Month: April 2008
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Hot Naked DSL!
Today I just switched to AT&T Naked DSL. That means DSL service without the requirement that you pay for landline service. Previously I was paying $22/month for 1.5 Mbps DSL and $16 for a phone line. Here are the terms and rates. First, the $50 rebate on your modem doesn’t count if you are obtaining…
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TV Vomiting Hall of Shame
July 10 Update: To accommodate the groundswell of public support, I have formed a Coalition to Prevent Gratuitous Vomiting on TV facebook group. Maybe when you read my recent complaint about too much vomiting on TV, you thought I was exaggerating. I wrote: I don’t watch much television except when eating. I have my basa…
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Non Sequitur (Again)
Have you ever loved a blog to death and then completely forgotten about it? Then, months (or even years) later, you pick it up again and say to yourself, “Dumbass, why did you ever stop reading this blog?” I feel that way with Non Sequitur, a blog by two philosophy profs (mainly John Casey) about…
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Flattery and Validation: Professors who Seduce
William Deresiewicz notices that mass media tends to stereotype professors as lechers (especially those in the humanities) Why is that? In the popular imagination, humanities professors don’t have anything to be ambitious about. No one really knows what they do, and to the extent that people do know, they don’t think it’s worth doing —…
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Video Art of John Sanborn
John Sanborn is my favorite video artist. He does beautiful video poems. Over the last 10 years he has worked with high tech companies as well as creatively-oriented companies. His piece Quirky Fact or Fiction influenced me greatly. Now though there is practically nothing up on the web except this website. On this website there…
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Suffering with Anticipation (Aka: Where is the remote control?)
Wow. If you remember, one of the games I play regularly is Find the Remote! I lost my remote control for my TV Thursday night. I know it’s not outside the house. Things I know: not in the bathroom/toilet area. (I’ve done that before–don’t laugh) not in the kitchen (the visible areas anyway) not in…
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Bouguereau: Pro and Con
You may not know about Fred Ross, but he is chairman of the Art Renewal Center, a leading online museum that stores high quality paintings. It is a treasure trove for people looking for public domain paintings. Here’s his take on Bouguereau: In October 1977, I walked into the Clark Museum, Williamstown, Mass. to see…
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Uncle Yorick
Randomly came across this painting by Phillip H. Calderon (Died 1937). A commenter says: “In this typical family scene, so popular with the Victorians, young Hamlet rides on the back of Yorick, with Gertrude sitting near by. Can we imagine that the woman holding the child is the wife of Polonius with her baby…
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Penalizing Spam Links, Etc, Etc
Sorry, I’ve been in the middle of a lot of things. Maybe only time for a links dump: Mike Schinkel suggests a way to fight spam comments: assign a special attribute to them that makes it easier for google to penalize their google juice. The problem is that unless Akismet had some direct connection with…
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Talking about Bugs: Interview with a Houston Pest Control Expert
In the next week or two, I’ll be interviewing Roy Law Elliott, the owner/CEO of Bugs and Burglars, a Houston exterminator and security business. Regular readers may know that I’ve had an ongoing problem with roaches (which apparently are crawling into my laptop and CD player). I met Roy at a storytelling event, and found…
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Twelve Dancing Rabbits
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. (Rod Serling) More quotes
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Which charities to support? (Give your recommendations).
Very soon I’m going to give $500 to various charities. It’s something I have wanted to do for some time. Last year I gave nothing to charity, and in 2006 I gave almost nothing. (Probably after this year I’ll give a more regular sum). Over the last few months I’ve contributed $25 each to John…
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Flirting and the Morose 42 year old
Here’s a lengthy publication about the art of flirting. Lot of obvious points mixed with subtle ones. A new study reveals that the age of 42 is when people’s happiness is at their lowest. Amy Sutherland on using animal training principles in negotiating with your spouse. Wow, Jack Shafer dissects the popularity of this article.…
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Moralistic Comments
I always enjoy reading blog comments, but this one threw me: This is first time in my life when I don’t know what to say. After reading all comments I’m shocked. What has happened with our society, with our young generation? They are commenting terrible information, their lexis sounds terrible. Is that true, that only…
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Playing the Game Called Life
TX blogger Robert Nagle talks about games he made up to endure the tedium that is his life.
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Michael Barrett film reviews…now easier to find!
A good friend of mine Michael Barrett has gotten off his petard and started writing highbrow film reviews for Popmatters. Popmatters doesn’t deserve his critical pen. Only a mag with the stature of the New Yorker or Salon deserves it. Oddly, I have enough friend (not as close) named John Sinnott who is also an…