November, 2001: 38 posts.
Time to get creative about dealing with popunders?2001Nov02
We all know about those crazy popunder ads which are more ubiquitous than ever- but Bill Rini of rini.org has some interesting thoughts on what we might do about them. I like this kind of brainstorming about a phenomenon that remains annoying as hell.
cross-posted to metafilter yesterday
From the land of Microsoft:2001Nov02
Passport hacked
Microsoft Passport Protects Consumer Privacy
Heh. Idiots.
Quote of the Day:2001Nov02
We’re all those things right now that you’re not supposed to be. Our management always goes crazy, ’cause we all tell how old we are, and we’re not ashamed of the fact that some of us are in our mid- to late-30s. The L.A. Times did an article on us, and our management almost fainted because we said our real ages. I said, ‘No, you don’t understand.’ We think we’re the real punk rock, because we think it’s punk rock to say, ‘Yeah, I am older than all of you guys, and that’s why we’re better than you. We’re older, we’re weirder and we’re far more jaded than any of you Gen X people could possibly imagine. We’re jaded ’cause we know and remember good music.’ I think you’ve just got to admit what you are and just go with it.
– Stew of The Negro Problem
That’s how I feel!
Quote of the Day:2001Nov03
I have fought since the beginning of the Web for its openness: that anyone can read Web pages with any software running on any hardware. This is what makes the Web itself. This is the environment into which so many people have invested so much energy and creativity. When I see any Web site claim to be only readable using particular hardware or software, I cringe – they are pining for the bad old days when each piece of information needed a different program to access it.
(source) – Tim Berners Lee, Inventor of the Web [via zeldman]
Eat my eclecticism:2001Nov05
He Loves U Not (Club Mix) by Dream; Crystal by New Order; God’s Child by David Byrne and Selena; Doowutchalyke by Digital Underground; Lady Marmalade (Thunderpuss Radio Mix) by Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink, Lil’Kim, Missy Eliot; Wonderful Wino by Frank Zappa (from: The Lost Episodes); Bamboozled by Love by Frank Zappa (from: Tinseltown Rebellion).
I got a lot of work done. I think for coding, sometimes a repetitive groove works very well. I remember writing many term papers in RT School while playing They Might Be Giants “Flood” again and again.
Note to self:2001Nov05
*heavy heavy sigh*
Still fooling with OSX…2001Nov07
The Creative Priority is my current side reading…2001Nov07
Item in the New York Times: As U…2001Nov10
Osama Bin Laden has read his Sun Tzu
He is cultivating his friends and his enemies with great care. He seeks to eliminate any means to rally global sentiment against him. He seeks to end the UN because it has the capability to act against him. The UN was to be the successor – the successful successor to the original League of Nations, which failed to prevent the Second World War.
Osama Bin Laden and his group effectively read and use the media
From the way he manages to get his message out, to his awareness of the news on CNN, Al Jazeera, and how he uses that to craft his message he is a madman who uses the media with as much savvy as any Hollywood PR man. We must understand what he’s doing, and as I have said before, we must play that game as well.
It is not enough to have justice and right on your side, you must also be able to communicate that fact. Can we do it?
Related posts on this theme: msnbc in arabic, us leaflets need better design
I have 96 megabytes of memory in my Apple PowerMac 8500 …2001Nov12
This cartoon on Salon sums up image problem of the USA…2001Nov13
[ via robotwisdom ]
Having OS X on a box here means…2001Nov14
Quote of the day:2001Nov15
Proponents of Bush’s kangaroo court say: Don’t you soft-on-terror, due-process types know there’s a war on? Have you forgotten our 5,000 civilian dead? In an emergency like this, aren’t extraordinary security measures needed to save citizens’ lives? If we step on a few toes, we can apologize to the civil libertarians later.
Those are the arguments of the phony-tough. At a time when even liberals are debating the ethics of torture of suspects — weighing the distaste for barbarism against the need to save innocent lives — it’s time for conservative iconoclasts and card-carrying hard-liners to stand up for American values.
webdesign-l is a wonderful list, and has a great diversity of web literati on it…2001Nov18
How the lie about what Clinton said spread2001Nov19
The upside of rapid communications is that it so rapid. The downside is that it’s so rapid it discourages good fact-checking, which tends to produce “news” which misrepresents what was said, leading to faulty conclusions about what it means. Several of the folks who got it wrong retracted, but not all. Kudos to those who retracted they’re their misrepresentations. Giant raspberries to the rest.
(Update: the struck text above is because I made an error)
Zoe Mozert is so cool…2001Nov20

More evidence of the role propaganda has played in building and fostering terrorist groups…2001Nov21
This is a great propaganda film – the kind that you can’t get out of your head. Bin Laden’s story of Muslim subjugation turning to resistance is so effective that I barely need my transcripts. He uses the most sophisticated western film-making techniques: it’s as if Guy Ritchie, Sylvester Stallone and Spielberg have banded together to make jihad, the movie.
Couldn’t have said it better myself2001Nov23
( happy belated thanksgiving )
From the News I Would Not Have Expected2001Nov23
China on the moon definitely fits in with the New Bizarre World Order.
Jack Cole and Plastic Man2001Nov23
The most powerful image in Heroes a tribute and benefit2001Nov23
It’s worth visiting a Comic Book shop for. At $3.50, the price is reasonable, and it’s a good cause.
Bruce Sterling is blogging! Super-duper-cool!2001Nov27
Tori Duff’s online class How To Write A Killer Business Plan looks really cool…2001Nov27
Is it good, or bad to be the number 3 most highly rated link for a search of batman fetish on google?2001Nov27
I can’t believe how therapuetic it is to listen to Frank Zappa right now…2001Nov27
Gratuitous Zappa links: zappa.com, St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Homepage
Note: I’m posting this to my blogger account of course also posting this to my livejournal. I doubt I’ll maintain my livejournal though – but LiveJournal is a very interesting community in its own right – much more of a community than blogger – but blogger seems to be more flexible in how you can use the output of the tool. I could be wrong though, I have only a superficial understanding of LJ at the moment.
I’ve got Bruce Sterling on the Brain …2001Nov28
These are the people who invented “la vie de Boheme.” They invented the lifestyle of the urban middle-class dropout art-gypsy. They invented its terminology and its tactics. They brought us the “succes de scandale,” the now time-honored tactic of shocking one’s audience all the way to the bank. And the “succes d’estime,” the edgy and hazardous life of the critics’ darling. The doctrine of art for art’s sake was theirs too (thank you, Theophile Gautier). And the ever-helpful notion of *epater les bourgeoisie,* an act of consummately modern rebellion which is nevertheless impossible without a bourgeoisie to epater, an act which the bourgeoisie itself has lavishly financed for decades in our culture’s premiere example of Aldissian enantiodromia — the transformation of things into their opposites.
…
The Paris Bohemians were the first genuine industrial-scale counterculture. This was the culture that created Jules Verne. It deserves a great deal of the credit or blame for origination of the genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. It has a legitimate claim on our attention and our loyalties.
…
Professor Seigel’s book is especially useful for its thumbnail summary of what might be called the Ten Warning Signs of Bohemianism. According to Seigel, these are:
1. Odd dress.
2. Long hair.
3. Living for the moment.
4. Sexual freedom.
5. Having no stable residence.
6. Radical political enthusiasms.
7. Drink.
8. Drugs.
9. Irregular work patterns.
10. Addiction to nightlife.
…
In reality, these Ten Warning Signs are every bit as old as industrial society. Slackers, punks, hippies, beatniks, hepcats, Dead End kids, flappers, jazz babies, fin-de-siecle aesthetes, pre-Raphaelites, Bohemians — this stuff is *old.* People were living a vividly countercultural life in Bohemian Paris when the house in which I’m writing these words was a stomping ground for enormous herds of bison.