January 2003 Archives

I'm no fan of the Nation Review, but this Jonah Goldberg image cracked me up:

(In case you want to test the query, yes, it's fake, but it's still hilarious.)

Hello, this is your captain speaking.

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING OUT WITH HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH SUBSIDIARY.

MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT COST.

THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND JAPANESE PARTNERS.

BUT MY FATHER'S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER.

UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000 - $200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT.

WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, RICHARD CHENEY, WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER HEAD OF THE ALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER.

I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH (15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL.

I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CO-OPERATE IN THIS TRANSACTION, PLEASE CONTACT OUR INTERMEDIARY REPRESENTATIVES TO FURTHER DISCUSS THE MATTER.

I PRAY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND OUR PLIGHT. MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL. PLEASE REPLY IN STRICT CONFIDENCE TO THE CONTACT NUMBERS BELOW.

SINCERELY WITH WARM REGARDS,

GEORGE WALKER BUSH

Switchboard: 202.456.1414

Comments: 202.456.1111

Fax: 202.456.2461

Email: president@whitehouse.gov

I was merely challenging his assumption that American audiences like the crap they're fed by network TV. Mr. Goodman's analysis implies that while he has perfectly good taste, network programming can be explained by demand created by other Americans who actually enjoy it. Who are these hypothetical people, we ask?

There's no use denying it any longer. Elijah Wood is very, very gay.

Once again I am into the thick of a new project, coauthoring a technical book. As is often the case, I can't discuss the title or topic in public just yet, but of course I will do so as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I expect my blogging to either drop off (as I wait till completing me contractual writing quota each day before touching blogspace) or pick up (as I procrastinate furiously). No promises either way.

You can probably expect a lot of agonizing posts about deadlines and how yucky there are too, as this thing goes along (my schedule, I think it's safe to say, runs from now until about May).

Scot Hacker has posted a series of photos from the antiwar protest in S.F. yesterday.

Great images. A fine contrast to the sourmouthing coming from the pro-war crowd.

I didn't attend. B wanted to bring a sign saying "No Bush War on the Environment" but we didn't have it together. Let the tea-leaf readers interpret that as a vote of support for the powers that be at their peril.

So, Scot, were there closer to 50,000 people there or 350,000?

It wasn't the first time I failed to close a tag correctly (in this case the STRONG tags surrounding the song same in the template for iTunes listings), and it won't be the last time, but I've fixed it now, so here's another example:

I did something very bad to Internet Explorer 2.2 for the Mac and now it crashes whenever it tries to start up. I downloaded a replacement and installed it but the problem remains. Something in the configuration or preferences must be triggering the problem, I suppose.

As side effect of this is that I'm using Chimera and Safari a lot more, which makes me face up to the design problems with this and other pages.

No progress, yet, but at least I'm facing up to them, right?

It's funny, though, that I'm experiencing this as a forced fast. I'm sort of waiting to see if I feel a need to get IE working again. About the only thing it has that I might like to have is up-to-date cookies in the Well's web interface (Engaged) so that I don't have to find my place again in the few conferences I've been able to keep up with lately (mostly flame.ind).

I guess if it gets to be enough of a problem, I'll deal with it. For now I'm preferring Chimera over Safari, and that's not just because my design for RFB renders badly in Safari.

before:

Birdcage from the album "Shmo's Sampler" by Stew and the Negro Problem

after:

OK. Now to post and test the search links.

When I feel like referring to or quoting from the music I'm listening to at the moment, I want the reference to be succinct and to link to a search for the song title, album name, and band or artist name (as opposed to just a search for the band name).

This format is still not as nice-looking at Scot Hacker dotted boxes:

x

Random example of distracted markup: &&and&;

I'm sure the Gettysburg Powerpoint is already a well circulated meme, but it's new to me, and such a perfect send up of the reductive power of slideshows as communication tools that I could not resist linking to it here.

For readers of my X-POLLEN blog via (an RSS) news feed, which includes LiveJournal friends reading the xpollen user Mark Pasc setup for me, I apologize for the way the feed just resent something like seventeen recent posts.

I just made a minor administrivial change to this blog's archiving nomenclature. Posts are now stored in calendar directories (YYYY/mm/dd, of course, so they sort intuitively) with the filename for the single-post archive file constructed from the entry title, which makes the raw URL a tad more comprehensible. This replaces a serial system in which a typical post would be called /000171.html or something like that.

The new format rides on the URL, saying "this is a post about whatever_the_filename_says posted on mm the ddth, in the year of our Lord 20YY). The old one said "this was xian's 171 post (give or take 40 or so comments and who knows how many deleted drafts)."

But this is inside baseball.

And completely irrelevant to LiveJournal users, who ordinarily don't have to deal with URLs like that and see my blog as one of their friends in their own personal design.

What I'm more concerned about is that I hope MT did not take it upon itself to delete the old-form addresses for the first 56 posts or so, as that would of course break any external links pointing into the site. The storage hit is minor to accommodate duplicates of those original posts, though there's a chance of splitting subsequent followup comments before old and new locations, so may I should think about using symbolic links or mod_rewrite to redirect incoming links set to the old, serial URLs.

What is annoying is that I specifically declined to "rebuild" the static site Movable Type's becaused I knew I had to work out a backup or migration plan for the address changes and had not done so yet (in my lurching, hurry-up-and-wait progress). Still, it seems that I goofed or MT took it upon itself to regenerate the pages, at least for the RSS news feed, so that's why I'm worried.

In the worst case, if MT munged the old URLs outright, then I may have a tedious cleanup job ahead of me. If both versions coexist, then I can work out a better solution in due time.

At this point even my eyes begin to glaze over.

Recommended Thursday morning pickup: Patti Smith doing Land of 1000 Dances (sort of).

A passing police siren summons up a strange being dragged away from my computer door knocked in dystopian fantasy image momentarily, before it is dispelled by a feeling of "surely not here."

"Divine to define, she's moving to divine. So say so. So say so."
The Great Curve, Talking Heads

To the people I referrred to in Outrage over Pete Townsend, who are busily debating the story over in the discussion area of my Pete Townsend reviews Kurt Cobain's diaries entry, I feel that I should pass along this report from the Smoking Gun, which lends at least some credence to Townsend's vapid-sounding defense that he was conducting ill-advised research.

But what of the other viewpoint, that he is merely one of the many people on the Internet simultaneously drawn to and repelled by images of transgressive or otherwise taboo sex and/or violence?

Because he condemns something does not necessarily mean that he is not at the same time a consumer of it. We have Marianne Faithfull's word that he's not a hypocrite but what is that worth?

Will Pete be the O.J. of the pedophile set?

It now appears that the one-time Camper Van Beethoven reunion shows last fall were some kind of dry run for a more substantial reunion.

Look at all the tour dates listed at the Cracker site.

The show I saw was a great nostalgia trip for me and it seemed to be an almost religious experience for some of the younger folks who missed out on seeing CVB before their untimely breakup around 1989 or '90.

Still, like any reunified band, if they don't work up some new material, the act is going to get stale. Since they were always pretty tight, despite a kind of jammy-loose feel to their arrangements, I thought the show felt a bit like a re-tread, even with Jonathan Segel (I know I always misspell his last name) once again in the band.

Still, it looks like Andrew Bayer may get a chance to see them after all this time around.

Scot Hacker has posed a provocative thought-experiment to his readers who defend video games that depict killing. In his post entitled Just Pretending he asks which is worse, rape or murder. Then he asks whether it would be OK for children to play rape games.

This has spawned an active discussion, at the birdhouse and elsewhere, including a long debate in LiveJournalspace.

Where do you come down on this?

Here's something odd. Back in November I posted a link to Pete Townsend's review of Kurt Cobain's diaries. Now that the pedophile (or paedophile, for British readers) arrest story has broken, it seems that people must be Googling his name and somehow finding their way to my old post.

Even though it was written about an entirely different topic, because it mentions Townsend, it has now spawned a growing discussion area. Weird.

Obviously people need to express themselves and stories like these stir up strong feelings (although if you want to see a livelier debate with strong feelings expressed on both sides, check out this Kuro5hin thread, where I'm surprised to see so many defending borderline practices), so I don't really mind that this is going on, but I do wonder about the thought process (and the literal clickthrough process) that has led some of my commenters to my site.

I always wondered how to pronounce Tufte.

(Thanks to plasticbag.org for the pointer.)

One day I'll need to come up with a big list of sites that track memes, especially those that do so automatically or semiautomatically (as opposed to sites like Metafilter and half the weblogs in the universe that track memes all the time by virtue of their infectious passing of memes from one to another).

The latest is the coolly named (yet awkwardly spelled) Memeufacture.

The set of categories included is somewhat strange, but I assume it will grow. Right now your choices are Influential, Politics (Right), Politics (Left), Apple, and Law.

Just asking.

The condensed parody version of the Two Towers is densely witty. Here's a snippet:

TREEBEARD: We have opted, hoom, not to do a damn thing.

PIPPIN: I didn't expect that.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOK: Neither did I...

New current favorite blog of note: shrevie hoister's LiveJournal. Jump in anywhere. Looks like shrevie's been backfilling to 1995. Random shards of a mind (and fingers, and probably toes) at work, good linkage.

Brain says: yummy.

A recent forwarded newspaper article singing the ills of birdfeeders had us going for a while. If we had read more closely or paid more attention to the source (the Wall Street Journal), we may have more easily seen it in the light presented by Laura Erickson's Wall Street Journal Bird Feeding Article Distorts Truth.

Reading a Buffy spoiler fan website today, I encountered an unfamiliar term: shipper. I know what slash fiction is (having stumbled on a book about k/s fanfic in the Princeton library a good 20 years ago), and I gather a shipper is someone who either likes to write slash fiction or who at least likes to read it.

See Carnal-Sins, for an example of a Spike/Buffy shipper site.

Hey, why are we letting out-of-staters choose our California Quarter Design?

Some of these are hilarious. Apparently Davis will pick one from the top 5 vote getters.

You'll hate this test but it gets more accurate with each submission. It was 86% sure I'm a man, close to my own level of certainty. A somewhat girly man perhaps (fairly near the middle on the linear scale — must be that preference for a blue bedroom over white), but a man nonetheless. Hear me roar!

I'm so out of it. After returning from a week and a half in New York I'm still reading The Gawker but without that same sense of immediacy (not that it matters where you are when you read about New York, and not that that prevents me from reading the Times, the Nation, the New Yorker, and so on).

So it figures I'd stumble on Matt Haughey's latest project, Ticketstubs, a collaborative site designed to collect stories centered around or illustrated with scanned ticketstubs, only from catching up with the Gawker.

It immediately succeeds in one of those key measurements of web site liveliness: can you get your readers to contribute the content?

Maybe if I finish my homeland-security blog entry ever I can upload the movie tickets from the Orpheum where my wallet disappeared and then submit the story there.

It looks like Slate launched a feature called Meme Watch back in November and refers, semifacetiously, to a MemeTracker&tm; device. Hey, as long as they pay us royalties!

No, honestly, the more of us tracking memes the better. Timothy Noah's latest column observes the ups and downs of the "Lucky Duckies" meme:

Meme Watch: Bushies Get Cold Feet - The "tax the poor" movement goes underground. By Timothy Noah