Excellence Through Mediocrity

We don't need no stinking pants!

2011-05-08T20:18:00.003-04:00

I was half way through this before I realized it was for women when I read, "Are you sporting a camel toe?" and I strangely answered, "Yes."

song of the day

2011-05-03T23:37:00.002-04:00

oldie but a goodie
the beat on this track is killing me
odd future (aka wolf gang (aka golf wang))

msnbc, keep this up

2011-05-02T16:36:00.002-04:00

reva bhalla, the new inhabitant of my below-the-beltway dreams. every time she talks about iranian sactions i get a chub.

Question...

2011-05-02T01:02:00.002-04:00

Is it wrong that i'm watching the bin laden coverage on Univision instead of CNN?

How I Came to Work at Wendy's

2011-04-29T10:39:00.003-04:00

A sample.

Full Length imgur
Via: reddit
Source

Higher education bubble?

2011-04-27T20:50:00.002-04:00

Suppose there is a game with a billion participants. Each participant starts with a (fair) coin. Each round, every participant flips his/her coin. If a person flips a heads, they get a dollar. If a person flips tails, they lose everything. After twenty-five rounds, what happens? Someone will try to write a book explaining how to flip heads twenty-five times in a row.

Enter Peter Thiel, venture capital wunderkind. Thiel predicted the dot-com bust, the housing bubble, and now....the higher education bubble.

Is higher education a bubble? Do employers over-value a college education? Is a college education worth the debt?

Kansas is flatter than a pancake...and other improbable science

2011-04-27T19:29:00.003-04:00

I recently discovered the Annals of Improbable Research, which chronicles all manner of ridiculous research. Some highlights:

* Kansas is flatter than a pancake.

* A comparison of apples and oranges.

* How to write scientific papers.

Anyway, get back to work.

The Hot Zone II

2011-04-20T22:14:00.002-04:00

I want to be on this epidemiology team:

An outbreak of Legionnaires disease at the Playboy mansion that left more than 70 people ill has been traced to a hot tub on the estate.

There's a great USMLE vignette in here somewhere...

Atlas Shrugged: acid in her face

2011-04-20T15:15:00.002-04:00

The following is my submission for the best sentence in a movie review ever.

``He must realize that the Taggart-Rearden "romance" is only romantic inasmuch as Rearden does not forcibly rape her or throw acid in her face upon what their lawyers deem satisfactory completion of coitus."

This sentence may be the only positive thing that has come of Ayn Rand's legacy. For the rest of the review of the movie Atlas Shrugged (from which this quote was shamelessly cribbed), see here.

The lines for the premiere in LA were apparently filled with 75-or-something objectivists, who are not bothered by the fact that this is likely a movie that is worse than Battlefield Earth. Normally, I like to see the movie before I hate it, but I, like the writer of the afore-linked review, refuse to pay to see it.

I want one, now.

2011-04-17T23:11:00.003-04:00

Saw this on Engadet, and there's a video of it on CNET. It seems to do pretty much everything you want it to, except give you a happy ending. This would come in handy especially after inadvertently eating some kind of dairy.

If at first you don't succeed: redefine success

2011-04-17T21:20:00.004-04:00

April 5, 2004 at 2:05 AM -- just over SEVEN years ago -- the very first communique on Fratocrate's Excellence Through Mediocrity was submitted for your viewing discomfort. It took exactly 17 more minutes for post #2, resulting in one of the earliest references to microwaved banana peels ever on the internet. Pretty powerful stuff.

Since then, the blogosphere has devolved into a simulacrum of modern hollywood...creativity, personal voice, and discovery trumped by crass consumerism and derivative works.

The internet's petri dish has of course since moved to twitter, which has led to JHC's Corollary: "The length of an effective blog post shall be directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to find and procure a clip of Jenna Haze getting DP'ed." (tempted to provide a link). I don't know what's going to happen to our collective attention spans once the fiber starts rolling into our homes and LTE radiates rapidshared porn directly into our wrinkly balls.

I want a return to the good old days...to the long form from the amateurs and not just the new yorker. I want to check my referrer logs again to see who's morbid curiosity is piqued by my photoshop masterpieces. I want In The Crease to post "funny" comments again so that we can all laugh at him behind his back like the good old days.

I know, I know, too much to ask. In the meantime, peep an old friend of ETM, stacey dash, selling sex over a great Curren$y track (haven't been able to find it yet)

yours truly,

a resurrected JHC

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

2011-04-13T22:59:00.000-04:00

world's tallest man saves dolphins

2007-01-02T21:23:00.000-05:00

a bbc article, via things magazine:

The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.
[...]
Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun was called in after the dolphins swallowed plastic used around their pool at an aquarium in Fushun, north-east China.
[...]
Guinness World Records list Mr Bao, 54, as the world's tallest living man at 2.36m (7ft 8.95in).
[...]
The mammals had lost their appetite and were suffering depression, aquarium officials said.

norway offsetting green house gasses

2007-01-02T21:00:00.000-05:00

via the bbc:

Norway has announced plans to offset the greenhouse gases produced by public employees when they fly abroad by buying emissions credits.
[...]
The estimated cost of the scheme would be around 2.5 million kroner ($400,000, £200,000) per year [ed: that's it?], according to the Norwegian news agency NTB
[...]
Although the announcement was received favourably by some businesses and environmental groups, at least one organisation reacted with scepticism.

Norway's Nature and Youth environmental group said: "The government should first reduce its ambitions for the oil and gas sector in Norway, which accounts for a third of emissions of greenhouse gases."

Norway is the world's third largest oil exporter and a major exporter of natural gas.

johnny five needs more input

2006-12-29T11:23:00.000-05:00

again, via the economist:

...studies show that people read around ten megabytes (MB) worth of material a day; hear 400MB a day, and see one MB of information every second.

kill me now.

chinese cars

2006-12-29T11:17:00.000-05:00

via the economist:

n their efforts to break into Western markets, China’s carmakers have stalled. Making a competitive car is not as easy as they first thought, it seems. A small number of Landwind cars shipped to Europe in 2005 failed to make quite the intended impact. German crash-tests revealed they were the most dangerous vehicles ever tested.

excellent. this is exactly what the germans deserve.

for what it's worth, the rest of the article paints a much more positive picture of both chinese and indian car manufacturers.

9/11 Revisited

2006-09-11T09:58:00.000-04:00

A little over a month ago, I accused JHC of forgetting about this blog. Being its originator, I felt it his responsibility to continue to post. He quietly reminded me that I too could have posted. I responded that I would guarantee that I would post when we he wrote something that wasn't of the ``me-too" blog style (this is the style of blogging where someone posts about something and everyone else links to that same thing). Anyway, here is my response.

First, I wanted to point to a really tasteless video collage done by Lubos Motl commemorating the fifth anniversary of 9/11. First some background. Motl is a (to the best of my knowledge, non-permanent) Harvard faculty member in physics. Just so that there is no pretense of objectivity on my part, let me say that I dislike Motl, mainly because I consider him a string theory pundit. However, Motl frequently uses his blog to make all kinds of silly claims. I probably shouldn't dignify his presence with a response, but....

oil

2006-08-13T17:30:00.000-04:00

interesting article on nationalized oil companies (via the economist):

Yet Big Oil is pretty small next to the industry's true giants: the national oil companies (NOCs) owned or controlled by the governments of oil-rich countries, which manage over 90% of the world's oil, depending on how you count. Of the 20 biggest oil firms, in terms of reserves of oil and gas, 16 are NOCs. Saudi Aramco, the biggest, has more than ten times the reserves that Exxon does.
[...]
Saudi Aramco's proved reserves alone could keep the world supplied for several decades. But it is only exploiting ten of its 80 or so fields, so will be able to pump at the present rate for about 70 years even if it never discovers another drop of oil.

big wheels keep on turning

2006-08-11T19:13:00.000-04:00

summer is almost over and i don't know what the fuck i've done with my time.

actually, i know precisely what i've done: gone to the sbarro's in pittsburgh international to the sbarro's in o'hare. way too much travelling this summer: grenada to pit, pit to philly, pit to bangalore, various useless trips within india, and then -- shockingly -- pit to alabama (birmingham).

at the outset of the summer, i was dreading that voyage to the dirty dirty: last thing i needed was to return from the developing world only to spend time in the 3rd world. but it turned out well...submitted a shitload of papers for publication, people were nice, girls dropped it like it was hot, and surprisingly, they had electricity.

no mosquitos. a ridiculous amount of cockroaches.

didn't get a chance to go to the civil rights institute (which i hear is fantastic). spent what little free time i had hustling people at air hockey. i made 500 dollars, unfortunately, all in confederate scrip. the 5 points south area was good dumb fratty fun (they got a ruby tuesday's y'all!!!), and i even drove by talladega.

on the way home, i sat in the back of the 737 despite possessing the coveted 'A' southwest boarding pass just to show my solidarity w/ rosa parks. made a quick stop in kentucky on the way back, and let me tell you, it looks like it sucks.

regards,
a cheese-biscut engorged jhc.

miami vice

2006-07-31T17:40:00.000-04:00

just saw miami vice.
perfect 5 out of 10.
a love story with neither love nor story.

however, i am now seriously considering getting a satellite phone.

regards,
a recently repatriated jhc.

Hunting Accident

2006-02-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

Alternate headlines to this article:
- Lawyer now lobbying for better gun control laws

- VP Cheney finally gets WMD. I'm sorry, did I say WMD, I meant a quail...and a fellow hunter

- Don't ever piss off VP Cheney, because he will shoot you.

"No Ticket."

2006-02-10T10:09:00.000-05:00

I f-in' hate the people of this city. A woman passenger on a city bus was yelling at the driver for missing her stop. She didn't realize that a detour prohibited the driver from stopping. So, the driver grabs the woman by the hair, knocks her head into a pole, then throws her out of the bus into traffic.

By no means am I defending what he did, but does the woman have to be yelling at the driver for something that was out of his hands? And certainly, the driver didn't need to assult the woman.

Kudos, Philly, for raising such pillars of the community. I f-in' hate you people.

finally.

2006-02-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

20060206lfwardmvp_450, originally uploaded by jhc.

a simple request

2006-02-05T13:47:00.000-05:00

please god, just give me this, this is all i am asking for: please
let the steelers win today.

i promise, i will be good in the nought-six. i haven't even
downloaded any porn this year after somebody told me that you didn't
like stuff like that. how was i supposed to know? and it's not like
i can undownload a terabyte, now can i? it was an honest
mistake...just please please please please please let the steelers
win, ok?

thanks,
jhc.

Even better

2006-02-01T16:22:00.000-05:00

I thought life couldn't get any better. I was wrong.

One for the thumb

2006-02-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

Beer: the cause and solution to all of life's problems.

2006-01-13T21:10:00.000-05:00

Here's one about a town in Ohio that's been dry for 131 years. It wasn't until just recently that they approved the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Business and city leaders pushed for the serving of alcohol in uptown establishments as a way to compete with restaurants and bars at two new retail developments near the Columbus suburb.

So, in order to compete with the the "retail developments" in booming the Columbus suburb, they did this:

Voters on November 8 approved licenses for beer and wine to be sold at Michael's Pizza and Pasquale's Pizza & Pasta, whose owner plans to start serving libations February 1.

So watch out Chili's and Outback Steakhouse, Michael's and Pasquale's pizza shops are really going to give you a run for your money.

Update: Confiscation of fake ID's rise at an alarming rate in Columbus suburb.

Charlie and Chocolate Penis

2006-01-08T15:05:00.000-05:00

This product is sweet, pun intended. I've always wanted to be able to give that special something to grandma to remember me by. And now I can, with a chocolate mold of my penis. This is awesome. I will no longer be giving sweaters and ties as gifts. From now on, twigs and berries dipped in chocolate for all!

An additional bonus, of course, is that you can substitute the chocolate with plaster, and finally be able to do what I've been telling to do..."Go fuck yourself."

cell phone backup on yahoo

2005-12-25T22:44:00.000-05:00

i just backed-up my cell phone's contacts and calendar via yahoo! mobile. pretty sweet. it sync'ed up my yahoo address book and calendar with the info on my phone... unfortunately, not all phone/services let you do this.

Ganesh

2005-12-10T16:42:00.000-05:00

Someone tell me why i never thought of making these?

Pro-Wrestling and Steroids?

2005-12-05T08:23:00.000-05:00

And now professional wrestling is dead. From now on, matches will be held at local Big Boys between the guy who sells toiliet fixtures at the hardware store and the crazy person who talks to himself.

The prize: free dessert with purchase of one dinner buffet at Cracker Barrel.

Congrats JHC!

2005-11-24T19:02:00.000-05:00

And all this time we thought you were educating yourself in the art of medicine on the shores of St. Georges. Instead, you were educating yourself in the art of Elton John on the shores of his loins. But be proud of yourself and use your real name, instead of David Furnish. Well, either way, congratulations JHC!

inching closer towards free trade

2005-11-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

the EU has agreed to trim it's sugar subsidies in an effort to potentiate the upcoming wto meeting in hong kong (part of the doha round). from the FT article:

After three days of talks, the ministers decided to cut the EU’s guaranteed sugar price by 36 per cent over four years. This was instead of an initially envisaged cut of 39 per cent over two years.
[...]
...Poland, Latvia and Greece refused to endorse the final compromise.
[...]
The EU has 312,000 sugar beet farmers and Brussels currently buys sugar from European producers at €632 a tonne, three times the world market price.
[...]
The UK Industrial Sugar Users Group on Thursday deplored last-minute concessions that would still leave the EU price about double the world sugar price. “This deal takes the easy way out by simply dumping increased compensation costs on consumers and industrial users,” it said.

i always wondered about the EU could export so much sugar (the world's number 2 exporter after brazil) w/o having the necessary climate to grow sugarcane, and now i know...sugarbeets.

sugar was also a sticking point in cafta. i like this from the 'truth about trade' article:

Sugar growers and refiners gave $2.4 million in contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates in the 2003-04 election cycle, more than any other agricultural group...The best-known donors are big sugar cane growers in Florida and Louisiana, especially the Fanjul brothers, who come from a family of sugar barons in Cuba (their holdings were expropriated by Fidel Castro) and now produce cane near the Everglades.

Jose "Pepe" Fanjul, president of Florida Crystals Corp., raised enough money for the Bush campaign to gain entry into the elite group of GOP "Rangers." His brother Alfonso, who specializes in contributions to Democrats, gained notoriety during President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, when it emerged that Fanjul's phone call to the Oval Office had interrupted a presidential meeting with Monica Lewinsky.

Technorati Tags: sugar, econ, free, trade, freetrade, eu, wto, doha, hongkong, hong, kong, acriculture, agribusiness

computer's thoughts during endgame

2005-11-23T21:10:00.000-05:00

computer's thoughts during endgame
Originally uploaded by jhc.

the mit advertising lab blog points to thinking machine 4, a beautiful chess applet (built on processing) that shows the computer's 'thoughts' during gameplay. definitely check it out...

some other nice information viz links in the original post as well...

flash art

2005-11-23T16:25:00.000-05:00

via tim bray, an incremental drawing of a woman, starting with the skeleton...more in tim's post. slightly non-work safe. (ie, pixelated boobs and bush).

non-literacy and technology

2005-11-21T08:58:00.000-05:00

jan chipchase, on textually illiteracy and mobile communications technology. very interesting.

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Smoker tried to open plane door

2005-11-21T08:50:00.000-05:00

hilarious, via the bbc:

A French woman has admitted attempting to open an airplane door mid-flight so that she could smoke a cigarette.

Sandrine Helene Sellies, 34, who has a fear of flying, had drunk alcohol and taken sleeping tablets ahead of the flight from Hong Kong to Brisbane.

She was seen on the Cathay Pacific plane walking towards a door with an unlit cigarette and a lighter.

She then began tampering with the emergency exit until she was stopped by a flight attendant.

she then proceeded to send the cathay pacific flight attendant to an ethnic ghetto.

happiness

2005-11-19T23:39:00.000-05:00

stephen johnston has a writeup on some happiness literature.

democratizing innovation: chemistry and pharma

2005-11-19T11:31:00.000-05:00

to begin, a little background: dr. jean-claude bradley is a chemistry professor at drexel who is very interested in using information technology to augment his didactic efforts (podcasts, screencasts, immersive gaming environments, wikis, blogs etc). he's chronicling these adventures on his excellent blog, drexel coas e-learning.

onwards to the topic at hand: recently, dr. bradley has started the useful chemistry blog, giving his students real world problems to work so that they can apply their knowledge to tangible ends.

for example, he has procured a list of compounds (from the find-a-drug project) with possible anti-malaria and anti-hiv properties. his students have been tasked with finding the most efficient synthetic route to these target compounds, which will then be assayed for efficacy.

very interesting work...i wish i was taught chemistry in this way, and i hope that this model of distributed discovery and innovation will play a large role in improving people's lives.

if the internet has taught me anything...

2005-11-19T11:20:00.000-05:00

...it's that east asians are crazy: from eating silkworm pupae to perfecting the art of spinning pencils on their thumbs, they just really know how to make me scratch my head.

along those lines, check out these beautiful paper structures; each is placed ontop of the the remaining piece of original paper, giving you a peek into their hidden internal architecture. i think they're from korea, but i'm not sure...please enlighten me if you know better. via tom coates.

business at the bottom of the pyramid

2005-11-16T09:27:00.000-05:00

rajesh jain posts on stuart hart's new book, 'capitalism at the crossroads'. here's an excerpt:

Unilever's Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), provides an interesting glimpse of the development of native capabilities in its efforts to pioneer new markets among the rural poor. HLL requires all employees in India to spend six weeks living in rural villages, actively seeks local consumer insights and preferences as it develops new products, and sources raw materials almost exclusively from local producers. The company also created an R&D center in rural India focused specifically on technology and product development to serve the needs of the poor. HLL uses a wide variety of local partners to distribute its products and also supports the efforts of these partners to build local capabilities. In addition, HLL provides opportunities and training to local entrepreneurs and actively experiments with new types of distribution, such as selling via local product demonstrations and village street theaters.

...Today more than half of HLL's revenues come from customers at the base of the economic pyramid....Even more important, through its new strategy, HLL has created tens of thousands of jobs, improved hygiene and quality of life, and become an accepted partner in development among the poor themselves.

unevenly distributed future: hong kong

2005-11-15T22:27:00.000-05:00

kottke has a great writeup of his trip to hk. the octopus cards were most impressive:

...It's a pay-as-you go stored value card...you put $100 bucks on it and "recharge" the card when it's empty (or when it's even more than empty...as long as your balance is positive when you use it, you can go into a HK$35 deficit, which you pay when you recharge the card). You can use it on pratically any public transportation in the city: buses, trains, MTR, trams, ferries, etc. It works with vending machines, at 7-Eleven, McDonald's, Starbucks, and the supermarket. You don't need to take it out of your wallet or purse to use it, just hold it near the sensor. Your card is not tied to your identity...there's no PIN, you can pay cash, they don't need to know your credit card number, SS#, or anything like that. They even make watches and mobile phones that have Octopus built it, so your phone (or watch) becomes your wallet.

tropically depressed

2005-11-15T16:57:00.000-05:00

tropical depression 27 just rolled through our neighborhood. it was the first of this season's storms to actually effect grenada's weather, and i gotta say, it was mildly shitty for a minute. we got our asses flooded on saturday, and then it was just nonstop rain until today. and the damn thing was 100 miles away: i can't begin to imagine the levels of feces that would have been dropped on our heads if it was an actual hurricane passing directly overhead.

anyway, it was kind of a nice respite from 24/7 sunshine and good vibes. our dorm stanking of wet dog, however, is a minus. now back to our regularly scheduled program...

All Hail

2005-11-14T00:18:00.000-05:00

the greatest
Originally uploaded by jhc.

behold: the hines.

whole foods, libertarianism

2005-11-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

interesting interview with whole foods ceo john mackey, where he discusses economics, philosophy, and sociology as they relate to business.

Technorati Tags: libertarianism, economics, business, wholefoods

flight patterns

2005-11-09T10:06:00.000-05:00

flight patterns
Originally uploaded by jhc.

check out these visualizations of flights over american airspace produced by aaron koblin, [via acts of volition]

GO TEAM!

2005-11-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

After reading this article from ESPN.com about two Carolina Panthers' cheerleaders, I am so for the Pittsburgh Steelers getting cheerleaders, as long as they perform in the men's bathrooms.

scanR

2005-10-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

scoble blogs about scanR (which might prove to be the only legitimate instance of the already overused -R suffix). basically, it lets you use your 1+ megapixel camera phone as a scanner, fax machine, etc. cool, cool shit which lends more credence to beattie's corollary: "if someone is using a pc to demo the Next Big Thing...then it's not the next big thing."

interestingly, as pervasive as cell phones are in grenada, there really aren't any home-grown mobile apps to speak of (granted, grenadians are too busy rebuilding their nation after hurricane ivan to worry about the latest cool comm hack).

the closest thing to a mobile app that i've seen down here is the nokia 1100's built in flashlight, which is pretty handy during power outages. and when i go out to parties, i've seen a lot of dj's using them while digging through their crates...kinda made me think about convergence in a new way.

Technorati Tags: mobile, cell, phones, applications, imaging, camera, scanr

dear comment spammers

2005-10-24T00:03:00.000-04:00

you realize you're spamming the wrong blog, right? i mean.....we suck. really, ask anybody: NOBODY reads this shit, even me! this blog basically answers the age old question, 'if a tree farts in the woods and no one is there to smell it, does it still stink?'.

and google juice? forget about it. has anybody ever linked to us? we can barely even get google smegma, we suck that badly.

i've been thanking god that you douche bags have started leaving comments -- your spam is actually more interesting and informative than our posts. a+ work!

pharma pricing

2005-10-21T23:43:00.000-04:00

interesting bmj article on pharmaceutical pricing, via the healthcare renewal blog:

The United States government is engaged in a campaign to characterise other industrialised countries as free riding on high US pharmaceutical prices and innovation in new drugs. This campaign is based on the argument that lower prices imposed by price controls in other affluent countries do not pay for research and development costs, so that Americans have to pay the research costs through higher prices in order to keep supplying the world with new drugs.
[...]
We can find no convincing evidence to support the view that the lower prices in affluent countries outside the United States do not pay for research and development costs. The latest report from the UK Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme documents that drug companies in the United Kingdom invest proportionately more of their revenues from domestic sales in research and development than do companies in the US. Prices in the UK are much lower than those in the US yet profits remain robust.
[...]
...in Canada the 35 companies that are members of the brand name industry association report that income from domestic sales is, on average, about 10 times greater than research and development costs. They have profits higher than makers of computer equipment and telecommunications carriers despite prices being about 40% lower than in the US.
[...]
Contrary to claims of American dominance, pharmaceutical research and development in the US has not produced more than its proportionate share of new molecular entities. The US accounts for just under 48% of world sales and spent 49% of the global total on research and development to discover 45% of the new molecular entities that were launched on the world market in 2003, less than its proportionate share. European countries account for 28% of world sales, 36% of total research and development spending, and 32% of new molecular entities, more than its proportionate share.

Technorati Tags: pharma, healthcare, econ, drugs, pricing, global, research, r&d

search, curiosity

2005-10-21T10:09:00.000-04:00

interesting quote from a die zeit article on search, focusing on ask jeeves. [via john battelle]:

It's all about a kind of hunger which is still far from being satiated. Just like kids, most adults have their heads full of questions, but there's nobody at hand who knows more than them, so they stopped asking and learned to postpone their questions. Until Google appeared, the possibility to get an answer from the immense collection of human knowledge, from this Library of Babel, as the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges dreamed, a collection which contains everything, all letters in every possible combination, all meaning and nonsense in all languages.

outsourced life

2005-10-14T08:37:00.000-04:00

via waxy links, a hilarious esquire article on outsourcing...

I don't have a corporation; I don't even have an up-to-date business card. I'm a writer and editor working from home, usually in my boxer shorts or, if I'm feeling formal, my penguin-themed pajama bottoms. Then again, I think, why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun? Why can't I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century? Why can't I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can't I outsource my life?
[...]
And so far, I'm not going broke: I'm paying $1,000 for a month of eight-hour days from Honey (Brickwork gave me a half-off deal) and $400 for a month of four-hour days from Your Man in India.
[...]
Honey has completed her first project for me: research on the person Esquire has chosen as the Sexiest Woman Alive. (See page 232.) I've been assigned to write a profile of this woman, and I really don't want to have to slog through all the heavy-breathing fan Web sites about her. When I open Honey's file, I have this reaction: America is fucked. There are charts. There are section headers. There is a well-organized breakdown of her pets, measurements, and favorite foods (e.g., swordfish). If all Bangalorians are like Honey, I pity Americans about to graduate college. They're up against a hungry, polite, Excel-proficient Indian army. Put it this way: Honey ends her emails with "Right time for right action, starts now!" Your average American assistant believes the "right time for right action" starts after a Starbucks venti latte and a discussion of last night's Amazing Race 8.

it continues...read for yourselves you lazy shits...

silkworms...they're what's for dinner

2005-10-13T20:29:00.000-04:00

this post can basically be summed up by two words: "fucking koreans". in the crease, what's wrong with your people???

behold: silk worm pupae. [via bastard of art & commerce]

here's some choice quotes from the taste test:

Any words in an oval demand attention. The yellow oval on this can says "High Protein - Great side dish when drinking alcohol." I imagine this came from the silkworm marketing team when faced with the nagging question "Who the fuck's gonna eat this?!" The answer: DRUNKS!
[...]
Sadly there is no "Serving Size" listed-- ruining my hopes that the serving size might be zero.
[...]
I found it odd that the pull-tab was actually on the bottom of the can, until I realized this is just a time-saver for people who'd rather open it right over the garbage.

the manifold faces of......diet coke.

2005-09-26T23:40:00.000-04:00

reading coca-cola's brand statement for diet coke officially made the longtime favorite verboten. to wit:

"Diet Coke is your style, it's your sass, it's doing what makes you happy. . . . So flirt, laugh, dance, prance, giggle, wiggle -- do what feels good."

(via a fastcompany article on the proliferation of diet cokes)

regards,
a non-wiggling jhc.

Technorati Tags: marketing, branding, diet, coke, soda, pop, beverages

effective marketing

2005-09-20T21:06:00.000-04:00

i was reading up on marmite (which i have become addicted to down here) and came across this fantastic piece of marketing lore:

A 2004 UK TV advert, which parodied the 1958 Steve McQueen film The Blob, substituting Marmite for the original alien space menace, and including frightening scenes of fleeing people, was dropped after being screened on children's television: concerned parents reported that the advert had traumatised their children into having nightmares and vowing never to watch TV again.

this was also pretty good:

"The first thing he had done after arriving home was to eat some Marmite on toast. 'It was pretty good. It's just one of those things - you get out of the country and it's all you can think about.' "

From an interview with Paul Ridout, a British backpacker kidnapped in India by Kashmiri separatists. The Guardian, 1994.

all the best,
an increasingly-expatriated jhc.

caste, immigration, genes

2005-09-20T00:26:00.000-04:00

check out the abstract of this article studying gene distribution within indian castes:

Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes.
[...]
For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%-30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans.

regards,
a low caste jhc.

Cheese, Glorious Cheese

2005-09-18T11:31:00.000-04:00

I saw this from NPR's website. Apparently curing disease isn't in the interests of the British. Instead they have a British Cheese Board who recently discovered that different cheeses will elicit different types of dreams.

Unfortunately for me, such dreams would end with me crying a little, and cleaning up a lot.

one in seven!!!

2005-09-16T18:28:00.000-04:00

sweet!! [via jwz]:

More women — particularly those in their late teens and 20s — are experimenting with bisexuality or at least feel more comfortable reporting same-sex encounters, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[...]
For women in their late teens and 20s, the percentage rose to 14 percent in the more recent survey. About 6 percent of men in their teens and 20s said they'd had at least one same-sex encounter.

The Ultimate Post-Bacc

2005-09-16T17:33:00.000-04:00

This guy is my hero. He just broke the world record for watching TV, previously at 50 hours 7 minutes, by watching 69 hours 48 mintues. The only drawback was that he could only watch ABC shows, since where he was watching must have been an affiliate. He literally had to keep his eyes on the screen at all times. Could have been worse though, could have been the WB.

Apparently, he also holds other records including longest duration balancing on one foot and number of hours bowling. He claims that he does this to "...raise awareness of suffering children." What children? One legged kids without TVs? WTF?!

My guess is that he does this to get free bowling and TV. The balancing thing, however, is just weird.

The Next Nintendo (Codenamed Revolution)

2005-09-16T09:37:00.000-04:00

The new nintedo controller was finally revealed last night (Video). It looks like it can change the gaming industry for good. Every game looks like Duck Hunt on crack.

2005-09-15T06:36:00.000-04:00

There was an old SNL skit which appeared after Gillette's Mach3 razor came out with marketed a razor with 10 blades--The best shave you could possibly get : it took your skin right off... Now, I use a Mach3 (average price for 4 blades is about 15 bucks- this price appeared after a decision by Gillette to have 4 blades in a pack instead of five a few years ago, maybe that was with the Sensor or the Sensor excel)... Well, ready? Here it is, the Gillette FUSION - a razor with five blades, trumping even the Schick Quattro... [Article 1 - Has a Picture] [Article 2]

Do we really need five blades to shave? An honest appeal: will we really be able to tell the difference? What do you guys use? Have you tried the Mach 3? At some point I really wanted to go back to a straight razor, just because the blades cost so damn much...

Left Behind (Dogs, not Agnostics)

2005-09-11T16:40:00.000-04:00

This is a touching article about pets left behind in New Orleans. No obnoxious jokes. No sarcasm. Just people who love their pets. The article could definitely longer, but it's pretty touching, actually. Please, no comments that I'm gay.

tablet pc, gestures, microsoft word

2005-09-11T00:19:00.000-04:00

loren heiny's gesture plugin for ms word on the tabletpc gives me a full boner. (via scob.)

Technorati Tags: tablet, tabletpc, gestures, hci, word, microsoft, computing

egyptian elections

2005-09-10T09:51:00.000-04:00

via the csm:

Omar Fatah, in a fresh T-shirt with Mubarak's beaming face on it, a gift for coming to the polls this morning, is typical of the folks struggling in Dar El-Salam. The 22-year-old - whose nose is marred by fresh scars from a recent street fight - is part of a small gaggle of young men in the same T-shirts hanging around the voting booths.

"Mubarak is my father,'' Mr. Fatah practically shouts, exuberantly explaining his presence. But his demeanor changes as he explains his situation, and his view of politics in general. "If we bring in another president, he'll rob us. With Mubarak, he's already robbed us so hopefully he's satisfied."

ha.

i want one of those tshirts.

jhc.

Technorati Tags: egypt, elections, mubarak, politics, middle, east

Some people need to chill the fuck out

2005-09-06T09:04:00.000-04:00

Here's an article about how a guy got fired for eating some leftover pizza from a business meeting. His co-workers ratted him out. What fucking petty shit.

You know, if we were all lactose intolerant senseless crime like this would never happen. How sad.

The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest

2005-09-06T00:02:00.000-04:00

The Chinese have gone global.

I personally wouldn't have voted for the tall, gangly girl. However, 8 million of 1.2 billion people must know wussup, if you know what'msayin'.

caffeine

2005-09-05T00:50:00.000-04:00

via an old gladwell article on caffeine:

Paul Hoffman, in "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers," writes of the legendary twentieth-century mathematician Paul Erdös that "he put in nineteen-hour days, keeping himself fortified with 10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin, strong espresso and caffeine tablets. 'A mathematician,' Erdös was fond of saying, 'is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.'"

change? shit....

2005-08-23T20:17:00.000-04:00

i guess change is good for any of us...whatever it take for any yall niggas to get up out the hood.

so on that note:

goodbye philly!

and hello grenada!

the run-up to leaving the states was pretty hectic: my moving schedule was based on the assumption that i was going to the grand caymans on the 26th, but i found out that i got into grenada on wednesday the 10th (with classes starting on the 15th!). so with the generous help of fin fang foom, dj i have no friends, big brother is watching, one pretentious fucker, and a hand truck (that's an actual hand truck, not a blogger named 'a hand truck'), i moved out of my apartment in record time and flew down to grenada.

i feel like life changed the second i stepped off the plane. things slowed down to a pace that i probably haven't experienced since childhood...and it's been transformative. sure, certain third world inefficiences bug me to no end (all day lines at the bank for example), but it is this same 3rd-worldness (think a less crowded version of india) that shelters me from the nonstop hyperactivity and experiential overload that i have grown accustomed to...i'm basically relearning how to live life.

and so far, my life down here has been great! i'm absolutely in love with this place. my dorm is on a beautiful beach where we float on our backs and watch the incredible sunsets. and you can actually see the milky way down here on moonless nights! it's incredible! the people are great, teachers are great, and i already feel a tinge of sadness when i think about leaving. of course, i wish i my shits were even remotely solid -- and an ocassional steelers games here and there wouldn't hurt either -- but these are reasonable prices to pay.

i wish you were all down here on the beach with me...
all the best,
jesus henry christos, ms-1

Southern Exposure

2005-08-10T23:51:00.000-04:00

Dr. Frederick Douglass Crunk, MD, resident philosophe and occasional medical practitioner, has come out of semi, self-induced retirement to wish JHC a safe journey, as he emarks on the first steps of a (no doubt) illustrious medical career. Welcome to the jungle, motherfucker!

Technorati tags: grace under pressure, mucus, guts, blood, glory, great times.

information overload and speed reading aggregators

2005-08-01T18:39:00.000-04:00

at last year's bloggercon III, robert scoble held a session on information overload. the session really got me thinking about ways to process information more efficiently, but since that time, i feel like very little has been done to alleviate the information downpour that many of us choose to wade through.

i've been trying to patch the leaks here and there by employing new technologies and judiciously pruning my feeds: filtering/funneling services like pubsub, technorati, del.icio.us, and myweb2 have allowed me to increase my signal to noise ratio, while moves like 86ing boing boing have been the blogistani version of abstaining from television.

but it's still not enough. at a fundamental level, we just need to start processing information faster...instead of a river of news, we need a neural implant of news. hopefully, digital reading technology will hold us over until my mindjack is ready, so over the past couple days, i've started work on a speed reading aggregator akin to trevor f. smith's speed reading java applet.

so go ahead and try it out and let me know what you think either via comments or email. the demo i put up uses canned post data scraped from scoble, udell, and rajesh jain that i stored on my server to circumvent the xmlhttprequest cross-domain restriction. (if any of you guys want me to remove your material, let me know).

so far, the speed reading aggregator (any ideas for a name?) uses straight up html, css, and javascript to do it's dirty work -- and the hackery is pretty filthy, believe me. tops on the lists of crappiness is the fact that i have to strip posts of all html. i do this because i'm too lazy to implement the logic required to smartly deal with multiple words enclosed in a single tag, especially when it comes to the highlighting code. but hopefully i'll get around to fixing this later this week.

next on the list of features:

allow the user to adjust the number of words displayed
display words over multiple rows
change display speed based on punctuation
additional keybindings??? (an emacs set to complement the vi set?)

if anybody has any further ideas wrt this project, please get in touch w/ me. i'm at best an average coder to begin with, compounded with the fact that i have zero html, css, and/or javascript experience, so i'll almost certainly need your input.

oh, and a thanks to a couple other developers: i'm using adrian zentner's string tokenizer and stephen cote's libxmlrequest...

jhc.

UPDATE: i totally forgot to provide instructions...

click on one of the feed names in the top left corner (e.g., scobelizer, jon udell, or rajesh jain). this will fetch the post data and load it into the aggregator.

now, either click on a 'speed read' link above the post you want to read, or just hit 'J' to advance the reader to the first post. the contents of the post will be displayed in the dark gray bar on the top of the screen in a speed reading fashion.

you can change the post being presented by navigating with the 'J' and 'K' keys.

further commands are displayed on the page, but let me know if you are still having trouble.

Technorati Tags: information, overload, rss, feeds, aggregators, speed, reading

Sony Busted for Payola

2005-07-26T12:27:00.000-04:00

Finally, an explanation for terrible radio

Just in from Pitchfork's Crimewatch: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has forced Sony BMG Music Entertainment to stop paying radio stations for airplay. In case you didn't know, this practice known as payola, is illegal. "Our investigation shows that, contrary to listener expectations that songs are selected for airplay based on artistic merit and popularity, air time is often determined by undisclosed payoffs to radio stations and their employees," Spitzer said.

Songs on the radio aren't based on their artistic merit? Surly there must be a mistake. R. Kelly, Brittany Spears, Shakira, and Good Charlotte are all on labels owned by Sony BMG. Their music is beyond artful. Infact i will quote "Ignition," to show R Kelly's artistic prowess.

Now I'm not tryin' to be rude
But hey, pretty girl, I'm feelin' you
The way you do the things you do
Reminds me of my Lexus Coupe
That's why I'm all up in your grill
Tryin' to get you to a hotel
You must be a football coach
The way you got me playin' the field

Truly amazing. But wait, surely the greatest and most influential band to ever exist, Audioslave, was not part of the payola scandal. Any mortal would die just to listen to their music if but just once.

Another [email], from an Epic employee to a Clear Channel programmer looked like this: "WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET AUDIOSLAVE ON WKSS THIS WEEK?!!? Whatever you can dream up, I can make it happen."

Oh god, everything is turning black. Tell my MP3s i love them. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to decieve"

Lava, not just for lamps anymore

2005-07-24T23:06:00.000-04:00

Here's a story about a guy who decides to go hiking in a lava field to take a closer look at an active volcano. Sound like a good idea at first, but without telling people where he was going, and going alone, doesn't sound so good any more. He remembers the camera, forgets the bottled water. Hey idiot, you're walking towards an active volcano.

Why is it that such morons without common sense can get through that kind of an ordeal unscathed and I can't remember on what level of the garage I parked. And I'm going to medical school.

Oh well. My only solace was that he had to drink "...muddy, green, mossy water,..." to survive. Which, by now, is giving him muddy, green, mossy shits.

Asked later what his biggest regret about the ordeal was, he replied, "I wish I hadn't dropped the rental car keys in the lava." He later admitted to not getting the insurance.

bloglines just lost all my feeds

2005-07-19T09:12:00.000-04:00

holy shit... i hope i have a backup somewhere.

UPDATE: i am not alone (found via technorati's bloglines tag)

UPDATE 2: they're back! thank god. now i can get back to wasting my life, one kb at a time.

Technorati Tags: bloglines, feeds, problem, rss, web20, aggregator

greasemonkey exploit

2005-07-18T20:43:00.000-04:00

again via waxy links, a critical security hole in greasemonkey 0.4:

a malicious website could retrieve any local file and send it to any other server; uninstall or downgrade ASAP!

Technorati Tags: security, hole, exploit, greasemonkey, firefox, mozilla, javascript, ajax, web20, web2.0, remix, remixable, applications

fold and drop ui

2005-07-18T17:45:00.000-04:00

via waxy links, check out pierre dragicevic's excellent fold and drop ui by viewing the movie linked to on his page.

Technorati Tags: hci, fold, drop, ui, gui,

Living your dream

2005-07-18T09:56:00.000-04:00

From the Express:
"Pittsburgh police have flagged a man for an illegal quaterback sneak. Brian Jackson was charged Friday with dating two women while pretending to be Pittsburgh Steelers quarterbacks Ben Roethlisberger and Brian St. Pierre. In the most recent scam, Jackson took one woman on a date July 6 and pretended to be Roethlisberger, giving her an autographed football and ruining a $75 Steelers jersey owned by one of the women's neighbors when he signed his worthless rendition of Roethlisberger's autograph on it, authorities said. She later learned from the neighbor that the man wasn't Roethlisberger." (AP)

Brought to mind is the time that my (newly and quite profoundly post-bacc'd) friend paraded as the Terrible Towel. The complete antithesis of Mr. Jackson, however, my carefully steam-pressed friend did so for Pittsburgh street cred, inadvertently but effectively undermining any attempt to get some tail.

I know I know.. Fin Fang Foom is jealous b/c of your thick and flowing hair you bastard why must you hit me where it hurts.

Go Steelers!

Harry Potter is gay

2005-07-16T00:04:00.000-04:00

Hi, I'm an 18 year old girl and I'm a big fucking loser!

I guess all it took to forget about the terrorist bombings in London was a book written for 10 year olds.

my plan is working out brilliantly

2005-07-14T13:21:00.000-04:00

400 breast implants stolen in brazil (via warren ellis):

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Armed bandits in Brazil robbed a vehicle carrying more than 400 breast implants, officials said on Tuesday.
[...]
A spokesman for the state Postal Service confirmed that assailants, apparently men, robbed the postal van with implants on Thursday night in Rio de Janeiro. Each Silimed breast implant costs nearly $400.

Technorati Tags: brazil, breast, implants, plastic, surgery, cosmetic, crime

optimism, education

2005-07-12T23:08:00.000-04:00

via eide neurolearning:

Some children seem to be born more pessimistic than others, but optimism can also be systematically taught. And a child with a higher degree of optimism is more likely to resist depression, be health physically, persist at difficult tasks, and succeed in school and later life. In fact, children with high 'optimism' scales are more likely to outperform in college what their SAT and achievement scores would predict.
[...]
Gifted children may also especially prone to existential depression, and studies of gifted children have shown that gifted students may react more intensely than average-ability students to frustration. Studies of stress and burn-out in gifted students suggest that key factors can be an inappropriate level of intellectual stimulation ('underload' or 'overload' as Hoekman et al. have recently commented).

Technorati Tags: neuroscience, education, learning, gifted, children, optimism, depression

west bank stencil

2005-07-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

via eyebeam reblog: beautiful, sad...

[the AP]: A Palestinian man sits in front of a section of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of A-Ram, on the outskirt of Jerusalem Sunday July 10, 2005.

Technorati Tags: israel, palestine, middle, east, mideast, conflict, wall, barrier, west, bank, graffiti, stencil, girl, baloons, floating

largest mobile phone companies

2005-07-12T22:20:00.000-04:00

via russell beattie, a wikipedia entry on the world's largest mobile phone networks:

China Mobile (GSM) - 204.3 million
Vodafone¹ (GSM, UMTS) - 154.838 million
China Unicom (IS-2000, GSM) - 100.1 million
T-Mobile² (GSM, UMTS) - 78.9 million
movistar (GSM, UMTS, IS-2000) - 51.3 million
Cingular (IS-136, GSM, UMTS³) - 50 million
Orange (GSM, UMTS) - 49 million
NTT DoCoMo (PDC, FOMA) - 45.9 million
Verizon Wireless (IS-2000) - 45.5 million
Mobile TeleSystems - MTS (GSM) - 34.22 million
Vivo (IS-2000, IS-136) - 27 million
Turkcell (GSM) - 23.4 million
Sprint PCS (IS-2000) - 22.2 million
O2 (GSM) - 21.3 million
TIM (GSM, UMTS)

Technorati Tags: mobile, cellular, phone, global, carriers

Go Pelicans!!!

2005-07-11T21:42:00.000-04:00

say hello . . . to my little friend!

p.s. don't forget your headphones if you're at work!

china, banks, sms

2005-07-10T20:32:00.000-04:00

via unicast:

Interesting feature: Here in China banks send you an SMS every time your credit card has been charged.

Technorati Tags: china, mobile, phones, cellular, sms, banking, credit, cards

gmap transparencies

2005-07-10T20:10:00.000-04:00

check it: the gmap drawings overlaid on the gmap satellite images. [via]

Technorati Tags: google, maps, geography, sattelite, images, cartography, gmap, gmaps, mashup, software, web20, web2.0

tag routing

2005-07-10T13:14:00.000-04:00

via the del.icio.us blog: as zawinski's law mandates, del.icio.us now lets you route a tagged article to another del.icio.us user.

We've just begun rolling out support for tagging items for others. To do so, use "for:username" where username is the name of the user you want to send the item to.

You can see items tagged for you at http://del.icio.us/for/ (it'll redirect to your own page, which other users will not be able to see.)

so, if you one day find yourself tagging midget porn on del.icio.us, don't forget to send it my way with a "for:jhc" tag.

Technorati Tags: tags, del.icio.us, delicious, folksonomy, folksonomies, message, routing, sharing, social, software

scanning medical records

2005-07-10T02:41:00.000-04:00

via ray kurzweil's blog, a boston globe article on harvard's plan to scan 2.5 million medical records:

Harvard scientists are building a powerful computer system that will use artificial intelligence to scan the private medical files of 2.5 million people at local hospitals, as part of a government-funded effort to find the genetic roots of asthma and other diseases.
[...]
"If we could use routine clinical care to generate new findings without having to do multimillion-dollar studies, that would be a true change in the way medical discovery is done," said Dr. Isaac Kohane, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who is one of the project's directors. "We want to use the healthcare system as a living laboratory."
[...]
...an early test of one of the artificial intelligence techniques found that the computer was able to deduce the main reason for a hospitalization almost as accurately as a doctor, missing only a few times out of 200 case files, Weiss said. Now the team is working on software to extract smoking histories and other key information.

(what are those in the picture??? squid?)

Technorati Tags: healthcare, informatics, emr, electronic, medical, records, boston, harvard, asthma, genetics

more on the real estate bubble: condos in south florida

2005-07-09T13:18:00.000-04:00

interesting csm article on the real estate frenzy in miami (although, the article is probably more balanced than i paint it):

Lines of people waiting to buy condos for quick profits and white-hot real estate - it's all part of what some analysts are calling the biggest real estate bubble in America. In Miami, the construction crane could become the new state bird as some 25,00 new units are punching into the skyline - with another 40,000 on the drawing board. And with prices going up 27 to 37 percent per year in the past two years, some buildings' ownership is up to 70 percent investors.
[...]
For economists, one of the red flags in Miami, as in other white-hot markets, is the home-price-to-income ratio. The higher the ratio, the more the buyer has to stretch to make payments. Since 2001, home prices in Miami are up 85 percent, nearly double the national average, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. At the same time, per capita income growth has averaged below 3 percent.

UPDATE: check out the housing bubble blog for more...

Technorati Tags: real, estate, bubble, miami, condos, condominiums, econ, housing

yahoo sms search

2005-07-07T00:28:00.000-04:00

russell beattie writes about yahoo's new sms search offering on the y! search blog. i feel like i am becoming a yahoo shill, but their sms search offering definitely has advantages over google's.

for example, when searching for a location, yahoo's results include a link that can be opened in your phone's browser. following this link will take you to a page containing more information: a low res map of the destination, a further link to driving directions, etc.

check it out by texting 92466 (YAHOO):

Right now you can search for any local information by sending a query with your location or zip code like: "pizza 94025", you can get a stock quote with: "s yhoo", weather information: "w 94025", dictionary definitions: "d garrulous", horoscopes: "h aquarius", WiFi hotspots: "wifi 94123", and more are coming.

(pics is of a tv cameraman stencil, outside anthropology, 19th and walnut..for some reason, it reminds me of moore/gibbon's watchmen...)

Technorati Tags: yahoo, search, mobile, sms, texting, cellular, cell, phone, pervasing, computing, wap

A True Steelers Fan

2005-07-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Via BoingBoing:

I could only dream of being this happy when i die:

Smith's body was on the recliner, his feet crossed and a remote in his hand. He wore black and gold silk pajamas, slippers and a robe. A pack of cigarettes and a beer were at his side, while a high-definition TV played a continuous loop of Steelers highlights.

Simply Amazing...
[link]

coalition fatalities in iraq over time

2005-07-05T12:24:00.000-04:00

via eyebeam's reblog, check out this interesting flash visualization of coalition fatalities in iraq...

(picture is of a stencil on the side of a newspaper stand, 18th and walnut. it says, 'listen to your dreams and nightmares'.)

Technorati Tags: iraq, war, fatalities

Ex-Unicorns reunite for new band!!! w00t!!!!!!111

2005-07-01T01:12:00.000-04:00

Since receiving the good news that two members of the unicorns are reuniting to form a new band called Islands, i thought i should post some of my favorite unicorn songs.

Jellybones
Child Star
I Was Born (A Unicorn)
Les OS
Ready to die

yahoo my web 2.0

2005-06-30T00:54:00.000-04:00

checkout waxy's post on yahoo's "my web 2.0", and give it a spin if you have a chance. very interesting shit.

similarly, i just tried out yahoo 360. cool service, too bad it's kinda late to the table.

all this convergence on yahoo makes me wish that i was already using yahoo's services to handle my digital needs...unfortunately, i have everything spread out on different services (del.icio.us, friendster, gmail, etc...), and it seems too late for me to migrate everything.

(pic is of a very confusing sign on cuthbert and 18th)

Technorati Tags: yahoo, web20, web2.0, search, social, software, networks, yasn, digital, lifestyle, aggregator, dla, convergence

testing blogger images part deux

2005-06-27T00:57:00.000-04:00

same drill as before...let me know if you can see the crap properly in you aggregator of choice.
thanks for helping a brotha out.

blockquote test...
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
laskdfjlskdfj
lskdjffffff fsdf slkdf sldkf

testing blogger images

2005-06-27T00:53:00.000-04:00

testing blogger images...
please let me know via comments whether or not you can see the photo in bloglines/rojo/etc...

(pic is of a tagged up uhaul truck at the uhaul storage center in south philly)

sparkline generating webservice

2005-06-24T13:55:00.000-04:00

via xml.com: joe gregorio made a sparkline generating webapp. pretty cool...

Technorati Tags: sparklines, tufte, webapps, ui, information, presentation

china more popular than the u.s.

2005-06-23T19:17:00.000-04:00

WOW. talk about a turn of events. it's funny how things work out, isn't it? just a few years ago, china used to wear z. cavaricci's and zubaz even though they were 'so 2 decades ago', but now, china's fingering amber cooper (captain of the cheerleading squad) in his camaro every day after lunch.

America's image is still so tattered abroad after the Iraq war that China is viewed more favourably than the US in many countries, a global poll finds.
[...]
In most countries surveyed, Americans are seen as "inventive" and "hardworking", but they are also seen by many in both Western and predominately Muslim countries as "violent" and "greedy" - a judgement with which many Americans agree.

The survey was conducted among nearly 17,000 people from 20 April to 31 May with samples of about 1,000 in most countries, with more interviews in India and China and slightly fewer than 1,000 in the European countries.

(pic is of the urinals in the downstairs bathroom of the philadelphia racquet club. even the urinals there have an air of arrogance.)

Technorati Tags: survey, popularity, china, america, safety, war, iraq, global, perception

love will tear us apart

2005-06-22T23:45:00.000-04:00

by way of hypemachine: a tuvan-throat-singing-cover of joy division's 'love will tear us apart'...originally pointed to by rummage through the crevices.

the artists' website.
amazon page for their album.

(pic is one segment of a larger chalk drawing that was outside of uniq, walnut btwn. 15th and 16th or something like that).

Technorati Tags: music, covers, tuvan, throat, singing, joy, division, love, songs

housing prices

2005-06-21T22:17:00.000-04:00

via unicast: an interesting economist article on the housing boom (check out the rent ratio graph):

According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history. [ed: nigga whhaaaaaa?!]
[...]
The most compelling evidence that home prices are over-valued in many countries is the diverging relationship between house prices and rents. The ratio of prices to rents is a sort of price/earnings ratio for the housing market...

Calculations by The Economist show that house prices have hit record levels in relation to rents in America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium. This suggests that homes are even more over-valued than at previous peaks, from which prices typically fell in real terms. House prices are also at record levels in relation to incomes in these nine countries.

the article also says that the market has cooled off in australia, britain, ireland, the netherlands, and new zealand...prices in japan and germany have outright dropped.

(picture is self-explanatory. locust between 15th and 16th)

Technorati Tags: econ, economics, global, economy, housing, prices, bubble

hubmed tags

2005-06-19T19:18:00.000-04:00

alf eaton has added a bunch of cool features to hubmed's tagging service. most interestingly, eaton implements what i guess should be considered 'structured-tagging'...that is, a class of tags is imbued with semantic meaning and hubmed provides an interface to interact with these specially tagged items: by prefixing a tag with "list:", one can create a re-orderable set of categorized links (like much of hubmed, the reordering interface is nice and dhtmly).

i think it would also be cool to have a set of structured tags for project management: i'm often juggling multiple projects, each of which relies on a set of articles. having an interface for dealing with a set of information tagged with "for:[project_name]" and/or "priority:[priority_level]" might be useful.

the rdf-like treatment of annotations is also very interesting...i'll definitely be keeping on eye on that...

(pic is of a label stuck on the bridge btwn. 20th and 30th streets on jfk.)

the man = us = the man = ...

2005-06-08T17:10:00.000-04:00

so i've discovered The Cubes - the lincoln log equivalent for disheartened white-collar urbanites the world over. Each set contains one miniature plastic figures and all the parts of a cubicle: four walls, a desk, a chair, a file cabinet, an in-and-out box, a phone, and a computer, so office madness can be had anywhere. There's also a sticker sheet you can use to create job titles.

The expansion set has four more figures and nine plastic accessories (cell phone, calculator, laptop, coffee cup, clipboard, briefcase, etc.) that make the faux-office feel more like the real hell-away-from-home you visit eight hours a day.

my immediate impulse was IMUSTHAVETHIS.. but then i started thinking, what is it about our attraction bordering on obsession to the likes of 'office space,' 'the office,' and all things 'down with the man' when we ARE the man?! is it underlying self-loathing or rationalization for the beemer that we buy lego sets depicting our pathetic realities or memorize lines from movies to entertain our fellow sell-outs over a round of Armadale and Pinot Noir?? ENOUGH WITH THE PINOT NOIR, ISAWSIDEWAYSTHEREFORE-ARTHIPANDEDGY?!?!!

...

i'm still SO buying one.. overnight shipping. i can afford it and then some.