Why not? More details at the YouTube page–here’s the first bit, but there’s much more: Performed for us live (at the La Brea stage in Hollywood, 1978), and rotoscoped – a process that traces back the live action frame by frame and turns it into animation. The original live action was shot with 5 cameras – 2 high, 2 low… Read more →
Canada Needs Some Net Neutrality Enforcement
Did you see the news about Bell deciding that it can filter and shape traffic even carried over “wholesale” pipes to ISPs? Users of the Canadian family-run ISP Teksavvy (which we profiled last year) have started noticing that Bell Canada is throttling traffic before it reaches wholesale partners. According to Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault, Bell has implemented “load balancing” to… Read more →
A throne is a throne…
You know, the Pope-throne in the Vatican press room, or wherever it is, reminds me of something… (photo source) Oh yeah, I know what it is. It reminds me of the stage at the No Rest For The Wicked concert I saw in Milan. (As an aside, I know I shouldn’t be shocked at hypocrisy here, but doesn’t seeing that… Read more →
Dismissed with a touch of ceremony
Maybe I will go to Paris. Who knows? But I’ll sure as hell never go back to Texas again. Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry. I never saw any of them again—except the cops. No way has yet been invented… Read more →
Midweek Miscellany
It is very hard for me to imagine that Guinness cupcakes could be anything but super yummy. Make me some–I’ll be your friend. While we’re talking about food, I’ve got to say that enough is enough. I consider myself at least something of an epicure, so I believe that there are such things as quality olive oils, that some vinegars… Read more →
It Might Surprise You
And now, for a nice long weekend diversion, a selection of songs with a common characteristic: people seem to be surprised that I really like them. First up we have Dino. This might surprise people who know me a bit, since I’m really not a lounge type of cat. It might surprise people who know me better even more, since… Read more →
Something to chew on
Oh, I am going to enjoy reading a bunch more stuff at Bostrom’s site, I can tell already: Wisdom is distinct from cleverness or mental efficiency. Wisdom is about getting the big things right. A prerequisite is the ability to recognize what the big things are, i.e., a sense for proportion, for what is important. I am often thinking about… Read more →
Seriously, who would simulate me?
From time to time I run across something that just shocks me, not because of the thing itself, but because the thing is so completely something I should have known about and yet have somehow missed. How does a philosophy argument about things that interest me greatly go on for years without my hearing about it? Today’s example of this… Read more →
Lab Upgrade
No normal blogging today, since I was mostly busy with family stuff. For cynical Good Friday stuff, hit the search bar and look for “Good Friday” or “Eostre”, and you can read last year’s stuff. The other thing keeping me busy was an upgrade to “the lab”, also known as “my office”, or “the library” depending on how I feel.… Read more →
Attach Us! We Are Hot Japanese Men!
I am not making this up. Things I don’t understand: Japanese popular culture The very idea of “cell phone charms” Things I do understand: Drunkenness Drunkenness coming in stages These things come together in the “drunken salaryman” charms, which I recently read about at Inventorspot. The stages of being dunk [sic] according to these little plastic dudes are: The Lecturing… Read more →
If I Were Him, I’d Just Be Saying “Told You So” All Day Long
Just for fun, let’s look at what Paul Krugman wrote five years ago. Snippet one, concerning the U.S. finances: Meanwhile, consider this: we need $400 billion a year of foreign investment to cover our trade deficit, or the dollar will plunge and our surging budget deficit will become much harder to finance — and there are already signs that the… Read more →
Understanding How Greed Hosed The Economy Again
If you had trouble following the last presentation I linked to that explained the subprime crisis and how it’s affecting the broader investment community, then you don’t have a chance with the NYT piece that attempts to take on the same task. If you could handle the stick figures though, you might want to give the piece a try. It… Read more →
Well, that confounds expectations
You are about 20 years old The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear! It’s not superhuman, but not bad for a 35-year old. I guess getting those ear plugs at… Read more →
QOTD
“The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great — a little understood thing.” —John Kenneth Galbraith Read more →
Damn
Now that was a speech. Honest, reasonable, nuanced, and almost completely unable to be reduced to a soundbite. I kind of wish I could vote for the guy. Read more →