Month: July 2006
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Advantages of a screenplay/ novel
Finn Harvor on writing a screenplay/novel: The screenplay-novel is not a selling out. Think of it this way: there are good movies. There is good TV. In other words, both mediums are capable of producing genuine works of art, despite their group-made natures. If you write a screenplay-novel, you should try to make something that…
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Bush Declares Mandatory 44% Price Increase on all Shrimp Sold in the US
This is old news, but Bush Administration’s decision in 2004 to maintain shrimp tariffs was awful. If you remember, Bush imposed tariffs on steel in 2002, stubbornly insisting that European countries were somehow doing something illegal by keeping prices down. European countries sued, Bush lost, then appealed it. European countries sued in WTO, Bush lost…
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Carnal Catalogue
Wow, a catalog of all the famous sex scenes in major films (with small photos)! Not for work, but a good stroll through memory lane. Omissions galore, but lots of respectable films I’d never heard of. Fun commentary too.
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Run for the Hills—Talent Competitions are Everywhere!
Here’s the TV lineup for 7 PM in Houston. Notice a pattern? 3 · WB Blue Collar TV CC TV14 4 · FOX So You Think You Can Dance CC TVPG 8 · PBS Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean … CC 9 · UPN America’s Next Top Model 10 · CBS Rock Star: Supernova CC 12 ·…
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Roy Peter Clark Book (and RSS Feed) (and Podcast)
Last year I raved about Clark’s great writing guide. I knew it was a classic and immediately copied all the tips and made an ebook out of it. Now the tips will be a book–which will certainly be a bestseller at universities. Frankly, I can’t imagine reading this as a college student. It contains lots…
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How to Mess up a Beauty Contest Big Time: Wait is this a hoax???!
Wow, how did I miss the scandal of Miss World 2006? Here’s the 7 minute video on YouTube. How outrageous! It has to be seen to be believed. Here’s the expose by one of the judges Jake Rudnitsky . Apparently the whole event was crazy and dehumanizing to begin with: In a slimy Hollywood twist,…
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Announcing: Arnold Bennett
In the next few months I will be launching a site devoted to the British author Arnold Bennett. At the moment there’s a dearth of good information about Bennett, which is surprising since for a while he was a top dog in the literary world. Here’s a wikipedia entry . I discovered him after reading…
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Cutting Down
Forum by parenting experts on raising children. To the question “We hear so much about negative cultural influences, whether it’s toxic media messages or the perils of consumerism. What effects do these influences have, and what should we be doing about it?” there is these two answers: Damon: If you turn on the television, or…
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Open Formats, Pilgrim and Linux Desktop Must-haves
Mark Pilgrim is a python/xml programmer who influenced a lot of web developers. I’ve read his great Dive into Python book and caught various essays here and there. But he’s been an erratic blogger. Now I find he is blogging (and even vlogging) on a semi-regular basis, which makes me very happy. Apparently, he has…
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Why Web Forms Suck!
My brother called me the other day. He is a novice to the web (long story) and he was trying to cut and paste his resume into his webmail. He couldn’t do it. The copy function wasn’t working. Impossible, I said. Later, I went to his house and understood what he was saying. Yahoo mail…
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7 Minute Link Dump
I have busy with lots of things and been determined NOT to blog about anything. But I’ve been bursting recently, and am allowing myself 7 minutes to do a link dump: Blogger extraordinaire J Wynia is running for mayor. I’ve been catching up on his Glass is too Full podcast. The podcast so far has…
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Reading email
It’s hard to understand how a person receives email, says one slashdot poster.
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Target’s business model
Elizabeth Warren realizes that 3 out of every 4 dollars of Target’s profit comes from subprime lending. She and others write the Warren Report blog (on consumer debt advocacy issues).
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Not Against the Law, Against the Law
George Saunders reviews the reasons why publicly identifying contact information on the web is NOT against the law, even if it’s for reasons having to do with intimidation or protest. In the meantime, a judge overturns the Cleanfix “fair use” case, which allowed Christian moralists to sell DVD players which made it easier to censor…
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Grits on Prison
Grits for Breakfast by Scott Henson has always been one of my fave political blogs. I really should read it more often. He focuses on the overincarceration problem we are experiencing in Texas, the self-licking ice cream cone phenomena occuring in my own state. Here’s his guide about how to reform the penal system. Among…
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KDE, Wow!
Purely for the heck of it, I changed my linux session editor from Gnome to KDE. I had been warming up to the simplicity of Gnome (and might continue to use it), but frankly, I’m stunned at the extent of the features that KDE has. Definitely a welcome surprise.