesting, somewhat related site is ePodunk ("profiling more than 25,000 communities across America"). They have lots of interesting stats, like:
06 Dec 0:48 | Link | Category: Interactive
December 5, 2004
Dylan Looks Back
Earlier today, 60 Minutes aired Bob Dylan's first television interview in 19 years. If you missed it, there's a very short clip here. If you look around, you can also find a bunch of recent print interviews, like this one from RS.
Speaking of RS, Like A Rolling Stone just topped their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all time. (When Ed Bradley asked Dylan if that was a pat on the back, I loved his response: "This week it is. But who's to say how long that's gonna last?") Interestingly enough, the single was almost never released. Read Shaun Considine's story in the New York Times, The Hit We Almost Missed.
And if you still haven't gotten your Bob fix, check out grow-a-brain's archive of odd Dylan links.