...more recent posts
Life: it's the Anti-Death!
(Happy Easter, in despite.)
Obviously the situation is very serious. The most up to the minute weblog reporting from Jerusalem I've found is Michael Bernstein. He's not a news reporter, but like many of us in NYC on 9/11 he is just trying to say what is happening. Does anyone else have any links to other personal reporting from this region? What's really going on over there?
Elsewhere on the Tree we've been discussing Google, on and off. Two analogies I've been thinking about. Maybe someone else has posted about this.
1. Just as biodiversity is good for an ecosystem, having a lot of search alternatives is healthier than having just one. Practices such as googlebombing emerge because people figure out the weaknesses of the system. Eventually the system becomes unreliable, diseased, because too many people know how to exploit it in ways it wasn't meant to be used. If there are no alternatives remaining when it rots, the ecosystem (Web) as a whole suffers.
2. Google is like the Interstate highway system. Towns on older roads decay and shrivel up because everyone starts building to catch passing traffic on the superhighways. Weblogging, with its heavy dependence on the link-and-constant-update-loving Google, is like Motel 6 and the Olive Garden. Yet just as those clusters of Interstate franchises will be collecting tumbleweeds when the oil economy winds down, many webloggers now furiously linking to each other to "up their ratings" will be history when, say, Google is wrecked by greedy shareholders after it goes public. And there'll be no "old growth" community to fall back on, because static websites will have packed it in for lack of hits (see #1 above).
These are meant to be words of caution, not pessimism. Just use Dogpile once in a while.
Musto on murderous club-kid king Michael Alig. A movie is in the works, no doubt looking for that audience who's world didn't change on 9/11. Party on, kids.
the gauntlet has been laid down!
The plan is to convert a DNA sequence – the order of the four chemicals that form the genetic code of a plant or animal – into a piece of digitally encoded music that can then be copyrighted like any other tune.
Talk about a gestation period; it only took nine months, but I finally got my new Bookstore Clerk! That's a typical government timeframe. She's just out of film school, and I guess the pickings are slim. I told her I know someone who'll hire her, as soon as he gets a job. (Just kidding; no way I'm letting her go.) Now maybe I'll actually be able to take a vacation…
Do As We Say, Not As We Do
In Mexico, George W. introduced "Millennium Challenge Grants," foreign aid available to developing countries that "end corruption, reform their economies and help their own people," in the Washington Post's words.
another daily candy like venture: flavor pill.
Czech Republic Enacts World's First National Light Pollution Law
"Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution."
"Welcome to Booklend, a lending library that sends books out by the mail. Booklend is the creation of a man with a postage meter, a roomful of books, and an urge to share. Borrowing a book is free, and you're welcome to keep the book until you're done. Read it at your leisure -- nobody likes to be rushed while they're reading. When you're done, pop it back in the mail. We'll even pay return postage."
dictionary of (someone with way too much time on their hands)
good doctor W, did you hear they found a fossil of a dino that wasnt much bigger than a pheasant, feathered but flightless...
I know it isn't very patriotic of me to say this but I just got a peek of what I think is "Tribute To Light" and am underwhelmed. I imagined two pillers of light, with corners/edges sharp enough to cut glass, not a vague colored stain on the cloud cover.
A little girl and her mother passed me on the street.
Girl: Hey look Mommy? What's that?
Mother: (tepid enthusiasim) Oh huh, I don't know...
Girl: It's a stuck search light.
Maybe the designers and crew are just getting the kinks worked out in time for the eleventh.
favorite new store in Red Hook,
hope to be aquire some garden stuff soon....
favorite street name in Red Hook
The Persimmon came up in conversation yesterday. There is indeed a native a native version, but the ones you see in the markets are larger, and come from Asia.
The bizarre story of the Collyer brothers has passed into NYC legend. The pathological hoarders are now the subject of a play. I guess it takes some poetic liberties with the actual story, but if the Voice and the Post both like it, it can't be all bad.
The four types of drunken monkeys.
shatner blogs, sort of. gotta love "shatnerdise." i bet he could get more by autographing his priceline stock certificates and selling them online than he could in trading them in the market.