...more recent posts
If I were writing a hollywood terrorist thriller it would go like this:
Main character would be a Johnnie Walker type all american kid descending into the murky underworld of militant islamic thinking. He rises quickly in the terrorist network like Johnny Depp rising through the drug smuggling ranks in Blow. Eventually, after a series of exciting capers proving his abilities, he is given the big job of making a deal with the Russian mob for a nuclear device. He gets to the deal expecting to take posession of the bomb, but the clever Kyser Sose-ish bad guy calmly informs him that he does not have the device. Pause. "Because it's already in the U.S."
It turns out that the Soviets, years ago, fearing the U.S. ability to cripple all their long range nuclear capabilities with some sort of lightning first strike (EM bomb?) planted nuclear weapons at many key points inside this country. Deep cover secret agents exist just waiting for the orders to trigger the devices. After the break up of the Soviet Union there was no real way, or desire, to deactivate these devices. So instead of an actual bomb, Johnny gets the location of several devices and the satellite codes needed to defeat the fail safe mechanisms. Nail biting chase ensues, followed by an improbable computer hacking scene (the single master password is the name of some Soviet general's mistress, or possibly his cat.) But in the final scene it turns out Johnny was working for the CIA all the time. When you think he is about to blow up Washington D.C., he is really deactivating the bomb. He suceeds with one second to spare, of course. Much rejoicing.
Note: I didn't say it would be a good movie.
The New York Times has yet another article on weblogs today. Page C6. Same old story. "Weblogs could be big, and maybe even important, but right now they all suck." They give the last work to some guy who used to blog, but stopped in favor of email. He says, "If you want to communicate with people, email it to them. Don't force them to come to your site every day..." That is ridiculous. There is much more force involved in an email list. It shows up in your in box whether you feel like reading it that day or not. Plus, it destroys the most important thing: archives. What good are all those emails? Who can ever get at that information? Emails just sit on people's hard drives until their systems crash or get thrown out.
My good friend Jeff wrote me an email yesterday. We haven't spoken in quite some time. He's from the brief Bozeman Montana episode in my life. Said he looks in on this page from time to time. I'm glad. I wish all of my friends, especially ones living far away who I don't speak with much, would keep web pages. How the hell am I supposed to know what's going on?
What do you say Bubsie? And you too Frank (you've got to actually put some words on that page.) And I wonder if Diana ever looks in here? What I'd give for a window into that world. It doesn't have to be anything special. I just want to know what you had for breakfast this morning.
Well, OK, I probably already know: bacon. Still, I'd love to hear it from you.
I used to think to myself "Paul Ford should write a book," but I've come to be happy just reading his site. I mean who needs a whole exfoliated book when you can just get the seed? Much more efficient, really. I'll unzip it on my end. Here's the beginning to todays gem:
I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower to find another one sitting near the drain. It was about 2 feet tall and made of metal, with bright camera-lens eyes and a few dozen gripping arms. Worse than the Jehovah's Witnesses.
``Hi! I'm from Google. I'm a Googlebot! I will not kill you.''
``I know what you are.''
``I'm indexing your apartment.''
I am the worst photographer of all time. Not one picture came out from dinner last night. I'll try again on Monday.
Aside from that everything went well. The kitchen still has some work to do, but that was expected. What they had ready was tasty. The staff seems good. Very nice energy. And the place looks great.
For no apparent reason, here's a list of CDs I added at least one song from to the big mix yesterday. Not at all representative of the whole list (maybe just the opposite, as I'm trying to fill in some categories that are lacking.)
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Manu Chao - Clandestino
Sounds from the Verve Hi-Fi compiled by Thievery Corporation
The Very Best of Elvis Costello
The Stooges
Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
R.E.M. - Life's Rich Paegent
U2 - Boy
The very best of Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Patti Smith - Horses
The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
Shuggie Otis - Inspirational Information
855 songs total. 61 hours of music.
Tonight is the very first (and very small) tasting at the new restaurant: Alias. I'll take some pictures. Hopefully you'll be able to contain your excitement until tomorrow. I think Wednesday or Thursday will be the stealth (soft) opening. But we don't want any real attention for another week after that. Might be a good time to come in if you're someone reading here.
Another impressive looking information space tool (see last post) is the newly released Tinderbox. I'll have to wait for someone else to make something with it to really understand what it's about, but the site gives some general idea. I've noticed a lot of people are talking about this one. Evidently the lead developer, Mark Bernstein, is a big name in the history of hypertext spaces.
I've mentioned Wiki's before. They are open collaborative web spaces. Very cool. You could use a subset of their capabilities to run a weblog. But they go far beyond that into something more like what I always imagined was possible with hypertext information storage (and presentation.) They are many dimensional, and many directional. A real idea space (where a weblog is more like an idea timeline.) So I'm already impressed, but now that I've found Bill Seitz's Thinking Space I am completely blown away. Both by the Wiki technology, and by all the information Bill has collected. The hardest thing about it is that it's unclear where to point someone to best get them started. There's so much there there. The link above is to a weblog like view. Here's a more general information page. If you're interested in information spaces (I almost want to say 'externalizing the brain') you have to check out his site. Keep clicking. It takes some work, but there is a lot to reward in there.
Interesting article in the March/April 2002 issue of Juxtapoz magazine by painter/visionary Paul Laffoley titled "Fables of the Reconstruction: Gaudi's NYC vision." In it he presents his latest painting which is itself a sort of proposal to erect the Gaudi designed Grand Hotel on the site of the former World Trade Center. Laffoley explains:
In 1908 the great Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudí was retained to design a grand hotel for New York City. The location chosen was the site upon which the twin-towered World Trade Center would eventually be built between 1962 and 1974....Included with the fascinating back story of the unrealized Grand Hotel is a reproduction of a new painting by Laffoley titled Gaudeamus Igitur. It deals with both the Grand Hotel, and the World Trade Center disaster. Laffoley seems to take the destruction of the towers as the end of post modernism. From text in the painting:
According to the architectural critic Charles A. Jencks, the heroic first phase of modernism died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 5:32 P.M. central daylight time when Minoru Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe public housing project was demolished for its negative social impact. In a final paroxysm of irony postmodernism ended with the destruciton of an other building by Minoru Yamasaki - The World Trade Center in New York City, 09/11/2001 at 8:45 - 9:03 am edst.Apparently Laffoley thinks that Gaudi's Grand Hotel should be erected on the spot and that this will signal the dawn of the next period which he calls the bauharoque:
The Bauharoque is the third phase of modernism, sometimes called post-post-modernism, trans-modernism, or neo-modernism - the word means the utopian impulse of the bauhaus is united with the theatricality of the baroque. This period in history transcends science-fiction... and all technology will be actual living structures.Gaudi, in Laffoley's view, "is the perfect precursor of the bauharoque with his gothic bio-morphic metaphor of architecture." See here for some examples.
Strange stuff, for sure. I find him incredibly interesting, if not entriely convincing. Or even understandable. Here are some photos I took last year at a show at the Kent Gallery which will give you an idea of his style. Google, of course, points to a lot more information on this interesting man.
It just doesn't feel like anything is going to go right today.
On the positive side I finally flew, consciously, in a dream early this morning. Pretty cool. Before I woke up inside the dream I was being chased by dinosaurs. Not sure what that's about. But it made me realize I was dreaming, and from there I just launched right into flying without too much thought. Quite unusual for me. Still ended up in a bad mood though. Weird.