farlane.blog

That Schobelizer guy pointed me to Ze Frank. Sometimes I think the last person to discover something funny and brilliant on the net tells me about it. Ze’s riff on tools and tech and how we learn to use them echoes what I learned about learning when I worked at a children’s center…

The complicatedness of something can make you not want to do or think about it at all. The world we’re in is changing pretty God damned fast. By the time you finish the manual, the tool you were going to use might not even exist anymore.

Go, listen to anything … I don’t think it really matters.

The photo above is one of a great set of photos depicting the UVA Summer Web Intensive successfully completing one-half of a ZFS Earth Sandwich Mission.

OK. I’m crossing a line here, something that I’ve been uncomfortable with ever since my first grade teacher Mrs. Allington whacked me across the back for coloring outside the line on Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hat. Until today, I’ve confined my comix to the NBA. Then something came along that I could think of no other way to deal with than the application of entirely too much Photoshop: Burger King’s BK Table Guest. In the words of BK, the premise is simple:

When you HAVE IT YOUR WAY® there’s no need to sit solo. Pull up a chair and select one of our guests for some company that’ll chat while you chew. Don’t forget to check back often. There’s no telling who might drop by.

Gloria Steinem? The ACLU?? Barbie??? I tell you the questions this raises are many.

Foremost among them is “Has Burger King totally written off women as a target audience?”

That’s closely followed by “How did the idea of representing women with three Maxim “Hometown Hotties” get past whatever passes for a review process at BK Headquarters?” I can picture Marketing Guy 1 discussing this with Marketing Guys 2 & 3 over lunch at Hooters, amidst lots of “awesomest thing ever” and “big rack” references. Meanwhile Marketing Gal was presumably making coffee or reading romance novels … or working for some other company with a less neolithic view of women.

If you’d like to experience BK’s version of reality, go to bk.com, click the menu at the bottom and select “BK Table Guest”.

Check out Maxim.com Models Star In Burger King Promotion from MediaPost.

A big meme floating around right now is “We don’t really know how bad global warming will be.” The poster boy for this is Oklahoma Senator James “How Much More Unpleasant Could My State Get Anyway” Inhofe, who apparently views climate change as a fundraising ploy of Greenpeace and recommends Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” as science enough for the masses.

Although this Wired article is just about old enough to drive, I think it’s worth a read … assuming you’re not easily depressed.

Wired News: Isn’t part of the problem that people associate “warm” with comfortable?

Kolbert: People think, “I won’t have to go to Florida anymore. Florida will come to me.” People should realize that warmth doesn’t mean Florida. It means New York is underwater. It may be that certain places like Siberia are more comfy, but it also means that they have no water. If people say, “Why should I be worried about global warming?” I think the answer is, “Do you like to eat?”

Wired News: You talk about David Rind’s work — predicting rampant drought conditions afflicting much of the continental United States within 50 years if greenhouse gas emissions continue at business-as-usual levels.

Kolbert: (In the book) he says that, “I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2100 most things are destroyed.” But he’s certainly a very cool guy, not a hysterical person. He’s a scientist, and he’s just looking at the evidence.

Read Global Warming: Be Very Afraid in Wired.

My friend Josh sent me a link to Girls Rock! The Movie, a rockumentary about rock camp for girls (trailer at the link). His daughter wrote and performs Destroy Our Destination and though she’s of an age of the girls above, she’s not one of them.

The documentary features girls from the Rock-n-roll Camp for Girls in Portland and the photo above (The Pink Slips by Rocco Kasby) shows girls at the Willie Mae Rock Camp in NYC.

Awesome!!

Detroit News sportswriter Chris McCoskey drops the hammer today on everyone’s favorite commish with an absolutely scathing column:

David Stern is either out of control or too much in control. It’s not good, either way.

He might be the most effective and successful commissioner in all of professional sports, but I am starting to suspect he’s gotten drunk on his own power. His need for utter and absolute control is bordering on the maniacal.

It’s one thing for the commissioner to have firm control on the business side of the game, but Stern has crossed over and is now lording over the competition side, as well. And that is a real problem.

Read the rest of Stern: Commish or tyrant? because Chris makes some really valid points about where the NBA could be headed.

Click for entirely too many more NBA Comix

written across my face :: photo by jamelah

I’m suggesting that you go and read what Jamelah wrote about this photo.

She’s also blogging for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in the 2006 Blogathon next weekend.

NOTE: I’m just kidding about Adam Morrison’s world-class mustache. By all accounts, the mustache is safe and resting comfortably on his face.

I tell you, it’s been quite a depressing couple of month or so for NBA Comix. First my beloved Pistons unraveled like a cheap suit in the face of Pat Riley’s expensive suits. Then Antoine Walker shoved the NBA’s most hallowed relic into his armpit. Then Big Ben Wallace, face (well, fro) of the Pistons bolted for the City of Michael Jordan. Now NBA Comix best friend Steve “the Haircut” Nash has elected to shave his head and challenge Sam Cassell for the Alien Lookalike title.

YAYSports has additional coverage on this breaking news and I invite you to take a trip back with NBA Comix to the happier days of Steve Nash’s hair. I think that if there’s anything funny in this story, it’s that ESPN is covering it but doesn’t have a photo of the haircut.

WordPress is showing a lot of love to this post right now. Why? I have no idea! Thanks though!!

Click for entirely too many more NBA Comix or check out other posts that may have nothing at all to do with basketball (or anything else for that matter).

White Knight with Spaceship One, photo by airventure

Space.com has a brief update on booking for Virgin Galactic’s space tourism excursions that begin in 2008. Virgin has sold about 200 tickets (at $200,000 a pop) to passengers for suborbital flights. The total flight-time is about 2 hours and 15 minutes. The ship ascends to a height of 87 miles and is in suborbital space for about 15 minutes (with five minutes of weightlessness).

Serious space geeks (I’m not one) would know that White Knight is the aircraft that carries Spaceship One up to a point where it can detach. Here’s a whole bunch of info, photos and video about X-Prize winning White Knight and Spaceship One and you can also look at Virgin Galactic’s surprisingly mundane web site (if you can keep your eyes open). Seriously, take note: if you’re selling something that is a total luxury item and is all about “cool” - spend some money making the site actually look cool.

Principality of Sealand, photo by misterbisson (has some geodata on the Principality)
I learned of the Principality of Sealand in a 2000 Wired article. Kind of an interesting, real life cyberpunk scenario that I recall made me think about the nature of nations in the future.

Apparently on Friday, the seat of the throne of King Roy Bates (and site of an offshore datahaven) was seriously burned in a fire. I assume that Slashdot and Digg will overwhelm these links today.

Cephalizations by wombfruit

So… I figured out what the nascent AI messages detailed in this post were. Sadly, instead of the first blips of silicon sentience, they were just spammers utilizing Gmail’s handy “sonar” feature:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
thisgoogleaddressdoesnotexist90383209343@gmail.com

—– Original message —–
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:55:42 -0400
To: thisgoogleaddressdoesnotexist90383209343@gmail.com
Subject: Testing
Test…

Basically, it works like this:

1. Spammer uses the “hobbit spam principle” or just random lines of prose to craft a message that will not be blocked by the spam filter.
2. Spammer generates x-bajillion email addresses and sends emails, noting those that do not bounce as “good” email address.
3. Spammer sells said email addresses.