There Is No Cat

The Girl in the Picture

Don’t remember where I saw this first, but Adactio had a link to it as well, so Jeremy gets the credit. I love this short silent movie. What a creative way to propose! (The story, as I recall, is that he took her out to see "a Buster Keaton movie", but when they got to the theater, they were the only people in the audience, and this is what showed up on the screen. At the end, she looked down and he was on his knees with a ring.) Gee, all we did was go to the Grand Canyon.... Come to think of it, we’re going to a wedding today, and I think Laura told me that Bacciagalupi proposed to Beerbrain in a clever way. Wish I could remember what it was.

Posted at 8:25 AM
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And 161 would mean?

I’m confused. Where I come from, "88" means "love and kisses", in much the same way that "73" means "best regards". But according to this site, it means "Heil Hitler". Do you mean to tell me that when Ian McFarland ended DX Digest on Radio Canada International by wishing 88s to all the ladies that he was engaging in a secret Nazi handshake? I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. Damned Nazis. I hate to see a perfectly good pair of numbers co-opted by those bastards. (Found on Daypop.)

Posted at 12:06 AM
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The best damned announcer ever

NPR’s Morning Edition aired a wonderful piece about Ernie Harwell, the long-time play-by-play man for the Detroit Tigers. You can tell that Don Gonyea, the reporter on the piece, is a born Detroiter and life-long Tigers fan. Ernie was the voice of the Tigers when I was a kid growing up, and as Don points out at the beginning of the piece, just hearing his voice transports any Tigers fan to another time and place. For me, it’s back to the back rows of my third grade class at Roeper Country Day School in Bloomfield Hills, where I would sneak my 6 transistor Motorola AM radio in to class and stick an earplug in my ear and listen to Ernie and Paul Carey do the games from the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. The Tigers don’t play at Tiger Stadium any more, but as long as Ernie was in the booth, everything was still right with the world. The man has a voice that could melt butter, and calls a game like a poet. I like the bit at the end of the report about the fans in Baltimore with the sign that said "Don’t Strike! It’s Ernie Harwell’s Last Season!" I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The NPR page has a lot of great stuff about Ernie. I can see I’m going to have to get a copy of his new autobiography. I’ve already devoured the previous two.

Posted at 9:36 PM
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Our correspondent is sorry to tell of an uneasy time when all is not well

BBC journalist Jacky Rowland gave evidence against Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic at Milosevic’s war crimes trial in The Hague today. I was surprised to hear that a journalist would do such a thing, as the common wisdom is that, number one, by doing so, a journalist would appear to be taking sides, and number two, by setting such a precedent, it makes journalists’ jobs more difficult in the future by letting story subjects know that the journalist may report to more than just his/her listeners and readers. But Rowland has an interesting response to this, which she elaborates on in the video clip that accompanies the BBC’s web site story about her appearance. Basically, her argument is that a journalist’s job is inherently dangerous anyway, and that with all the high-tech toys journalists have now that will likely make live coverage of war crimes as they happen possible in the very near future that subjects aren’t going to be thinking about the remote possibility of a journalist testifying against them in the distant future. It’s an interesting argument, I suppose, but I’m not sure I like what it says about the future of journalism. Basically, her argument comes down to the idea that journalists will be setting themselves up to be harmed or killed in any case, so her testifying will have no impact on the safety of journalists anyway. That seems like a curious rationale to me, and one that makes me kind of glad that I never pursued my dream of becoming a foreign correspondent.

In any case, I have to agree with Ms. Rowland when she said that she was "very happy to say the BBC enjoys probably the best international reputation of any international broadcaster for being objective." It was that committment to objectivity an excellence in reporting that’s made me a BBC fan for 25 years and that led me to join the protest when the BBC World Service stopped broadcasting to North America last year.

Posted at 6:51 PM
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Digital killed the analog star

I’m sorry to see that Sony is finally killing the Betamax. I bought my first Betamax VCR in college, a used model from a video store. That was probably a mistake, as I had to repair it (myself) a couple of times, but it worked pretty well anyway. I replaced it with another model the last time it died around 1990, and that one is still going strong. I still use it occasionally, but the TV it’s hooked up to is kind of flaky, and we watch so little television that it doesn’t get as much use as it might otherwise. Maybe if its tuner could tune in ESPN on the cable I would use it to tape football games on weekends when I’m out. Beta was always a superior format to VHS. But VHS was good enough for most people, and Sony mismarketed Beta. I’ve had access to VHS VCRs for years now, either when I was living with my parents or now since Laura and I moved in together, but I didn’t actually buy a VHS machine until Laura’s died a couple of years ago. We took the opportunity to get a DVD player as well at the time, and I have to say, the DVD picture and sound is just so much better than either VHS or Beta. So I guess I’m not surprised that Beta is finally going. But I’m still a little sad. I’ve got dozens of tapes in the format, and I hope Sony keeps its word when it promises to continue servicing the decks.

Posted at 6:29 PM
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BBC pulls out the big guns

Proving that their cluelessness with regard to their American audience is not limited to World Service radio, BBC America television has sparked off a protest by moving the venerable Eastenders program from the Sunday airing it’s had since BBC America started to a time on Friday when most of its audience is still at work. Angry fans started a website (gee, that seems like a good idea), but this time, BBC has pulled out the big guns and threatened the owners with legal action, proving that the best response to a little bit of love is an injury added to insult. The owners of the site have moved their campaign to another domain until things are resolved. Meanwhile, BBC America is deleting posts on their own discussion forum. When it was pointed out to them that their terms of service didn’t forbid the deleted discussions, they changed the terms of service. Seems like someone’s really got their knickers in a twist.

Posted at 8:01 AM
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Clarus was resurrected, maybe he’s next

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one mourning the passing of the Happy Mac in the opening screen of the new version of Mac OS X. I spent some time digging through the guts of Jaguar to see if I could find the TIFF file that defines the opening screen, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe there isn’t one at that early stage in booting. I still want my Happy Mac back. Ah well, it’s still there in Mac OS 9, where I still spend the vast majority of my time.

Posted at 8:48 PM
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Kerrang! Brong!

I don’t know what’s scarier, that there’s a World Air Guitar Championship held yearly in Finland, or that this year’s winner is 32 years old and defended his crown from last year. Actually, I attended an air guitar contest once. It was held in the student union building at Penn State when I was a freshman. The thing I remember most about it was that the intermission entertainment was a real band, The Seen, a 60s-influenced group of local high school students. They were fantastic, and became my favorite local band of my whole time in school. I became friends with a couple of the band members. Probably the biggest exposure they got was a track on Bomp’s Battle of the Garages Volume 2 compilation. It’s not clear to me if they’re included on the CD reissue. Ah well. Shortly after I left State College (as in a week or so), they released their one and only LP. Their drummer mailed me a copy because I had been such a big supporter of the band. Good stuff. I’m going to have to pull that album out.

Posted at 10:31 AM
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Science as art

A post on Curious Frog reminded me that some of my favorite photographs ever are those made by Harold "Doc" Edgerton, a professor at MIT. That post only mentioned one of his most famous photos in passing, but it was enough to send me in search of more. MIT has a page for the center named after the good Doctor that includes some of his most famous photos, including the milk drop that Michael mentioned, the bullet going through an apple, and the bullet going through the playing card. MIT’s Tech Talk has a copy of his amazing Densmore Shute Bends the Shaft from 1938. The University of California at Riverside has a page about the presumably long gone travelling exhibition of Edgerton’s photos. I recall seeing an exhibition of Doc’s work in the Infinite Corridor at MIT when I was visiting with my friends who work there some years ago, but I’m not sure it’s still there; I think I heard they took it down. In any case, I think it’s just the neatest thing that Edgerton was able to make a career out of shooting things and taking pictures of them.

Posted at 10:57 PM
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When I Was Cruel

Judging by the tone of some of the answers Elvis Costello gives in this Q & A session with fans, the title of his most recent album refers to yesterday. Damned amusing, too.

Posted at 12:50 AM
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Someone begs to differ with me

There is so a Catzilla.

Posted at 9:51 PM
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Catzilla

Because this man’s been vilified,
This blog has now been Zillafied.

Posted at 11:18 PM
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No longer smuggled in in diplomatic pouches for restaurants in Queens

Also discovered on the Czech Primer page (actually on the site’s weblog): the original Budweiser, Budejovicky Budvar, is now being sold in the United States. Thanks to those bastards in St. Louis who stole their name and to a Nazi-occupation-era contract forbidding them from using their name in North America, it’s sold here as Czechvar, but anyone paying attention will know it’s the real thing. It’s not sold everywhere, but a press release from this past April (carefully extracted from Google’s cache) reveals that New Jersey is one of the 15 states where the precious elixer is distributed.

The first time I went to Prague in 1993, I met a bunch of college students from Michigan in the dining car on the train from Berlin. They were spending a semester abroad with one of their professors, and Prague was their next stop. I suggested that they try the Budweiser, because it wasn’t the piss water they would be used to from home. They agreed. Good stuff.

Posted at 9:18 PM
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What I really need is a Babelfish

I went to Prague in 1993 and again in 1995, and in 1996 I was even offered a job there. If it had come two months earlier, I probably would have taken it, but I had just met Laura and had high hopes, so I stayed in New Jersey (right choice, no doubt). I love visiting places where I don’t understand the language. I’m so word-oriented that in a way, it’s a relief to be someplace where I can’t understand stuff. On the other hand, being in a place where you don’t understand the language is also a fascinating puzzle to solve. How do I order a beer? ("Jedno pivo, prosim!") I bought a few books (knyhy!) and some tapes in Prague to help me learn the language after I got home, where I completely and utterly failed to make use of them.

No doubt I’ll completely and utterly fail to make use of this really cool web site, but hell, the site’s creator doesn’t know Czech either. But I love the way he imparts what little Czech he does know through pictures. It actually reminds me of one of the books I bought. It’s just a lovely site. I don’t really know Czech any better for having perused it, but it’s a neat resource anyway. Maybe if I just work at it a little harder....

Posted at 8:50 PM
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My boss right or wrong

When I saw the name Remington Rand attached to this explanation of how to be a Super Secretary, I was wondering what the Rand think tank was doing in the 1950s producing such a piece of sexist claptrap. Then I realized that it wasn’t the think tank that made this. It was a typewriter manufacturer.

I’ll have to ask my mom if this was how things were when she was a secretary in the early 60s, and if anything’s changed....

Posted at 7:22 PM
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I’m on a Mexican, who-oah, Radio

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to pick up on the possibility of pirate netcasting. Doc Searls notes a post by Kevin Marks on the subject of offshore broadcasting in the UK in the 1960s. It’s true that the offshore ships in that area had a huge impact (and not just in the UK), leading directly to the creation of BBC Radio 1, but you don’t have to look at the UK for inspiration. There’s a long history of pirate broadcasting right here in the good old USA. In the 1920s and 30s, another Doc, Doc Brinkley, was chased out of the US and set up a powerhouse station in Mexico, XERA, to peddle his particular brand of quackery (something involving goat glands). In more recent times, the owner of international shortwave broadcaster WBCQ, Allen Weiner, has tried his hand at offshore broadcasting. Radio New York International held New York City at rapt attention for a few glorious days in 1987 until the Coast Guard and the FCC raided the ship, smashed the equipment, and arrested all on board with malice aforethought, including a reporter for the Village Voice.

Today there are still thriving pirate radio scenes. Every weekend between 6900 and 6955 kHz there are flea-powered broadcasters grinding their axes. Andy Yoder publishes a magazine, Hobby Broadcasting, that brings together the various threads, the shortwave RF geeks, the micropower FM radicals, and the netcasters. The Free Radio Network is the online epicenter of the movement. And Allen Weiner, despite having gone legit after a long history of pirate broadcasting, is still trying to get a shipboard broadcaster on the air. His most recent attempts have centered around Belize. And maybe that’s the answer to your question, Doc.

Posted at 8:30 AM
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I do not like Green Eggs and Spam

Speaking of spam, there was a pretty decent package about spam on NPR’s All Things Considered on Thursday on the subject. It started with an interview with Jason Catlett of Junkbusters, then got the other side of the story from spammer Alan Ralsky. He prefers to call himself a "commercial e-mailer", but I’m reading a book by Ken Smith called Junk English, and that would seem to fit into at least a half-dozen assaults on the language that Ken talks about in the book. If he doesn’t like being called a spammer, perhaps the terms "weasel" or "leech" would be more acceptable. He seemed awfully defensive, but I guess getting a couple of death threats a week will do that to a man. When he was asked if he uses open relays to send his spam, he said he wouldn’t comment on that. I’ll take that as a "yes". He said he prefers to think of what he does as free enterprise. I prefer to think of it as trespassing and theft.

Posted at 12:10 AM
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Boring Old Farts

The Observer observes that people over the age of 35 are set in their ways, and advertising to them doesn’t work. "[N]o amount of expensive advertising will convince them to try new products." One bit that resonates particularly, since it doesn’t describe me at all, is this:

When the CD collections of 40-year olds were analysed, it was discovered that there was a point where their tastes ’froze in time’ as they stopped buying new music and started buying compilations instead.

If I ever reach the point where I stop seeking new music, please kill me. As for whether advertising works on this over-35, I think it’s not that I’m set in my ways. I think it’s that I’m smarter and can see through the transparent crap that serves as inducement to purchase. As reformed marketer Doc Searls says, there is no market for messages. Most of us just aren’t interested in being bombarded by ads. And I know that the advent of spam has made me even more resistant to advertising in any form. It’s poisoned the well and made me ever more skeptical.

Posted at 11:55 PM
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In Memoriam

Elvis, what happened?
What happened was you died
You showed us how to live and then you died
And it was not a pretty sight

And you made us feel like fools for believing what we saw
Like how you loved religion and how you loved your ma
And Dr. Nick, that evil prick, for all that thorazine
And Colonel Parker kept his hand at making things look clean
Your acting out a public life was better than your films
Colonel Parker took your hand, and he catered to your whims
You let him be your teddy bear and he made you Frankenstein
And then you died, you stupid ass, and left it all behind

Well, Elvis, what happened?
What happened was you died
But thanks to RCA we still get pieces of the pie
You multiplied

It must have done your dad some good, ’cause he seemed to egg you on
’Til you tantalize in glory until all of you was gone
And adoration was a burden, and the public was a wraith
You must have died one tortured soul for having so much faith

Elvis, what happened?
What happened was you died
You showed us how to live and then you died
And it was not a pretty sight

But I still visit Graceland whenever I’m in town
And up the walk and through the gates and I lay my flowers down
Among the thousand million garlands that are laying on the ground
And wish that you could be here with us to see what we’re going through
When we read that Goldman book and we think we misread you
And then you died like Lenny Bruce after he’d given up his chase
I only wish you were around to see the look on all the faces

When they say

Elvis, what happened?
What happened was you died
You showed us how to live and then you died
And it was not a pretty sight

Elvis, what happened?
What happened was you died
You showed us how to live and then you died
And it was not a pretty sight

Song written 1985 by "Mr. Bonus", appeared on the compilation album Luxury Condos Coming To Your Neighborhood Soon.

Posted at 9:08 PM
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I hope they come up with better special effects than slow motion

USA Networks is too dumb to come up with any ideas of its own and too poor to buy any good ideas from some place like HBO. So instead, they’re going to resurrect a long-dead bad idea and revive The Bionic Woman.

Posted at 6:57 PM
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I can even forgive him for giving us Ricki Lake

Didja ever wonder what the inside of the apartment of the King of Bad Taste Movies looks like? So did the New York Times. So they went and visited John Waters. It sounds like he keeps most of his really tacky stuff, like his electric chair, in Baltimore. I particularly like this quote:

I write every morning from 8 to 11:30. I have to think up weird things. That’s my job. And then the rest of the day I figure out how to make that into money.

I guess it’s getting harder and harder to do as he gets older. His later movies, like Pecker and Hairspray, have actually been more sweet than weird. But then, that’s what the Times calls the Broadway version of Hairspray, sweet.

Posted at 6:46 PM
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Trouser it to me!

TrouserPress.com is back!!!

Posted at 9:53 PM
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Ooooh eeeeeeEEEEE ooooooo

And now for your entertainment, The Virtual Theremin.

I think Laura and I bought a theremin kit at a WFMU record fair a few years back. I don’t remember for sure. I know we at least considered it. But if we did buy it, we never built it. I know we bought a copy of the great movie that was made about the inventor of the Theremin and his fascinating and incredible life story. (Virtual Theremin found via Wordridden.)

Posted at 4:10 AM
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Monsters, Inc.

Cory Doctorow has a nice, well-written summary of how Hollywood is going to take away your rights because of their paranoid fantasies, and of how the tech industry was suckered into participating against their own interests. There’s not much new there for anyone who has been reading the EFF’s Broadcast Protection Discussion Group weblog, Consensus at Lawyerpoint. But Cory says something that seemed a bit off to me. He specifically called for Apple and Steve Jobs to break ranks with the timid bloc of cowering tech companies that are bowing to the pressure from Hollyweird and stand up to the bullying from the studios and the MPAA. He’s forgotten one thing, though. Steve Jobs is part of the MPAA. (Link to Cory’s article found via Backup Brain.)

Posted at 12:09 AM
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Family Ties

I just found out this weekend that my brother’s girlfriend has a web site of her own. She’s got a great page of old postcards of her former town of residence, Bradley Beach, and some very nice photographs of trips she and my brother have taken. Amazingly enough, there are even photographs of my notoriously reticent brother.

Posted at 12:00 AM
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The Thrilla in Nevada

Wow, Terry McAuliffe of the Democratic National Committee really lit in to Dubya in this recent speech to the faithful, hitting him where it hurts. I particularly like the section of the speech where he lists all the ways in which Dubya has betrayed the trust of the American people, the trust he asked for in his nomination acceptance speech. And, as McAuliffe points out, he actually had this trust in the wake of the terrorist attacks. He’s squandered it. He had an opportunity to rise above partisanship and actually become a leader for everyone. He failed miserably. He has no credibility on the business scandals affecting voters’ retirement funds, since he made his fortune exploiting many of the same loopholes, except his path was even more rigged. If the Democrats follow this template for the upcoming elections, I think Dubya’s in for a rude shock. (Found on Nick Denton’s site.)

Posted at 11:35 PM
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Why don’t you do yourself in?

David Weinberger writes about how bifocals suck. I was grumbling about my possible need for bifocals earlier this week, something I’m hoping not to need for, oh, another ten years or so. But I’ve been having trouble reading some of the settings in Dreamweaver on my computer at work. The Properties window uses tiny type for a link’s file name and such. Then I came home and opened Dreamweaver on my Mac. The difference is like night and day, much larger type, no problems reading. I don’t need bifocals. I need a better computer at work.

Posted at 5:42 PM
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Wit and Wisdumb

While my brother and sister are taken with the Geek Quiz on Thudfactor, I’m more partial to the archive of the wisdom of now-former Representative James Trafficant (D-Mars). Take, for example, this pressing issue addressed in the most urgent of tones by the esteemed gentleman from Ohio:

News reports say after a game-winning goal at a soccer match in Spain, a player celebrated his teammate who scored by biting him on the genitals.

Beam me up.

Now I have heard of high fives, back slaps, butt slaps, but this takes the family jewels.

I know he was a creep, a convicted felon, a traitor to his party, and had the worst rug in the world, but isn’t there someone out there who can replace him? The House (and C-SPAN) just isn’t the same without him and B-1 Bob Dornan. I can see I’m going to have a lot of fun mining this particular resource.

Thank you, John Williams.

Posted at 11:33 PM
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No, I’m not going to show you the other side

Ah yes, now I remember. This is why I work. First one of these I’ve seen in quite a while.

Posted at 10:26 PM
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Scatman Crothers / he and I are brothers

The Hulk took a road trip with a surprising companion. I wonder if he’s got an extra nipple.

Posted at 11:49 PM
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Form follows function

Erin Malone has a great article on Boxes and Arrows about not letting tools dictate process. I’ve seen this so often in my work, where someone gets excited about using a particular piece of software and loses sight of the goals that should define the tools. I’m not totally immune to the allure of a great tool myself, but I think I’m pretty good at steering the discussion back to the goals. Especially at the beginning of a project, deciding on the tools first is a great way to lock yourself in to an inappropriate direction. I’ve been pretty fortunate that in most cases, I’ve been able to push discussion back toward goals, and in those cases where I couldn’t, it was generally because I came on to the project far too late to have any impact on that. The decisions had been made long before. Funny thing, few of those projects ever finished.

Posted at 11:31 PM
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A man, a plan, a delay, Afghanistan

Dubya denies that his administration sat on a plan conceived by the Clinton administration to attack Al-Qaeda until it was too late. Instead, they discussed it to death and decided they didn’t want to take as long as the plan described. They held back because the plan would have taken too long. Does anyone else see the logical problem with this? "Number one, there was no plan. Number two, it would have taken too long to accomplish its goals. Number three, we thought we could do it faster by not doing anything until later." It’s like the defendant in court whose stammered refutation to the judge digs the hole deeper and deeper. And these guys have the unmitigated gall to blame Clinton for September 11. It just makes me want to spit.

Posted at 9:12 PM
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Al Gore writes about politics and economics

Al Gore kicks off his campaign for 2004 by kicking George Bush in the teeth. It’s framed as a call for people to elect Democrats to Congress this year, but it’s also a salvo across the bow for the next Presidential election. I’m sure that those who bother to comment on it will cast it as a return to Gore’s so-called populist campaign, but he makes the point that his approach isn’t anti-business, just anti-corruption. And I agree with him. To save American capitalism, the market has to be made to operate in a way that’s fair to all investors, not tilted toward to wealthy and powerful. They’ll have more than enough riches in a system that operates properly. And in the long run, they’ll make more money, because their businesses will be more likely to survive when they’re operated in a transparent manner that allows investors to direct money to where the returns are truly the greatest, not where revenues are an illusion. It’s necessary to destroy the incentives to theft in American capitalism in order to save it.

Posted at 8:27 PM
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Rolling Stone writes about politics and economics, so why not?

That noted journal of music criticism, The Economist, reviews the new Bruce Springsteen album. It thinks the album is schmaltzy, corny, and "not great art", but ultimately comes down on the side that it’s exceptionally well-suited for its purpose.

Posted at 8:05 AM
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Rye or pumpernickle?

The Morning News asks, is the Apple iPod the greatest thing since sliced bread? This hard-hitting investigative report rises to the challenge. (Lifted from Adactio.)

(I would have posted this earlier, but I didn’t want to tip my hand. I gave Laura an iPod as her graduation present. Neat little toy!)

Posted at 8:52 AM
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Grad school nightmares

Laura finished grad school yesterday. (Yay!) In light of that, it seems like a good time to point to Dorothea Salo’s Straight Talk about Graduate School, a somewhat bitter but not terribly off-base look at the subject. Laura’s experience was absolutely nothing like this, I hasten to add. But I’ve known quite a few gradual students over the years, and lot of this sounds awfully familiar. All of those other students, though, toiled in Liberal Arts fields and attended school traditionally, that is to say, on campus and in person. Laura’s grad school experience was in a technical field, and she attended virtually, viewing the classes on videotape a week or so after they had taken place in Dallas, and she interacted with professors via e-mail. But I suspect my sister, who is getting her Master’s degree in Psychology, would find a lot to vibrate to in Dorothea’s tale. I wonder if the difference in Laura’s experience was that she was in a technical field, that she was attending virtually, or that because she was a returning professional and not a poverty-stricken graduate assistant, she avoided the most likely flash points that made Dorothea’s experience so terrible. I suspect that latter bit is the most likely.

Posted at 6:03 AM
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If you don’t know, it’s you

Dan Gillmor had a great column in the San Jose Mercury News about how businessmen and politicians continue to demonstrate just how great their contempt for the unwashed masses is with their unbelievable insistence that nothing is wrong in the business world and that it’s just a coincidence that insiders made huge fortunes while the investor-on-the-street (as opposed to the investor-on-the-Street) got fleeced. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and politicians and pundits can jawbone all they want to about investor confidence returning and the market finally hitting bottom, but as long as they treat the common investor like the only poker player who doesn’t know who the sucker at the table is, we’re not coming back.

Meanwhile, evidence mounts that the Resident is part of the problem, not part of the solution. For weeks, administration officials have been berating companies that move offshore to avoid tax liabilities, as much as calling them traitors. Eric Alterman’s MSNBC blog points to a story on the New York Daily News site about how Harken Energy, Dubya’s cash register, set up a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands to shelter the money they expected to flow from their dalliance with Bahrain while Dubya was a director. Impeachment, anyone?

Posted at 12:01 AM
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