There Is No Spoon
Wednesday 24 December 2014
Max Fisher, writing for Vox:
Kwangmyong, which is Korean for “bright star,” is North Korea’s officially sanctioned intranet. It looks sort of like the internet circa 1994; many users even access it with old-school dial-up or computer labs. It is a closed network that runs on pirated Japanese versions of Microsoft software and looks sort of like the real internet but isn’t. Rather, it runs rudimentary email and browser tools that are restricted to a hand-picked collection of “sites” that have been copied over and censored from the real internet.
To a certain extent, I knew this already. But in this respect, North Korea is like a real-life Matrix. Except instead of blissful ignorance, it’s oppressively enforced cluelessness.
Per Se
Friday 19 December 2014
Among linguists this is probably common knowledge, but the history of the ampersand (&) is one of the coolest etymologies I’ve heard.
First the symbol. The Latin word for “and” is et. Long ago, when scribes would make copies of documents, the cursive form of the letters “e t” morphed into &. Since and was/is such a common word, & was a form of shorthand.
But what about the word ampersand?
At one point, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the alphabet. But ending the alphabet saying “X, Y, Z, and” sounds odd. Instead, children were taught to say “X, Y, Z, and per se and”
“and per se and” became ampersand.
Tell your friends.
In A New York Minute
Thursday 18 December 2014
Via the New York Times:
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration announced on Wednesday that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State because of concerns over health risks, ending years of debate over a method of extracting natural gas.
1 down. 49 to go.
Take A Number or Jump In With Both Feet
Wednesday 10 December 2014
As a perpetually impetuous young’un, Mark Shields’ latest column was quite interesting:
The GOP is a little bit like Kiwanis or the Rotary Club. If you were sergeant-at-arms last year and you’re club vice president this year, then you’ll almost certainly be club president next year. Think about it. Ronald Reagan, who was runner-up to Gerald Ford in 1976, became the 1980 nominee; George H.W. Bush, runner-up to Reagan in 1980, was nominated in 1988; Bob Dole, runner-up to Bush in ’88, won the next open nomination, in ’96. Plausible nominee-in-waiting George W. Bush in 2000 made it “his turn.” And John McCain, who finished second in 2000, went on to win the nomination in 2008, when Mitt Romney, the eventual 2012 standard-bearer, finished second to the senator from Arizona. You get the drift.
Yes, Mark, I do. Go on…
By contrast, Democrats almost always reject the leaders in the pre-primary polls and end up nominating some semi-unknown underdog. Only twice in the past half-century has the eventual Democratic nominee led a year earlier in the Gallup poll: former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1983-84 and incumbent Vice President Al Gore in 1999-2000. Democratic front-runners Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Hillary Clinton, Ed Muskie and Joe Lieberman (that’s right) failed to win the prize. In 1991, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, just 13 months before he would become the first Democrat since 1932 to defeat an elected Republican president, slipped to only 6 percent in the Gallup poll. In the entire year before he won the White House, Jimmy Carter did not even register in any Gallup poll.
That’s remarkable. And it makes a lot of sense. Liberals detest complacency, while conservatives relish it. So given this trend, does Clinton have the nomination sewn up? Perhaps not. Just recently, a spokesperson for Elizabeth Warren responded to MoveOn.org’s push for a Warren candidacy by saying “As Senator Warren has said many times, she is not running for president.”
To paraphrase Taegan: notice the tense of that statement.
Anyone who’s complaining that 2015 won’t be interesting is sorely mistaken.
Wake Me Up When It’s Ready
Sunday 30 November 2014
While I realize that already a countless number of words has already been written (and undoubtably will be written) about the new Star Wars teaser, one detail seems to have been lost in the shuffle. From the 91 seconds of footage we’ve seen so far, the consensus seems to be that J.J. Abrams isn’t going to fuck up the franchise. For one, Abrams’ Star Wars universe re-introduces the grittiness and tarnish that was (and is) the defining aspect of Episodes IV-IV. Absence of cityscapes provides further evidence Abrams knows what he’s doing (i.e. Star Wars is fundamentally a western, a story that takes place on the frontier– see this video for a much better explanation).
But I want to focus on Abrams’ writing partner: Lawrence Kasdan, whose writing credits include The Empire Strikes Back, Return Of The Jedi and Raiders Of The Lost Ark. While I realize the importance directors, set designers and cinematographers play, if the story doesn’t work, the movie doesn’t work. Take Avatar for example. Visually, it’s incredible– an undeniable accomplishment in filmdom. But the story is so trite and contrived, it was nearly impossible to sit through (for me, anyway). I describe it as a shitty, blue version of Dances With Wolves. Cameron has said that the story was purposely clichéd, acting solely as a conduit for the film’s visual breakthroughs.
At best that’s lazy and at worst it’s disingenuous.
Take The Abyss as a counter example: a film whose story is just as compelling as its visual effects. So don’t tell me that James Cameron doesn’t know how to write and tell engaging stories.
The fact that Kasdan is co-piloting the story of the new Star Wars films is evidence enough that this film will be fantastic. From a writer’s perspective, audiences tend to only notice poor screenwriting. Frustratingly, great screenwriting typically goes unnoticed by the masses (probably because the telltale sign of great screenwriting is that it feels so natural and unremarkable). Thankfully, Kasdan’s screenwriting is about as unremarkable as it gets.
Stay On Path
Sunday 19 October 2014
From an old Larry Wall interview:
At the University of California at Irvine, when they first built its campus, they just planted grass. Then they waited a year and looked at where people had made paths in the grass and built the sidewalks there.
I have no idea if this is true, but I like to think it is– one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas.
The Jon Weekly Show
Wednesday 8 October 2014
Via Political Wire
Before choosing Chuck Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting “Meet the Press,” three senior television sources tell New York magazine.
One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually “anything” to bring him over.
What I would give to have been a fly on the wall during those meetings…
Update: But seriously, the fact that NBC considered Jon Stewart to host one of the oldest and most storied institutions in television is shameful and embarrassing. Jon Stewart isn’t a journalist, he’s a comedian. And a very funny and effective one at that. But just a comedian, nonetheless.
Meet The Press isn’t a comedy show. To treat it as such, hoping to get a quick bump in ratings, is disrespectful to the American public. Meet The Press is where the issues should be debated, where our Representatives and Senators should be questioned on their positioned. In recent years it’s turned into somewhat of an echo chamber. But placing Stewart at the helm would have erased any influence the show still maintains.
I shutter to think what Tim Russert would think.
Someone In Desperate Need Of The Colbert Bump
Friday 3 October 2014
Dick Cavett, writing on his NYT Opinionator blog, back in 2013:
And speaking of Dave’s presumably stepping aside some sad day, if CBS is smart, there is in full view a self-evident successor to The Big L. of Indiana.
I can testify, as can anyone who’s met him and seen him as himself, how much more there is to Stephen Colbert than the genius job he does in his “role” on “The Colbert Report.” Everything about him — as himself — qualifies him for that chair at the Ed Sullivan Theater that Letterman has so deftly and expertly warmed for so long. Colbert is, among other virtues, endowed with a first-rate mind, a great ad-lib wit, skilled comic movement and gesture, fine education, seemingly unlimited knowledge of affairs and events and, from delightful occasional evidence, those things called The Liberal Arts — I’ll bet you he could name the author of “Peregrine Pickle.” And on top of that largess of qualities (and I hope he won’t take me the wrong way here), good looks.
Should such a day come, don’t blow it, CBS.
Wow did Mr. Cavett nail it, over a year before Letterman announced his retirement in 2015– which means you could argue that Mr. Cavett called it over two years before everything would transpire. I wholeheartedly agree that Stephen Colbert will do a phenomenal job.
And as an aside, Northwestern University will be nicely represented across both networks: Stephen Colbert at CBS and Seth Meyers at NBC.
That’s A Big Asterisk
Saturday 27 September 2014
Via 9to5Mac
Apple’s website states that to trigger this function, the user should be “out running errands with your phone in your pocket.” As implied by that sentence, the device needs to be locked to start randomzing its MAC address. This was confirmed by the AirTight study, which found that about two minutes after the device’s screen was locked, it would start searching for a familiar Wi-Fi network using a random address. Every time the device wakes up and goes back to sleep, a new MAC address is generated.
There is another stipulation that must be met before this feature will kick in, however, and it’s one that most users aren’t going to meet. In order to start using randomized MAC addresses, location services must be disabled.
If that requirement hasn’t ruled out every iPhone user from taking advantage of this feature, a discovery in the second part of the study almost certainly will. During the first round of testing, the researchers at the AirTight blog had not used SIM cards in any of the phones being analyzed. When they put SIM cards into these units and activated a cellular data connection, they found that MAC address randomization was completely disabled no matter what other criteria were met.
Or you could just turn your phone off. Or better yet, not take it with you.
Strike Three
Saturday 13 September 2014
For the longest time I assumed that the last great ((and by great I mean the Genesis of the 1970s: quintessential progressive rock, before Phil Collins “pop”-ularized the band in the 1980s, as his solo career began taking off)) Genesis album was Wind & Wuthering. So much so, that I considered Wind & Wuthering to be the last Genesis album period. It seemed fitting– Wind & Wuthering has one of my all time favorite Genesis songs on it, “Afterglow,” which happens to be the last track of the album. Genesis, like most great prog bands, were able to create these beautiful, albeit fleeting, moments in some of their compositions. Moments that kept me coming back for more, yearning for them to last. “Afterglow” is rather unique in that Genesis isn’t afraid to repeat one of these moments– quite the opposite, it’s the core of the entire song, building and building, capping a final crescendo at the end of the piece. It’s a beautiful composition, rivaling Genesis’ best moments in Selling England By The Pound or As The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.
But on a whim a few months ago I played …And Then There Were Three… Released in 1978 after the departure of Genesis’ guitarist Steve Hackett, …And Then There Were Three… holds its own against the band’s earlier repertoire. While not their best, …And Then… is certainly not crap. Though there is some evidence of Collins’ future “pop”-ularization to which I alluded to earlier, there are, nevertheless, some fantastic pieces and moments on the album. Notably, the first two tracks “Down And Out” and “Undertow,” the latter especially. “Undertow” can go toe-to-toe with some of Genesis’ best work on their first two post-Gabriel albums A Trick Of The Tail and Wind & Wuthering.
It’s a testament to Genesis that they were able to produce such an album after the departure of Hackett. Many a music critic spelled the death knell of the band after Gabriel left in 1974. But to everyone’s utter surprise A Trick Of The Tail was not only good, it would eventually become one of Genesis’ best works. Amusingly, some critics penned that Phil Collins sounded more like Peter Gabriel than Peter Gabriel did.
So it’s arguably even more impressive that …And Then There Were Three… is as good as it is. Doubly so considering how awful their future work would be in comparison. Make no mistake, Steve Hackett was as much a vein of the band as Collins. Many refer to Hackett’s first solo album Voyage Of The Acolyte as the “lost Genesis album.” Losing Hackett at the end of the 1970s really was akin to the band losing a limb. My hats off to them for producing quite a listenable and impressive album. I’m enjoying now and I’ll continue to do so in the future.
You’ve Got To Be [Redacted] Kidding Me
Friday 22 August 2014
Via Techdirt.:
Two more documents were released late Friday, with one of them being more about what it doesn’t include than what it does and the other potentially leading to irreversible eye damage.
Click on the link if you’d like, but basically, the entire report is redacted. The FBI is adhering to FOIA requests just by technicality. This reminds me of when President Nixon released heavily edited transcripts of his Oval Office tape recordings during Watergate. Didn’t fly then and surely this kind of behavior won’t fly now. Right?