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[More Blogs][Comic Blogs] | 8 December 2004
[comics] The thing is, the Thing is Jewish — great article about religion in Superhero comics. ‘…it turns out that Jack Kirby, an active, synagogue-attending Jew, had a faith in mind for at least one of his characters. Mr. Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzburg) was an irascible, cigar-smoking, wryly funny product of New York City’s tough Lower East Side. So was his co-creation, Ben Grimm. Mr. Kirby died in 1996, but members of his family and many of the folks who worked for Marvel Comics over the decades say they knew that Mr. Kirby always thought of the Thing as a sort of alter-ego – and Jewish. In fact, Mr. Kirby once drew the Thing wearing the traditional Jewish skullcap and prayer shawl and holding a prayer book…’ [via Progressive Ruin]
[retro] b3ta: Hey Hey 16K … ‘old skool rampaks are much better’
6 December 2004
[bbc] Tales from the Morgue — an anonymous BBC Management Insider’s Blog likely to cover the staff losses and reorganisation … ‘Walking past TV Centre there was a Union rep handing out leaflets about tomorrows announcements…’
[blogs] New kids on the Blog — behind-the-scenes profile of Nick Denton’s blog-publishing company … ‘Most of his nine blogs attract well over 100,000 unique users a day. Gawker traffic increased to 300,000 when it was the first to show a picture of B-list actress Tara Reid after she suffered a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ and exposed a nipple at a red-carpet event. When Paris Hilton revealed she wasn’t wearing underwear at the same event, the accompanying photo brought in 255,000 unique users. That’s about a million unique users visiting the site each month. Denton has a handful of full-time staff, no office and everyone else – up to 20 employees – works part-time. Some industry estimates have put his gross earnings at as much as $100,000 a month.’
3 December 2004
[web] A Del.icio.us Interview — interview with Joshua Schachter the man behind del.icio.us … ‘Q: I’d like to nominate del.icio.us for “Best Use of a Non-Dot-Com Name” — is there a deeping meaning to the name? A: Not really. I’d registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six letter suffixes that let me generate the most words. In early discussions, a friend referred to finding good links as “eating cherries” and the metaphor stuck, I guess…’
2 December 2004
[books] Digested Read: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe … ‘The cleverest girl ever to leave Sparta, North Carolina felt crippled inside. Her roommate was so posh. “So here we are in our fuck-pad,” grinned Beverley. “Can I use all the cupboard space? You don’t have any clothes.” Charlotte bit her tongue. “I am Charlotte Simmons,” she said to herself.’
1 December 2004
[ipod] Troubled Diva: 17 things which I love about my beautiful, bouncing new iPod … ’16. The surprisingly intense surge of paternalism which I experience before leaving the house each morning, as I squeeze my iPod into its bendy “skin” in order to protect it from the ravages of the outside world. “Come along, my lovely; let’s wrap you up nice and warm in your matinee jacket. Easy does it. There’s a good boy.” Followed by the corresponding evening routine, as I gently prise off the matinee jacket (or is it a Babygro?) and place my baby back into its cradle.’
[blogs] Getting Fired From Weblogs Inc. — some interesting comments from behind-the-scenes at a couple of Blog “nano-publishing” Empires … ‘It’s probably every blogger’s dream: one day, they will achieve blogging nirvana and someone will actually pay them to blog. Despite the fact that people pay me fairly regularly to write for magazines, I admit that I, too, indulged in the blogging nirvana dream. And on the 18th of October, the absolute weirdest thing happened: Nirvana knocked on my door. Twice…’
30 November 2004
[internet] Penny Arcade: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
29 November 2004
[descaler] On eBay: CILLIT BANG – New and unopened [via Tech PR blog] … ‘YES – it does exist – but very difficult to find!! This is an excellent product and does everything that it says it does – great for kitchens and bathrooms and for shiny new pennies!!!’
25 November 2004
[descaler] Cillit Bang FAQ — everything you need to know about the much blogged household cleaner … ‘Q: How does Cillit Bang work? A: I’m not sure. Any Chemistry gurus out there? Is it a surfactant? Oxidant? Acid? What would happen if you necked a shot of it?’
[politics] Impeach Tony Blair? Not this Crazy Gang — Simon Hoggart on the attempt to impeach Tony Blair … ‘Some of us had gone along in the hopes of hearing Harold Pinter, a keen supporter of the move to impeach the prime minister. Perhaps he would read one of his poems: “‘ Bombs hurtle down. They split open the skulls of babies. George Bush fills the skulls with shit, the shit of shitty shit-covered damnation’. Thank you.” Or words to that effect. Sadly, Mr Pinter was not able to attend…’
24 November 2004
[london] B3ta interviews London’s “Are you a Sinner or a Winner?” Man … ‘Q: Daddy or chips? A: Both. If your chips are down you need your Daddy (points skyward).’
22 November 2004
[tube] Blood on the Tracks — article about suicides on the London Underground … ‘How the tube got its reputation as a good spot for suicides is a mystery. It is a completely stupid choice. A large number of jumpers don’t die immediately and plenty don’t die at all. Those that are successful often manage because they get themselves crushed between the far wall and the train, instead of on the rails. It is very far from clinical. At the first “one-under” I attended, the woman was still alive underneath the train, screaming and trying to get up. The image stayed with me for years.’
21 November 2004
[wifi] How To Steal Wi-Fi — a useful guide to using your neigbours wi-fi access point without asking from Paul Bouting… ‘Every techie I know says that you shouldn’t use other people’s networks without permission. Every techie I know does it anyway.’
19 November 2004
[royalty] Prince Charles: ‘What is wrong with people nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far above their capabilities? This is all to do with the learning culture in schools. It is a consequence of a child-centred education system which tells people they can become pop stars, high court judges or brilliant TV presenters or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having the natural ability. It is a result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically engineered to contradict the lessons of history.’
[buy sell] eBay Pulse — find out what’s selling on eBay. [via BingBangBosh]
18 November 2004
[comics] The Strangeness of Brendan McCarthy — nicely done unofficial website for the much missed artist best known for his work on Judge Dredd and frequent collaborations with Peter Milligan … ‘Will he ever return to drawing a full comic strip? He has been quoted as saying, “Of course I will produce comic books in the future, but first I want to make sure I have enough money behind me so that I can self-publish the material I choose. I’m getting too long in the cock to have silly people telling me how to produce my own work. There’s just too much crap to put up with and quite frankly, I can’t be bothered with it”‘
17 November 2004
[web] Portable Firefox 1.0 — useful adaptation of Firefox … ‘Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers. It will also work from a CDRW drive (in packet mode), ZIP drives, external hard drives, some MP3 players, flash RAM cards and more.’
16 November 2004
[lard] Lard Crisis: Mince Pies Threatened As Supplies Dwindle … ‘Demand in east European countries for cheap cuts of pork has led to a shortage of meat suitable for rendering into lard. New members of the European Union, including Hungary and Poland, are buying within the union to avoid a levy on non-EU imports. Supermarkets such as Morrisons have been forced to display signs on shelves apologising for the lack of lard’ [Related: Mefi on the Lard Crisis]
15 November 2004
[spam] Trial Shows How Spammers Operate … ‘As one of the world’s most prolific spammers, Jeremy Jaynes pumped out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need. [..] In a typical month, prosecutors said during the trial, Jaynes might receive 10,000 to 17,000 credit card orders, thus making money on perhaps only one of every 30,000 e-mails he sent out. But he earned $40 a pop, and the undertaking was so vast that Jaynes could still pull in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead, McGuire said. “When you’re marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there” who will be suckered in, McGuire said in an interview.’
[books] Dark Star of LA Noir — long profile of James Ellroy … ‘For many, his ostensibly shocking claim that he had “figured out how I could use my mother’s death, reduce it to sound-bites and sell books”, might have seen him tagged simply as a grotesque opportunist. But then, in a bravely imaginative departure, he complicated matters further by addressing head-on the nature of that exploitation in his ground-breaking 1996 book My Dark Places, which was part memoir and part, ultimately doomed, attempt to identify her killer, who has never been identified. The more one finds out about the man, the more his title of the essay in which he claims novels are mislabelled autobiography makes sense: he called it “Where I Get My Weird Shit”.’
14 November 2004
[games] Spacewar – Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums — a profile of Spacewar (one of the first computer games) and the personalities behind it by Stewart Brand from Rolling Stone magazine in 1972 … ‘Spacewar as a parable is almost too pat. It was the illegitimate child of the marrying of computers and graphic displays. It was part of no one’s grand scheme. It served no grand theory. It was the enthusiasm of irresponsible youngsters. It was disreputably competitive (“You killed me, Tovar!”). It was an administrative headache. It was merely delightful. Yet Spacewar, if anyone cared to notice, was a flawless crystal ball of things to come in computer science and computer use…’ [via del.icio.us]
12 November 2004
[quote] Kurt Vonnegut Quotes … ‘I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.’
11 November 2004
[iraq] Steve Bell on Falluja … ‘These people are hardcore.’
[blog] Thought of the Day — moblogging a handwritten thought-of-the-day sign at Oval Station on the London Underground … ‘Those who dance are thought mad by those who do not hear the music.’ [via Sashinka]
10 November 2004
[apocalypse] 19 End-Of-The-World Prophecies — We missed at least one apocalypse last month: ‘2004-OCT-17: Clay Cantrell computes the date of the Rapture from size of Noah’s Ark with particular attention to the precise location of the “escape window” in the top of the vessel.’ [via Kevan’s Delicious]
9 November 2004
[web] Firefox 1.0 Released … ‘Thus did the followers rejoice with a clamour that shook the heavens; for the Fox came forth in its majesty, fully grown, and did henceforth swear an oath to do battle against those who would oppose it. Truly, rejoice, for the Fire hath descended from heaven to cleanse!’ – from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9 [Related: Download Firefox 1.0 using Bittorrent]
8 November 2004
[comic] Dan Clowes Switch Commercial — the creator of Ghost World did an unused commercial for Apple (directed by Errol Morris) … ‘It’s like a perfect robot pal.’
7 November 2004
[comics] The Comics Reporter — Tom Spurgeon’s comic news weblog.
6 November 2004
[books] Another interview with Neal Stephenson … ‘I do think that those who devote their lives to studying science or to building new technologies learn certain habits of thought. They derive satisfaction from finding new truths, or doing things in a way that is more elegant. Perhaps this could be considered spiritual. It is a way of confirming over and over again that the universe makes sense and follows orderly laws, which a religiously significant assertion.’
4 November 2004
3 November 2004
[comics] Snowed-under Briggs resorts to eBay — Raymond Briggs has so much The Snowman merchandise stored at his house that he’s decided to attempt sell it all on eBay … ‘Briggs, 70, admitted he is a novice at internet selling. ‘I didn’t know about eBay. A lady who works for me is putting the stuff on. It could be a disaster: there are already pages of Snowman things there. I assumed everything would be £10 at least, but I’m amazed to see some of it going for 50p. Why bother? There are all the costs of postage and packing. You can buy something for that in a charity shop. ‘We’re starting with one item to see if it will work: a Snowman toy holding a tiny teddy bear, which I’ve signed. It’s very well made, like Steiff teddy bears, and I can’t remember if we’ve said £50 or £150. There are mad collectors out there who will buy anything with signatures…’
2 November 2004
[politics] More Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail — long interview with Hunter S. Thompson …
‘Hunter S Thompson is not regarded as one of world journalism’s easier subjects. […] It’s a combination of things, really: the ubiquitous firearms and narcotics; his nocturnal regime and sudden mood swings. I first encountered him in the early 1990s when I was working for another newspaper which had decided to send him to join the Royal press corps for the Highland Games. I met Thompson at Gatwick, at 6am. He lit his hash pipe while we were still in sight of the customs hall and insisted on being driven to Smithfield Market for whisky. When we reached his hotel, he barricaded himself in his suite for 36 hours, then fled back to Aspen in the middle of the night. His subsequent faxes referred to me as an “evil treacherous dingbat” and a “weird limey freak”. “In a strange way,” says Ralph Steadman, “insults are Hunter’s way of articulating affection.”‘ 1 November 2004
[tv] The real King of Comedy — the Observer on the DVD release of Seinfeld … ‘One episode is entirely set in a Chinese restaurant where the cast wait for a table, and George (Jason Alexander) confides his latest girlfriend disaster to Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld). He has had to leave midway through sex because he is too embarrassed to go to the toilet in his girlfriend’s tiny flat, where his every move will be heard, and he has “an intestinal requirement that surpasses by great lengths anything in the sexual realm”. So how to extricate himself? “The only excuse she might possibly have accepted is if I told her that I am in reality Batman, and I’m very sorry, I just saw the Batsignal”.’
[reading] Pattern Recognition [Buy: Amazon UK | Amazon US] … ‘There must always be room for coincidence, Win had maintained. When there’s not, you’re probably well into apophenia, each thing then perceived as part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, he’d believed, you stood all too real a chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect. But which he always, she knew, took for granted was there.’
31 October 2004
[politics] You Ask The Questions — PJ O’Rourke … ‘Q: Is Tony Blair Bush’s puppet, poodle or fig leaf? A: Tony Blair is your Bush, or Clinton, or Kerry. He is your first really American politician: he has a great facility for baffle-gab; he gets intrigued with all sorts of complex ideas without really thinking them through; and he attempts to be all things to all people at all times. I think George does care what Tony thinks. They are the only two people on the same page about international intervention by Western powers…’
30 October 2004
[useful] Google Cheat Sheet — I learned a couple of new tricks from this … ‘~auto loan – loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc.’
29 October 2004
[work] Forty per cent of IT workers vomit at office Xmas party — ‘…while more than third admit to snogging their boss or a colleague […] The research doesn’t reveal what proportion of people threw up before snogging their boss.’
28 October 2004
[blogs] Hierarchy of Blogging — a useful guide from Random Acts of Reality. I look down on Family Blogs and Bloggers who blog about their pet cats apparently… [Related: Sasha has mirrored the Hierarchy]
27 October 2004
[web] Who knows? — Simon Waldman on the rise of Wikipedia … ‘The current Encyclopedia Britannica has 44m words of text. Wikipedia already has more than 250m words in it. Britannica’s most recent edition has 65,000 entries in print and 75,000 entries online. Wikipedia’s English site has some 360,000 entries and is growing every day. But numbers mean nothing if the quality is no good. And this is where the arguments start…’
26 October 2004
Human Nature — audio download of Malcolm Gladwell exploring ‘…why we can’t trust people’s opinions — because we don’t have the language to express our feelings. His examples include the story of New Coke and how Coke’s market research misled them, and the development of Herman-Miller’s Aeron chair, the best-selling chair in the history of office chairs, which succeeded in spite of research that suggested it would fail.’
24 October 2004
[politics] The Baghdad Blogger goes to Washington — Salam Pax visits America before the election… On arriving at JFK: ‘This is the moment where, in a perfect world modelled on Bollywood movies, I would break into song and dance; my chorus boys would be the beautiful boys in turbans and beards brandishing their “axis of evil” passports and I would look as fabulous as Kylie Minogue while singing: “What do I have to do to get the message thru? I am Iraqi, Iraqi!” It would be a hit with everyone at the airport and I would be escorted by adoring fans to the limousine waiting outside. But this is not a Bollywood movie and I am being taken to a “secondary screening”. My first visit to the USA might just end up with me being shackled and sent to a very unpleasant place where the colour orange is the height of fashion.’
22 October 2004
[fact!] True Facts — a page of trivia … ‘In her later years, Florence Nightingale kept a pet owl in her pocket.’
21 October 2004
[politics] Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 — Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone …
‘Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for — but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him. You bet. Richard Nixon would be my Man. He was a crook and a creep and a gin-sot, but on some nights, when he would get hammered and wander around in the streets, he was fun to hang out with. He would wear a silk sweat suit and pull a stocking down over his face so nobody could recognize him. Then we would get in a cab and cruise down to the Watergate Hotel, just for laughs.’
[books] Neal Stephenson interviewed by Slashdot. On the Singularity: ‘I have a personal mental block as far as the Singularity prediction is concerned. My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware’s nothing more than a really complicated space heater.’
20 October 2004
[politics] Faith Against Reason — commentary from Jonathan Freedland on the faith-based Presidency… ‘As the [Republican] faithful streamed out of the Evesham Recreational Centre in Marlton, a Kerry-Edwards bus with a loudhailer was taunting them from across the road: “Don’t be scared of science, guys. Please guys, we need science.” It seemed an odd kind of election slogan, but it might be right to the point. For the clash under way now is about more than Bush v Kerry, right v left. It seems to be an emerging clash of tradition against modernity, faith against reason. The true believers pitted against the “reality-based community”.’
19 October 2004
[politics] Without a Doubt — Ron Suskind on George W. Bush’s Faith-based Presidency …
‘He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can’t run the world on faith.’ 18 October 2004
[collecting] Smartie Museum — a webpage for a collection of Smartie Lids … ‘You wouldn’t think there could be much to say on this subject, would you? WRONG!’
17 October 2004
[comics] The Ascent Of Fan — Ninth Art on Comics Fans … ‘Far from discussing their love of comics, the fans seem to spend more time debating the precise reasons why they suck, with particular reference to why things aren’t as good as they used to be – whether ‘used to be’ goes back two years, five, ten or twenty. This, of course, is the basic joke of THE SIMPSONS’ Comic Shop Guy. For a man who’s devoted his life to comics, he doesn’t actually seem to like any of them very much. And remember, these are the people who really adore comics. Just imagine what the people who can’t stand them must be like.’ [via Neilalien]
15 October 2004
[politics] Bush Like Me — a Rolling Stone Reporter spends ten weeks undercover with the grassroots of the Republican Party …
‘”We have a transvestite at our school,” I repeated. Only Susie heard me. “No!” she screamed. “Did you hear what he said? A transvestite works at his school!” She turned to me in horror. “Is he allowed to dress like a woman?” Now I had everyone’s attention. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Totally normal guy, except that at some point, he started reading all kinds of . . . ” “Books!” Susie guessed. “It’s called possession,” her husband said. “Yeah, books,” I said. “It started… he was reading Agatha Christie books at first, then he got really into detectives. Next thing you know, he’s reading Nietzsche. You know, the German philosopher.” “The weirdo German!” Susie exclaimed. Everyone was staring at me in shock.”And he comes up to me one day and says, you know, ‘Well, since there’s no God, I might as well be gay!’ ” “Oh, my God,” her husband whispered.’
[film] Feeling Listless on Clerks X: ‘To some degree it’s a depressing experience because I’ve seen this film so many times that it’s lost that shock of the new. It’s the kind of piece which people are still discovering and I wish I still could. Even at student age I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the melancholic desolation which seeps through the cracks of the comedy. Like the best film with longevity it changes each time we revisit because we are older and our perceptions change. Which is the film’s real achievement – that something could cost that little money, be made under those production limits and still be have that value.’
14 October 2004
[search] Google Desktop Search — Google releases beta software which allows you to search your desktop as easily as the internet … ‘Search your own computer.’
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