{"id":1168,"date":"2008-03-31T12:43:40","date_gmt":"2008-03-31T16:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2008-03-31T22:20:44","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T02:20:44","slug":"monday-miscellany-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/31\/monday-miscellany-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Miscellany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s really a miscellany today. I was half-tempted to title this 88 lines about 44 links, and maybe even do it in some kind of poetic structure, but fortunately a combination of laziness and good sense prevailed.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nice to see that former local (and HGPA-member) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radiomaru.com\/\">Brian O&#8217;Malley<\/a>&#8216;s movie deal is actually happening&#8211;at least <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/entertainment\/article\/349210\">leads are being cast<\/a> and a start date for filming is set, which seems to suggest things are much more real than the usual &#8220;optioned and a director set&#8221; thing. Actually going to film should bring Mal a nice payoff. (I have no particular hopes for the movie itself&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/scottpilgrim.com\/\">the books<\/a> are pretty uniquely <em>comics<\/em>, so whatever the movie is, it will be something else.)<\/li>\n<li>While I am two years older than my wife, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/10\/no-practical-value\/#bar\">the basement bar thing<\/a> does particularly sting, I think we&#8217;re quite a bit happier than the couple in &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fliggo.com\/video\/NTtenBNg\">I Guess You&#8217;ll Do<\/a>&#8220;. I do see some acquaintances in there, though.<\/li>\n<li>I was very confused to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/stories\/2008\/03\/21\/2196406.htm\">an article<\/a> describing how a Japanese astronaut threw a boomerang &#8220;in space&#8221; and it still returned. I was confused because I had been certain that the boomerang flight path was very much a function of curvature and differential air flow rates, and I didn&#8217;t see how any of that would work in the vaccuum of space. Well, it turns out that the first article is quite misleading, since &#8220;in space&#8221; apparently means &#8220;inside a negligible-gravity, but still pressurized, portion of the ISS&#8221;. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn13525-does-a-boomerang-thrown-in-space-return-to-its-pitcher.html\">New Scientist<\/a> points this out, as well as noting that actually in space the boomerang would behave just like any other space junk. I am left wondering why anyone thought the story was news&#8211;boomerang works in air is pretty much &#8220;dog bites man&#8221;, isn&#8217;t it?.<\/li>\n<li>I am heartily amused by the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster\">FSM<\/a> statue <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itlovesyou.blogspot.com\/\">on a Tennessee court house lawn<\/a>. Especially that its presence is officially sanctioned, and not a &#8220;three students in the middle of the night&#8221; prank.<\/li>\n<li>I love &#8220;bookmarklets&#8221; generally&#8211;my browser&#8217;s link bar has ones that let me do all kinds of things that interact with various services on the internet. However, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.squarefree.com\/bookmarklets\/zap.html\">annoyance zapping ones<\/a> provided freely at SquareFree have just made my day&#8211;just the one that will turn any site into &#8220;black text on white&#8221; is enough to make my day. The others are rich tasty gravy. Import them all, put them in a dropdown submenu off your links bar, and enjoy.<\/li>\n<li>I think it&#8217;s kind of funny that the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Western_Standard\">Western Standard<\/a>&#8216;s print edition went out of business<footnote>It&#8217;s still <a href=\"http:\/\/westernstandard.ca\/\">an online magazine<\/a>&#8211;one of the many I read from all different points on the political spectrum&#8211;I like to think it gets in fights with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsocialist.org\/\">The New Socialist<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmag.org\/\">Z<\/a><\/footnote>, but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s funny AT ALL that they had to spend one thin dime, much less &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rickmercer.com\/blog\/index.cfm\/2008\/3\/18\/tbd\">over a hundred thousand dollars<\/a>&#8221; defending their right to publish some cartoons. I feel a rant about how &#8220;freedom of speech&#8221; trumps &#8220;freedom from being offended&#8221; any day of the week.<\/li>\n<li>For fans of The Wire: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftrain.com\/the-wire.html\">classic one-upmanship<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Schneier tries to explain the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/politics\/security\/commentary\/securitymatters\/2008\/03\/securitymatters_0320\">twisted mindset<\/a> of the security professional. Percival says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.daemonology.net\/blog\/2008-03-21-security-is-mathematics.html\">mathematicians are also twisted<\/a>. I get what he&#8217;s saying, but I don&#8217;t think any of the pure math folks I know would have come up with the &#8220;paint someone else&#8217;s stuff with Smart Water&#8221; thing. &#8220;Is this true everywhere&#8221; is not the same thing as &#8220;what are the unintended consequences and how can I exploit them&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>I remember an interview where Tom Waits said &#8220;I can&#8217;t have a dog in the house, because I am a dog.&#8221; Which makes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qYOMPU18QjA\">this<\/a> all the funnier.<\/li>\n<li>I am ready for <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/entertainment\/7307303.stm\">a 750,000 word Alan Moore novel<\/a>. Especially if it comes three volumes in a slipcase. (As an aside, I don&#8217;t think the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/insideout\/east\/\">Inside Out East<\/a> web site actually has this interview up yet&#8211;am I missing something)?<\/li>\n<li>Yeah, I feel for the athletes who would miss their shot at the Olympics, but I kind of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.photobasement.com\/beijing-2008\/\">don&#8217;t think we<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/wikileaks.org\/wiki\/Wikileaks_releases_over_120_censored_videos_and_photos_of_the_Tibet_uprising\">should be going<\/a>. (I&#8217;d be forced to say <a href=\"http:\/\/www.justforeignpolicy.org\/iraq\/iraqdeaths.html\">the same thing if it were in the U.S. this year<\/a>, although I suspect that would be a much less commonly held position.)<\/li>\n<li>If I get my tax return (assuming that I will actually get money back this year&#8211;unlike the last three years, each of which had a nasty, nasty surprise for me in April) before they sell out, I think I would like to buy one of these <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressureprinting.com\/jean\/jean.htm\">James Jean artifacts<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/story\/LAC.20080322.BKJEET22\/TPStory\/Entertainment\/Books\/?&#038;pageRequested=all&#038;print=true\">Jeff Heer<\/a>, writing a review of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/Ten-Cent-Plague-Comic-Book-Changed-America\/dp\/0374187673\">David Haju&#8217;s The Ten-Cent Plague<\/a> gives as concise a summary of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fredric_Wertham#Seduction_of_the_Innocent_and_Senate_hearings\">Werthamite<\/a> effect on comics history as I&#8217;ve ever read.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2008\/03\/14\/virgin-mobile-turns-spitzer-scandal-into-marketing-gold\/\">It&#8217;s a funny ad<\/a>, but I think Virgin might have overestimated the number of Canadians who will recognize <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scandal\">Spitzer<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Boy, <a href=\"http:\/\/goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot.com\/\">Golden Age Comic Book Stories<\/a> is just a never-ending cornucopia, isn&#8217;t it?<\/li>\n<li>If <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com\/8301-13577_3-9901630-36.html?part=rss&#038;subj=news&#038;tag=2547-1_3-0-5\">Mytopia<\/a> would just add a faux-Scrabble game, maybe people would stop telling me to get on Facebook so I could play <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/apps\/application.php?id=3052170175\">Scrabulous<\/a> with them. (Note: I am not joining. I am Luddite in this respect.)<\/li>\n<li>Checked out <a href=\"http:\/\/greenmanpress.com\/news\/\">Charles Vess&#8217;s blog<\/a> this month? The early March posting where he details, with copious photos, the process of working on the latest giant statue, is pure gold.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.last100.com\/2008\/03\/26\/inside-story-the-making-of-a-legal-tv-torrent\/\">inside story<\/a>&#8221; of how the CBC came to release a show via BitTorrent (as mentioned <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/27\/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement\/\">here<\/a>).<\/li>\n<li>Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.postmodernbarney.com\/2008\/03\/oh-drama.html\">Dorian&#8217;s post<\/a> to collect some brilliantly remixed vintage posters&#8211;remixed into commentary on the ridiculous drama that sometimes erupts in message board culture. In this case it&#8217;s the comics blogosphere under the crosshairs, but there is a much larger applicability to the sentiments.<\/li>\n<li>I wish I could <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rationalistinternational.net\/article\/2008\/20080310\/en_1.html\">laugh right in the face of the death magician<\/a>. On TV. More than once.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m sticking with atheism, but I would totally buy swag from <a href=\"http:\/\/positiveapeindex.blogspot.com\/2005\/07\/my-new-religion-first-church-of.html\">the First Church of Galactus<\/a>. I bet Coop could make a wicked hood ornament to express solidarity with that church.<\/li>\n<li>I used the term &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Churchkey\">church key<\/a>&#8221; in a casual conversation last week, and the people I was talking too had no idea what I was talking about. Wikipedia comforts me that I am not making this up.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2008\/03\/quote_of_the_week.php\">How to frame<\/a> the Fundy-vs-Science debate.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of atheism and religion, I know we atheists are supposed to be immoral or amoral or something, so my opinion on this might we way off, but I&#8217;ve got say&#8211;when you start talking about <a href=\"http:\/\/haaretz.com\/hasen\/spages\/968729.html\">hanging children from trees<\/a> in order to &#8220;deter&#8221; their parents, you kind of lose your moral high ground, you know?<\/li>\n<li>Yup, that&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/cubo.cc\/\">some freaky shit<\/a>. <strong>Attention Mike Drake<\/strong>&#8211;this link is for you.<\/li>\n<li>Also for Mike: The NYT has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2008\/03\/28\/arts\/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html\">Al Jaffee fold-ins from Mad Magazine<\/a>, that you can fold online.<\/li>\n<li>I think my reaction to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/books\/int\/2008\/03\/31\/Nim_Chimpsky\/\">this story<\/a>, about scientists and chimp, is almost exactly the reaction I&#8217;d have to a story about child abuse.<\/li>\n<li>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2008\/03\/22\/norgy122.xml\">that pretty much tops<\/a> any story I had from my end of high school, post graduation party. And then some.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, that will close some of the tabs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">It&#8217;s really a miscellany today. I was half-tempted to title this 88 lines about 44 links, and maybe even do it in some kind of poetic structure, but fortunately a combination of laziness and good sense prevailed. Nice to see that former local (and HGPA-member) Brian O&#8217;Malley&#8216;s movie deal is actually happening&#8211;at least leads are being cast and a start&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/31\/monday-miscellany-2\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[232,213,31,234,135,460,27,233,107,67,230,229,99,231,227,228],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linkapalooza","tag-alan-moore","tag-artists","tag-comics","tag-drake","tag-freedom","tag-hgpa","tag-movies","tag-net-neutrality","tag-religion","tag-science","tag-security","tag-the-wire","tag-things-to-buy","tag-tom-waits","tag-viral-video","tag-web-tools","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-iQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}