Despite the problems I have with the way it has been conducted and the very reasons for the war in Iraq, the turnout at today's elections clearly provides them and the rest of the world with an opportunity to hope that things are, in fact, improving significantly. Even though there were some attacks, the number of fatalities, though far above the desired zero, was much lower than many had anticipated while turnout was higher. How many Americans would go to vote if there were a substantial threat they might be killed by terrorists? So, congratulations Iraqi people. You demonstrated your courage and committment today. Let us hope there are no massive irregularities in the vote and that this is just one of many steps towards a stable and peaceful nation. Good luck.
Check out iSketch, an online pictionary-style game. It's pretty fun.
If you could have any powers, what would they be? Please choose one from each category: realistic, ESP-related, and superhero. For example, I would choose photographic memory, telekinesis, and the ability to stop time.
Check out this very cool collaborative art project. It was on BoingBoing almost a month ago, but is just too great not to share.
A man hasn't slept in 20 years:
Ukrainian Fyodor Nesterchuk from the town of Kamen-Kashirsky said the last time he managed to doze off was more than 20 years ago."I can't remember the exact date and I don't know why it started, but all of a sudden I found it more and more difficult to nod off until eventually I was awake the entire night.
I wonder what, if any, psychological effect this has had on him. Research has consistently shown the sleep is important in helping us learn new things, remember facts, and solve problems. Has his ability in these areas been in any way decreased? Does he hallucinate? I do wish sleep were optional. If I could choose to stay awake with no ill effects and at full mental capacity, I don't know that I'd ever sleep again, except maybe as a sort of drug.
Those of you who care may have already heard about this, but Beck's forthcoming album leaked onto the net recently. You can find a torrent of it with only a little searching.
Umbrae Canarum has a post up prompted by reflection on Texas small towns and their charming, old-fashioned main streets. A good post, but it annoyed me. Not because I disagree with anything he writes, but because it reminded me of what I see as the biggest flaws in American culture. Rather than retype everything I said in the comments, I'll just reproduce most of it here with some elaboration.
Texas has these small towns all over the place. The old, delapidated main streets still have a definite charm, but even those are being overrun by Generica, the scourge of our nation. Do most people find it comforting that the only difference from one city to the next is the arrangement of the stores? Or is it simply something they take for granted? I fear that 20 years from now, there will only be a handful of cities in the nation that are distinct from the others (Austin, Portland, San Francisco, etc), but even those will be in danger of being overrun. I know the big box stores and the restaurant chains are convenient, but the quality, particularly of the restaurants, is usually mediocre at best. What happened to exploration and adventure, even if on such a small scale as trying a new place to eat? Isn't a fierce individualism supposed to be a distinctly American trait?
Gah! I know I'm just coming off as bitter and arrogant, but I see this as just another sign of the general decline of culture and education in the US. We're rapidly moving towards being a nation of obese, illiterate, and generally ignorant automatons. Naturally, I think the answer rests in better education. It is the foundation for a thoughtful, cultured life, one that would lead more people to reject the anonymizing commercialism created and sustained by the Walmarts, McDonald's, and Applebees. The unexamined life is the one most Americans live. Am I wrong about this? Am I just being a snob? It's indisputable that educational standards have fallen precipitously in the last few decades; that much is really not debatable. Is it only coincidence that this coincides with the rapid expansion of Generica and its attendant ills?
They've been piling up in my mail and I really dislike having messages just sitting there. So, here's what I've received in the last month or two in the way of links:
A dancing transformer car commercial (.WMV).
The 1906 aerial photography of George R. Lawrence showing San Francisco after the great earthquake.
The explanations of many subtler Simpsons jokes.
Techno rollerskating (.MOV).
Buy a handheld, high-powered laser. Definitely not a laser pointer. (You'll put your eye out!)
A trailer for Sin City. The movie looks very stylish, but with potential to be either highly enjoyable or really bad (Quicktime).
Do the robot. This kid must be double-jointed (.WMV).
Strange geek behavior, dancing to German techno. Requires sound (Flash).
Ali G in the news for almost starting a riot. Man, some people don't seem to like it when their national anthem is mocked.
UNIX as product names (for geeks only).
Something actually useful, for those of you who've made it this far. How to drastically speed up Firefox.
How to get a Free iPod. This is apparently legit and a sustainable business model. Personally, I would sign up for one of the credit cards, but given my significantly reduced income, I doubt I would get approved. I also don't want to be saddled with a subscription to some service like BMG or the like. That's probably a bit silly of me, but ah well. YMMV.
I just overheard an amazing exchange between a few of the future leaders of American I live with. The three of them had been reading modern poetry aloud, and while two of them were obviously enthralled, or at least intrigued, the third didn't quite get it.
"But why don't they rhyme? Didn't poems used to rhyme?"
"They don't rhyme because they're not rappers."
As usual, another interesting discussion has popped up at 2Blowhards, this time about photography. The most interesting part of the discussion is the fact that amateur photographers are able to stumble into the occasional good or even great photo, something no other art form permits. As one who owns a pretty nice camera and is naturally pretentious, I try to take fancy/artsy pictures from time to time, the results of which you've seen—nothing terribly spectacular, but a few passable images nevertheless. Yes, you have to know about things like aperture and shutter speed if you want to increase your chances of stumbling into a good picture, but the primary requirement in black and white photography is an innate sense of composition and lighting; in color, well, I'm not sure, but it seems to be a feel for how colors work with and against one another, along with the other parts needed in black and white. Like with any other art, you either have a talent for this or you don't. The "rules" can be taught, but someone with talent will regularly outperform someone without. But that's the great thing about photography, especially with digital cameras. You can take a ridiculous number of pictures in the hopes that one or two will turn out well. Even without talent or skill, persistence and luck will provide. This makes photography by far the most democratic of artforms. Of course, persistence and luck are key factors to nearly any art. Practice is required and the ancient curse of living in interesting times always help. Even so, I doubt anyone has ever "accidentally" written a great poem.
So I'm learning Latin for fun and career advancement (Latin will help my application to Ph.D. programs and is a requirement for Medieval Studies, one of the fields I'm considering) and have to say, it's a lot of fun. Since it's the first inflected language I've learned, it's something almost entirely new, unlike the various Romance languages out there which are all highly similar. It's also surprisingly easy to get enough of a handle on it to be able to put it to use translating the random bits of Latin one comes across in reading. For all of you who are interested in languages, I highly recommend learning it if you don't already know it. You can just pick up a copy of Wheelock's and the workbook and manage to learn it fairly well on your own if you can't find a class somewhere. Quis linguam latinam intellegit?
He asked us if we were interested in looking at what he had in the back of the van. We said, "Sure," and what to our eyes should appear but a load of legs and arms with feet and hands on them, a box full of penises, and a box each of extra hands and feet. My cock got harder.
I've seen some weird things in the disturbing amount of time I've spent on the internet. But boytaur.net quite easily takes the cake. No actual pornographic pictures that I saw, but then again, I didn't really dare search that hard.
Via Instapundit, we learn that Bill O'Reilly and the Wall Street Journal are up in arms that Daily Kos and MyDD were "taking money" from the Dean campaign. From this segment between Hugh Hewitt and O'Reilly
BILL O'REILLY [FOX NEWS]: You know, I think this is just the beginning of this. This is like the 50s, when DJs were being paid to play records on the radio. You're going to see more and more of this kind of stuff, where political campaigns and people like that are buying quasi-journalists, bloggers, radio people, for good publicity. Do you disagree?
HUGH HEWITT [AUTHOR]: No, Bill. In fact, the idea of payola is very dangerous. Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging of real journalists, and people like Power Line and like InstaPundit and myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Daily Kos says, this is one of the bloggers from the left, says he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who watches him. I didn't know.
O'REILLY: Aw, this is bunk. This is bull. Nobody knew about this.
As it turns out, Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) was actually on a blogging hiatus throughout the primary season--something Zephy Teachout should have noted in her original post. As for for Daily Kos, was anyone who read him him during the primary season not aware that he was consulting for Dean?
I guess the question is whether Kos was trying to be an "objective" journalist. I would be interested in what others think about this. IMHO, there wasn't any ambiguity if you read the site often enough--Kos was and is no journalist. Kos himself has said as much. But I suppose occasional visitors might have gotten the wrong impression, since Kos did occasionally criticise Dean and praise other candidates (especially Clark). In any case, Faux certainly isn't interested in uncovering the truth. To its credit, WSJ did check the facts. But once they had them, shouldn't they have realized attacking Markos on "blogging ethics" was a non-story? The same goes for Instapundit, who has emphasized the story, even though he admits Kos did nothing wrong.
The reasons are a little bit convoluted to go into here, but basically he's a jackass and someone else ghostwrote his biggest hit. You can read the details and sign the petition at the same time here. More importantly, though, you can visit Byron Crawford's new site, solely dedicated to destroying the career of a single man (quick, someone look up 'Quixotic' in the dictionary for me). This is one of the funniest jags of hateration Byron's been on in a while, so it's a great chance to jump on board and absorb his brilliance in a focused form - Hey, that kind of rhymed!
Oh, shit, there's Kanye West at the door with a check! I'm rich, bitch!
In the long line of advice to writers, here's another, but it's pretty good:
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ''Do you think I could be a writer?''''Well,'' the writer said, ''I don't know. . . . Do you like sentences?''
The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ''I liked the smell of the paint.''
I have nothing to add, but read the whole thing (it's quite short).
(via Scott Rosenberg)
I have a feeling our recent attempt to lose all our readers is coming to an end. With the three main posters all in school, Decemeber caused a serious disruption. Apologies to all who have come to rely on the GNC for... umm... ok. Nevermind that last part, but I still suspect our recent experiment at abject laziness is coming to an end.
I just ran across this Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis. It's never too early to start thinking about these things.