Rob explains...

This year's BNAT Application

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:45:36 GMT

It's pretty long. Text .

How old will you be at BNAT this year?
36

Where do you live?
San Francisco, CA

What is your favorite "special drug" ?
Like any good citizen, I recognize that proper emotional stasis requires a constant careful balance of many different drugs to maintain a respectable level. I am highly unlikely to ever be arrested for criminal underdosing of caffeine. Some unusually loud MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND is a good mellow on the commute home from a long day spent in critical phase, Hammer horror and The Venture Bros. bliss me out, indoor rock climbing gets me jazzed, and once in a while I really dig some absinthe.

What is your favorite masturbation material?
I have a pretty fertile imagination. Who needs materials? Regardless, variety is the spice of life, so much like THX, "channel surfing" ends up being the norm.

In a Dystopian Future, what do you hope to be doing?
I am so torn on this, in completely opposite directions. On one hand, I long for the posthuman future wherein I abandon this smelly, high-maintenance meat prison to live as a ghost in the machine, virtually immortal and free to explore the Universe (provided I can avoid being reprogrammed to Obey). On the other hand, part of me just wants the postapocalyptic Mad Max world where I can walk the Earth righting wrongs and staying alive by virtue of my wits, my dog and my shotgun. It is a dilemma.

What is your favorite Dystopian Film about the Future & Why?
I think I'm about to subconsciously resolve that dilemma. I think I'm going with GHOST IN THE SHELL. It often seems to get lumped in with cyberpunk and thus written off as dated these days, but I always thought the ideas they were playing with transcended simply aping the shallow tropes of the genre. There's a lot of genuinely thoughtful exploration of that very interesting intersection of philosophy, psychology, neurology and computation that often gets labeled "cognitive science" these days, and which continues to increase in relevance. I'm a total sucker for that postsingular transhuman sort of setting, where questions of what it means to be human aren't just ageless philosophical abstracts, but clear, present and urgent.

What was your most uncomfortable experience with Law Enforcement personnel?
Most likely that would be the time in college I was on my way to a Halloween party and a campus officer followed me to my destination, blocked my car in and proceeded to verbally accost me on how, in his opinion, I looked like I had been thinking about running a stop sign. As I was busy processing the oddness of this situation, he shined his flashlight around in my car and asked, "so, what's up with the crossbow?"

Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... George Lucas.
Visionary Imaginitive Coiffed Trendsetter Nostalgic Geek Introspective Perfectionist

Like THX 1138, you wish to be entertained. What do you expect and desire from BNAT 1138 and how do you realistically expect this to be accomplished?
I admit my expectations of BNAT are pretty high at this point. It's been the high point of my year for the last two years, and short of not getting to go I don't see that changing. Most importantly, I expect to see at least one strong contender for The Best Thing I've Ever Seen In My Life, and for it to have been made fifty years ago and I never heard of it before that extra-long day in early December. On the other hand, I expect to see something that will HURT me, and I will come away stronger for it. And I expect to be able to share all that with a whole room of incredibly awesome geeks, most of whom are in that same state of "where has this movie been all my life" as I am. I expect, if I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity, to introduce someone new to the best cinematic experience anybody will ever have, and, having spent many years vicariously sharing in Smallerdemon and Placeboeffect's BNAT experiences second hand, to be able to finally return the favor. As for how it will be accomplished, well, I still contend the "mystery lineup" format combined with a room full of intense geeks makes anything better than The Poughkeepsie Tapes more awesome, but as for the details of how it's carried off, I still have no idea. I know I couldn't manage it if I tried. I've just seen enough to trust that, somehow, it will be.

Producer of THX 1138, Francis Ford Coppola has recently spoken about the death of film, if you were in charge of studios, how would you keep Film relevant in this modern world we live?
I actually couldn't disagree more with Coppola on this. Film isn't what's dying. It's the regimented clockwork studio system geared to maximizing profits and industry control that's becoming less relevant. The art isn't suffering; the business is. Does anybody really imagine that people suddenly don't want to be told the kinds of stories film has been telling them for a hundred years? The studios built a colossus based on market conditions that no longer obtain. Now the sand is blowing out from under it and all they know how to do is to push rocks first under one corner then another and another in an attempt to keep the whole thing from falling over. Soon it will be precariously balanced on nothing but stacks of rocks and collapse will be unavoidable. What would I do if I were in charge of the studios? Probably push rocks. When you're standing in the shadow of the thing, it seems like the only sensible thing to do. On the other hand the world has changed. The elements that keep people on their couches and out of theaters are here to stay, and I think the players that survive that environment won't come from the traditional studio system. Already footpaths are starting to appear across the carefully manicured lawns. Eventually they will be paved and become the new system. Theaters may suffer in the short term, but most of them deserve to. Unless you're lucky enough to live near a well-loved local historic or independent theater, chances are your local megaplex is a filthy cattle-pen operation staffed by surly minimum-wage teenagers who couldn't care less about your film much less Film. People still love the social experience of a great movie in a great venue with a great crowd. Many of them just can't remember the last time they had that experience. Cut costs have resulted in cut quality, and a quality experience beyond the simple novelty of the film is exactly what's needed to get people off their couches. In short we need fewer megaplexes and more Drafthouses. Film won't die. People still love film, and anything that is loved will find a way to survive. A system that brings a little "ars gratia artis" (as opposed to "ars gratia pecuniae") back into the equation can't lose.

What is your favorite Sid Haig performance?
I've got to hand it to Ralph in SPIDER BABY. Who says going Full Retard is a bad idea? Strangely, he reminds me a bit of Vin Diesel here.

What is your favorite Robert Duvall role?
Think I need to go with Prendergast from FALLING DOWN.

What is your favorite Donald Pleasence role?
Well here I was, all ready to be lame and go with Blofeld, then Meghan pointed me at the fantastic THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS. Pleasence, probably as young as I've ever seen him, very nearly steals that movie. Hare is so slimy he makes your skin crawl.

Name your favorite film that Walter Murch has taken part in.
Callback to last year, but Murch worked on the re-edit of TOUCH OF EVIL. There you go.

At the BNAT Pre-Party, what are you looking forward to most at the HIGHBALL?
Karaoke

What is your favorite song to perform at Karaoke?
Let's say LIE STILL, LITTLE BOTTLE by They Might Be Giants.

List the 3 future films and 3 vintage films you most would like to see at BNAT 1138. 
Future: AVATAR, LEGION, SHERLOCK HOLMES Vintage: If the trailers are any indication, any of the EVIL DEAD series paired up with Legion would be awesome. SORCERER (1977) because I saw a short about it, but have not seen the film itself, and the circumstances that killed that movie, and practically Friedkin's career, intrigue me. Finally, THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960), probably the best, creepiest realization of the Jekyll/Hyde character I've ever seen.

And here's the obligatory bald pic for this year (click to embiggen):

Movies Rob Should Have Seen Sooner #1

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:14:57 GMT

Carlito's Way

Although, you know, if there's one movie I don't need, it's one whose moral seems to be, "you know that loser you used to be? You're fucking stuck with him. Suck on it, jackass."

In lighter news, I've never been happier to see Sean Penn die.

"A favor'll kill you quicker than a bullet."

"Dumb move, but the it's the old instincts coming back."

Election Season in The Village

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:16:47 GMT

I've got The Prisoner playing in the background today, and just hit one of my favorite exchanges from the whole series, which seems especially pertinent just now:

#2: What a piece of luck! We start our election campaign today. A showery outlook is very depressing, don't you think?

#6: Elections? In this place?

#2: Of course. We make our choice every twelve months. Every citizen has a choice. Are you going to run?

#6: Like blazes, the first chance I get.

#2: I meant, "run for office."

#6: Whose?

#2: Mine, for instance.

#6: You have a delicate sense of humor.

#2: Naturally. Humor is the very essence of a democratic society.

MacHeist: Referral Please?

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:09:08 GMT

So, no arm-twisting, but if any of you Mac fiends were considering the MacHeist bundle anyway, I'd appreciate if you'd use my referral link (https://www.macheist.com/buy/invite/32979) to get there. I'm sort of interested in trying out Circus Ponies Notebook, which takes two referral purchases.

There are three days or so left, and a few cool things in the bundle, depending on your particular needs.

Who's My Candidate?

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:16:50 GMT

It's going around, so here:

80% Chris Dodd
78% Mike Gravel
77% Hillary Clinton
76% John Edwards
76% Barack Obama
73% Joe Biden
70% Dennis Kucinich
70% Bill Richardson
49% Rudy Giuliani
40% John McCain
37% Tom Tancredo
34% Ron Paul
33% Mike Huckabee
31% Mitt Romney
22% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Funny how everybody I've seen is topping out with candidates that have been completely marginalized for months now. And by funny I mean utterly tragic.

So Sick Of This Shit

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:11:15 GMT

For the past couple of years I have been unable to do automated kiosk check-ins at the airport. I've only been flying American (by coincidence), and I figured maybe it was just an issue with them.

Not so. This morning I found out that I particularly cannot check in online for a Southwest flight. I was on the phone with smallerdemon who did the same thing at the same time for the same flight with no hitches whatsoever. I got a message that I could not check in online due to some vaguely worded thing about Southwest policies, rules and procedures, and that I had to go to a counter agent.

When I'm checking in with an agent, I typically ask them if there's an issue or if there's something I could do differently to avoid this. I've never gotten an answer. The only clue I've ever gotten is that once when I handed my "you cannot check in at the kiosk" slip to the counter agent, he muttered something about "every common name in the world." Now I have a very common sort of name, but surely, surely there's got to be more to it than that. I've asked my father, who has the same very common name, and he doesn't have this issue. On the other hand, I've never done a goddamned thing to anyone, ever. Besides which, if I'm some huge security risk, how is it that seeing me in the flesh resolves it and gets me a boarding pass? Zero added security is conferred by this process. The boarding pass I receive has never tagged me for extra screening. It's just a huge pain in the ass for me to get to that point.

The pointedly unresponsive attitude I get when I ask about this has the cumulative effect of telling me that they are not allowed to tell me why this happens. It goes without saying that because the issue, whatever it is, is not made explicit, there is absolutely no chance for an appeals process. To whom would I appeal, and on what basis? Nobody's made any specific claim I could respond to. I appear to be singled out for a reason that cannot even conceivably be legitimate, but I am not even permitted the information that would allow me to evaluate its legitimacy. People toss around that "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" bullshit, but this makes me feel like I have something to hide that even I don't know about. I'm forced to examine my life and try to figure out what the hell could have possibly triggered this. Is it because I object to the retarded man-monkey ostensibly running the show? Should I avoid publicly writing things like "retarded man-monkey"? This is exactly what's meant by "chilling effect" only I have no solid idea what it's supposed to chill; just a generalized uncertainty. I'm not exactly the up-sticking nail that needs to be hammered down. I'm pretty damned flush already.

This shit needs to end, period. Nobody is safer as a result of this, and frankly I'd like to live in America again, please.

WOOHOO

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:53:30 GMT

I'm going to BNAT 9!

BNAT 9 Application

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:54:05 GMT

Well, as the entry deadline has passed, here is my complete application for Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9. I have been trying for a few years. This year I am grouping my entry with smallerdemon and p1aceboeffect in the hopes of basking in their reflected coolness.

1. Full Name?
REDACTED

2. Online Aliases?
REDACTED, boson (@LJ), others I may have forgotten.

3. Age?
34

4. Sex?
Male

5. City, State, Country?
San Francisco, California, USA

6. Number of people submitting in your group, counting yourself?
3

7. Have you ever attended a BNAT before, if so, which one(s)?
No, and this is a source of much consternation.

8. Occupation?
Software Engineer

9. Hobbies?
I write a bit. I paint a bit. I compose long philosophical treatises on subjects nobody cares about. Movies, of course. Television, and various electronic things that connect to them. Recently I became deeply infaturated with snowboarding. Years ago I would get insatiable urges to climb things. More on this later.

10. Celebrity Sexual Fantasy?
I typically don't have many such fantasies, but I definitely remember the first time I noticed that not only were some of what I had in my younger days dismissed as "Mom movies" (e.g., Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's) actually pretty good, but that the leading ladies in these movies were in many ways far more attractive than actresses from the age of photoshop and plastic surgery. Bergman really blows me away. If I restrict myself to something more modern, I still have to say the perfect woman for me is Jodie Foster's character from CONTACT. I acknowledge and embrace the oddness of this particular choice.

11. Favorite Childhood Toy & Why?
This is a hard one, but as a hardcore Star Wars Action Figure kid, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Boba Fett I saved up my Kenner Points for. The fact that I had to work, save and wait a whole six to eight weeks made Boba a treasure, even if his rocket was glued into the pack by the time I got mine. Runner up mention to my zip-cord Tron Light Cycle, just because light cycles rock.

12. Favorite Film Experience & Why?
The film experience that most stands out in my mind is seeing Haute Tension (yeah, the French version) at the Roxie here in SF. The theater was claustrophobic. The audience reacted amazingly. Somebody was smoking pot in the theater, but this is not entirely germane. Regardless, this is the only time I have ever seen a horror movie in the theater that really wound me up like this did. High Tension indeed. I was literally on the edge of my seat throughout. It was a fantastic contrast to decades of mostly self-consciously ironic American gorefests, and I adored it.

13. Top 3 Future Films You Hope To See This Year At BNAT?
1. IRON MAN. Longshot, but must see. Iron Man was my dude when I was a kid. I could try to rationalize in an adult way what it is about that character that appealed to me, but that just wouldn't be accurate. My kid brain took one look at that armor and recognized concentrated awesome. This is the Marvel movie that kid has been waiting for.

2. JOHN RAMBO. Last year I think I told you Aliens was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. I realized shortly after clicking "Send" after that I was totally, totally wrong. It was, in fact, First Blood Part II. I hereby make amends to Mr. Rambo in the hopes of keeping my trachea intact.

3. 10,000 B.C. Off-the-wall choice given the early reviews, but note my below mention of 1MYBC. I would really love to see these paired, just for comparison's sake, but also because people seem to be trying too hard to figure out how this movie stands up against Apocalypto, which doesn't even make sense to me.

14. Top 3 Vintage Films You Hope To See This Year At BNAT?
1. MOONTRAP. Koenig and the Chin. On the moon.

2. ALPHAVILLE. Admittedly this is one of those movies I keep hearing I am supposed to have seen at some point but haven't. Maybe others also haven't. French Space Noir -- I can buy that.

3. ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.: See the note above about 10,000 B.C.. Besides, even if the new movie stinks (or is otherwise unavailable for BNAT), the old one still has Ray Harryhausen dinosaurs and Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.

15. Biggest Trouble You’ve Been In Personally?
I lead a fairly trouble-free life, so I had a hard time thinking of this, which will seem funny once I tell the story.

Once upon a time I was on a trip doing some charitable construction work in Costa Rica. During an off day we had chartered a boat out to a little island. No, there were no dinosaurs. Don't skip ahead. There were, however, cliffs. Recall the climbing urge to which I previously alluded. I swam to the island, so I had no shoes, but the climb looked easy and I was young and stupid, so I started my ascent.

About fifteen feet from the top, the trouble started. I placed my hand on a rock over my head and immediately had one of those "locking your keys in the car" style faux eternities to contemplate the realization, "oh, that's sandstone." On the fortunate side, the large rock that came away in my hand bounced away from the cliff face, narrowly avoiding an unpleasant encounter with my skull. On the less fortunate side, I nearly came away from the cliff face myself, and immediately began sliding. I was quite certain I was about to die, but I had some friction to work with at least, and after fifteen feet or so I managed to find enough purchase to stop.

Relieved as I was, I must remind you I had no shoes. After recovering from the icy calm of impending death (which I had previously figured was a dramatic device), I made two realizations: One, I was in rather a lot of pain. Two, there was no obvious way to climb down. The original plan was to walk around the ridge about five hundred yards to a steep but walkable slope down. Now, despite being rather less well stocked on skin than I had anticipated, I found I had to forge ahead with the plan regardless.

The remaining climb was much more cautious, and thus largely uneventful, but the walk was through the edge of a low coastal rainforest, covered in all kinds of rocks and twigs and leaves and such, which made a pretty poor surface under the circumstances, but I did make it around and started down the slope.

You may be aware that Costa Rica supports a very diverse selection of wildlife, including, as I have discovered, several species of land crab. The most distinctive of these is the Halloween Crab, whose purple claws and bright red legs, sprouting from a fist-sized jet black body, can under some circumstances give the appearance of a creature disgorged straight from the maw of Hell itself. As for the circumstances, suffice it to say their natural habitat is the edge of low coastal rainforests, living among rocks and twigs and leaves and such, occasionally in great numbers.

All this I discovered as I hobbled down the slope back to the beach. So there I was, barefoot, bleeding, unable to run and surrounded by scores of tiny carnivorous elder gods, with maybe a hundred yards to cover before swimming another 50 back to the boat.

Fortunate I am that in real life the lesson "don't go off by yourself" is not always a fatal one.

16. What would Jack Burton Say?
Well you know what Jack Burton says when you're bleeding out some of your favorite appendages and surrounded by oversized bugs from the pit of Hell with nowhere to go but down. Ol' Jack Burton looks those critters square in the eye and says, "Scuttle off. I ain't that tasty."

17. Favorite John Carpenter Film?
Big Trouble is awfully close, but I have to give the edge to They Live, for all the reasons anybody ever loves They Live.

18. Favorite Kurt Russell Film?
Up until recently I think Big Trouble would have been the one, but I really think now I'm forced to change my answer to Death Proof. Russell got to display a really surprising range in that movie, and pulled it off brilliantly.

19. Favorite Genre Bending Film That Blew Your Mind?
Depends on what you mean by mind-blowing. Despite later imitators, Reservoir Dogs is still an incredible challenge to the genre it redefined, starting with it being a crime movie that never shows the crime. For sheer impact on me personally, though, I probably have to go with The Fifth Element. I still have no idea how that film works. Every single element of it by all rights should spell cinematic poison, but the end result is a thing of beauty. It is thus amazing both from within and from without.

20. Why do you wish to attend Butt-Numb-A-Thon?
Well, I have consulted with the very best doctors in the field, and it turns out that attending Butt-Numb-A-Thon is the only known cure for my severe case of Butt-Numb-A-Thon Envy. Symptoms include filling out increasingly lengthy applications followed by acute seasonal disappointment. Palliative treatment involves watching films from the lineup after the fact, even Toys Are Not For Children, but this is not a cure. What's required is concentrated group therapy over a 24-hour period.

Seriously, I have been trying to get into BNAT for years now, and this is the only event I would try this hard, this consistently, with this little chance of success to get into. The idea of sharing an experience like this with a group of hardcore geeks is irresistible to me. Reading the list is no substitute for a string of coffee-tinged cinematic surprises, and a DVD is never a substitute for a real audience. I really think you have hit upon the perfect format for a memorable film experience, and I almost cannot tell you how much I want to be a part of it.

21. what is your email address?
REDACTED

Photos:

Cuckoo for Commercials

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 04:32:57 GMT

Via John K's blog, here's a collection of old Cocoa Puffs commercials. It surprised me to learn that Sonny once had a grandfather. More surprising was that Gramps seems to have been a sadistic old man cruelly manipulating a young cuckoo's tragic dissociative psychosis for his own purposes.

Very short step from those ads to...

Gramps
I JUST CAN'T RESIST THE BLACKJACK,
AND FRANKIE THE THUMB WANTS
HIS MONEY!

Sonny
HERE COMES FRANKIE NOW! RUN,
GRAMPS!

Gramps
NO PLACE TO RUN. I'LL BE DEAD IN
MINUTES! BUT SONNY CAN'T RESIST
COCOA PUFFS, MADE WITH REAL
COCOA. I'LL TURN HIM INTO A
COCOA-POWERED MOBSTER
MURDER MACHINE! HERE, BOY. IT
MAKES BREAKFAST TASTE LIKE
CHOCOLATE!

Word Nerd Warning

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:04:43 GMT

People^* commonly argue whether one should use "email" or "e-mail" when referring to electronic mail. I am fairly sure it doesn't matter, not least because both are wrong. Why not...

Contraction: e'mail
This may have a problem owing to the regional differences in pronouncing "electronic," which can start with a long e, short e or schwa. I don't know how I might respond to a request for my ə-mail address.

Abbreviation: e. mail
This just sounds like a kind of bacterium: Bags of pre-cut salad were recalled from grocery stores this week due to e. mail contamination.

Regardless, English already had standards for shortening terms, and we seem not to have even considered them. I am not a total prescriptivist, but on the other hand a language where all usage is idiosyncratic does nobody any good. Did "e-mail" arise because the hyphen looked more futuristic? Did "email" arise because early adopters simply didn't know or care about spelling or usage concerns? Should we correct it? Should we form a retroactive rule describing it? Should we just give up trying to have a language that yields to any objective analysis at all?

Disclaimer: I care about this much less than it sounds like here.

--------------------
^* By "people" here I am referring to people who write software and the accompanying documentation. Everyone else happily ignores it.

The Career Meme

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 04:08:34 GMT

How To:
Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
Put in Username: nycareers Password: landmark.
Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
Post the results.

1. Computer Programmer
2. Multimedia Developer
3. Business Systems Analyst
4. Database Developer
5. Web Developer
6. Computer Support Person
7. Video Game Developer
8. Veterinarian
9. Website Designer
10. Industrial Designer
11. Special Effects Technician
12. Technical Writer
13. Webmaster
14. Costume Designer
15. Model Maker
16. Actor
17. Mediator
18. Zoologist
19. Desktop Publisher
20. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
21. Horticulturist
22. Zookeeper
23. Marine Biologist
24. Set Designer
25. Comedian
26. Artist
27. Activist
28. Print Journalist
29. Critic
30. Public Policy Analyst
31. Communications Specialist
32. Medical Illustrator
33. Professional Athlete
34. Potter
35. Writer
36. Translator
37. Composer
38. Agronomist
39. Politician
40. Rehabilitation Counselor

My Daemon Thingy

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:25:57 GMT

And, no, you don't get to change it. Screw you guys. :-)

Apple Kudos

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:27:59 GMT

I'm not shy about ranting when a company provides miserable service, so it's only fair I mention the ones that go above and beyond. Over the past few weeks my MacBook Pro battery has been giving me troubles, and finally today it just stopped cooperating altogether. I checked closely and found I had fallen victim to the dreaded battery bulge.

The excuses any other company could have used to leave me to swing:

- Apple had recalled batteries for the 15" MBPs for this problem, but I use a 17", for which there is no recall.

- I didn't even remember when I bought this MBP, but was quite confident it was out of warranty.

- I had no receipt.

- Due to some oddness, my MBP serial number appears in their database registered to somebody named "Lance." No idea.

- The listed purchase date for "Lance" was May of 2006 (which, in retrospect, is close to accurate), putting it officially six weeks out of warranty.

- I was a walk-in on a day when there were no gaps left in the schedule.

- About five minutes after I got there two Geniuses left, leaving only one on duty.

It wasn't quite as easy as "sorry about that, here you go." I had actually kind of accepted that I was going to have to just buy a new one. I was just waiting for the Genius to find out for me whether there had been any incompatible revisions between the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo MBPs so I would know if I could just buy one off the shelf when she came out of the back with a new battery and told me she was just going to replace it for me.

I may have benefitted from being cool about the situation at a time when another customer was being less so, but for whatever reason I walked out with a replacement battery. I can't help mentally comparing that to what would have happened if I had had the same sort of problem with some other company's laptop.

Word Nerd Note: "the vagaries of…"

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:56:29 GMT

Vagary (most commonly seen in the plural, vagaries) is most often used as if it is a concrete instance of abstract vagueness. This is not correct. They come from the same latin root, meaning "to wander," but where "vague" means "of indefinite character," a "vagary" is an unpredictable change in character.

Therefore, it is correct to speak of "the vagaries of summer weather in San Francisco," because it cycles unpredictably through many well-defined states, but incorrect to speak of "the vagaries of climate change skepticism," when you mean that the arguments of climate change skeptics involve a lot of hand-waving.

This appears to be one of those cases in which people attempt to use a fancy turn of phrase they have heard elsewhere and only think they understand. If you mean something is ill-defined, rephrase your description to actually use a form of the word "vague" instead of the clichéd and incorrect "the vagaries of…." Borderline cases in which both the correct and incorrect senses apply (e.g., "the vagaries of the Bush Administration's justification for invading Iraq") should probably be avoided, as they promote confusion even when the correct meaning is intended.

Mmmm, PopChips

Thu, 24 May 2007 00:18:33 GMT

The magical cornucopia of the Work Kitchen has disgorged something called PopChips. Little bit perplexed about one thing on the back of the bag:

Blurb:
"we don't fry it (unhealthy). we don't bake it (undelicious). we take organic white corn, apply heat and pressure (no oil, mind you), and pop! it's a chip. [...]"

Then, not two inches away:
INGREDIENTS: ORGANIC WHITE CORN, SAFFLOWER OIL AND/OR SUNFLOWER OIL, SEASONING [...]

But no oil, mind you.

This oddness notwithstanding, and aside from a very slightly styrofoamy texture, they're not bad. I might prefer them to baked chips.

The Counterassault for Reason

Fri, 18 May 2007 17:57:30 GMT

Time has posted an excerpt from Al Gore's forthcoming book, The Assault on Reason. Go read. The further the man gets from politics, the more he sounds like he ought to be there.

Phishing for CareerBuilder?

Thu, 17 May 2007 16:26:38 GMT

(Crossposted from elsewhere.)

I just got a phishing email trying to get me to give up my (nonexistent) CareerBuilder account details, leading me to wonder, what the hell do you gain by cracking somebody's CareerBuilder account? Any ideas?

Here We Go Again

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:43:04 GMT

Once again, Americans are too special (in whatever sense of that word you prefer) to see the same news as everybody else. This week's MiniTrue Moment is sponsored by Time Magazine:

Europe	Asia	South Pacific	U.S.

Cover images copyright © 2007 Time Inc. Used without permission subject to fair use provisions.

This episode is even better than the last one. Time gets bonus points for the irony of failing to report the re-Talibanization of Afghanistan in favor of telling Americans why they should teach the Bible in public schools. It's almost too on-the-nose, isn't it?

What is it about Afghanistan anyway? Leaving aside the fact that it's news to most Americans we're even still in Afghanistan, what's with the major newsmagazines going out of their way to hide the fact that we've totally screwed it up?

Rob Update

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:40:26 GMT

I've been totally slacking out on the blog posting for a few months now. Not to say nothing is going on. In the past three months I have:

1) Lost 30 lbs.

2) Gotten a new car.

3) Taken up snowboarding.

Other more minor things, I'm sure, but those are the parts that are even remotely of general interest.

Great Deal plus Charitable Karma for Mac Users

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 20:03:43 GMT

If you haven't seen this yet, check out MacHeist. Several Mac developers have gotten together and offered a bundle of 10 pieces of software, valued over $300, for only $49, with 25% of the proceeds going to your choice of eight charity organizations. They've been gradually "unlocking" packages as they hit contribution thresholds. They're all unlocked now, but the deadline to buy the bundle is Sunday.

Even if you only use a few of them it's a great deal, and you do some charitable goodness to boot.

Awww...

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:30 GMT

via Ain't It Cool News, Jack Palance has died at 87. The CNN obituary lists the cause of death as natural causes. Am I the only one who simply assumed it would be lung cancer? Regardless, RIP Jack.

Yeah, Citibank's got my back.

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 20:53:26 GMT

From my email:

This email confirms the following action(s) completed at Account Online for your Citi Cards account ending in XXXX.
See detail(s) below:
Email Address Update/Change: The email address on file was modified or added on October 06, 2006.

For your protection, contact us immediately at XXX-XXX-XXXX if this is incorrect.

They sent this to the new address. Good to know you're looking after my security, Citibank. I see nothing at all that could possibly go wrong with this foolproof protocol.

Word Association Time

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:59:16 GMT

via Metafilter, this word association game kept me up MUCH later than I should have been last night.

The instructions aren't really obvious until somebody explains that they're really obvious: you see "On the farm" in the center box and you start typing into the text box on the left things you'd expect to find on the farm. When you get one, the appropriate box lights up as do (usually) new unlit connections to that word. The number of dots in a box is a hint to the number of letters in the word. Occasionally you'll get really lucky and there will be visible punctuation that will be an additional hint. When you light up an edge box, it lights up the adjacent square on the mini-map. Click on newly lit squares in the mini-map and you get a whole new blank area. Each square of the mini-map has a different theme. Keep going until you light up every box or go insane.

Minor bugginess: Occasionally you have to wait a second between entries before it will accept the new one. This can be an issue for fast typists. Also, there's some sort of mechanism to detect that someone has looked at the HTML source. It fires randomly sometimes when you've done no such thing. Just press the "back" button and keep going.

One of these things is not like the others

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:59:55 GMT

Why do Americans seem so ill informed around the world? Where do we get the vapid and shallow world view for which we are notorious? I mean, that's just an unfair generalization, isn't it? When you get right down to it, Americans are just as well-informed and engaged in world affairs as anyone else, aren't they? Well, for confirmation let's take a look at the Newsweek International site at MSNBC.com:

Europe	Asia	Latin America	U.S.

HP introduces camera for lying fatasses.

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:43:27 GMT

You thought personal ads were big fat lies before, but you ain't seen nothing yet. HP has introduced cameras with built-in digital subject slimming. HP is about to become richer than God on the backs of MySpace users alone. Somehow I suspect fashionable blurring and artsy angles are about to start going out of fashion in user pics. Just think of all the awkward first meetings: "Oh... I guess you have an HP camera too. Hrm."

But the really great thing is how all the body-dysmorphic girls out there no longer need to use heroin-addicted fashion models to give them their false impressions of how their bodies should be shaped. Just wrench the slider down and create your own unrealistic expectation feedback loop in the comfort of your own home!

HP: Because you're totally going to exercise someday, but people take pictures of you today.

Surely the digital deuglifier can't be too far down the road. Hell, maybe they'll introduce a camera that will just put somebody else in the picture altogether.