Nonlinear Web Droppings
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Tittering about twitter?
My initial thoughts on T when it came out were that it should be pit in ridiculousness rumblemania matchup against that other dead-on-arrival video blog-comment enabler seesmic (It allows blowhards in pajamas to scrunch into a camera and pontificate; after 12 million dollars they realized there wasn't yet a market for such exalted levels of narcissism).
Why, I wondered, would anyone be interested in something as banal and vain. While I am sure there are geniuses who can consistently condense wisdom into 140 character gems, about 9 billion of the rest aren't.
And yet, Twitter rocketed into the public sphere. Some dude on CNN stands by a screen with scrolling tweets and shags. Or something like that, I've only watched it on mute in Airports, restaurants, and my gym.
And then, Oprah, the one remaining arbiter of monolithic cultural significance, launched into it. The twitter subscription graph looks like a cliff upside down. Given all this madness, I was compelled, obliged by my duty towards sharp and current cultural critiques, to give it a try. And so I fleshed out yet another digital avatar, epigrammasai
After about a month of sporadically trying this new protocol, and trying to make sense of it, I still think the Onion article was on the mark.
But that's too cavalier. I don't have friends who twitter much, and following celebrities--I followed Mindy Kaling and Neal Gaiman, both literary spark plugs in their own right. And then I unfollowed. Their everyday banalities are not much more interesting. --. Yes, to continue, following celebrities was a drag. But then again, I am not the kind who reads People and I suspect that their readership might attribute a higher value to this magnified and possibly unfiltered view that celebs permit.
Also, twitter is the first protocol that allows for a supereasy way to track the number of people interested in you, and celebrities who transact in the currency of fame must find this intoxicating, even necessary. Blogs have RSS feeds and webpages have counters, but you need to be somewhat of a technophile to understand and use these (And that explains why RSS never really took off). Twitter on the other hand has a detailed viewership count built in. CNN and that Demi Moore plaything even engaged in a visible risible fight to follower count supremacy.
Twitter obviously helped spread the word on the Iran election aftermath, but even this shows how the underlying protocol could be focused better. What twitter aided could simply be allowed by baking in an option of publishing texts made by any and every mobile user. These could be anonymyzed by default (How do Twitter identities help anyways?). Twitter's true strength shine through when instant, decentralized group formation is required, whether at the small scale of organizing meetups of a few tens or protesting unfair elections by the tens of thousands. Groups and group identities coalesce and melt in the space of a hashtag. That truly is revolutionary.
And yet, on a daily basis, Twitter's perhaps useful in broadcasting links (but I have Reddit for that) or narrowcasting links (I don't have a fan following. Yet) or sharing links (My friends shoo my emails into spam folders anyways). Ardent twitterers must therefore be tweeting for some other reason. Is it the most effective way to navel gaze and communicate in some new age form of a constant celebratory campfire? Omphaloskeptic, now here is a pertinent username for you if you are inclined to dive in.
In the interest of objectivity, I must perhaps add a counter explanation. It is also possible that my extreme levels of narcissism were offended by the lack of interest in my tweets as demonstrated rather cruelly by my stagnant follower count. (Such a cold lack of interest hasn't stopped me from blogging, and I've valiantly hung on for five years! But then there's no cold harsh negative feedback of reader enthusiasm that I cannot ignore...)
And finally, an exciting new development in my life means that I will have to use Twitter in the future and must continue to restrain this pessimistic sour grape sentiments and chug along.
Oh wait, that wasn't final. I have also observed a healthy number of African-American twitterers, more than I've ever stumbled across blogs. Is this simply because searching on Twitter is far easier? More grist for this profitless publishing mill... ¶ 11:50 PM 0 Comments
Why, I wondered, would anyone be interested in something as banal and vain. While I am sure there are geniuses who can consistently condense wisdom into 140 character gems, about 9 billion of the rest aren't.
And yet, Twitter rocketed into the public sphere. Some dude on CNN stands by a screen with scrolling tweets and shags. Or something like that, I've only watched it on mute in Airports, restaurants, and my gym.
And then, Oprah, the one remaining arbiter of monolithic cultural significance, launched into it. The twitter subscription graph looks like a cliff upside down. Given all this madness, I was compelled, obliged by my duty towards sharp and current cultural critiques, to give it a try. And so I fleshed out yet another digital avatar, epigrammasai
After about a month of sporadically trying this new protocol, and trying to make sense of it, I still think the Onion article was on the mark.
But that's too cavalier. I don't have friends who twitter much, and following celebrities--I followed Mindy Kaling and Neal Gaiman, both literary spark plugs in their own right. And then I unfollowed. Their everyday banalities are not much more interesting. --. Yes, to continue, following celebrities was a drag. But then again, I am not the kind who reads People and I suspect that their readership might attribute a higher value to this magnified and possibly unfiltered view that celebs permit.
Also, twitter is the first protocol that allows for a supereasy way to track the number of people interested in you, and celebrities who transact in the currency of fame must find this intoxicating, even necessary. Blogs have RSS feeds and webpages have counters, but you need to be somewhat of a technophile to understand and use these (And that explains why RSS never really took off). Twitter on the other hand has a detailed viewership count built in. CNN and that Demi Moore plaything even engaged in a visible risible fight to follower count supremacy.
Twitter obviously helped spread the word on the Iran election aftermath, but even this shows how the underlying protocol could be focused better. What twitter aided could simply be allowed by baking in an option of publishing texts made by any and every mobile user. These could be anonymyzed by default (How do Twitter identities help anyways?). Twitter's true strength shine through when instant, decentralized group formation is required, whether at the small scale of organizing meetups of a few tens or protesting unfair elections by the tens of thousands. Groups and group identities coalesce and melt in the space of a hashtag. That truly is revolutionary.
And yet, on a daily basis, Twitter's perhaps useful in broadcasting links (but I have Reddit for that) or narrowcasting links (I don't have a fan following. Yet) or sharing links (My friends shoo my emails into spam folders anyways). Ardent twitterers must therefore be tweeting for some other reason. Is it the most effective way to navel gaze and communicate in some new age form of a constant celebratory campfire? Omphaloskeptic, now here is a pertinent username for you if you are inclined to dive in.
In the interest of objectivity, I must perhaps add a counter explanation. It is also possible that my extreme levels of narcissism were offended by the lack of interest in my tweets as demonstrated rather cruelly by my stagnant follower count. (Such a cold lack of interest hasn't stopped me from blogging, and I've valiantly hung on for five years! But then there's no cold harsh negative feedback of reader enthusiasm that I cannot ignore...)
And finally, an exciting new development in my life means that I will have to use Twitter in the future and must continue to restrain this pessimistic sour grape sentiments and chug along.
Oh wait, that wasn't final. I have also observed a healthy number of African-American twitterers, more than I've ever stumbled across blogs. Is this simply because searching on Twitter is far easier? More grist for this profitless publishing mill... ¶ 11:50 PM 0 Comments
Monday, June 01, 2009
The Chasedown
Noun Chasedown
1. The chilling spectacle of a supremely gifted predator calculating the precise twin trajectories of itself and its lithe prey before launching its shiny unfurled musculature into the skies and ripping the very life force from the bewildered prey's grasp. Also very dispiriting for other conspecifics watching helplessly from the sidelines.
¶ 3:41 PM 0 Comments
1. The chilling spectacle of a supremely gifted predator calculating the precise twin trajectories of itself and its lithe prey before launching its shiny unfurled musculature into the skies and ripping the very life force from the bewildered prey's grasp. Also very dispiriting for other conspecifics watching helplessly from the sidelines.
¶ 3:41 PM 0 Comments
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Building boundaries from bits: class and distinctions in this digital age
Miguel Garcia, a class valedictorian accepted by 13 eager colleges, felt like an outsider at Harvard and Boston.com explores the reasons. The reason is predictable and yet poignant when seen through his eyes. Class disparity. Scholarships are not immediate levelers in a world inundated with numerous methods of signaling--seasonal junkets, clothing, transportation, you name it and there is an exclusive and exclusionary way to indulge that it. Cultural transplants face this too, though it might not strike one as prejudiced. All this is by way of introducing not the article over at Boston.com, but the rather fascinating diversity of opinion in the comments section. Some empathize with Miguel's struggle, while others snicker at the tragedy! of not being able to afford a suit as they remind Miguel to look at the bigger picture in which he inhabits that most desirable island of elites, an address that is sure to open all kinds of doors later. ( And still other commentators sniff a an anti-Harvard bias in these articles of this kind.)
Why are so many differing perspectives held? Or to have a different perspective on that question, why are all these people right? Humans are labeling fetishists, and yet rail against otherness. The general unspoken and strongly held consensus is: Exclusion is wrong especially if it is done on the basis of wealth. Brash Boston Brahmins. And yet we readily glue multiple labels on, even literal ones like brands, and feel free to typecast on their basis. It may even be necessary to prevent a cognitive overload. How can you greet every stranger with tabula rasa and patiently tabulate his or her characteristics without recourse to any guesses. Labels allow guesses and we are constantly refining our own labels to make it easier for people to guess our location in the culture space. Some labels like intelligent and knowledgeable are acquired, while others are stiched on, maybe loosely, at birth. Acquired labels for reason are more defensible and people have no qualms about bashing others over the head with these. I do this myself when I see moronic comments on Youtube. Perhaps I shouldn't, or perhaps I should better understand the true reasons for this disdain.
Labels allow us to gravitate faster towards a community based on commonalities. Is it wrong for physicsts to interact mainly with physicists? Or Scrabble enthusiasts, or knitting fans? Class provides similarly ready labels, but these are harder to acquire, or at least were, but they stand for commonalities nonetheless. And all these different forms of shared understanding and appreciation seem to provide that same warmth of connection and allow for that state of flow us social beings need. Those who support and empathize with Miguel seem to share a background, while those who do not see Miguel as a different grain hewn from the same rock. It is scale-space theory applied to society.
The digital society makes it so much easier, dizzingly easier, to erect and formalize communities, connections, and boundaries that the question of otherness pops up more often. The comments section on the Boston article allows these different perspectives to wrestle and recognize difference. Pornographic websites force the entire spectrum of sexual identities into visual arrays, asking consumers to piece together their own, and Facebook compels us to recognize and approve any sentiment of connection another individual might perceive by friending him. Twitter breaks this symmetry and allows us to follow and peer in, but also creates and defines transient commonalities every second with hashtags and searchable labels. Where are we headed? Will this ebb and flow of friction between boundaries lead to an understanding of this fundamental need to connect allowing for more fluid and (for lack of a better word) compassionate understanding, or isolate us into ever small groups ending in the unit cult? Repositories of cultural fragments like Youtube allow everyone to join in, but embedding of these cultural fragments in walled gardens and moated forts allows for a shared stagnant identity that one can luxuriate or wallow in. What will we make of these dueling forces? ¶ 7:46 PM 0 Comments
Why are so many differing perspectives held? Or to have a different perspective on that question, why are all these people right? Humans are labeling fetishists, and yet rail against otherness. The general unspoken and strongly held consensus is: Exclusion is wrong especially if it is done on the basis of wealth. Brash Boston Brahmins. And yet we readily glue multiple labels on, even literal ones like brands, and feel free to typecast on their basis. It may even be necessary to prevent a cognitive overload. How can you greet every stranger with tabula rasa and patiently tabulate his or her characteristics without recourse to any guesses. Labels allow guesses and we are constantly refining our own labels to make it easier for people to guess our location in the culture space. Some labels like intelligent and knowledgeable are acquired, while others are stiched on, maybe loosely, at birth. Acquired labels for reason are more defensible and people have no qualms about bashing others over the head with these. I do this myself when I see moronic comments on Youtube. Perhaps I shouldn't, or perhaps I should better understand the true reasons for this disdain.
Labels allow us to gravitate faster towards a community based on commonalities. Is it wrong for physicsts to interact mainly with physicists? Or Scrabble enthusiasts, or knitting fans? Class provides similarly ready labels, but these are harder to acquire, or at least were, but they stand for commonalities nonetheless. And all these different forms of shared understanding and appreciation seem to provide that same warmth of connection and allow for that state of flow us social beings need. Those who support and empathize with Miguel seem to share a background, while those who do not see Miguel as a different grain hewn from the same rock. It is scale-space theory applied to society.
The digital society makes it so much easier, dizzingly easier, to erect and formalize communities, connections, and boundaries that the question of otherness pops up more often. The comments section on the Boston article allows these different perspectives to wrestle and recognize difference. Pornographic websites force the entire spectrum of sexual identities into visual arrays, asking consumers to piece together their own, and Facebook compels us to recognize and approve any sentiment of connection another individual might perceive by friending him. Twitter breaks this symmetry and allows us to follow and peer in, but also creates and defines transient commonalities every second with hashtags and searchable labels. Where are we headed? Will this ebb and flow of friction between boundaries lead to an understanding of this fundamental need to connect allowing for more fluid and (for lack of a better word) compassionate understanding, or isolate us into ever small groups ending in the unit cult? Repositories of cultural fragments like Youtube allow everyone to join in, but embedding of these cultural fragments in walled gardens and moated forts allows for a shared stagnant identity that one can luxuriate or wallow in. What will we make of these dueling forces? ¶ 7:46 PM 0 Comments
Friday, May 29, 2009
Entertaining Excerpts (Morbidly)
Baechler described 4 distinct types of suicide: escapist, aggressive, oblative, and ludic. The ludic type is subdivided into the “ordeal” and the “game.” The “ordeal” refers to risking one’s life to prove oneself to oneself or to seek the judgment of others. He postulates that participants in Russian roulette desire to prove something by challenging probability: A “winner” of this activity is alive; survival rests in the hands of fate. The customary attributes of a successful sportsman, specifically, skill, bravery, and intelligence, play no role. Baechler’s suicide as a “game” involves the sole purpose of playing with one’s life in recognition of the chance of a fatality. The ultimate stakes of life versus death constitute the thrilling appeal of Russian roulette.link Via Kottke ¶ 12:52 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Dan Ariely: On our buggy moral code
Dan Ariely's Blog
Dan talks about the pitfalls of handling tokens that are exchangeable for money, but removed from the implicit affective relationships that have been forged with the concept of money. Credit card users surely face this. What is insidious about credit cards is that the motor action accompanying a purchase remains the same, no matter the amount being forked over. Real paper money forces you to make a stronger motor correlation. More money implies more bills, or bigger bills.
This effect might be stronger in those making the leap from cash to cards. (I suspect that there is also a perceptual difference (aside from the obvious factual one) between credit cards and debit cards. Do debit cards automatically elicit visual episodes of logging on to see dangerously depleted balances? ).
Technology, in making the process easier, may also make it easier for us to spend. In fact, it makes it easier for us to consume by eliminating or relegating the concept of spending to a quick swipe of a magnetic strip. Technology, however, can also help resuscitate the connection. Will an iphone app that automatically pops up your balance, not as a number, but as a bar or other spatial entity presented in the context of your preset savings goals, also shown as a spatial entity, nudge us into being a bit more careful? I guess it is interesting that these technological advances will have to come from outside the bank or credit card issuer as it isn't in their interest to make the consumer more prudent.
Update: Jonah Lehrer points to some studies that look at recklessness induced by the abstractions that are credit cards.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Preemptive apologies for excessive basketballography
But this has to be said. The NBA playoff adverts have been great. Last year's "there can only be one" series was directed by the creative couple behind Little Miss Sunshine. I haven't been able to discover the agency behind these :
The foreground figure extraction is beautifully done; wonder how they accomplish it. ¶ 7:06 PM 0 Comments
The foreground figure extraction is beautifully done; wonder how they accomplish it. ¶ 7:06 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Monday, May 04, 2009
Funny tube copypasta
99.5% of all teens would cry if the Jonas brothers were on a 20 story building about to jump.The other 0.5% would bring a chair and popcorn.Copy and Paste if your one of those 0.5%
I just noticed while trying to attribute this that the Tube doesn't permalink comments. Why come? But this should be easy enough to Google.
I also just realized that I am not a teen anymore. Every passing second changes culture on the outside, and the neural webs on the inside. Bit by bit that teen spirit becomes distant, opaquer, and ultimately impenetrable. And thus the hour glass flips... ¶ 6:33 PM 0 Comments
I just noticed while trying to attribute this that the Tube doesn't permalink comments. Why come? But this should be easy enough to Google.
I also just realized that I am not a teen anymore. Every passing second changes culture on the outside, and the neural webs on the inside. Bit by bit that teen spirit becomes distant, opaquer, and ultimately impenetrable. And thus the hour glass flips... ¶ 6:33 PM 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sakshat, the ten dollar laptop
Updated (see footnote)
Ten dollars? How are they going to pull that off? If the website that probably defaults as the homepage is any indication, they might ship this with a coarse screen or a no-screen TV pluggable. Text on TV screens is obviously a concern, and hence the absolutely bizarre synced narrative that sounds like it was mecha-turked to be read into cheap microphones?
Despite all that, this could still work. We are nothing if not ingenious in working around technological obstacles. What is the most common use of this laptop going to be? IIT Madras was involved in the project. If past projects are any indication, this will involve some crazy, creative, but ultimately workable hacks.
Western design is hobbled by aesthetic constraints. Developing nations can't afford that a lot of the times and something that just works, however pathetically inefficient it is, would still be a lot better than nothing. I know nothing of the OLPC design, but I would speculate that having it conform to current ideals of what a laptop is, added to the cost.
And now the government, or whatever sleazy agency was responsible for the 10 dollar stunt, has backpedaled and ordered 250,000 OLPC laptops. This is both infuriating and heartening. Infuriating because of the ineptitude it highlights, and heartening because the whole cycle starting at bombastic blunder and ending in a bashful backing off did not take the usual decade. But still, 250,000 OLPC laptops is a lot of money; the kind of amount that screams scam and ghapla when the Indian beauracratic machinery is involved. I am expecting some unexpected setbacks here. ¶ 12:23 PM 1 Comments
Ten dollars? How are they going to pull that off? If the website that probably defaults as the homepage is any indication, they might ship this with a coarse screen or a no-screen TV pluggable. Text on TV screens is obviously a concern, and hence the absolutely bizarre synced narrative that sounds like it was mecha-turked to be read into cheap microphones?
Despite all that, this could still work. We are nothing if not ingenious in working around technological obstacles. What is the most common use of this laptop going to be? IIT Madras was involved in the project. If past projects are any indication, this will involve some crazy, creative, but ultimately workable hacks.
Western design is hobbled by aesthetic constraints. Developing nations can't afford that a lot of the times and something that just works, however pathetically inefficient it is, would still be a lot better than nothing. I know nothing of the OLPC design, but I would speculate that having it conform to current ideals of what a laptop is, added to the cost.
And now the government, or whatever sleazy agency was responsible for the 10 dollar stunt, has backpedaled and ordered 250,000 OLPC laptops. This is both infuriating and heartening. Infuriating because of the ineptitude it highlights, and heartening because the whole cycle starting at bombastic blunder and ending in a bashful backing off did not take the usual decade. But still, 250,000 OLPC laptops is a lot of money; the kind of amount that screams scam and ghapla when the Indian beauracratic machinery is involved. I am expecting some unexpected setbacks here. ¶ 12:23 PM 1 Comments
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
He's Attorney James Sokolove
James Sokolove is an almost avuncular presence in my life. He was there for me when I first moved to Boston in 2002 and his soothing voice was still calming me and assuring safety right until I got rid of my TV sometime last year.
Every New Englander knows him from his ads on TV, but I never thought of Googling him to look up his back story, which turns out to be pretty damn interesting; goes to show that there's a tale under every unturned rock.
The most fascinating part? His firm doesn't actually take on any cases, but simply passes them on for a juicy affiliate fee to other lawyers who are too chicken to indulge in the (apparently) morally dubious business of advertising on TV!
Full Story
And, of course, the commercial on the Tube :)
¶ 11:57 PM 0 Comments
Every New Englander knows him from his ads on TV, but I never thought of Googling him to look up his back story, which turns out to be pretty damn interesting; goes to show that there's a tale under every unturned rock.
The most fascinating part? His firm doesn't actually take on any cases, but simply passes them on for a juicy affiliate fee to other lawyers who are too chicken to indulge in the (apparently) morally dubious business of advertising on TV!
Full Story
And, of course, the commercial on the Tube :)
¶ 11:57 PM 0 Comments
Friday, April 17, 2009
What about the Baileys?
¶ 2:09 PM 0 Comments
I am a huge LeBrawn fan. Not just because of his basketball prowess, which is off the charts, but also because of how he has managed to surpass an almost insurmountable mound of expectations heaped in front of him by all comers, and then lit into a giant flaming pyre by media outlets. He managed to do that as 19 year old entering a league where a 6 foot 3 inch, two hundred pound player is considered a weak misfit.
His story also serves to remind us of the many threads that do unravel, as would be the norm. For, really, how many high-school phenoms hoisted on the shoulders of adoring but uninformed fans actually make it to the big leagues AND shine.
Ever heard of Damon Bailey? He was a Lebron to his Indiana hometown and then state. I came across this mention of him in the (wonderful | awesome| amazing| supercool) times archive.
His story also serves to remind us of the many threads that do unravel, as would be the norm. For, really, how many high-school phenoms hoisted on the shoulders of adoring but uninformed fans actually make it to the big leagues AND shine.
Ever heard of Damon Bailey? He was a Lebron to his Indiana hometown and then state. I came across this mention of him in the (wonderful | awesome| amazing| supercool) times archive.
For Damon Bailey and Eric Montross, the distinctions between basketball myth and basketball reality sometimes blurred during their last three seasons in high school.
From their first year in high school until graduation last month, the two prep all-Americans had become legendary figures in the rich lore of Indiana basketball. Much of the legend had to do with talent, though much of it also had to do with the hunger of in-state Hoosiers for new hot-shot heroes.
This week at the Olympic Festival, however, the mythology of high school has been replaced by the bruising reality of big-time college basketball. link
He first shone in the public eye when anointed a "hot prospect" while still in eighth grade, by Bob Knight. According to Wikipedia, he was drafted 44th by Indiana, and then cut after one year on the injured list. However, he is still big in Indiana.
How humbling it must be for Damon to have to push back his pride and appear at McDonalds to sign autographs. Bailey was Lebron James before there was a Lebron. His every move was watched as he caught the imagination of basketball fans across the state of Indiana. After all, Bob Knight said he was a better player in the eighth grade than the contemporary IU point guard, Steve Alford. The only difference between the basketball careers of Bailey and James is Lebron can actually play.
The moral of this story is twofold. First, if you try to live off of past glories in high school, you’ll probably end up spending some time working at McDonalds. Secondly, if you fit the mold of what an Indiana basketball player should be (Caucasian, short, slow, from a small town), even if you had a mediocre college career and non-existent professional career, the state will still love you and there will always be a place for you in small town fast food restaurants.
Ouch!
These slips and slaps are what high-school phenoms risk for all the transient glory that shines so brightly, ever so briefly. Fascinating.
Source
These slips and slaps are what high-school phenoms risk for all the transient glory that shines so brightly, ever so briefly. Fascinating.
SourceDamon Bailey sounds like a nice, not-too-bitter guy though...
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The news distillation process
The New York Times is publishing pro- skilled immigration articles to go along with Obama's political maneuvering. A recent article had this amusing, obviously exaggerated account of an engineer's ingenuity.
"the company’s map-making team faced a problem that even the best and brightest could not solve. Maps produced by the service were taking too long to download and appear on phones. Enter Mr. Mavinkurve, who floated an alternative: cut the number of colors in each map section to 20 or 40 from around 256. Mr. Mavinkurve used a rare combination of creativity, analysis, engineering and an understanding of graphics [emphasis mine] to find a solution that had eluded the rest of the team."
Sharp-eyed Redditers are obviously not going to let something that juicy pass by unmolested :)
Redditer millstone provided this hilarious reconstruction of the editing process leading into the luminous outcome:
Sanjay here. This is exactly what happened. Completely serious. I was mortified when I read this!
link ¶ 9:32 PM 0 Comments
"the company’s map-making team faced a problem that even the best and brightest could not solve. Maps produced by the service were taking too long to download and appear on phones. Enter Mr. Mavinkurve, who floated an alternative: cut the number of colors in each map section to 20 or 40 from around 256. Mr. Mavinkurve used a rare combination of creativity, analysis, engineering and an understanding of graphics [emphasis mine] to find a solution that had eluded the rest of the team."
Sharp-eyed Redditers are obviously not going to let something that juicy pass by unmolested :)
Redditer millstone provided this hilarious reconstruction of the editing process leading into the luminous outcome:
Sanjay here. This is exactly what happened. Completely serious. I was mortified when I read this!
link ¶ 9:32 PM 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Odd one out
Only one dog in this picture doesn't mind vegan hippie-enforced Yoga.
And it is not the one wagging her tail. ¶ 10:06 PM 0 Comments
Only one dog in this picture doesn't mind vegan hippie-enforced Yoga.
And it is not the one wagging her tail. ¶ 10:06 PM 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Watching hoops mashups on the Tube is my favorite between-work blocks indulgence. This Tubester has elevated a grungy basement genre into an artform.
¶ 9:44 AM 0 Comments
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sampling Bias Bitten
During summer vacations, Chamberlain worked as a bellhop in Kutsher's Hotel. Red Auerbach, the coach of the Boston Celtics, spotted the talented teenager there and had him play 1-on-1 against Kansas University standout and national champion, B. H. Born, elected the Most Valuable Player of the 1953 NCAA Finals. Chamberlain won 25–10; Born was so dejected that he gave up a promising NBA career and became a tractor engineer ("If there were high school kids that good, I figured I wasn't going to make it to the pros").
From the Wilt Chamberlain bio. Many other interesting tidbits in there. ¶ 3:34 PM 0 Comments
From the Wilt Chamberlain bio. Many other interesting tidbits in there. ¶ 3:34 PM 0 Comments
Monday, March 16, 2009
Playoffs!
Don't watch it here if you are not on a smartphone. The widescreen HD version is awesome. ¶ 7:24 PM 0 Comments
Don't watch it here if you are not on a smartphone. The widescreen HD version is awesome. ¶ 7:24 PM 0 Comments
Friday, March 06, 2009
Vikram Pandit and the Indian mafia
The phrase Indian mafia does appear in the article. It was also used in a humorous, unknow
¶ 2:58 PM 0 Comments
Friday, February 20, 2009
Ghettodawg Chamillionaire
This latest offering from Danny Boyle is a visual feast. Set in gritty West Baltimore, the protagonist Jamaal comes of age during the crack epidemic of the early nineties. The director is unflinching in showing Jamaal's horrific childhood lived in sumptuously saturated shots of dilapidated brownstones, boarded doors, and urinated alleys. An 8 year old Jamaal fleeing the projects while his parents are being slaughtered by a rival gang, or Jamaal being subject to unspeakable sexual indignities during his time at a foster home-- Danny Boyle almost makes us squirm in our plush seats. But virtuoso that he is, the scenes are shot at a rapid clip and set to pulsating hip-hop beats that are synchronously lively and pop-menacing
Particularly magical and joyous are the scenes where Jamaal and his brother, after finding their way to New York City, manage to reinvent themselves as guides, picking up an impeccable east coast preppie accent in the process.
Oh Danny Boyle! An utterly unlettered black kid from West Baltimore donning an east coast preppie accent? You never fail to amaze!
The movie skirts surreality at all times and heartily indulges in the buffet of caviar battered fried chicken and magical realism when Jamaal manages to find his way into Regis Philbin's hot seat while working as a mortgage repackager at Fannie Mae. In a deliciously inspired sequence of lucky strokes, the questions asked of Jamaal resonate soundly with memories from his absent-childhood. Jamaal instantly recognizes Richard Wagner as the composer of The Ride of the Valkyries as that was the ringtone the drug dealers he worked with set up as a code on their burners.
And so, the movie titillates, pleases, pleasures, in ways so desperately sought in these uncertain economic times. As I gushingly committed my trembling pen and fluttering heart to pen an ecstatic review, the theater jived and grooved to the song sequence in the closing titles. Without giving too much away, I will add that Soulja Boy, High School Musical, and Miley Cyrus combine swimmingly well!
Siiigh ¶ 12:27 AM 1 Comments
Particularly magical and joyous are the scenes where Jamaal and his brother, after finding their way to New York City, manage to reinvent themselves as guides, picking up an impeccable east coast preppie accent in the process.
Oh Danny Boyle! An utterly unlettered black kid from West Baltimore donning an east coast preppie accent? You never fail to amaze!
The movie skirts surreality at all times and heartily indulges in the buffet of caviar battered fried chicken and magical realism when Jamaal manages to find his way into Regis Philbin's hot seat while working as a mortgage repackager at Fannie Mae. In a deliciously inspired sequence of lucky strokes, the questions asked of Jamaal resonate soundly with memories from his absent-childhood. Jamaal instantly recognizes Richard Wagner as the composer of The Ride of the Valkyries as that was the ringtone the drug dealers he worked with set up as a code on their burners.
And so, the movie titillates, pleases, pleasures, in ways so desperately sought in these uncertain economic times. As I gushingly committed my trembling pen and fluttering heart to pen an ecstatic review, the theater jived and grooved to the song sequence in the closing titles. Without giving too much away, I will add that Soulja Boy, High School Musical, and Miley Cyrus combine swimmingly well!
Siiigh ¶ 12:27 AM 1 Comments
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Slumdogs
Article in The New Yorker by Katherine Boo
"...This was the marvel of many great twenty-first-century cities, including New York and Washington, whose levels of inequality now match those of Abidjan and Nairobi. Maybe they should have looked like [violent video game] Metal Slug 3. Instead, ingenious social constructions--democracy, charity, subtle and blatant articulations of caste, hope, electrified fences--were keeping things more or less in order."
(link)
Why is it that I haven't come across any Indian journalists writing about class resentment. Is it considered too obvious, simple-minded, socialist? Arvind Adiga's White Tiger does, but in an almost garishly caricatured fashion. And it is fiction. All that Valentine's day fundie brouhaha probably stems from some resentment towards the excessively rich and lavishly consumerist. India is only nascently capitalist and one can't attribute riches and assuage resentment by reminding oneself that the wealth being flaunted and uglily consumed was made justly and through channels open to all.
In India, that is still far from true. ¶ 6:49 PM 1 Comments
"...This was the marvel of many great twenty-first-century cities, including New York and Washington, whose levels of inequality now match those of Abidjan and Nairobi. Maybe they should have looked like [violent video game] Metal Slug 3. Instead, ingenious social constructions--democracy, charity, subtle and blatant articulations of caste, hope, electrified fences--were keeping things more or less in order."
(link)
Why is it that I haven't come across any Indian journalists writing about class resentment. Is it considered too obvious, simple-minded, socialist? Arvind Adiga's White Tiger does, but in an almost garishly caricatured fashion. And it is fiction. All that Valentine's day fundie brouhaha probably stems from some resentment towards the excessively rich and lavishly consumerist. India is only nascently capitalist and one can't attribute riches and assuage resentment by reminding oneself that the wealth being flaunted and uglily consumed was made justly and through channels open to all.
In India, that is still far from true. ¶ 6:49 PM 1 Comments
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Allen Stanford reveals the secrets behind his sucess
4. What event will touch off the next economic crisis?
Poor global leadership, nuclear or biological war, man's inhumanity toward man, greed, religious intolerance, exponential growth of human enterprises. I could go on, but they are all overshadowed by global climate change--the environmental time bomb that began ticking with the start of the Industrial Age. I am not talking about saving earth. I'm talking about saving civilization. For the next generation to have a future, we--as nearly 7 billion people living on a planet with finite resources--must immediately begin the process of restructuring the global economy before we reach the tipping point of massive market failure and the collapse of social, economic and government structure. I strongly encourage everyone to read Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown. (More)
Via
I first became suspicious when I heard he was pouring money into a twenty20 match involving England. Picking the most boring international team isn't a sign of business savvy! :)
¶ 10:07 PM 0 Comments
Poor global leadership, nuclear or biological war, man's inhumanity toward man, greed, religious intolerance, exponential growth of human enterprises. I could go on, but they are all overshadowed by global climate change--the environmental time bomb that began ticking with the start of the Industrial Age. I am not talking about saving earth. I'm talking about saving civilization. For the next generation to have a future, we--as nearly 7 billion people living on a planet with finite resources--must immediately begin the process of restructuring the global economy before we reach the tipping point of massive market failure and the collapse of social, economic and government structure. I strongly encourage everyone to read Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown. (More)
Via
I first became suspicious when I heard he was pouring money into a twenty20 match involving England. Picking the most boring international team isn't a sign of business savvy! :)
¶ 10:07 PM 0 Comments
The Indian Railway King: Hathi ko cheetah bana diya
How did India’s Huey Long become its Jack Welch?
NEW DELHI—In his boyhood, long before Lalu Yadav became India’s most unlikely management guru, he sometimes strayed from his cows and scampered barefoot to the railroad tracks. Dodging crowds and porters, he made his way to the first-class cars and, for a few glorious moments, basked in the air conditioning that blasted from the open door. Then the police would spot him and shoo him away, into the moist trackside cowflap where he belonged.
The boy has grown up, but when I meet him in his New Delhi office, he’s still barefoot, and a headache for train conductors everywhere. Lalu Yadav, 61, is now the boss of all 2.4 million Indian Railways employees. When he wants air conditioning, he nods, and a railway employee hops up to twist the dial. As minister of railways, he rules India’s largest employer—one with annual revenues in the tens of billions—from a fine leather sofa, his sandals and a silver spittoon on the floor nearby and a clump of tobacco in his cheek....(More) ¶ 12:01 PM 1 Comments
NEW DELHI—In his boyhood, long before Lalu Yadav became India’s most unlikely management guru, he sometimes strayed from his cows and scampered barefoot to the railroad tracks. Dodging crowds and porters, he made his way to the first-class cars and, for a few glorious moments, basked in the air conditioning that blasted from the open door. Then the police would spot him and shoo him away, into the moist trackside cowflap where he belonged.
The boy has grown up, but when I meet him in his New Delhi office, he’s still barefoot, and a headache for train conductors everywhere. Lalu Yadav, 61, is now the boss of all 2.4 million Indian Railways employees. When he wants air conditioning, he nods, and a railway employee hops up to twist the dial. As minister of railways, he rules India’s largest employer—one with annual revenues in the tens of billions—from a fine leather sofa, his sandals and a silver spittoon on the floor nearby and a clump of tobacco in his cheek....(More) ¶ 12:01 PM 1 Comments
Saturday, February 14, 2009
My Clumsy Duck Theory
During my daily coffee pilgrimages, I noticed that the person manning the counter usually has the credit card swiper to his or her right. Also, the credit card machine seems to insist on the magnetic stripe facing inwards, towards the person.
Now most people, including me, being right-handed, take out the card from the wallet with the right hand and give it with the name side of the card facing up. This means that the person has to flip the card over and face down before swiping. It struck me that I could perhaps save them a second or two by doing the flipping myself.
But after doing so, I have noticed this throws them off and they usually flip the card over back to how they'd usually receive the card, and then proceed to swipe, thus negating my valiant and generous effort. It seems obvious from my recent observations that habits, even if resulting in more muscular work, have less of a cognitive load than a simple, new action. ( Hence, the suboptimal qwerty keyboards ). This is straightforward. But, from my observations, I have also noticed the profound effect a sexy name slapped on a simplistic theory can have. And thus, I declare this The Clumsy Duck Theory. The duck analogy is also apt because of some quirky chirality issues. ¶ 4:57 PM 0 Comments
Now most people, including me, being right-handed, take out the card from the wallet with the right hand and give it with the name side of the card facing up. This means that the person has to flip the card over and face down before swiping. It struck me that I could perhaps save them a second or two by doing the flipping myself.
But after doing so, I have noticed this throws them off and they usually flip the card over back to how they'd usually receive the card, and then proceed to swipe, thus negating my valiant and generous effort. It seems obvious from my recent observations that habits, even if resulting in more muscular work, have less of a cognitive load than a simple, new action. ( Hence, the suboptimal qwerty keyboards ). This is straightforward. But, from my observations, I have also noticed the profound effect a sexy name slapped on a simplistic theory can have. And thus, I declare this The Clumsy Duck Theory. The duck analogy is also apt because of some quirky chirality issues. ¶ 4:57 PM 0 Comments
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Dreams from my dreamy baby daddy Obama
The dreams recounted here are hilarious, ridiculous, pathetic, and ... whatever. Just read on till you can stomach no more. link
¶ 7:05 PM 2 Comments
Friday, February 06, 2009
Dilution of quality in social aggregators
The bemoaning of degrading quality is a staple across many domains. The older generation waxes nostalgically about the golden age of yore, alums say they same about their schools, and so on. Keeping with the incredibly short life cycles of internet-based systems, it is no surprise really to see users airing similar complaints, whether it be on reddit, digg, hacker news. Quality, however, should be far easier to measure when everything's in bit form already.
We must define quality however, and also ask whose definition we must heed, for there will invariably be multiple perspectives. It is a social news, wisdom of crowds, collective intelligentsia, thing after all! :)
For a first-pass definition, I'll start with interesting in a non-trivial way. That definition is quite akin to pan-spermia in foisting the heavy-lifting on other terms. To end that, I'll further define interestingness as something that educates or informs, and non-trivial being contextual. That is, politics, puns, Palin jokes, and Paul (Ron) screeds are very within the realm of non-triviality for reddit or digg, but not for Hacker News.
A caveat that immediately comes to mind is that people seem to have a perception of quality that is anchored by their own value. That can be still be dealt with in the simple thought experiment that follows.
Given the common knowledge/myth that most interesting web 2.0 sites are pioneered by smart early adopters, it might be fair to assume that the initial set of users is smarter than average. A counter to that would be an example of a site that started with Youtube's average comment quality and evolved into something like vimeo. Or myspace metamorphizing into facebook. Note that both examples are derived from subjective value judgments, but ones that are quite widely held
So, the question then is given an intial user base of smart people, how does the average quality of the community evolve as the knowledge of this community's existence spread through friend networks. Yes, to simplify things, I'll assume that new users are inducted only from the friend networks of existing users, and also that a person's friends all fall within a finite neighborhood of quality relative to the person's quality.
And what's quality, in this exceedingly simplistic analysis, it is a two dimension vector comprising os the scalars average post value and average comment value. The assumptions in a nutshell are that initial user communities are smart, and that smart people have similarly smart friends. Given these assumptions, what does the community cluster look like at various points in its evolution?
As evinced by the mean comment and post values, it does seem like the average quality does go down. The variance, however, indicated by the size of the cluster, increases.
These are rather obvious results because high quality, implying a position on the right tail of a normal distribution, is in short supply and will eventually be depleted. Even if the rate is slow, new users, who are within some finite quality distance of a user through whose network they were inducted, will on average be of lower quality. This is just the bell curve working its inevitable logic.
The more important question, however, is whether new users can be induced by the community into moving to the top-right corner of the above graph. And if not, can they be effectively filtered out?
Old and repetitive arguments about the dynamic or static nature of these curves/distributions are easy to find elsewhere on the net. Assuming that both inducement and filtering are necessary for effective maintenance of the community, what should the incentives and disincentives look like?
¶ 11:27 PM 0 Comments
We must define quality however, and also ask whose definition we must heed, for there will invariably be multiple perspectives. It is a social news, wisdom of crowds, collective intelligentsia, thing after all! :)
For a first-pass definition, I'll start with interesting in a non-trivial way. That definition is quite akin to pan-spermia in foisting the heavy-lifting on other terms. To end that, I'll further define interestingness as something that educates or informs, and non-trivial being contextual. That is, politics, puns, Palin jokes, and Paul (Ron) screeds are very within the realm of non-triviality for reddit or digg, but not for Hacker News.
A caveat that immediately comes to mind is that people seem to have a perception of quality that is anchored by their own value. That can be still be dealt with in the simple thought experiment that follows.
Given the common knowledge/myth that most interesting web 2.0 sites are pioneered by smart early adopters, it might be fair to assume that the initial set of users is smarter than average. A counter to that would be an example of a site that started with Youtube's average comment quality and evolved into something like vimeo. Or myspace metamorphizing into facebook. Note that both examples are derived from subjective value judgments, but ones that are quite widely held
So, the question then is given an intial user base of smart people, how does the average quality of the community evolve as the knowledge of this community's existence spread through friend networks. Yes, to simplify things, I'll assume that new users are inducted only from the friend networks of existing users, and also that a person's friends all fall within a finite neighborhood of quality relative to the person's quality.
And what's quality, in this exceedingly simplistic analysis, it is a two dimension vector comprising os the scalars average post value and average comment value. The assumptions in a nutshell are that initial user communities are smart, and that smart people have similarly smart friends. Given these assumptions, what does the community cluster look like at various points in its evolution?
As evinced by the mean comment and post values, it does seem like the average quality does go down. The variance, however, indicated by the size of the cluster, increases.
These are rather obvious results because high quality, implying a position on the right tail of a normal distribution, is in short supply and will eventually be depleted. Even if the rate is slow, new users, who are within some finite quality distance of a user through whose network they were inducted, will on average be of lower quality. This is just the bell curve working its inevitable logic.
The more important question, however, is whether new users can be induced by the community into moving to the top-right corner of the above graph. And if not, can they be effectively filtered out?
Old and repetitive arguments about the dynamic or static nature of these curves/distributions are easy to find elsewhere on the net. Assuming that both inducement and filtering are necessary for effective maintenance of the community, what should the incentives and disincentives look like?
The art of the highlight reel
This video so wonderfully captures the drama that is basketball; the greatness at its center and the rightful idolatry. NBA, like every other behemoth, might have been late to the Youtube cultural but they are catching up. I guess background mood music is another cultural fork that is here to stay; it runs right through LeBrawn's monologue.
¶ 10:50 AM 0 Comments
¶ 10:50 AM 0 Comments
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Deconstructing A Disgraced Chairman
Indian journalists, and fledgling writers of Indian descent in general, have this amusing tendency to chunk words on the fly and repeatedly abuse these newly minted phrase. The terrorist attacks in India gave renewed vigor to that periodically dusted civic cry "Enough is enough", and now the Satyam controversy gives us disgraced chairman. This may have a lot to do with Indians (and perhaps other ex-colonies where English is lingua economica) coming in contact with more infrequent words in peculiar usage, and not having a more general definition of that word handy. Contrast this usage with the more diverse adjectival nomenclature applied in Bernie Madoff's case
Cognitive chunking of words into phrases removes conscious access to member words. The phrase becomes a convenient label for an event or a set of events, making it likelier for the event to be viewed non-introspectively in the guise of a spectator. The phrase disgraced chairman then makes it harder to introspect on the fall from grace and the commonalities it might share with traditional Indian business practices. Greasing official government cogs was a part of these practices. The high tech boom made us feel that with this new economic wave also swept out these parasitic practices, at least from certain arenas, but this saga of disgrace reminds us how hard it really is to wiggle these off.
Other instance of disgraced that have entered collective memory as a subconscious modifier are interesting too.
These are probably American trends, and almost all modify groups often in the focus of cultural battles. What does that tell us? ¶ 12:56 AM 0 Comments
Cognitive chunking of words into phrases removes conscious access to member words. The phrase becomes a convenient label for an event or a set of events, making it likelier for the event to be viewed non-introspectively in the guise of a spectator. The phrase disgraced chairman then makes it harder to introspect on the fall from grace and the commonalities it might share with traditional Indian business practices. Greasing official government cogs was a part of these practices. The high tech boom made us feel that with this new economic wave also swept out these parasitic practices, at least from certain arenas, but this saga of disgrace reminds us how hard it really is to wiggle these off.
Other instance of disgraced that have entered collective memory as a subconscious modifier are interesting too.
These are probably American trends, and almost all modify groups often in the focus of cultural battles. What does that tell us? ¶ 12:56 AM 0 Comments
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Witness, finally
Lebron James was simply spectacular in last night's game against the Celtics. Boston's in a woeful slump, but that shouldn't detract from the intensity with which King James lorded over Pierce and the rest. They simply withered in the face of that relentless offensive onslaught and rebounding. Watch the play at 1:10 where he steals a pass from Pierce and then races back with two Celtics in pursuit, does a behind the back exchange to the left to cut one defender out, and then a left-handed layup from a crazy angle to beat the other one. Divine
recap at nba.com ¶ 1:25 PM 0 Comments
recap at nba.com ¶ 1:25 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Barack Obama and the invention of self
Here's a remarkably good article that discusses in detail, a facet of Obama's much discussed persona. However Sue generis he may be in the context of American politics, I must note that intelligence, ambition, and a mastery of human psychology have given India many priests and God men over the centuries. Most religions are perhaps founded in the wake of a charismatic figure's unprecedented effect on the masses. That, however, does not tell us anything about the morality of the person. It is along another dimension and can help or hurt depending on how self-serving it is. O is surely unique, but only time can really tell if he is good in the moral and ethical sense. You also have to ask the question whether it matters, and if the current economic scenario makes it matter more or less.
¶ 2:46 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, January 01, 2009
And another begins!
Many in my peer group are struck by the rapidity with which time goes/passes/flows/ by now, so it must be an age thing. Newer experiences become rarer to come by as we put on the years, and new experiences are what seem to be the main markers that pin down slices of time for posterity.
So, I decided to rely more on digital markers to rejig this crustier brain and train myself to remember that 2008 wasn't the 13th month of 2007. Question: How long will it take me to write 2009 on my notes and checks? Checks, I am willing to be more relaxed about wrongly dating :)
Digital markers: Youtube was the obvious choice; the orchestral combination of the visual and auditory does much more for us than text. Text is still good in its own languorous pace, but a hasty year demands a rapid memory Rolodex.
And lest we forget, this is what passing time means
Obama: "I am the Juggernaut of Change!" I paraphrase, but O didn't realize how much of that change would be wrought by complicated financial externalities.
Hillary: Cry for me America! uhh I mean I am crying for America.
She should still be a formidable Secretary of State
Cory Worthington shows the world how to throw a Paahty
You don't Intrade once you star in mega-hit mixtape sampling your seminal speech.
This was the most memorable moment. And to make this happen in the Superbowl, on the way to winning it, against an undefeated team!
Wall Street is behind the counter selling derivatives, timidly and stupidly waiting for its future to be decided by the capricious throw of dice by cruel chaos. Actually, that was some convenience store guy being scared out of his suspenders by a menacingly awesome Javier Bardem
Client No 9 went down in month 3
The Changer goes into second gear
Celtics win the Championship right after their worst season, which included a 0-16 run. Historic and histrionic play by Pierce helped.
Dan LaFontaine ain't doing his legendary voiceovers no more
Palin! Palin! Palin! rears her head and enters the cultural airspace of America while singing You Betcha!
I am rooting for an Edwards/Spitzer versus Palin/Plumber 2012/16 RumbleMania
The Economy tanks and the disaster results in a new government acronym or word being added to our lexicon every day. A few local wars and atrocious terrorist attacks flare up. Global stag-deflation sets in. All this, His Divinity can handle, but then, HE finds out that Americans are buying SUVs and monster trucks again as gas prices go down below 2 dollars a gallon...
We are resilient if nothing else. We will soon recover and walk the planet again, if in slightly changed exoskeletons. Here's to the future!
¶ 1:55 PM 0 Comments
So, I decided to rely more on digital markers to rejig this crustier brain and train myself to remember that 2008 wasn't the 13th month of 2007. Question: How long will it take me to write 2009 on my notes and checks? Checks, I am willing to be more relaxed about wrongly dating :)
Digital markers: Youtube was the obvious choice; the orchestral combination of the visual and auditory does much more for us than text. Text is still good in its own languorous pace, but a hasty year demands a rapid memory Rolodex.
And lest we forget, this is what passing time means
Obama: "I am the Juggernaut of Change!" I paraphrase, but O didn't realize how much of that change would be wrought by complicated financial externalities.
Hillary: Cry for me America! uhh I mean I am crying for America.
She should still be a formidable Secretary of State
Cory Worthington shows the world how to throw a Paahty
You don't Intrade once you star in mega-hit mixtape sampling your seminal speech.
This was the most memorable moment. And to make this happen in the Superbowl, on the way to winning it, against an undefeated team!
Wall Street is behind the counter selling derivatives, timidly and stupidly waiting for its future to be decided by the capricious throw of dice by cruel chaos. Actually, that was some convenience store guy being scared out of his suspenders by a menacingly awesome Javier Bardem
Client No 9 went down in month 3
The Changer goes into second gear
Celtics win the Championship right after their worst season, which included a 0-16 run. Historic and histrionic play by Pierce helped.
Dan LaFontaine ain't doing his legendary voiceovers no more
Palin! Palin! Palin! rears her head and enters the cultural airspace of America while singing You Betcha!
I am rooting for an Edwards/Spitzer versus Palin/Plumber 2012/16 RumbleMania
The Economy tanks and the disaster results in a new government acronym or word being added to our lexicon every day. A few local wars and atrocious terrorist attacks flare up. Global stag-deflation sets in. All this, His Divinity can handle, but then, HE finds out that Americans are buying SUVs and monster trucks again as gas prices go down below 2 dollars a gallon...
We are resilient if nothing else. We will soon recover and walk the planet again, if in slightly changed exoskeletons. Here's to the future!
¶ 1:55 PM 0 Comments
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Made me laugh
Q: I had a stunning realization when I awoke this morning: Isn't Greg Oden the real Benjamin Button? I mean the injuries, the 45-year-old face, the creaky knees and geriatric hobble? This means for us Blazers fans things will only get better as he gets "younger." Phew.
-- Phil Taylor, Brooklyn, N.Y.
link ¶ 12:07 PM 0 Comments
-- Phil Taylor, Brooklyn, N.Y.
link ¶ 12:07 PM 0 Comments
I think it probably went down like this:
Reporter: "Give me an example of something Sanjay did."
Sanjay's manager: "He reduced the color palette to improve download time."
Reporter: (dutifully writes it down)
Editor: "This is boring. Can you add some drama?"
Reporter: "Ok...the BEST and BRIGHTEST were HELPLESS in the face of this mind-bending enigma. But suddenly, when things seemed at their darkest, a proud figure strides PURPOSEFULLY from the mist. He pulls back his hood, and it's SANJAY! He quickly COMBINES his powers of creativity, analysis, engineering, and graphics, forming a Molotov cocktail of sheer software brilliance. Diving behind a table, he HURLS it onto the slow download times, which run SCREAMING from our cell phone bills. Also Sanjay's hair blows majestically at all times."
Editor: Good.
link