Month: June 2006
-
Video Tutorials
Video production tutorials. Great stuff. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my RSS feed reader to take the videos. Still good stuff.
-
Fast Things: John Kerry and Defamation Suits
Little Men: Things to Think about when considering a credit card . Matt Yglesias on the true economic costs of war (according to CRS). The same CRS report indicated that before it ends, the war will likely cost somewhat more than the $549 billion spent (adjusted for inflation) in the much more lethal Vietnam War.…
-
Sneaking Thought
The roaches are invading my cereal!
-
Perfect
‘This morning when I got up and saw myself in the mirror, I looked awful! What’s wrong with me?’ He replied, ‘I don’t know, but your eyesight is perfect!’” (Rodney Dangerfield)
-
Hitler vs. Coulter, part 1
Highest rates for online ads . See also the world’s most expensive joke. Hitler vs. Coulter quiz . Matt Yglesius comments: Their rhetoric does have a lot of similar themes — namely that liberals are evil and hell-bent on betraying the country — but you really can tell them apart. For one thing, they have…
-
Update: Linux Wifi problems…again!
Update: I have been busy chasing down yet another wireless bug related to my Linux laptop and the Intel 2915 wireless driver/firmware. Frustrating, and yet educational. (For those who take joy in my travails, check out this thread). There is a positive side to this. I’m reaquainting myself with the linux networking configuration files. Also,…
-
Recent blog discoveries
I read a lot of blogs by brilliant people. Often I simply forget to check them while discovering new ones. Here are some recent discoveries that I find myself never missing: Matt Yglesius on political science. He’s a young pundit who writes extremely well and carefully. Less about topical issues than about trends and economics.…
-
Now a Terabyter!
Rounding off, I now will have 1.4 Terabytes of hard drive data under my belt. (That’s not including DVD media or CDs).
-
Network Media Servers
I am really close to buying a Network Area Storage solution. The frontrunner: Buffalo Technology Linkstation gigabit 250 gigabyte solution for $200. Actually, I may upgrade to the 300 gig solution ($280) after learning that installing the linkstation open firmware lets you install a server and media player software like swisscenter or twonkymedia (which apparently…
-
MC Lars
Here’s a great catchy music video by MC Lars, a rapping countercultural Wierd Al/Public Enemy geekstar. Here’s some downloadable mp3s (including the song “download this song”). He also keeps a weblog of fave vids he finds on YouTube and other places. (BTW, he has several other music vids floating on youtube). Too bad downhillbattle.org doesn’t…
-
The Distractions of Politics
It probably isn’t astounding, but media critic Mark Crispin Miller now has a blog. Miller taught at JHU in my graduate writing program. I didn’t have class with him (although I sat through the showings of Hitchcock films in his movie class), and bumped into him at cocktail parties occasionally. I think I also taught…
-
Orwell and Marx as Bloggers?
Trevor Buttersworth on the blogging culture: To illustrate the point, I asked a number of bloggers whether they thought Karl Marx or George Orwell, two enormously potent political writers who were also journalists, would have blogged if the medium had been available to them. And almost always, the answer was, why of course, it would…
-
Larry King, Chris Mooney, Penn & Teller
Science writer Chris Mooney on Larry King and the paranormal: oes CNN, the “most trusted name in news,” take responsibility for the factual content and balance of “Larry King Live”? This article–a double-length installment of my monthly “Doubt and About” column–attempts to answer that question. After all, King’s July 1 Roswell program was no aberration.…
-
Virgins or Raisins?
While listening to a great discussion on race and identity between Salman Rushdie and Amartya Sen, I came across this gem. I paraphrase Rushdie: (paraphrase) The promise of “70 virgins” for Islamic suicide bomber martyrs is in fact a mistranslation of the original text. The correct translation was supposed to be “70 white raisins.” Imagine…
-
War Movies and Samuel Fuller
Sam Fuller (director of the classic WW2 film, Big Red One): “The only way to make a truly realistic war movie is to fill the theater with smoke and flame, the sound of explosions, and to have someone shoot the person sitting next to you.” Sam Fuller on War Movies (recorded in a Roger Ebert…
-
Amazing Camera Tricks on Sex and the City
I watch a fair amount of television, and I watch Sex and the City for a variety of reasons, not because I especially love it (I don’t), but I’m trying to figure out why it has been so successful and how a major studio produces a one camera location-based comedy (and more importantly, how to…