• Another classic stunt by Improv Everywhere in New York City: they had over 200 people freeze at the same time in the middle of Grand Central Station. (via bb)

    (11) #
    2/1/2008

  • With the recent large-scale Internet outages in much of the Middle East and Southeast Asia due to the severing of undersea fiber optic links, it’s a good time to go back and read “Mother Earth Mother Board,” an essay by Neal Stephenson written for Wired in 1996. In the piece, Stephenson travels to several continents to chronicle the laying of undersea fiber optic cables, including the repair process:

    Clearly, submarine cable repair is a good business to be in. Cable repair ships are standing by in ports all over the world, on 24-hour call, waiting for a break to happen somewhere in their neighborhood.

    (0) #
    1/31/2008

  • When it comes to presidential primary coverage, it’s the momenucrats vs. the arithmecrats for both the Democrats and the Republicans.

    (3) #
    1/30/2008

  • Check out this bill in Massachusetts enacting the repeal of several antiquated blue laws, mostly from Chapter 272 of the General Laws of Massachusetts. The most fun laws are in sections 63-69, which carefully distinguish “Tramps,” “Vagrants,” and “Vagabonds.” (thx, jon may)

    (2) #
    1/30/2008

  • And speaking of Vollmann, there’s a negative but amusing review of his latest non-fiction work, “Riding Toward Everywhere,” in today’s New York Times Book Review. Line of the day:

    Whores are to Vollmann as bears are to John Irving.

    The reviewer then goes to describe a “freaky” episode where Vollmann makes out with a transient stranger dancing by a campfire. I love Vollmann.

    (0) #
    1/27/2008

Beautiful Children, a novel about Las Vegas

I read a line in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine that resonated with me deeply:

(2) comments | Sun, 01/27/2008 - 12:00am

  • The Las Vegas Review-Journal crunches some numbers to show that the influence of caucus-goers widely varied, depending on their voting location.

    [V]oters at the casinos had, on average, twice as much influence as if they had voted near where they lived…Strip voters weren’t the only voters who had greater individual influence on the caucus results based on where they were. For example, in Carson City, the ratio of voters per delegate was almost 19, but in Esmeralda County, it was just 1.5.

    The Democrats are allowed to keep this system at their discretion, but I see it as more evidence that Nevada should transition out of the caucus system. (thx, flea)

    (0) #
    1/25/2008

The Clintons and political sadness

I don’t want this to turn into a political blog, but I’ve always posted freely about American culture – and the most dominant aspect of our culture at the moment is the recent behavior of both of the Clintons. Those who have spoken with me in the past few months about the election have heard me say that I like Hillary Clinton, that we need more people like her fighting for us, that it’s important that America have a woman as president sooner than later, but that for various reasons I prefer Obama for the presidency. I usually then dive into those reasons, but I don’t want to get into that here. What I do want to get into is that during the past week or so, I’ve felt the most political sadness since I realized that the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry were sticking.

(89) comments | Thu, 01/24/2008 - 12:00am

Eyak becomes extinct

The last fluent speaker of the indigenous Alaskan language Eyak has died at 89. She was unable to pass it on to her children because languages other than English were heavily discouraged at the time they were raised. (via language log)

(0) comments | Wed, 01/23/2008 - 12:00am

  • The UCLA’s California Center for Population Research has released a statistical study of the strongest predictors for getting an Oscar nomination. Some predictors are obvious, such as that dramas and big distributors are favored. Others are more surprising:

    Actresses, meanwhile, proved more than twice as likely to be nominated as actors for any given performance, making being female the study’s third strongest predictor of a nomination, the authors say.

    Warning: the article (and maybe the study) does the usual correlation/causation blurring. (thx, lorelei)

    (0) #
    1/22/2008

  • The nominations for the 80th Academy Awards were announced this morning, and I’m surprisingly happy with the results. Atonement , Juno , Michael Clayton , No Country for Old Men , and There Will Be Blood are the Best Picture noms, with only Atonement not getting a Best Directing nod as well. I had a lot of problems with Atonement, and I thought Michael Clayton was a straightforward movie with good acting, but I wouldn’t complain if any of the other three won. My only major disappointment: that Johnny Greenwood’s fantastic score for There Will Be Blood was disqualified for Best Score.

    (20) #
    1/22/2008

  • Now that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has full archives online, I was able to go back and find one of my favorite low-brow moments from August 3, 2000. (It starts at about 2:17.)

    (0) #
    1/22/2008

  • Jim Emerson brings up a good point: David Fincher’s Zodiac was unfairly snubbed by the Academy. It deserved, at the very least, editing nominations. Or maybe it deserved a nod for its subtle visual effects, to escape from the Academy’s obsession with nominating movies with big rather than artful visual effects.

    (0) #
    1/22/2008
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