Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

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Childhood me would have loved this Star Trek train set (on pp.130-131)—aside from it being O-scale, where my train set was HO-scale.

Adult me is amused, because on several levels, it doesn’t make much sense. But I like it anyway.

On This Day: Jan 21

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 21…

There are 25 posts previously published on January 21st

  • 2025
    • Johnny English 🎥: ⭐️⭐️⭐️: It's ridiculous and silly, and that's fine. ➡
  • 2024
  • 2022
  • 2020
    • Childhood me would have loved this Star Trek train set (on pp.130-131)—aside from it being O-scale, where my train set was HO-scale. Adult me is amused, because on several levels, it doesn’t make much sense. But I like it anyway. ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 21 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 21 ➡
    • The Brother Always Dies First Two cinematic theories: Black male sexuality puts a ceiling on possible earnings; and black men are expendable, while white characters are not. ➡
  • 2017
    • Got back to town and found the #Ellensburg rally in support of the #womensmarch events! We hit two protests in one day! ➡
    • Signs! #womensmarch #yakima ➡
    • So many people, even on this side of the state! We’ve heard others guessing around 2,000, which wouldn’t surprise us! #womensmarch #yakima ➡
    • Make vaginas great again! #womensmarch #yakima ➡
    • Gathering for the #womensmarch in #yakima! ➡
  • 2016
    • Proof of life! ;) Some of my contacts have expressed concerns that my daily photo updates were a ruse, and asked my captors to include a newspaper in a photo as proof that these are being taken on the appropriate day. So here I am with this week’s issue of the CWU Observer (the only ... Read more ➡
  • 2015
  • 2014
    • Got the last of the P. K. Dick nominees in the mail today. Adding it to the to-read stack! ➡
  • 2013
    • Gigs Music Theater 1998 Since I archived the Gigs Music Theatre website as it was when the club shut down, I still have the last 'top requests' list that I posted, back in 1998. Looking at it the other day, it struck me that it could make for an entertaining playlist.... ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for January 21st from 08:43 to 17:23 Sometime between 08:43 and 17:23, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • US Democracy Server: Patch Day • Gregg Nations’s Job - Keeping ‘Lost’ on Track • The Inauguration of President Barack Obama - The Big Picture • 88 Lines about 44 Presidents • Obama inauguration stops traffic - web traffic, that is ➡
  • 2005
    • Gallimaufry 5 The weekly music meme: ten songs at random from my music collection, plus assorted rambling. ➡
  • 2004
    • Mars Dead or Alive If you've got an hour to kill and a broadband connection, the NOVA program 'Mars Dead or Alive' is freely available on the web! ➡
    • Pictures from Mars Very cool webpage automatically collecting and displaying the newest images from Mars. ➡
    • Preliminary Birthday Wishlist This is really early (my birthday isn't until May 3rd), but I'm starting to put together a birthday wishlist. Admittedly, just about everything I've come up with so far is definitely on the 'wish' side (as in, triple-digit prices), but I can dream, right? ;) ➡
    • A look at the Iowa caucus experience Lane and Tina have both posted their impressions of the caucus session for their corner of Iowa, on Eat Your Vegetables and Kickass Sociology, respectively. Some interesting comments, especially as I'm planning on hitting the local precinct caucus for my area of Seattle in early February. ➡
  • 2003
  • 2002
  • 1996
    • [From the archives: 1.21.96 0639] I actually have been doing some occasional work on my pages lately, just haven't done much in the way of recording it here, just because few of them have been very major. ➡

The Brother Always Dies First

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The Brother Always Dies First: on sex, death, and cinematic depictions of race is an excellent essay by author Steven Barnes, exploring two propositions regarding race in American cinema:

Proposed: Black men cannot have sex in movies without it hurting the box office.

Evidence: No non-white male is able to have sex in a movie and have that film cross $100 million at the domestic box office.

Exception: After thirty years of observation, there are now actually THREE movies that contradict this! Huzzah! (Do you know what they are? Answers at the end.)

Proposition #2: It is NOT true that “the black guy always dies first.” This is easily proven as far back as Night of the Living Dead. The reality is rather more difficult to wrap minds around. It is this: there are countless films in which ALL the black characters die, or all the black males die. And there are NO American films in which all the white characters die, if anyone else at all survives. Not one.

I have compiled a list of over ONE HUNDRED such films, which appears at the end of this article.

Explanation: A “character” is someone with at least one line of dialogue.

Exception: On January 17, 2020, I finally saw a movie that contradicts this, the very first American film I’ve ever seen or heard of where black people survive while all the white people die. Not a bad movie, either. The name is in the footnotes.

Some of this I was semi-conscious of, at least in the “the black guy always dies first” sense. But I certainly hadn’t taken as deep a dive into it as Steven has (and, gee, I wonder why, as I look at my nearly-translucent white skin…).

On This Day: Jan 20

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 20…

There are 40 posts previously published on January 20th

  • 2024
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • A 📚 post for micro.blog SF/F fans: The nominees for this year’s Philip K. Dick Award have been announced! Always an interesting slate of books, the award winner will be announced on April 2nd at Norwescon (which is virtual this year, so you can attend wherever you live!). ➡
    • Photos: The Inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.: “Gathered below are scenes from a unique moment in American history.” ➡
    • Inaugurated President Biden and Vice-President Harris ➡
  • 2020
    • Can ‘Star Trek’ Chart a Way Forward?: “With ‘Picard,’ a spinoff following Patrick Stewart’s Starfleet officer, the franchise is trying to rediscover its place in a universe it effectively invented.” ➡
    • Rosa Parks Was My Aunt. It’s Time to Set the Record Straight: I believe her story is more relevant than ever because she and people like her laid a foundation so that women today can be more vocal, can run for office, can demand equal rights and equal pay, and say we don’t have to ... Read more ➡
    • Beyond Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream 'It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.' ➡
    • Martin Luther King Day I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice… ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 20 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 20 ➡
  • 2018
    • On our way downtown! #womensmarch ➡
  • 2017
  • 2016
    • The sign says don’t tease the snake, but it didn’t seem to care when I told it it looked like an overstuffed muddy shoelace. (20/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Lunch and a book in the library. ➡
  • 2013
  • 2011
    • Happy Penguin Awareness Day! It seems that Jan. 20th is Penguin Awareness Day. Though I was not aware of this, I _am_ aware of penguins. You should be too. Just in case you're not...here are some penguins. Be aware. ➡
  • 2009
    • Obama’s Inauguration Speech Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. ➡
    • Links for January 19th through January 20th Sometime between January 19th and January 20th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • 'Battlestar Galactica's' Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of 'Sometimes a Great Notion' • The country's new robots.txt file • Gothic Charm School • One man's take on the new whitehouse.gov on TwitPic • The top 25 Bushisms of all time. • Worst Commercial Placement Ever ➡
    • Congratulations President Obama! President Barack Obama, right, is congratulated by daughter Sasha, lower left, as first lady Michelle Obama looks on after taking the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. ➡
    • Postalicious Excerpts A couple days ago I dropped a line to Postalicious' creator, asking it might be possible to add excerpt templates in a future revision. He wrote back to say that he'd work on that when he got a chance...and just one day later, version 2.6 of Postalicous was posted with support for excerpt templates! ➡
  • 2006
    • Give him a fling… Remember the kinda-cool, kinda-creepy flash thing with the girl falling through and bouncing off of a bunch of bubbles? This is that again...but better. ➡
    • Seattle Nightlife ...as summarized by Cor Tenebrarum on the SeaGoth message board. ➡
    • (Another) iTunes Meme Lots of silly statistics on my music collection. ➡
    • First and Last and Always Oh, very, _very_ nice. This March, The Sisters of Mercy will be in Seattle. On a Saturday night, even. I'm _so_ there. ➡
  • 2005
    • Death of a Spammer, in a Place Called Hope The crime was murder. It was during the autopsy that the medical examiner noticed an obstruction lodged deep in the victim's throat. He reached in and pulled out the object — a can of Spam. ➡
    • Judy Bachrach on FOX News Judy Bachrach was on FOX News and completely ambushed FOX anchor Brigitte Quinn. Rather than a cute fluff piece on the inauguration, Bachrach launched into an indictment of the forty million dollars being spent on Bush's parties. ➡
    • Engine Ice This picture wasn't taken by me, I just thought it was incredibly cool! A friend forwarded it to me along with the accompanying text explanation. ➡
  • 2004
    • March of the Sinister Ducks Neil Gaiman had a song bouncing through his head the other day, and mentioned it on his weblog. Several people then wrote in to let him know of the existence of an .mp3 of the song. After getting permission from the author, Mr. Alan Moore, Neil has quite kindly made the .mp3 officially available. ➡
    • Jason gets his heart back I was just going through the guestbook on Jason Webley's site, and it turns out that on Dec. 30th, Chris received an unusual package in the mail… ➡
    • Search inside! Wow — I entirely missed Zeldman's original post about this, but Kirsten just pointed out a hilarious little side effect of Amazon's addition of 'Search Inside!' or 'Look Inside!' text to book cover images featuring their full text search feature. ➡
    • Chimp Gone Wild! A screencap from CNN ➡
    • If not Dean, then who? There's a lot of good food for thought in the comment thread for this Daily Kos post-Iowa look at the Dem contenders. Some good discussion on whether Dean has suffered as bad of a blow as it may seem, and if so, than who might be the best person to pick up the nomination. ➡
    • Unplanned Applause I'm used to the apparently mandatory applause after every sentence. I was quite pleasantly surprised tonight when after mentioning that the Patriot Act expires in the near future, the Democratic portion of Congress interrupted Bush's speech at that point to start applauding. ➡
    • Enterprise in trouble? Now, I've not seen Enterprise since I moved into my current apartment, and at the time, I wasn't sorry to stop watching it. It's still a little sad to see that one of the staples of my life may be coming to such an ignominious end. ➡
    • The one-party America America has had periods of single-party dominance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in the Republican 1920s and in the early 19th-century 'Era of Good Feeling.' But if President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. ➡
    • Read fast! If people are tired enough of Bush's leadership to show up in surprisingly large numbers to be a part of the process of finding the best candidate to oust Bush from office nearly a year before the general elections, it makes me even more optimistic that come November, we'll be putting a Democrat back in office again. ➡
  • 2003
    • Must've been a fluke I stopped by the Wander-Lust homepage a bit ago, skimmed over the 'Popular Destinations' sidebar, and realized that I was number 16! I have no idea how I managed to pull that off, but it must have been a fluke — as I write this now, I'm number 47. Heck, I'm rather surprised to be on their top-50 list as it is, 47's impressive enough. But 16? ➡
    • MT: Easy comment and entry editing I use a 'edit this entry' here, only one that allows me to not have to worry about the blog ID number, and I have 'edit' links both for each individual entry, and for any comments that are left on my site. As a bonus, the edit links are hidden, so unless you're me (or you read this post), you'll never know that they're there! ➡

On This Day: Jan 19

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 19…

There are 26 posts previously published on January 19th

  • 2025
  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 262 We actually managed to make it home when there was still light in the sky. ➡
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • I now have a never ending, ever morphing, randomly generated mishmash of Wellerman, the COVID rewrite, and the Star Trek filk version on loop in my head. Thanks, Internet. ➡
    • President Boring He's going to be _so_ much better than what we've had and what we would have had if that continued. ➡
  • 2020
    • This Twitter thread of someone watching The Princess Bride for the first time is wonderful. ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 19 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 19 ➡
  • 2019
    • For the third year running, we hit the Seattle Women’s March today. A small selection of photos is on my Flickr account (because something choked my blog when I tried to send them here…I’ll look into that some other time). ➡
  • 2017
    • At the #ghostlightproject vigil put on by the CWU Theatre department students. #ghostlight #bealight #iamalight ➡
  • 2016
    • And here we go again. I’m so done with this. I should move back to Alaska to get away from all this snow! ;) #noishouldnt (19/366) ➡
    • We had an unexpected visitor in our backyard this morning. Neat to see, but hoping it doesn’t become a regular (apparently they’re not good for birds or gardens). #kitty #notakitty #raccoon ➡
  • 2014
    • Almost forgot to take my picture today. Good thing this moose was here to remind me. Someone’s gotta keep me on track! ➡
  • 2010
    • Links for January 18th through January 19th Sometime between January 18th and January 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • H. G. Wells on 'Metropolis' (1927) • Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion • AirTran 297 - Anatomy of an Urban Legend • Dear God, please confirm what I already believe • Insanely Vulgar 'Better Off Ted' Outtakes (NSFW Video) ➡
    • Top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels of All Time Obviously, a list like this one is subject to a _lot_ of debate due to everyone's personal taste. Still, it's not a bad list of works. Herewith, in true blog-meme style, the list, with those that I've read in **bold**. ➡
  • 2009
  • 2007
    • Not with my $300 million, you don’t… You want $300 million of _my_ tax dollars? Put the money towards something -- or _anything_ -- that would actually benefit _everyone_, not just those who get their rocks off by watching _other_ people play a game. ➡
  • 2006
    • Beastie Boys are the new Bon Jovi The camera-toting fans took those instructions to heart. They shot the band, they shot the fans, they shot their fellow camera operators. Four even took their cameras along on their bathroom breaks. ➡
    • French Headmaster Dooced The headmaster of a technical school in Lozere, France, has been dismissed after discovery of his anonymously-written weblog, which was deemed obscene and pornographic. Apparently he was discovered when he posted his photo in a recent entry. ➡
  • 2005
    • All Request Saturday Something about me you'd like to know? Something you'd like me to ramble on about? Pick a topic, any topic, and drop it in the comments. Come Saturday, I'll go through what (if anything) is there and start babbling. ➡
    • Prior art for ‘nofollow’ blocking Most of the time I see block-level 'nofollow' mentioned, credit has gone to Brad Choate's post from Feb. 2002. However, the idea itself dates as far back as Jan. 2001 in Zoltan Milosevic's Fluid Dynamics Search Engine. ➡
    • Battling the spammers After a comment spam attack brings my server to its knees, I rename the comment and trackback scripts only to have the attacks begin again as soon as the files are rebuilt and the spamming scripts target the new script location. This sucks a lot, and I'm really not sure where to go from here outside of disabling comments entirely on the affected sites. ➡
  • 2004
  • 2002
    • Evolution It's kind of a slow Saturday today, so Candice and I rented a couple movies to kill the day with. She's working on homework while I watch the flicks, and the first one I checked out was Evolution. ➡
  • 2001
    • A dark day for buttrock Well, just found out that Metallica's bassist has quit the band. I'm just kind of curious how long it'll take before we start hearing news stories about the majority of the Mat-Su valley slitting their wrists in dispair.... ➡
  • 1999
    • [From Usenet: 1.19.99 0000] Incidentally, she just provided the voice for one of the supporting characters in the animated film 'Prince of Egypt' - I figured it was her when I heard her sing, then checked the credits to be sure. ➡

On This Day: Jan 18

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 18…

There are 23 posts previously published on January 18th

  • 2024
  • 2021
    • What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol: “A collection of more than 500 videos [that] provide one of the most comprehensive records of a dark event in American history through the eyes of those who took part.” ➡
    • Martin Luther King Jr. Day A selection of quotes from and about MLK. ➡
  • 2020
    • Helping make Norwescon go! ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 18 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 18 ➡
  • 2018
    • Got a nice scarf from my brother @kevinhanscom – #cascadia plus a nice #joydivision #unknownpleasures tribute. Perfect! ➡
  • 2017
    • Book nine of 2017: Batman, by Craig Shaw Gardner. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
    • Book eight of 2017: Desolation Road, by Ian McDonald (@norwescon’s Writer Guest of Honor for #nwc40). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Today became a “laze around the house in pajamas” kind of day…which I’m entirely okay with. (18/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Probably a good idea, I’ll admit. ➡
    • Friends, snacks, and Cards Against Humanity. Not a bad Saturday evening! ➡
    • No clue what I was dreaming about, but I woke myself up at 1:20 AM by biting my tongue hard enough that I tasted blood. Got back to sleep eventually, and I can’t see any visible damage now, but the tip of my tongue is quite tender today! ➡
  • 2008
    • Google Transit: A for Effort… I need to walk a block, scale a chain-link fence, climb a hill, play Frogger across three lanes of northbound traffic, one express lane, and three lanes of southbound traffic on I-5, go down a hill, scale another chain link fence, hike through some woods, and swim across the lake on the NSCC grounds. ➡
  • 2007
    • TagMaps TagMaps is a really cool little toy from Yahoo's research labs that I just stumbled across. It's using heavy concentrations of tags on Flickr and overlaying them on a map, allowing you to zoom around the map and see how people have tagged their city. ➡
    • Melting Snowmelt on pine needles on the NSCC campus. ➡
  • 2005
    • rel=“nofollow” : Massive weblog anti-spam initiative Six Apart has announced in co-operation with Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and other blog vendors a massive joint anti-spam initiative based on the HTML link type rel='nofollow'. ➡
    • Tip of the Slung A very interesting thread popped up on MetaFilter yesterday (though I just found it this evening) after Las Vegas weatherman Rob Blair fumbled during a broadcast. ➡
    • Bank of America can kiss my ass Bank of America will get their money, as fast as I can get it to them without risking my health or home — and I'll be very happy not to do business with them in the future. ➡
  • 2004
    • Mars vs. Marriage As a long-time science fiction geek, I'd really like to get excited about the new emphasis on space exploration and research, and even a little more budgetary increase is better than none. Somehow, though, it comes across to me as nothing more than election-year grandstanding than something that's really going to have much impact. ➡
    • Washington Presidential Caucuses: Feb. 7th The Washington State Caucuses are coming up on February 7th. This is everyone's chance to help choose who will run against George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential election. ➡
  • 2002
  • 1994
    • [From Usenet: 1.18.94 0513] Where'd I get all the info? Lots of reading, and working in the only theatre in Alaska to have Dolby Digital installed. Anchorage's Fireweed theatre was at the time the biggest Dolby Digital installation on the West Coast. ➡

On This Day: Jan 17

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 17…

There are 28 posts previously published on January 17th

  • 2024
  • 2021
    • 📚 3/2021: Ringworld by Larry Niven ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1971 Hugo Best Novel This was one of my formative SF books of childhood, and for the most part, still holds up well, especially in the sheer mind-boggling nature of the Ringworld itself and the true alien-ness of the puppeteers. ➡
  • 2020
    • Goop’s Netflix series: It’s so much worse than I expected and I can’t unsee it: “Disclaimer: This review contains detailed information about the Netflix series the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow. If you plan to watch the show (please, don’t) and do not wish to know details in advance, this is not the review for ... Read more ➡
    • YouTube RSS: “1. First I find a YouTube channel I want to watch. 2. View its source code in my browser 3. Search for ‘channelid’ 4. And append the Channel ID to the end of this URL https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=“ ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 17 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 17 ➡
    • I’ll admit, I never was much for Thomas the Tank Engine…but I think I’m all sorts of interested in the reboot. ➡
    • They Should Have Sent A Poet… Every macOS wallpaper from Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah to macOS 10.15 Catalina combined ➡
  • 2019
    • Book five of 2019: The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1939 Retro Hugo Best Novel 📚 ➡
  • 2018
    • Book four of 2018: Wetware, by Rudy Rucker. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Book three of 2016: Seveneves by #nealstephenson. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (17/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Friday night of a three day weekend! Hope all of you enjoy yours. ➡
    • Really foggy morning today, the campus just seems to disappear. ➡
  • 2011
    • Moving to Ellensburg, Part III The moral of the story? If you're looking for rental properties in Ellensburg, _stay away_ from Ellensburg Property Management, LLC. Andrew at Hatlestad Investment Group, LLC, however? Originally, we thought he was good. No longer recommended. See update at the end of this post and comments from others. ➡
    • Moving to Ellensburg, Part II Okay. So at the end of Part I of this little adventure, I'd left off with ominous words about how moving in to the new apartment did not go smoothly. That's actually something of an understatement! ➡
    • Moving to Ellensburg, Part I Bet'cha you never expected _those_ words to come from me, did'ja? But you did, and this is the point where I can finally publicly ramble on about what I haven't been allowed to talk about until now. Here's the deal. ➡
  • 2010
    • Links for January 13th through January 17th Sometime between January 13th and January 17th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • U.S. Supreme Court to Rule on Petition-Signers’ Rights • Dispersion of Sound Waves in Ice Sheets • Here's to Planet Earth! Doomsday Clock Moved Back 1 Minute • Pat Robertson Cites Haiti’s Earthquake as What Happens When You ‘Swear a Pact to the Devil’ ➡
  • 2006
    • Disaffected! Disaffected! - a videogame parody of the Kinko’s copy store, a source of frustration from its patrons. Disaffected! puts the player in the role employees forced to service customers under the particular incompetences common to a Kinko’s store. ➡
  • 2005
    • Technorati Tags Change of plans as far as my keywords/tags project goes. Thanks to George's TechoratiTags plugin, I'm now listing tags in the metadata for each post, just underneath the title. The tags are drawn from the keywords for each entry, and clicking on any one of them will take you to that tag's Technorati search page. ➡
    • God Save the Queen According to Alabama's ABC affiliate, rap legend and actress Queen Latifah, well…just isn't looking herself lately. ➡
  • 2004
  • 2003
    • More color/code tweaking I've also managed to get the hide/show smileys function when leaving comments working, thanks to a new Scriptygoddess script (that I even helped debug — go me!), and I think (though feel free to correct me on this) that I've got the 'Remember Me' function when leaving comments fixed too. Just so all five (actually, I might be up to eight!) of my regular visitors won't have to keep entering their information into the form. ➡
    • TIA getting the smackdown I've mentioned the Total Information Awareness program a couple times here, usually in a context of horror and bemused amazement at a program so tailor-made for conspiracy theorists. ➡
    • Suckers How absolutely mindblowingly perfect is this? A French yacht taking place in a round-the-world sailing race was attacked by a giant squid. The perfect part? The trophy they're going for is the Jules Verne around-the-world sailing trophy. ➡
    • Sound familiar? Excellent op-ed piece over at Slate right now: Fool me twice — the press swallows a story. Be sure to read all the way through, of course. ➡
  • 2002
    • Enterprise: Silent Enemy It's just starting to seem like their desire to be the first explorers from space is getting in the way of their better judgement -- almost like they're afraid that if they do go back to earth, they won't be allowed to go play anymore. ➡
  • 2001
    • Lock, Stock and Logan’s Garden Stomper First off, just finished watching Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, which I borrowed from a co-worker. Absolutely hilarious little crime drama. Next off, three more DVD's to my collection. ➡
    • Things to remember while e-mailing This is another of the very few random e-mails I received that did not get immediately nuked...and I think not only is worth sharing, but should be the default new message in every freshly installed e-mail client across the internet. ➡

On This Day: Jan 16

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 16…

There are 30 posts previously published on January 16th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
    • The Tokyo 2020 Official Art Posters are fascinating, with a wide range of styles and imagery. I’m particularly fond of this one for the Paralympic games, which has a very retro-SF feel to it. A bonus: This 73-page, 15MB .pdf showcasing summer Olympic posters from 1896 to 2016. ➡
    • Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens: It’s the Real Deal: “Today, Mojo Vision announced that it has…put 14K pixels-per-inch microdisplays, wireless radios, image sensors, and motion sensors into contact lenses that fit comfortably in the eyes.” ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 16 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 16 ➡
    • How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy: “We’re in an age of manufactured nihilism. The issue for many people isn’t exactly a denial of truth as such. It’s more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth is ... Read more ➡
  • 2019
    • I’ve updated my post about Marie Kondo’s approach to cleaning out bookshelves with a few more thoughts, prompted by an article calling out the classist and racist undertones of the reactions to her advice. ➡
    • My stack of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award nominees has arrived! 📚 ➡
  • 2017
    • Playing with a set of silly clip-on phone camera lenses we got in Alaska (there were four sets on dad’s desk; we all assumed he’d meant them to be Xmas presents, and they got distributed among us all). Kinda chintzy, but could be fun to play with occasionally. ➡
    • Book seven of 2017: March, Book 3, by John Lewis. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Went outside long enough to shovel the driveway and fill the bird feeders. The rest of the day so far has been sitting in the library and reading (finishing Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves). Lunchtime looks amusingly juvenile, but hey, it works for me. (16/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Really pretty morning. Clear skies and sun after yesterday’s snow. ➡
  • 2014
    • Kicked back on the exercise bike doing my nightly ride while watching the newest episode of Bones. ➡
  • 2013
    • See Something? Check Snopes! So here's a little contribution I made to the world today, after seeing yet another Facebook friend sharing yet another easily disproven bit of misinformation. ➡
  • 2010
    • To: Pat Robertson. Your Pal, Satan. I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for January 15th through January 16th Sometime between January 15th and January 16th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • no news is bad news • Cool Stuff: Olly Moss’s Poster Remakes • Strong Women Steer Battlestar Galactica's Final Voyage • Little Progress on Adult Literacy • Top 10 Sci Fi Flicks For The Thinking Man (beerandscifi version) ➡
  • 2008
    • Make a Band (Altered) The title of whatever random Wikipedia page you land on is the name of the band. The last four words of the last quote on this page is the title of the album. The third image this Flickr search is the cover of the album (this will search Creative Commons Attribution licensed photos and sort them by interestingness). ➡
  • 2006
    • Martin Luther King Day Three items caught my eye today: The New Yorker's reprinted account of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; Dr. King's speech, which I'd never actually read in its entirety before; and dad's recollection of marching in a rally in Kokomo, IN, after Dr. King's assassination. ➡
    • Lost s02e10: The 23rd Psalm Scribbled notes while watching last Wednesday night's episode of Lost (yes, I know, almost a full week late...but this was my first chance to finally watch it). Spoilers, obviously, so only read further if you want to... ➡
    • Happy Battlestar Galactica Bunny I have _no_ idea where or when I found this, but it just turned up while cleaning out my 'downloads' directory. The middle one's my favorite. ➡
  • 2004
    • Oh, no, not again. I don't have time to rant about this like I'd really like to. As far as I'm concerned, though, getting Bush out of office should be the number one priority — and Nader just isn't the answer. He wasn't last election, and he won't be this election. ➡
  • 2003
    • Getting pissy… Would everyone mind too terribly switching over to webbrowsers that actually support CSS layout declarations properly? Mozilla, Netscape, Chimera, whatever. ➡
    • Colors aren't my strongpoint I'm experimenting with different colorschemes for the site. Colors outside of black and white just aren't my strong suit. ;) So this may go on for the next few days until I find something I settle on. Bear with me. ➡
  • 2002
    • Bad site slowdowns Okay -- if you're reading this, you may (or may have not) noticed that for some reason, my website is responding _incredibly slowly_ at the moment. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out just why this is happening yet. ➡
    • Too weird to be fake Now here's a headline that I don't think I could have made up if I tried: 'Jesus Charged With Bail Jumping, Intimidating Witness!' ➡
    • Resurrections I'm slowly but surely getting all the old posts that disappeared when I borked things up put back in. ➡
    • A good day for quotes, as it turns out Clearly he failed to reckon with an attention span deficit so profound it makes even a roomful of espresso-torqued toddlers with power tools seem focused by comparison. ➡
    • Another quote All we may say is, that the more purely an aesthete a man is, the more likely he is to prefer cats; since the superior grace, beauty, manners and neatness of the cat cannot but conquer the fancy of any impartial observer emancipated from mundane and ethical illusions. ➡
    • Spooky… The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. ➡