Eclecticism

Sometime between October 29th and November 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Meet Stephen King’S Gore Specialist: "King first tapped the Dartmouth-trained practitioner to help him fact-check the terrifying supervirus he'd conceived for The Stand. King knows better than anyone the golden rule for horror and sci-fi: Make it as real as possible. In Dome (out in November), King serves up generous portions of materials science, nuclear physics, and medicine. And that's where Dorr comes in. He's the geek behind the geek."
• xkcd: Movie Narrative Charts: "These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time." The Lord of the Rings box is the most impressive; also done for Star Wars (original trilogy), Jurassic Park, Primer, and 12 Angry Men.
• Obamas give out treats, fruit to White House trick-or-treaters: "This wasn't the first-ever Halloween event at the White House — Tricia Nixon hosted underprivileged children for the holiday, the Fords and Carters welcomed trick-or-treaters from charitable organizations like UNICEF — but it might have been the biggest. Thousands of 5- to 14-year-olds and their families paraded through the crescent-shaped driveway." This is really cool. More and more, the Obamas just seem like really nice people.
• 27-Inch iMacs Reported to Have Flash Playback Issues: "If you were contemplating buying one of those shiny new 27-inch iMacs, maybe don't pull the trigger just yet: according to Engadget, many proud new owners of the computer have become annoyed new owners, reporting pronounced problems in particular with Flash playback." I'm not having this problem myself (knock on wood), but it might be worth keeping an eye out to see how this progresses.
• An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All: "…there is no credible evidence to indicate that [the claim that vaccines harm children] is true. None. Twelve epidemiological studies have found no data that links the MMR vaccine to autism; six studies have found no trace of an association between thimerosal and autism, and three other studies have found no indication that thimerosal causes even subtle neurological problems. The so-called epidemic, researchers assert, is the result of improved diagnosis, which has identified as autistic many kids who once might have been labeled mentally retarded or just plain slow. In fact, the growing body of science indicates that the autistic spectrum…may largely be genetic in origin. […] But that hasn’t stopped as many as one in four Americans from believing vaccines can poison kids, according to a 2008 survey."
• Jan. 1984: How critics reviewed the Mac: John C. Dvorak, 19 Feb. 1984: "The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the 'why' out of the equation — as in 'why would I want this?' The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don't want one of these newfangled devices."

Sometime between October 27th and October 28th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Lovecraft 101: Get to Know the Master of Scifi-Horror: "You've heard about Cthulhu, and you've probably heard about the man who created this tentacled horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Now you want to try delving into the world of Lovecraft, but where to start? Let us help you."
• Couple Alive After Car Pins Them to Bed for Almost an Hour – CNN.com: "With motor fluid spraying their faces and the weight of a car numbing their bodies, two Nevada college students struggled to stay calm after a drunk driver allegedly tore into their home, ripping them from their slumber. Kristin Palmer and Trent Wood were asleep in their home last week when a motorist allegedly drove into their bedroom around 4 a.m., mistakenly believing it was his ex-girlfriend's home. The University of Nevada students spent almost an hour pinned between the car and their bed while emergency workers battled furiously to free them. Somehow, the two left the scene with relatively minor scrapes and burns — and a new lease on life, Wood said."
• Stephen King Brings an "American Vampire" Tale to Vertigo: "The idea behind 'American Vampire' is that vampires can evolve, and because King's vampire was turned in the Old West, he thrives in the sunlight of the desert and has powers that are distinctly American. 'As the vampire bloodline, over the last couple thousand years, has hit different populations at different times, it occasionally mutates into a new species of vampires,' Snyder explained. 'And so there's this whole secret family tree of different species besides the dominant one that we're aware of — the one that is the classic, nocturnal, blood-drinking, burned-by-the-sunlight species that came to dominate Europe."
• tron.fm: "Tron 1.5: Rise of the Virals" (Soundtrack): "'Rise Of The Virals' was a fantastic, but much darker storyline from the original — different from the 'Into The Machine' pitch made to Disney by another party. It involved updating the ENCOM universe to a networked system (thanks to the Internet), but also created a darker world — full of programs abandoned as buggy systems (or 'mutants') and abused by corrupt users as viral systems. Furthermore, the story included the death of Flynn and presented questions about the digital life of programs lasting beyond the mortality of their creators — the users."
• 500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error

Sometime between October 21st and October 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Underwater Land: "Enjoy seventeen delightful underwater themed songs, written by Shel Silverstein and sung by Pat Dailey for minnows of all ages. Featuring a beautiful 32-page booklet of previously unreleased Silverstein lyrics and illustrations, Underwater Land overflows with the zany humor and poignant wit that has made Shel Silverstein one of the world's most popular and best-loved children's authors of all time. Shel's longtime friend and collaborator Pat Dailey sings with a warmth and wit that will tickle the funny bones of small fry everywhere. No Silverstein collection is complete without this award-winning album. As the Parent's Choice Foundation enthused, 'When it comes to smart and funny family albums, this is the catch of the day!'"
• Maelstrom (1993 Video Game): "Maelstrom is a 1993 clone of Asteroids with an improved graphics and interface. It was created by Andrew Welch, president of Ambrosia Software, and led to the formation of that company. Many of Ambrosia's subsequent shareware titles followed in a similar formula."
• Minimal Mac: "Recently I decided to reorganize my home office by eliminating as many wires as possible. Here's a list of products I used to accomplish my goal"
• Left vs Right: "A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th)."
• Cutting Edge: Just What Is It About Adding Blades That Makes a Razor Better?: "It's all down to 'a phenomenon we refer to as hysteresis'. According to the Chambers Dictionary, hysteresis is 'the retardation or lagging of an effect behind the cause of the effect', or 'the influence of earlier treatment of a body on its subsequent reaction'. In shaving terms, this means that when a razor blade encounters a hair, it doesn't only cut through it, it also pulls it a little way out of its follicle. So if there's another blade following close behind, it will slice into the hair lower down the shaft, before it has had time to retract into the follicle. 'You've actually shaved below the skin level,' Stewart says. 'Can you ever get a closer shave with a single-edge cut-throat razor? In a stroke, no.'"

Sometime between October 16th and October 21st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Revised Code of Washington (RCW): "The Revised Code of Washington (RCW) is the compilation of all permanent laws now in force. It is a collection of Session Laws (enacted by the Legislature, and signed by the Governor, or enacted via the initiative process), arranged by topic, with amendments added and repealed laws removed. It does not include temporary laws such as appropriations acts."
• Justice Blocks Release of Ref. 71 Names: "Constitutional-law experts scrambled to apply meaning to an order issued Monday by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, temporarily blocking the release of the names of those who signed Referendum 71 petitions, in what has become a months-long legal back and forth."
• The New Literacy: Stanford Study Finds Richness and Complexity in Students’ Writing: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, Stanford researcher Andrea Lunsford finds that today's students are writing more than ever before — but it may not look like the writing of yesterday."
• Essay – the Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate: "A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the Large Hadron Collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."
• Eleanor Cameron vs. Roald Dahl: "From October 1972 to October 1973 a controversy over Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory simmered in the pages of The Horn Book. It began with an article, 'McLuhan, Youth, and Literature', by Eleanor Cameron, author of the Mushroom Planet series for children and of The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books. Spread out over the October, December, and February issues, it tied the ideas of Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage) to the confection of Charlie, calling it 'one of the most tasteless books ever written for children'. What followed was a knock-down, drag-out, letter-writing brouhaha, refereed by Horn Book editor Paul Heins, with librarians, parents, teachers, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Roald Dahl himself joining in, and it was one of the main causes of the book's revision that year."

Sometime between October 15th and October 16th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Copyright Website: "Welcome to the Copyright Website, the ultimate copyright portal. Endeavoring to provide real world, practical copyright information for over a decade.. Specialized information for webmasters, musicians, moviemakers, screenwriters, programmers and photographers. General copyright information for educators, students, web-surfers, re-mixers, mash-uppers and confused citizens."
• 5 Reasons It Sucks Being a Joss Whedon Fan: "I like me some Joss Whedon. I consider Angel and Firefly two of the best shows of the last 15 years. I 'grr, arg' along with the end credits every time. The man knows how to write dialog, how to make badasses of the doofiest of nerds, how to make sexpots of the most unlikeliest of actors. He is a ginger titan, a colossus bestriding the tube of boob. Joss Whedon knows how to make great television. If only he did it more consistently, and without all the accompanying bullshit …" The writer's a little too angry and vulgar for me to really enjoy how he writes, but as for what he writes? Dead on. Especially his first point, #5 on the list. It's one big, glaring reason why I can't really consider myself a Whedon fan anymore, and why I can't join the Dr. Horrible cheerleader's club.
• Business Unusual: Work That Skirt!: "In the beginning, there was the notion of just a single washable kilt. A loose, comfortable garment that, Steven Villegas says, 'I could walk around naked in.' And because you couldn’t just go out and buy a man-skirt in those days, Villegas made one. And when he saw how nicely it fit him, he wore the kilt to a Seattle nightclub. At the door a bouncer asked, 'Where can I get one of those?' And before he even got into the party, it occurred to Villegas: It’s a ballsy step, wearing a dress. Like Braveheart, only more so."
• Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.: Holy crap. I'm amazed at the dunderheaded stupidity of people in Seattle getting all uppity about gay marriage, and this kind of crap is going on in Louisiana? In 2009? "A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. 'I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way,' Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. 'I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.' Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said."
• Sublime Text: The Text Editor You’ll Fall in Love With: Good-looking text editor for Windows. May get installed on our Windows laptop, as I'm constantly searching for a decent Windows analog to TextWrangler, my primary text processor on the Mac.

Sometime between 09:25 and 16:56, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Is Science Fiction Feminized Or Is It Sexist? Both.: "Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's though the back door. Let's not start patting ourselves on the back because we can recognize rank sexism when we see it written by an anonymous guy on a radical right wing opinion blog. We can celebrate how far we've come from our sexist past when women and men are equally represented in the pages of science fiction anthologies. And when the next big, blow-em-up spaceship movie is written and directed by a woman. Until then, we have a lot of work to do. Work that involves challenging people who actually have the power to alter the course of SF as a genre. Work that is a lot harder than ridiculing an anonymously published blog post." Interesting, thoughtful response to the "women are killing sci-fi" blog post that I linked to the other day.
• Know Thy Enemy: They've introduced bigoted legislation, filed referendums, held rallies, and raised money—but they've never gotten around to explaining how gay couples actually hurt their marriages. They've also allegedly done things like failed to pay taxes, raised rents on the elderly, and beaten their wives. They say their battle is a righteous one, but these four crusaders are short on righteousness and long on catacombs in the closet.
• Photos: Rare Snapshots From Early Star Trek Conventions: A fun collection of old Star Trek convention snapshots, with accompanying audio.
• If God Had Wanted Me to Be Accepting of Gays, He Would Have Given Me the Warmth and Compassion to Do So: "I don't question God. The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall put none above Him. Which is why I know that if it were part of God's plan for me to stop viciously condemning others based solely on their sexual preference, He would have seen fit–in His infinite wisdom and all–to have given me the tiniest bit of human empathy necessary to do so. It's a simple matter of logic, really. God made me who I am, and who I am is a cold, anti-gay zealot. Thus, I abhor gay people because God made me that way. Why is that so hard to understand?" Oh, how I love the Onion.
• Hey, Marriage-Minded Teens! It’s Teen-Time!: "Teen-Time demonstrates a delightfully astonishing lack of understanding of its target market. Hilarious generalizations abound. The playing field centers around — where else? — a mall and a video store. But let's just cut right to the exquisite central absurdity of Teen-Time… the object of the game is to get engaged to be married before your fellow teens do. Seriously."
• I-1033 a Windfall for the Rich: "In August, the state Office of Financial Management estimated that in 2015, Eyman's initiative would force the state to refund $1.8 billion in property taxes. What the fiscal note didn't say — and which got no mention that I could find anywhere — is that the state only collects $1.8 billion in property taxes. It all goes to public schools. In Olympia they call it the 'state school levy.' What this means is that state economic forecasters have predicted Eyman's initiative would eliminate most if not all of the state school levy in five, maybe six years. That would be 25 percent of state school funding — gone."

Sometime between October 12th and October 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Dispatches From a Public Librarian.: "Libraries don't earn money for a city, but they do earn a city pride; they enrich lives; and most importantly, they help people get the skills they need to reenter the work force. In hard times, they shouldn't have limited service hours–they should have expanded services hours. When a person goes to a library to get help seeking employment, and they see a notice on the door that says that due to cutbacks the library is not open, it only adds to the persons frustration that there is no hope or places to go for the help that they need. […] Spread the word. If you approve this dispatch (or even if you hate it, but you like libraries) then start a Twitter trend—just tweet #savethelibrary."

• A Brief History of Gummy Bears: "In 1920, a poor confectionery factory worker in Bonn, Germany, decided that it was high time he struck out on his own. Armed with nothing but a bag of sugar, a marble slab, a kettle, an oven and a rolling pin, Hans Reigel began whipping up hard candies in his kitchen, which his wife would then deliver from the basket of her bike. The new company was called Haribo–a smash up of Hans Riegel of Bonn. After two years of middling profits, the Riegels realized that they'd need a gimmick and fast to keep competitive."

• Sendak, Ever-Untamed, Sees Wild Things Adapted: "'I advised [Jonze] to make more mischief, and he made more than most,' says Sendak. 'In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. And I did not want to reduce Max to the trite image of the good little boy that you find in too many books.' 'Maurice was our sort of mentor in this whole thing,' said Jonze. 'He was the one person that I really wanted to please. The thing that's so great about him is he wanted me, early on he said, `You need to make this your own. Don't worry about me, don't worry about the book, don't worry about what anyone else expects. You have to just make something bold and not pander to children and make something that's as dangerous for its time as the book was in its time.''"

• iTunesLP.net: "iTunes LPs are a new format introduced by Apple in version 9.0 of their popular iTunes software. The idea is to recreate the old LP experience by providing additional content such a lyrics, liner notes, photographs and other content. At this moment these iTunes LPs are available for a select list of new releases on the iTunes store. However we think it would be nice to have many older, out-of-print, obscure albums or albums on indie-labels to get the same experience; and with that in mind we started working on finding out exactly how this new format works, in order to share our results with the community."

• The War on "Real" Science Fiction: "…there is an undeclared war on real science fiction on TV and in movies. The former Sci-Fi channel, now 'Syfy', is a good example of what has been happening to science fiction on television. In 1998 Bonnie Hammer took over the Sci-Fi channel and declared that 'more female viewers were needed'. Over the next several years, the Sci-Fi channel became increasingly feminized losing many of its traditional male viewers in an attempt to go after women viewers. This included making the logos 'warmer and more human' because the logos before were 'too male and too dark'. The biggest change was in the feminization of the programming shown on the Sci-Fi channel." And that's just the beginning. Yup, modern science fiction sucks, and it's all the fault of the girls! Oh, and the gays, too! Girls and gays, ruining sci-fi for all us manly men, who just want to shoot aliens and each other. Girls should only be allowed when they're in peril, wearing skimpy clothing, waiting for us to rescue them.

• Kinder, Gentler Spider Eats Veggies, Cares for Kids: "Each of the world's 40,000 spider species survives by hunting and killing — except, that is, for Bagheera kiplingi, the world's first vegetarian arachnid. Found in Central America, the order-defying jumping spider eats nutrient-rich structures called Beltian bodies, which are found on the tips of Acacia trees. And that’s not all: It looks like B. kiplingi males help care for eggs and young — something entirely unprecedented in the spider world."

Sometime between October 7th and October 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Goodbye Halloween, Hello “Safety”: "'The bottom line is that I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,' says Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. The fear is completely unfounded."
• Eyman Initiative Gets an ‘F’ From Teachers: "'If this goes through, we will never recover money lost in this budget: We will never fund the class size initiative that voters passed,' said Meg Town, who teaches science at Redmond Jr. High. The teachers talked forcefully of what they do. It's a heckuva lot more than teach core classes five periods a day: The 'more' motivates students, opens up career choices, and keeps at-risk kids in school. The 'more' is what's getting whacked. The Legislature's budget is being felt now: The pains will be magnified and made permanent if voters approve Eyman's initiative."
• In Surprise, Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for Diplomacy: "The Nobel Committee announced Friday that the annual peace prize was awarded to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, 'for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.' The award cited in particular Mr. Obama's effort to reduce the world's nuclear arsenal. 'He has created a new international climate,' the committee said."
• Toys"R"Us Scolded for Gender Discrimination: "Last winter, a sixth grade class at Gustavslund school in Växjö in south central Sweden reported Toys'R'Us to the Reklamombudsmannen (Ro), a self-regulatory agency which polices marketing and advertising communications in Sweden to ensure they are in line with guidelines set out by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). According to the youngsters, the Toys'R'Us Christmas catalogue featured 'outdated gender roles because boys and girls were shown playing with different types of toys, whereby the boys were portrayed as active and the girls as passive', according to a statement from Ro."
• An Open Letter to the Guy Who Put Just a Geek the Audiobook on His Website for People to Steal: "I'm Wil Wheaton. I wrote Just A Geek, and I created the audiobook you're helping people steal. You may not know this, but I 'm just one guy, without a publisher, so when you help people steal this copy of Just A Geek by making it available for download, you're basically stealing directly from me. You're not stealing from some big publisher with deep pockets who is trying to rip you off with overpriced stuff; you are stealing directly from me, an indie artist and publisher who counts on every sale to make a living. I have to tell you, guy-who-I-won't-link-to-for-obvious-reasons, what you're doing sucks. It sucks a lot."