hour left on these boys

Thursday at Rivington St.? Bereket; out by 12:00? Opinions, complaints, suggestions, modifications, updates, confirmations, alternatives, questions, lewd comments, propositions, squabbles, rants, or raves?

Someone had suggested we meet at the Top of the World. I like this idea, but I was hoping to invite a few new people along this week, and I fear that might make us a bit too big to be out on the town en mass. But if this, or any other week, turns into a light turnout maybe we should attempt this. What say you Bill, master of the WTC, is the view worth it?

Dirty detritus for filthy lucre: Antiques Roadshow is coming to town! (Does ebay tour?)

Slow as molasses. Yes I know. Made some changes this morning in an attempt at a stop gap solution to the speed problems we've been having. Didn't seem to help too much but your mileage may vary (I can always hope.) Anyway, we are close to a solution to this problem, so with the risk of sounding like a broken record, hang in there for just a little bit longer. I'm going to fix the problem with the only sure fire solution available to someone who's not that good at building faster software - I mean, of course, I'm going to throw more hardware at it. Soon. Soon.

On a related note, I'd appreciate some feedback on possible dates for a slightly larger than average gathering. This would be something like a launch party if this were a real site that did things like have launch parties. I'm thinking sometime after the second week of May. We should be running the new software on new (dedicated) hardware by then. I guess I'd like this to be a Friday or Saturday night. And of course I'd like as many of you as possible to be able to attend. Any late May scheduling conflicts that anyone is aware of at this point? Take your time. Thanks.

Uh-oh, you're already missing the People's Poetry Gathering of lower Manhattan. Includes my dad's undertaker Thomas Lynch reading Poe at midnight in a graveyard.

what say you blakeans?

Thought I had a hangover, but maybe it's that sunspot.
Found a Quicksilver page, but no mention of a violinist, as was suggested last night.

off to Italy today will probably not report till back but we will visit the recently 2*'d Arnolfo in Colle di Val d'Elsa (Tuscany), the venerable 2 *'d Da Vittorio in beautiful Bergamo, along with the awesome one * Trattoria Della Posta in Montforte, and lots of non stared local yummy's--SUPER CHOW

when you get an tingle for some old Tempier at the current retail for ten year younger bottlings head up here we had 1989, 1988, 1990 La Tourtine and La Migoua and the very rare 1988 La Louffe--the food is very very good--cellar loaded with many other value (like 1982 Peyre Rose Clos Ciste @ $24) along with fair priced splurg wines (best Tempier is 88 La Tourtine by the group vote)

When you look at the economics of it, saving the world just isn't worth it.

couldn't get you a link to this upi story, but here is a more technical paper from the authors, and here are some highlights:

“Spanish and American astrophysicists claim the universe we inhabit contains an infinite number of other universes like our own, called O-regions, that we will someday be able to contact. Jaume Garriga, of the University of Barcelona, and Alexander Vilenkin, of Tufts University, call the concept "many worlds in one."

…these universes are likely similar to our own -- share similar life forms, for instance – because they share a key feature with our world: a finite number of distinct histories. A history is the way something has evolved in time and will continue to evolve. Until now, physicists have never been able to make such an assertion.

Are these ideas far-fetched? Alan Guth (MIT) says no. "Do I think that the ideas are viable? Definitely yes. In fact, I very much admire the precision with which the ideas are expressed. I consider the work of Alex Vilenkin and his collaborators to be the leading work in this field."

”Whenever a thought crosses your mind that a terrible calamity might have happened," Vilenkin told UPI, "you can be assured that it has happened in some of the other O-regions." Furthermore, since some O-regions have histories identical or nearly identical to our own, "if you nearly escaped an accident here, then you were not so lucky in some of the O-regions with the same prior history," he said

Guth also believes the many-worlds hypothesis has profound philosophical implications. "We already know that our planet is merely a tiny speck in a vast cosmos, but now we are being told that we do not even hold a unique copyright on our own identities," Guth told UPI. "Instead, each of us is actually only a single copy of an infinite number of beings that are completely identical to ourselves."

More collectibles as entertainment.
I possess nothing of value, but Antiques Roadshow has become my excuse for never cleaning anything, just in case it might be worth a fortune.

Yeah, but what does He look like now?

Our friend Steve DiBenedetto has a show opening this Saturday, 3/31, 6 to 8, at Baumgartner Gallery. They’ve registered a domain name, but you’ll have to go to their artnet site for a selection of Steve’s ambiguously emphatic paintings. Good stuff.

Hello Monday. Any plans for the weekly IRL meeting? I think last week was a pretty big success. Bring your own Bereket seemed to work well. But there was some talk (I think maybe I started it) of going to Grand Szechun International (hereafter: GSI.) Anybody ready to think about this yet? I know it's only Monday, but you can't start planning for the weekend too soon (and yes, I realize that by counting Thursday as the weekend I might be pushing it.)

Mmmmmm... sea cucumber.

"Joey... do you like movies about gladiators?"
Peter Graves, Airplane

he took her to a movie.....

No maps for these territories is the new William Gibson documentary. Cool web site.

Creativity, Digitally Remastered : Kimmelman for NYT. (I haven't had to sign in to e nyt in a longtime) "Wanna Cookie ?" - Don Rickles

palladin calls 71 clinton a shack.

"To do so, Mr. Anschutz chose to come to New York, the town that gave birth to the independent film industry, where small companies are marching well ahead of Hollywood toward digital filmmaking and exhibition—most of them with the idea of getting more and better distribution for smaller-budget, so-called art-house films. Some are betting that the technology of downloadable or satellite-beamed movies will make theater ownership profitable again. But Mr. Anschutz, many believe, also wants to personally influence mass entertainment—to decide what gets shown at his movie theaters, when and how often."

best of the best: mondo list of lists of all-time films

"The 34-year-old computer whiz in Silver Lake got a phone call from the friend of a friend--the head of publicity for a movie studio. The offer was $10,000 a week for an Internet "project." Was he interested? Absolutely. Details quickly followed from the studio's department of new media. The computer whiz discovered he would soon be "purposely forgetting everything I knew about design." The job was to construct a phony fan Web site for a new movie. "

Steve Albini eyewitness record reviews.

I saw Memento yesterday at Loews Broadway/19th. It's about ten minutes too long but quite good. As you may have read, it's about a man who's lost his short-term memory, but keeps himself up-to-date on his own investigation of his wife's murder by tattooing messages on his body and carrying polaroids in his pockets. The story is told in reverse chronological order, so each time he "wakes up" to a new, memory-wiped reality, the audience knows about as much as he does. Reviews have been smartass, comparing it to Groundhog Day and Harold Pinter's Betrayal, but I'd say it's closer to Tarantino (minus the pop-culture irony) and Dark City (minus the aliens). Stephen Tobolowsky, who played the accountant who kept recognizing Bill Murray on the street in Groundhog Day

is heartbreaking in a parallel tale of another short-term-memory-losser named Sammy Jankis, who remembers how to give his wife her insulin shot but can't retain the plot of the TV show he's watching. One of the ironies of Memento is that the audience has to hold a lot of info in RAM (i.e., short term memory) in order to make sense of the plot.