Everything isn't Under Control

Friday, July 8, 2005

Girl: There's no such things as cooties, cootie shots, or cootie insurance.
Bart: But State Farm took my money!

@ 11:45 AM CST [Link]

Coined the term 'weblog,' never made a dime. Wired piece on eccentric, usually homeless, and broke weblog pioneer Jorn Barger. This must have been written a while ago, as robotwisdom has been steadily updated for months (a year?) now.

Andrew introduces me to the guy in the Google cap: "This is Jorn Barger," he begins. "Another homeless blogger," his companion finishes.
Jorn Barger. It takes me a moment to recognize the name. Barger is an online legend I've been following for a decade. He was the unstoppable Usenet poster who could carry on simultaneous debates about Ibsen, Chomsky, artificial intelligence, and Kate Bush. He was the keeper of the James Joyce FAQ. Barger's prolific posting made him famous, if not popular, in the protoblogosphere.
Barger crossed over from Usenet to the Web in 1997 and set up his own site, which he dubbed the Robot Wisdom Weblog. He began logging his online discoveries as he stumbled on them - hence "weblog." I barely understood what he was talking about, and still I read him giddily. Barger gave a name to the fledgling phenomenon and set the tone for a million blogs to come.

Update: Jorn says this is mostly fiction.

@ 11:23 AM CST [Link]

Small gallery of bad toys. I simply don't even get this one. A robot jogger for Superman. Umm, ok.

justice-jogger1 (48k image)
Lex Luthor has an atomic weapon? Lois kidnapped? To the jogger!

@ 11:01 AM CST [Link]

A rare, sane, commentary on Plume by a journalist. Its amazing to see the corporate media and the left and right join together to protect vindictive punishment through the media under the guise of "confidentiality" or mindboggingly "whistleblowing." I guess you can't expect the media to be impartial about their own industry, although they should be able to, but the last batch of op-ed pieces and even straight out news pieces about Judith Miller make her sound like the white MLK. Here's an op-ed by a journalist who has actually dealt with confidentiality issues for reasons other than political backstabing.

Reporters acting in the public’s interest and protecting the public’s right to know? Hardly.
To the contrary, the Miller-Cooper-Novak affair is a classic misuse of anonymous sources. Here, administration insiders first used reporters to inflict punishment on their political enemies and then to hide behind, all in the name of freedom of the press. In granting anonymity to these “confidential sources,” Miller, Cooper and Novak weren’t protecting a whistle-blower with information valuable to the public. Far from it. The real whistle-blower—Wilson—was the target of the damaging leak.

@ 10:50 AM CST [Link]

Tim Burton Interview. The questions aren't very good and the answers are practically curt (too many interviews lately?), but its worth checking out if you're a fan. Regardless, I'm much more interested in the upcoming Corpse Bride than the remake of Charlie.

Also: Corpse Bride official site.

@ 10:17 AM CST [Link]

Thursday, July 7, 2005

Flypaper theory. George Bush: We are fighting these terrorists with our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond so we do not have to face them in the streets of our own cities.

@ 10:45 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

DJ Darth scratches the Imperial March. Ignore the cheesy costume and check out the amazing job this guy does. If only all of star wars fandom was more like DJ Keltech and less like this guy.

dj-darth (17k image)

@ 08:46 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

New cat and girl. New Mr Wiggles too.

@ 01:08 PM CST [Link]

Kids make Matrix fan film. Its so bad, its good, but to be fair its supposed to be intentionally funny. Reminds me a lot of the show Home Movies. What's with all the pauses? I don't think the google people have worked out all the kinks out of their video service yet.

See also: The Fanimatrix. Slightly better fan film. Actually, its very easy to trash this movie, but for a fan film its very well done. Its just people subconsciously compare fan films to the originals which have much more time, talent, and money invested. Needless to say its not a fair comparision.

@ 12:58 PM CST [Link]

Monday, July 4, 2005

Lets learn about Galambosianism! Crazy Ayn Rand crap? Yes.

Now read this: Man in Illinois owns the trademark to the generic word "stealth." This is why stealthdisco.com doesn't exist anymore. Remember that site? People would dance behind working and oblivious coworkers, record it, and upload it. Intellectual property reform needed? Hell yeah.

Also: The word "stealth" is over 750 years old.

@ 12:40 PM CST [Link]

Halfbakery: McAmbulance. For 39 cents more you can get super shock defibrillator.

@ 12:33 PM CST [Link]

Hong Kong is the least sexy place on Earth. This does sound like BS or perhaps translation/cultural translation issues.

@ 12:21 PM CST [Link]

Deep Impact animated gif. This is really nice. The Planetary society gathered the raw feeds of the images from NASA and made an animated gif of the projectile colliding with the comet along with what it looked like from spacecraft. Someone needs to dub in people screaming "Oh my god, we're going to crash into that thing!!"

Also: Deep Impact homepage. Your tax dollars at work. Don't miss telescopic images of the explosion from other observers around the world.

observer (22k image)

@ 12:13 PM CST [Link]