Observational Items
- I believe that it is not hyperbole to say that the existence, even in conceptual form, of the Chompr is the final clear sign that Western society has slipped completely into decadence. First of all, if you can’t hold a sandwich in your hand, you shouldn’t be trying to eat it. Second of all, you should be able to engineer a sandwich with sufficient structural integrity that external stabilizers are not required. Thirdly, if you have to eat a giant, sloppy sandwich, then you can find a way to hold it together that doesn’t involve high-end materials and design–that’s like conspicuous consumption to the third power or something.
- I’m not sure where it falls on the good taste scale, but I think this particular advertisement is genius.
- I loved Bloom County back in the day, and I expect I’ll be getting the snazzy five volume collection. I wonder if it will stand up–I haven’t looked at it in more than a decade, so you never know.
- I’ve mentioned that I generally love the TED talks, but even more I love the idea of Bill Gates turning into an (overt) evil mastermind who infects a roomful of the intelligentsia with malaria to prove a point about class. While I’m glad he didn’t actually infect anyone, I admit that there’s a part of me who kind of wishes he had, because it would be a better story.
- There are all kinds of websites that make handy references for online research and discussion. There are a more limited number that can play an important role in Real Life(tm) interactions. This week a pal sent me the link to perhaps the most useful of these.
- Does Irish bank strike experience indicate that the local equivalent of Canadian Tire money might be a way out of the recession? I’m not sure about the connection to current conditions for banks, but I have always been fascinated with the private currency idea, especially when it meets up with neo-utopian community ideals.
- The Militant Guild Of Rural Tailors has a research group devoted to it? And the primary purpose of the research group is “verify the existence of the Rural Tailors Guild and to outline the nature of its practices and membership”? Why does this make me want to fnord?
- FontStruct is cool and all–it enabled one of my little time-wasters–but I think it has been surpassed by YourFonts. Just draw the letters in the boxes, freehand with a pen-on-paper, scan it, and BAM! free font. Maybe I can use this, with some scans from the Codex, to make my own Codex font.
- The idea of crowdsourcing a bank scam, with round-the-world flashmobs turking some of the work would make a great science fiction story. Oops, too late.
- At what point in the last decade did it become plausible that the Financial Times, of all places, might run a piece on comic books, and movies made therefrom, that would not be a “POW! BAM!” piece, or a “Not just for kids anymore” piece?
