Cranezilla --Mark Crane's collection of rarely annotated links

It is possible that cool hunters will track down someone in the right demographic, capture their painted clogs, and some global brand will commodify painted shoes and sell them worldwide. This is fine! It means more people will be wearing large numbers of random colors! At that point, we can move on to painting shirts, pants, and hats. If the commodification engine wants to chew it all up, terrific! The world will be a more colorful place, and we can think of new ways to make art out of our lives.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 29, 2002 |

I've been thinking about small acts that can infect people with more goodwill. I remembered an ironic joke. You know how someone cuts you off in traffic and you lean on the horn, or even give them the finger? Have you ever thought that the person you insulted might do the same thing to another person, in traffic or elsewhere, and that wave of bad vibes you initiated propagates through the world? The punch line to the joke is "...and eventually it all ends up in the Middle East."

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 29, 2002 |

Unlike the current crop of Pocket PCs, the Zaurus can not play MP3's or other 'real' audio thru the internal speaker. You must listen thru headphones. The internal speaker is a piezo buzzer which means that it will really only play beeps, boops and clicks. To me this is very disappointing because I want to be able to be able to set alarm sounds that are more interesting then the lame phone ringer one that is included. I also want to play games that have great sound without having to wear earphones. That said, the stereo output thru headphones sounds great! I think the Zaurus has the best sound quality for playing MP3's of any PDA that I've tested so far. The volume level is also quite good. Compared to my HP 565 and iPAQ 3670, it is about 10% louder than the HP and about 20% quieter than the iPAQ. I never listen to MP3's on the highest volume setting anyway, so I find the levels to be perfect.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 29, 2002 |

"An 802.11 [Wi-Fi] base station does about as much [as a 3G celltower] for $500 instead of $2 million." He believes Wi-Fi is more likely to be the dominant carrier for broadband multimedia. So what about voice, I wonder? Ito responds immediately - "IP phones that use 802.11b!"

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 27, 2002 |

The thing is, I already know you, Todd. You moved out here from suburban Conneticut, and you love it here in the Bay, and you're really politically progressive and are loving the new Coup album. Bo-ring. It's not that you're a bad person or anything, but does West Oakland really need anymore liberal white folks who love living in such a "multicultural" neighborhood? We have nothing against white folks as such, but as it is, we already have two in the house, which I think you'll agree is more than enough.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 26, 2002 |

They must’ve felt it, too, because we received an unexpected standing ovation afterward.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 26, 2002 |

After using the software enough, I started to dream about it at night; it was like weaving every day for months. With the interpolation disabled, I chipped away at passing subway lights and faceted reflections of my own face in windows, frame by frame. I barely dipped my toe in the grueling task of the animation. A minute of the film could take up to 250 hours to animate, and some of the scenes are long, often created by a single artist.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 26, 2002 |

"When the outside temperature is 93 degrees, even with a window cracked the temperature inside a car can reach 125 degrees in just 20 minutes and approximately 140 degrees in 40 minutes," Bailey said. She advised parents never to leave children in a car in any weather, nor allow them to play in or around cars. Cars should always be locked, even at home, she said. And to avoid burns to children's skin, parents should check seats before placing youngsters in cars.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 26, 2002 |

On the tram last night I saw it, after hours in the office reading. So simple, so powerful: it will explain everything I'm trying to write about. I scribbled down notes with a borrowed pen and shone the whole way home. I fell asleep thinking about the details, my whole body glowing with the beauty of it. I've been writing all morning, in between kids chirping merrily and peering over my shoulder and my partner getting grumpier and grumpier at my asocial behaviour. But what about X? Am I confusing this with that? And how can I think about Y? It's going to take a lot of work to explain it so people can understand both the simplicity and the depth of it. Anxiety: it can't be that good. Thinking it's good is hubris, it'll be hacked apart as punishment, they'll laugh at it. No. They won't, and even if they did: It is good.
I can't tell you about it yet. It might fall apart. Later. If it bears the weight of thought.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

What is going to happen to equality of opportunity when a non-musically enhanced child aspires to be a musician, which has become not just the territory of a guild of musicians, but of a subspecies of musicians whose total genetic identity is tied up in that form of life?

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

A 3,000-seat bunker located under the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is another unsolved mystery. (The cathedral was demolished by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s; it is now being rebuilt.) "We were not allowed to go there, although the cathedral dean asked us to take out a sealed container with communist slogans on it," says Mikhailov. The dean called it the "anti-capsule," in the same tone he would use to speak of the anti-Christ. Mikhailov would have liked to explore, but "officers from the Kremlin guard said that nothing under the church threatened the safety of the building, and so they did not allow us to go down."

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

Our super-well descendants, by contrast, will enjoy a glorious spectrum of new options. They may opt to combine emotional stability, resilience and "serotonergic" serenity, for instance, with the goal-oriented energy, optimism and initiative of a raw "dopaminergic" high. Post-humans will have discovered that euphoric peak experiences can be channelled, controlled and genetically diversified, not just medically suppressed.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

Sadly, in today's "bipolars" manic exuberance can spin out of control. Euphoria may be accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

The Fun Team has been tasked with identifying ways to improve morale within the company. One of the suggestions we have been working on is bringing back paper products, including plates, forks and cups.
In lieu of providing paper cups, the Fun Team elected to provide everyone with a CoreComm insulated travel mug. As each employee will be issued only one mug, please be sure to secure your mug, especially if you are sharing a workstation.
The mugs are now available and you can pick up your mug from _______ or _______ at the 4660 building Receptionist Desk at any time.
Paper plates and forks will be following shortly...
If you would like to share your morale building ideas with the Fun Team, please let me know!
Thanks!

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

Today was the big Pit Fire at Bolsa Chica Beach with Master of Ceremonies, Joe Soldate. Joan brought drinks, Preston brought his guitar, I brought a shovel...there were about a dozen of us...and everyone pitched in and brought ingredients of their own.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

I remember seeing a home made recumbant based on a ~4 inch diameter pvc drain
pipe. The builder cut a slot in the pipe for the rear wheel. Everything was
bolted on. Hole cut for the head tube for the steering. Hole cut for a
bottombracket shell. Holes drilled for the seat supports. Simple and cheap.
Looked a little flexible for that comfortable ride.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 25, 2002 |

If there is a reason, it has to come from the competitive nature of Bill Gates as Microsoft's spiritual and ethical leader. Everything is a competition to Bill, and every competition has a winner and a loser. Microsoft people have always been encouraged to see the game, not the consequences, and to win the game even if winning this way makes no sense.

Let me give an example of this behavior. In the early days of Microsoft, one of the popular games was to see how late the boys could leave work for the airport and still make their flights. These weren't people who were habitually late, they were playing a game. The eventual winner was Bill Gates, of course, but to win he had to abandon his car at the departures curb.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 24, 2002 |

Of course, you still need bandwidth, and the more the better, but very few applications make good use of the mega-amounts available to DSL users. Downloads are faster, as are uploads to peer-to-peer file sharing systems, but a couple hundred kilobits-per-second is plenty for anything else except watching movies or intensive gaming. So it must be the non-movie downloading non-networked game players Covad is targeting with its new TeleSurfer Link product, which offers 200 kilobits-per-second downstream and 64 kilobits-per-second upstream. The introductory price in the U.S. is $21.95 per month, rising to $39.95 per month after we stop noticing the charge on our credit card bill. That's AOL kinda money for what amounts to DSL Lite.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 24, 2002 |

The converts include George Meireles, 44, a Millington, N.J., luxury-home builder. He initially resisted getting an RV, worried that it might be too confining and spartan for his taste. Finally relenting after Sept. 11, Meireles purchased an RV with leather interior, satellite dish, microwave and a washer-dryer.
His family of five recently returned from a trip to Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Canada, and hopes to visit Florida and the Western states sometime soon.
"He's enjoying it more than I am," said his wife, Chrissy, 34, who grew up camping in tents and relished the idea of showing her young children the great outdoors. "We feel like we've bought a condo on wheels."

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 24, 2002 |

"Powered looms were what took weavers out of cottages. How could they put them back in?"
Stratton had not spoken of this before, and welcomed the opportunity to explain. "The cost of automatous engines has always been high, and so we have mills in which scores of looms are driven by an immense coal-heated Goliath. But an automaton like mine could cast engines very cheaply. If a small automatous engine, suitable for driving a few machines, becomes affordable to a weaver and his family, then they can produce cloth from their home as they did once before. People could earn a decent income without being subjected to the conditions of the factory."

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 24, 2002 |

IBM said that 90% of CF cards are not compatible? I've used an IBM Microdrive in there that didn't work. IBM advertises that it supports the Microdrive. Everybody should call IBM, the number is 1-800-772-2227. Feel free to mention that a lot of other people are having this problem. You might ask to speak to the supervisor, that's who I had to speak to before I got any answers.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 22, 2002 |

When I got home the first thing that I did was plug the device in to external power. Sometimes that works, but in this case it did not. Time to look in the User Manual. The User Manual says that if the battery switch is not locked the device will not turn on. A quick check underneath the WorkPad and I found that the battery switch was in the unlock position. I switched it to locked, and the device turned on. I might have left it unlocked when I removed the battery earlier.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 22, 2002 |

It is a Handheld PC Professional, meaning that it comes with the latest version of the Windows CE operating system for Handheld PCs that includes all the Pocket Outlook and Pocket Office applications, including Pocket Access. IBM bundles bFax Pro, bPrint and bUSEFUL Backup Plus with the device. The device automatically starts a "Print to bFax or bPrint" application that you find on the system tray. When I checked the System icon I noticed that half of the 8 MB of program memory was in use, presumably from this app, so I shut it down.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 22, 2002 |

What's the secret of success in the toy industry? A toy idea is only "about 10 percent of this exercise," he says. "Ninety percent is the marketing of it -- getting it together, getting it out." Word-of-mouth can be more important than any ad campaign, and the landscape can change quickly. Levy says he keeps a close watch on popular culture, and uses social trends for inspiration.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

In 1998, one toy caused near riots at Christmas time -- an interactive, animatronic creature called the Furby. You can blame Richard C. Levy and his colleagues for the panic. He licensed and co-developed the Furby. More than 40 million have been sold in 57 countries, and the Furby can interact with humans in seven languages.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

"I saw Rodney and he was speaking with a whole group of customers," said Corey Johnson, Power On's operations manager. "He had gathered a crowd. His speaking skills were something to behold. He could really keep people's attention. He was selling Macs to several people there at the same time.
"It was like preaching. He was preaching the Mac gospel. He was showing them the light, which is something people don't get when they go into CompUSA. It was really quite something. When I saw that, I said we really have to hire this guy."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

After a history of doing what they could to "pass" for white, Melungeons are now doing just the opposite and staking claim to the identity. The lighter complexions are at least in part due to Melungeons mixing with fairer-skinned people.
"The neighbors with more money tried to keep their sons and daughters away from us, but we were just so cute they couldn't do it," said Wayne Winkler, president of the Melungeon Heritage Association.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

So what is it that people actually do in big houses? Gopal Ahluwalia, a vice president in charge of research for the Washington-based National Association of Home Builders, has been studying that question for decades.
"People use the kitchen, the family room and the bedrooms," he said. "Beyond that, there is very limited use of the house."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

By the bigger-than-big standards of houses in the suburbs of Washington, the Banners are not living all that large, although their house does have six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, two home offices, a wine cellar, a media room and four 21-foot-high "Gone With the Wind" columns on the veranda. All for two adults and two children.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

"That's not the case here, I'm telling you. They home in on a person like a spider and spin a web around him

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

What new and relevant information did this meeting provide?

"That the environmental factor is the key - not the socioeconomic situation, or whether they're working or unemployed, or the years of oppression and built-up frustration, or whether they're educated or not. These parameters have weight, but it is marginal. Above all, it has to do with the person's character and how susceptible he or she is to pressure and persuasion. There's an entire system with its sights set on this satanic aim. It operates entirely in order to produce human bombs. As soon as they identified him as suitable, they trapped him like a fish in a net. These suicide bombers aren't created out of nowhere. They aren't born like that. The Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim and Hamas find them. It's the most cynical and cruel exploitation of human lives, of young people's lives especially. The weak, like him, are caught."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

He listens, but doesn't say anything. She sighs. "What will become of me? I have no future. I don't want my whole life to be ruined because of this. I'm at the beginning of life. I didn't do anything. Don't forget that. I didn't do it. I changed my mind. Please, let me out."

"To each his fate," Ben-Eliezer says, and then he leaves the room.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

Ben-Eliezer: "Explain to me why you wanted to commit a suicide bombing in Israel. Was it for religious reasons?"

Ahmed: "No, it was something personal. I was in distress. I was depressed."

Ben-Eliezer: "Why did you want to commit suicide?"

Ahmed: "You [Israelis] killed my friend."

Ben-Eliezer: "Was he a close friend of yours?"

Ahmed: "Yes. We were friends for a year and a half."

Ben-Eliezer: "Did you live together?"

Ahmed: "No, of course not. There's no such thing in our society. But we were friends. And he was killed."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

Ben-Eliezer: "If Yasser Arafat called for a halt to suicide bombings, would it have any effect on you?"

Stiti: "No. It's a religious imperative from Allah. It has nothing to do with whether Arafat says yes or no. Allah supersedes everyone." He thinks for a moment and continues: "But maybe if he did call for it to stop, we might think twice about it."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

They were supposed to carry out the attack together. Mahmoud Salem instructed Badir to blow himself up amid the backgammon tables on the open plaza. Arin was supposed to wait on the other side of the street for the people who weren't killed or injured in the first explosion to run in a panic toward where she was standing. The expectation was that she would soon be surrounded by a large crowd. Then she was to choose the right moment and blow herself up.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

U.S. Middlemen Demand Protection From Being Cut Out
WASHINGTON, DC—Some 20,000 members of the Association of American Middlemen marched on the National Mall Monday, demanding protection from such out-cutting shopping options as online purchasing, factory-direct catalogs, and outlet malls. "Each year in this country, thousands of hard-working middlemen are cut out," said Pete Hume, a Euclid, OH, waterbed retailer. "No one seems to care that our livelihood is being taken away from us." Hume said the AAM is eager to work with legislators to find alternate means of passing the savings on to you.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 21, 2002 |

Having said that, why can't Apple take its genius to the next level and bring out a completely new machine that is not a Macintosh? The answer is obvious if we look at recent history and compare it to the era when the Mac was invented. Here's the problem. This supposedly creative business of high technology has invented nothing that compares with the Xerox Star in over 20 years. All the R&D money has been diverted, mismanaged, killed by zealous bean counters, or simply wasted. Most of the big R&D labs have been closed or cut back. All the R&D seems to be in semiconductor technologies, which is because that particular business is more of a psychopathic rat-race than anything else and you get eaten by the rats if you miss a step.

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 20, 2002 |

Definition:
According to New York psychologist Herbert J. Freudenberger, PhD., who coined the term, burned is a state of fatigue or frustration brought about by a devotion to a cause, a way of life, or a relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 20, 2002 |

Ballmer has always been a tough boss. He's known for eviscerating business plans at annual reviews, sometimes humiliating execs in the process. One former top exec says he'd rather put his arm in a food processor than work for Ballmer again. "Steve is a pain in the ass to work for," the exec says. Ballmer says he's trying to improve. "A lot of people would like to see me balance a little bit more the fun side with the tough side," he says. "I think I've hit a better balance than I had in the past."

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 20, 2002 |

I had a great physics teacher in 11th grade. He was funny and also lazy, since it was last period. He was also an avid golfer, so it was easy to get him off track by asking him about that. "Lot of physics in golf!" he'd always say. We'd also watch some golf on TV at the beginning of class on Thursday and Friday, and he let us watch the Ryder Cup all class when it was on.

He also wrote awesome word problems--about car crashes, trucks driving off cliffs, etc.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

My chemistry teacher did this a few times. He took a small tub of water and put some soapy stuff in it so make it bubbly. He then took a hose from one of the natural gas lines and fed it into the water. He turned the gas on and boom, you get big bubbles filled with natural gas.

Then we would cover our hands with the soapy material (Not the one that was in the gas water) so we could hold a huge amount of these gas bubbles. Then we'd shut off the gas line, put on goggled, hold out the bubbles in front of us and then someone would light it on fire. Instantly we held a fireball the size of a small car which burned for about 3 seconds in our hands. The heat was amazing but didn't hurt us. That was the coolest shiat ever. Most times the fire would hit the ceiling and crawl alone until the remaining gas from the bubbles had burned out. Breaking the fire code? Hell yes, but it was farking fun and that was the reason why I didn't skip class.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

"Oh oh. Two independent thought alarms in one day. The students are overstimulated. Willie! Remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms."

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

Late at night, and we tried this experiment many times, he took us out to show us a chemical reaction involoving unstable light metals and water. We threw pieces of sodium metal onto a frozen lake.....Kaboom. We really dug the firey explosion. All those loose electrons are just so unstable. We ahd to repeat the experiment to make sure we had our calculations correct.

I then majored in chemistry. Got a 5 in the AP exams and entrance in to Cornell engineering.Mr Norton had the right idea about getting kids intrested in chemistry.

The administrators canned him.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

My eighth grade chemistry teacher got in trouble for an experiment she did for us. We were standing in the middle of a soccer field, with goggles and aprons on, as we should be. She dropped a baseball-sized piece of pure sodium into a bucket of water, to show us how violent some chemical reactions can be. If you haven't seen this done, it's very cool. The sodium and water react with each other, producing loads of hydrogen. The heat from the reaction ignites the hydrogen. That one lump of sodium made a 4-foot diameter fireball above the bucket.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

So he built a potato cannon, big deal. My chemistry teacher used to sniff chloroform and walk around in a stupor. The lesson here is, never allow the press into your work place.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

Fred Trujillo, the security director at the Shriners Hospital, told CNN he saw a car being driven in a suspicious way and trained a camera on it for several minutes.
A second car arrived and there appeared to be some interaction for a few moments before both cars drove away, Trujillo said. Police said the tape is of poor quality because of the low light conditions.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

The night of the abduction, police said the suspect carried a small dark handgun and wore a Polo brand shirt, tan pants, dark shoes and tan cap. He had dark hair on his arms and the back of hands, they said, and was described as calm but "concerned others would awake."
Atkinson showed reporters a pair of white Ralph Lauren tennis shoes, saying they were nearly identical to the ones Elizabeth Smart was wearing when she left that night.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

P.S. I realize that in most people's imagination and the current conventional wisdom, the Camp David talks are an obvious example of a fair and rejected offer of a Palestinian state. See my recent NYRB links.

The short and long of it is, Israel's present belligerent stance, and especially its mockery of the principles of Oslo (which, no secret, Sharon always hated) makes Palestinians rightly dubious that any "state" will end the might-makes-right military occupation. As Saeb Erekat (I think) said recently, the Palestinians don't want a "state" that features incursions, assassinations, home demolitions, random violence against Palestinian civilians, suspension of due process, etc.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |

How to calculate amortization tables by hand

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 18, 2002 |

Dr Livingstone wrote that Africans he encountered were aware that consciousness is not lost immediately. He recounts how they bent a springy sapling and tied cords from it under the ears of a man to be decapitated so that his last few moments of awareness would be of flying through the air.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 18, 2002 |

How long is the interval of consciousness after the head is severed? In France, in the days of the guillotine, some of the condemned were asked to blink their eyes if they were still conscious after the knife fell. Reportedly, their heads blinked for up to 30 seconds after decapitation. How much of this was voluntary and how much due to reflex nerve action is speculation. Most nations with science sophisticated enough to determine this question have long since abandoned decapitation as a legal tool.

Dale McIntyre, University of Cambridge



Answer
Antoine Lavoisier, the French chemist who lived between 1743 and 1794, was caught up in the revolution and faced beheading. He asked friends to observe closely as he would continue blinking as long as possible after being killed. He was reported to have blinked for 15 seconds after decapitation.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 18, 2002 |

The wild rhetoric about enslaving the poor and bankrupting the economy to do climate policy is fallacious, even if one accepts the conventional economic models," Schneider told New Scientist. He says the economic arguments need to be put in context, and called on climate scientists to take a tougher stand against the doom-mongers who say action would be too costly.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 18, 2002 |

Never mind that his stint in the Bluegrass State was a mistake - that Huang's aunt and uncle, recent immigrants to Tacoma, Washington, who spoke little English, unwittingly sent him to a reform school instead of a prep school. He got three meals a day and escaped the violence and civil unrest his parents faced, first in Taiwan, then in Thailand. "Wow. There it is. I haven't been back since," the 39-year-old Huang says softly, recalling his childhood while pulling up the school's Web site from Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara, California. "I remember that part of my life more vividly than just about any other."

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 18, 2002 |

Whoops of delight greeted the announcement that Earl and Lanitha Hudson had been chosen to get out of debt. Elder Ronda Russell, the Bishop’s wife, summoned debt-free parishioners to come forward with offerings. “Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to have something to give,” she said. “Those who can plant a seed of $1,000 get in line.” Behind them came those offering $500, then $300, then $100, on down to those who gave small amounts. People wrote checks as they waited in line. Small children clutched dollar bills. The deacons collected and counted the contributions while the pastor snipped credit cards with large shears.
Finally, the good news resounded: “The Hudsons are out of debt!” the pastor shouted. A tide of joyful noise swept the sanctuary.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 15, 2002 |

Walmart does not care about Linux geeks clutching their little stuffed penguins and waving their "Open Source" flags. They do not care about someone who walks into a store to tell the tech department that they should sell machines with Linux on it. They care about money. They have always cared about money, and they always will care about money. They are the most efficient corporation in the whole world, and they are efficient because it makes money. Anyone who thinks that Walmart's #1 priority is not about money needs to take some courses in Economics, wake up, and smell the capitalism.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 15, 2002 |

Andreessen: (Pause). I don't think so. For mass market adoption (open source) is clearly not compelling yet or (Opera) would have more adoption than it does. Other things are more important. Bundling with the (operating system) is clearly more important for adoption. When you're competing against something that's both being (promoted) by a monopoly and is free, good luck competing, have fun.
My attitude is, everybody should try competing with Microsoft once in their life. Once.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 15, 2002 |

In fact the brown-nosing that goes on between bloggers singing each others' praises makes the worst office kiss-ups look tame by comparison. I mention this anomaly since these Cluetrain folks all believe the opposite to be true. Somehow networking like this, according to the Cluetrainees, reveals truth—when in fact it supports and forces the worst kind of conformist behavior. Try to find a blog that is ever critical of another blog. I've never seen it.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 14, 2002 |

Yet the apparent faith in this odd vision of an idealistic human-oriented internetworked new world/new economy marches forward. I imagine all these folks holding hands in a large circle, rolling back and forth, with some in the middle of the circle, spinning and chanting and hugging, all naked. I'm betting that most of these folks go to Burning Man and all of them write blogs about it and how cool it was. They link to each others' blogs and read what they say about each other—all highly complimentary.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 14, 2002 |

The setting: Any airport, U.S.A. The victims: You and your laptop. Action! You put your computer on the X-ray conveyor belt and get in line for the metal detector. The guy in front of you gets stopped and has to empty his pockets. Turns out he’s a walking scrap heap, and it takes him five minutes to get through. Meanwhile, your defenseless laptop is waiting helplessly on the other side. By the time you’re finally through, it’s gone — swiped by Scrap Heap’s accomplice on the other side

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 13, 2002 |

So they ''dirtied up'' the animation, aping all of Yoda's limitations. When original puppeteer (and voicer) Frank Oz saw the footage, he freaked. ''He said, 'You're even matching my mistakes! Those ear wiggles -- you've got to get those out!''' But Coleman, and especially Lucas, vetoed Oz's request, arguing that the evident puppet-ness of Yoda is in fact what audiences remember best about him, and they still expect it.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 12, 2002 |

Play trivial persuit with your favorite search engine
concept by Sharon Huston.
This game is more a morphing of trivial persuit than anything else. The difference between this and normal trivial persuit is that the players are allowed to use a search engine to find the answers. Naturally a time limit (about two minutes) applies, although this depends on the speed of your connection. This game works best with a difficult edition. It is also useful to help people learn how to best utilize the power of search engines.
This concept can also be used to help the youngsters in the common family position where the children are normally at a big disadvantage... they can be helped by permission to use search engines.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 12, 2002 |

Meanwhile, an INS memo issued Thursday and obtained by CBS News directs agents at U.S. airports, borders, and ports to do: "A complete and thorough search of all baggage" carried by Yemeni travelers and make "An inventory of all effects." Only those carrying diplomatic passports are exempt.

The memo specifically orders agents to look for "...large sums of currency, thermos bottles, night vision goggles or devices." It warns, "under no circumstances will an inspecting officer open a thermos bottle."

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 12, 2002 |

During the next four days of fighting, the Newfoundland corporal set what is believed to be a record for a long-distance shot under combat conditions, hitting an enemy gunman at a distance of 2,430 metres.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 11, 2002 |

Thinness and healthy eating are increasingly becoming the preserve of the wealthy and the educated living in privileged urban cocoons.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 11, 2002 |

"If government is willing to regulate, force disclosure of fat and calorie content, get fast food out of schools, put more health foods in vending machines, install bike racks and showers at public buildings to encourage more exercise, and so on, great," he said in an interview. "But if government does with obesity what it did with tobacco, which is largely nothing, then we may be forced to go to our third branch, the legal system."

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 11, 2002 |

America, as we all know, is the fattest nation on the planet and getting fatter all the time. According to a report by the US Surgeon-General, released a few months ago, 61 per cent of Americans are now significantly overweight, compared with 55 per cent in the early 1990s, and 46 per cent in the late 1970s. Obesity generates $117bn in annual medical bills and triggers 300,000 premature deaths each year.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 11, 2002 |

He also remarked about the lack of security in the building, pointing specifically to a safe behind Bryant's desk. "He asked me what would prevent him from going behind my desk and cutting my throat and making off with the millions of dollars in that safe," said Bryant, who explained that there was no money in the safe because loans are never given in cash, and also that she was trained in karate.
"He wanted to know how, once he became settled down in the United States, how he could take that kind of training," she says.
Bryant turned him down for the loan because as a non-U.S. citizen he did not meet the basic eligibility requirements and because the program is intended for actual farming purposes. But she referred him to other government agencies and to a bank downstairs.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 11, 2002 |

Greetings Earthwomen.

I am Kham from the planet Krobernorz. I have traveled many years to meet you. Fourteen of your years ago, our planet suffered a cataclysmic event, forever affecting our future. A race of opposite gender aliens has invaded Krobernorz and have mandated that they will destroy all of us unless we mate with them and become their boyfriends. Obviously, we are very confused.

I have been sent by my superiors to "date", and record the social interactions between your genders. Until recently on Korbernorz we had only one gender. I fear this "dating" will be a difficult task.

I seek your help. I have found your "Internet". Please help. You are our last hope.

I have assumed the shape of a 29-year old male human being and have taken up residence in Midtown Manhattan. My mission must not fail.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 10, 2002 |

Married in 1960, John Sr. and his wife, the former Victoria DiGiorgio, had four other children — daughters Victoria, a successful romance author, and Angela; and sons Peter and Frank.
In 1980, at 12, Frank was killed by a neighbor's car while riding his minibike. Though ruled blameless by police, the neighbor was abducted weeks later and never seen again. No charges were ever brought.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 10, 2002 |

''There used to be a romance to it,'' he says. ''Now you're just a person who schleps. People have the idea that the book trade is a polite business for gentlemen. In fact, it's a lot more like the Mafia.'' He remembers how one dealer beat another with a tire iron in a dispute over a book and how a dealer was arrested for stealing the contents of an entire store when he realized the store's owner had died.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 10, 2002 |

Then gradually, as the months went by, I began to see these people develop their own angles or niches. One friend, a teacher, was supplementing his regular income by scouring for science-fiction and fantasy paperbacks. His particular gimmick was to put together entire sets of books by writers that only the comic book geeks knew about. ''A rich lawyer in Seattle paid me $250 the other day for an entire set of Tarzan paperbacks by Edgar Rice Burroughs that I'd picked up for 25 cents a pop,'' he says. ''There's a couple in England who pay $8 for any Michael Moorcock paperback. Why do they do this? Because I'm making it easy for them.''

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 10, 2002 |

The average household in America now pulls in about $42,000 a year. The average household headed by someone with a college degree makes $71,400 a year. A professional degree pushes average household income to more than $100,000. If you are, say, a member of one of those college-grad households with a family income of around $75,000, you probably make more than 95 percent of the people on this planet. You are richer than 99.9 percent of the human beings who have ever lived. You are stinking rich.
You may start the day with good intentions in your heart and one of those simplicity magazines by your side. You may tell yourself that today you are going to renounce material things. You're going to slow down and savor the moment. So you break out the seaside-scent candles, fill up the claw-foot tub with fluoridated water and tub tea, and just soak with a volume of Robert Frost in your hand and some brown-sugar-based body wash on the shelf

# posted by craniac @ Sunday, June 09, 2002 |

In 1986 Cyc asked whether it was human. That same year it asked whether any other computers were engaged in such a project.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 08, 2002 |

"Lagaan" is said to be the most ambitious, expensive and successful Bollywood film ever made, and has been a box-office hit all over the world. Starring Aamir Khan, who is one of the top Indian heartthrobs, it was made with an eye to overseas audiences: If "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" could break out of the martial-arts ghetto and gross $150 million, then why not a Bollywood movie for non-Indians? It has succeeded in jumping its genre; it won an Academy Award nomination this year as best foreign film, and has been rolling up amazing per-screen averages in North American theaters.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, June 07, 2002 |

Eventually a new nest of fratboy law students moved in (it was never clear exactly when the changing of the guard occurred; I think that they were all friends-of-friends. Once you get fratboy law students, it seems, you can never get rid of them. They're like roaches.)

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 06, 2002 |

It's pretty ironic that, when these bands travel with so much gear (presumably in an attempt to live out their Van Halen rockstar fantasies of 80' speaker stacks on 200' wide stages, with flight-harnesses and Stonehenge dropping from the ceiling and whatnot) what happens when they play non-stadium venues is that there's so much gear on stage that none of them can move! They want to feel they have a big show, and it results in them not being able to shuffle two feet from their assigned spots. Whereas bands with more realistic (and no less loud) amounts of gear have plenty of room to run around...

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 06, 2002 |

People have very individual needs on the Web. Google has indexed over 2 billion pages, and gets about 3-5 billion search queries a month. There are probably over 40 million web sites (Netcraft found 37 million based on unique hostnames, and you need to add millions more personal and small business web sites that are sub-domains of places like GeoCities, Tripod, and Lawyers.com). Somehow, many of those web sites get read, too.

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 06, 2002 |

As soon as the bus leaves, they all whip out their laptops and start working in "Photoshop" on the images they've been taking for the last four days. Despite all the dark rooms and wet areas at the media centers, 95 percent of the photographers at the World Cup are taking digital pictures with professional cameras that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. They will take hundreds of pictures before, after and during the game and e-mail them all back to their agencies and papers right after.

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, June 06, 2002 |

(YellowTimes.org) – John Ashcroft, likely inspired while rolling around on the plush carpet of the Attorney General's office during a sudden onset of speaking in tongues, has given the FBI new powers for domestic spying. FBI Director Robert Mueller, ever-vigilant for the rights of Americans, assured the public that the Bureau's agents had been "hampered" by bureaucratic restrictions, his tone and substance closely resembling an American executive grumbling about the Environmental Protection Agency's having hampered sluicing operations of toxic sludge into wetlands.

The FBI is now free, in the great, "no damn fed'rah regulation" tradition of Enron or Silverado savings and loan, to pursue its goals. Only this is not just another crooked corporation chiseling people's savings, but a secret police force with vast powers and an unwholesome history.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 05, 2002 |

What I've learned from all this is that the subjective process of becoming a cyborg, in the hardwired sense, greatly suppresses one's appetite for objective theorizing about it. Where "wounds are openings to possibilities," as the French technocultural critic Jean Baudrillard once suggested, they are equally openings to infection.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, June 05, 2002 |

It is said that Building 20 was designed in one day. The barracks style is plain, and many people would describe the building as shabby, dingy, or unpretentious. However, as Stewart Brand astutely points out in his book, How Buildings Learn: What Happens to Buildings After They're Built, Building 20's lack of style and its low-visibility have allowed its occupants to be wonderfully creative and successful within its walls.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 04, 2002 |

For now, such problems can usually be resolved by coordinating and adjusting settings, said Matthew Gast, author of "802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide." But coordination can be difficult, he notes, when competing networks aren't centrally run by the same company.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 04, 2002 |

The space and versatility of wagons create a valuable package. The station wagon marries the best qualities of personal transportation. Two of the safest station wagons are Ford's Taurus and Volvo's 850.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 04, 2002 |

The family station wagon has many functions. First and foremost, a station wagon provides the family with a comfortable vehicle that can hold the entire family as well as the belongings they need for a vacation. They can hold all the groceries in addition to the lawn mower, lumber, and other big items the family needs. Families have also been known to use the station wagon as a home away from home. They are perfect for camping trips, because the cargo bay can be turned into a bed if need be. One of the most familiar functions of station wagons is their employment during "tailgate" parties.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, June 04, 2002 |

In my college days, I was a ditch-digger for a gas company. There is a certain way to dig with a shovel that yields twice the ditch with half the effort. My sixty-four-year-old workmate then, Pappy, watched me dig for a few days before he finally got fed up with my inefficiency. He showed me the secret of how to use a shovel, and then I was a ditch-digging machine. Later, Pappy showed me the biggest secret of all, one of life's greatest mysteries, how to back up a trailer.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 03, 2002 |

The all-girl band "Skin Tight" picked up several of us one night for free rock 'n roll as well as a chance at the microphone. Better yet, consider this exchange that happened at one of the local miniature golf courses:
Me: "How much is golf?"
Owner: "Five dollars."
Me: "Even if you're a Bona Fide Desert Storm Veteran?"
Owner: "Here's two free passes."
Not everything worked that way. The tolls for the bridges into New York range are $4 to $5. One sailor tried this:
Sailor: "The mayor said Navy people could use this bridge for free."
Toll collector: "The mayor doesn't own this bridge."

# posted by craniac @ Monday, June 03, 2002 |

Music bosses have unveiled a revolutionary new recording format that they hope
will help win the war on illegal file sharing which is thought to be costing the
industry millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Nicknamed the 'Record', the new format takes the form of a black, vinyl disc
measuring 12 inches in diameter, which must be played on a specially designed
'turntable'.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, June 01, 2002 |