Conan O’Brien on his speech to the 2000 Harvard graduating class:
When I had my Class Day, you students would have been seven years old. Seven years old. Do you know what that means? Back then I could have beaten any of you in a fight. And I mean bad. It would be no contest. If any one here has a time machine, seriously, let’s get it on, I will whip your seven year old butt. When I was here, they sold diapers at the Coop that said “Harvard Class of 2000.” At the time, it was kind of a joke, but now I realize you wore those diapers. How embarrassing for you. A lot has happened in fifteen years. When you think about it, we come from completely different worlds. When I graduated, we watched movies starring Tom Cruise and listened to music by Madonna. I come from a time when we huddled around our TV sets and watched “The Cosby Show” on NBC, never imagining that there would one day be a show called “Cosby” on CBS. In 1985 we drove cars with driver’s side airbags, but if you told us that one day there’d be passenger side airbags, we’d have burned you for witchcraft.
Jim Heid on Works in Progress pages: This Site is Under Construction!
A.O. Scott on Steven Spielburg’s War of the Worlds:
But “War of the Worlds” also succeeds in reminding us that while Mr. Spielberg doesn’t always make great movies, he seems almost constitutionally incapable of bad moviemaking. It’s not much to think about, but it’s certainly something to see.
Personal Note: after long thought, I decided that my vote for Time Magazine’s person of the Century would be Steven Spielburg. I have not regretted that choice.
Over the weekend, I’ve started watching Decalogue, by Krzysztof Kieslowski, a 10 hour TV series loosely based on the 10 Commandments. Simple and beautiful.
Marc Hedlund asks: why do factories wrap their $.25 blank CDs or DVD’s in plastic? Are they afraid someone will steal them?
I found a few dozen links about voice recording. Forget where they were!
Best geek jokes according to Slashdot.
The car stalled out.
The mechanical engineer said, “It must be the pistons; let’s repair them and be on our way.”
The electrical engineer said, “It has to be the spark plugs; we’ll
replace them and be ready to roll in no time at all.”The chemical engineer said. “No, it’s got to be bad gas; we’ll flush the system and be on our way.”
They turned to the computer engineer. “What do you think we should do?” they asked.
The computer engineer shrugged and said, “Let’s get out of the car, close the doors, then get back in and try restarting it.”
Also see Onion in 2056
Two audio talks by Guido von Rossum. Funny anecdote. Guido mentions a “problem that came up on newsgroups: What if Guido were hit by a car?”
From Bruce Sterling, two great articles: JG Ballard on the strange appeal of CSI. Pavel Seifter on a Czech film about an imaginary shopping center.