Robot Wisdom WebLog for May 1998 (waning)

Tue, Jun 23, 1998 (New Moon 22:51 CDT)

This Day in Joyce History: In 1903, in Ulysses, May Goulding Dedalus (SD's mother) died. In 1904 in Ulysses, Molly and Boylan were scheduled to start their concert tour. In 1904, James sent the completed chapters of "Stephen Hero" to CP Curran.

TV 2nite: Pretenders on Letterman

New Lingua Franca explores how the discovery of germs overthrew Victorian esthetics: http://www.linguafranca.com/9805/ip.html

Tomes shows how silverware, leftovers, drinking fountains, the drape-laden Victorian parlor, even facial hair came under suspicion as unwitting purveyors of filth and disease.

Games, songs, plays, billboard ads, essay contests -- "The germs are the Turks," opined one winning entry -- and films disguised as light entertainment were created to teach people how to cough, sweep, mop, dust, wash their hands, and blow their noses.

And the happy puzzle of rising IQs: http://www.linguafranca.com/9805/hypo.html

Some of the proposed explanations -- better nutrition, better education, smaller families, homes full of stimulating puzzles and video games -- imply that the higher IQ scores are matched by gains in real intelligence. Others suggest that the gains are a mere artifact, a result of defective tests or greater test-taking sophistication.


A scary, exhilarating look at a lean, mean, downsized university system: [multipage] http://www.universitybusiness.com/9803/gas.html

...the for-profit juggernaut and its surrogate programs already have 98 campuses in 31 states and an enrollment of more than 55,000, making Phoenix the largest private university in the nation...

Stripped-down curricula and flexible schedules allow most students to earn a Phoenix degree in far less time than the national average. ... Classes for a typical three-credit course are held one night a week for four hours ... The entire course lasts only six weeks ... The average class has 14 students.

"Setting up each new campus is like setting up a franchise," says one Phoenix vice president. "We hire a local manager to run the campus, or move a manager from an established site."

When Apollo first went public, in December 1994, shares sold for a mere $2.50 each. Today, after splitting four times in less than three years, the price per share has soared beyond $40, giving the company a market capitalization of more than $2 billion.



[B&W]

New Village Voice has a nice review of two performances pieces: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/theater/26feingold.shtml

The second major new piece is the evening's triumph: the skyrocket of malicious good humor in which [Karen] Finley describes her imaginary life as the sex slave and/or dominatrix of several eminent politicians, starting with Jesse Helms.

And a UK RealAudio radio station: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/music/26wolk.shtml

The best radio station in the world went on the air June 12, and it's going off the air again July 5.

And a great giant table tallying Clinton's broken State-of-Union promises: [multipage] http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/26ridgeway.shtml

[IMF failure effect:] Pissed off big-business honchos, who thought they'd bought all the Republicans. Now they want to buy more Dems.


One of John LeCarre's favorite novels is now online: [400k] http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/fmf/gs.htm [OLB]

Ford Maddox Ford's "The Good Soldier" is a neglected gem, one of the saddest and greatest novels of our century or any other.


Details on NJ's smartcard driver-ID: http://www.phillynews.com:80/inquirer/98/Jun/23/front_page/DRIV23.htm

In contrast to some other systems, New Jersey's card only would hold codes that act as "keys" to unlock data already contained in other databases, rather than storing all the personal data directly on the card itself...


Design flaw in Creatures? [Deja URL]

Norns by themselves will eat just fine but in a group they are distracted and will go without food till they get sick even though the stats show them to be very hungry indeed.


Predicting how foods will react to microwave cooking: http://www.sciencedaily.com:80/story.asp?filename=980623045258

"However, you would think a larger ball would merely take longer to heat, but that's not true," Datta points out. "A small and large ball get heated in completely different ways, and our models quantify these phenomena."


A more-interesting-than-AFI's 100-best-movies list: http://www2.nando.net:80/newsroom/ntn/voices/062298/voices6_12836_noframes.html

The Searchers, 1956, John Ford
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962, Ford
Citizen Kane, 1941, Orson Welles
His Girl Friday, 1940, Howard Hawks
The Grapes of Wrath, 1940, Ford
Casablanca, 1942, Michael Curtiz
Annie Hall, 1977, Woody Allen
Rio Bravo, 1959, Hawks
The Godfather, 1972, Francis Ford Coppola
Our Hospitality 1923, Buster Keaton


Targeting Ted Turner's UN billion: http://www.forbes.com:80/asp/redir.asp?/forbes/98/0601/6111086a.htm

He would like to tackle population control, empower women and protect the environment and children's health. ... Wirth would also like to create a U.N. news wire like Greener, the news service for environmental groups.

Time to get out of stocks: http://www.forbes.com:80/asp/redir.asp?/forbes/98/0601/6111052a.htm

"The possible return of inflation is a huge kicker for silver," says Goehring. "It's a no-lose situation."

UPI's Internet strategy: http://www.forbes.com:80/asp/redir.asp?/forbes/98/0601/6111047a.htm

A longtime writer and editor at the London Sunday Times, Adams plans to offer multimedia news coverage to subscribers on a dizzying number of topics, ranging from international news to, possibly, bow-and-arrow hunting.


Dream job: special effects wizard: http://www.latimes.com:80/CNS_DAYS/980622/t000057995.html

"My mother told me that when I was a kid, I ignored all the presents under the Christmas tree to play with the extension cord..."


Yahoo's market cap is now $70 per pageview/day: http://www.herring.com:80/insider/1998/0622/yahooup.html

Still, an 11-point day, driving Yahoo to a $6.5 billion market cap -- that's billion with a "b" -- is enough to make anyone stand up and take notice. ...And Yahoo currently attracts more than 90 million pageviews per day to its online sites...


(I resized the earth jpeg below to its original size... check it out!)

A boring local Rainbow update: http://www.desnews.com:80/cit/vv0mgeq1.htm

"Up here we're not used to this style of dress," said Sam Gardom, vice mayor in Springerville, a town about 15 miles from Carnero Lake, where the camp is being set up. "If it were up to me, I'd have them go somewhere else. But we have a tough bunch of people up here who can handle anything you throw at them."


DianaCon theorists want to FOIA the US embassy in Paris: [Deja URL]

The embassy therefore looks over at least half of the square. If it has cameras covering what it can see of the square, as it surely does, they would definitely have shown the Mercedes entering the square and driving across at least half of it. Motorbikes in pursuit would also have been on film.


A norn's eating disorder is traced to mutant neural connections: [Deja URL]

The following table shows what cell will probably fire in the Attention lobe based upon what sensory input the norn is getting through the General Sense lobe:

          General Sense                Attention Lobe
          =============                ==============
       0. I've been patted             Myself (current norn), Hand
       1. I've been slapped            Call (Red button)
       2. I've bumped a wall           Water
       3. I am near a wall             Plant (Herb)
       4. I am in a vehicle            Egg, Food...


Mon, Jun 22, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1904, James approached a girl in Stephen's Green (not yet loyal to Nora) and was punched by her escort.

Paglia has an amazing rant about gay irresponsibility: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/pagl/1998/06/23pagl.html

And as a lesbian, I'm sick and tired of the gay rights movement being damaged by the cowardly incapacity for self-examination of many gay men.

[Weller/Davis] Salon rehabilitates "The New Age" (8 Mar, below): http://www.salonmagazine.com/ent/movies/tayl/1998/06/23tayl.html

His is not Woody Allen's view of spacey L.A. It's closer to the films about upper-class Europeans that were so popular with art house audiences in the early '60s.


[Asia] If this is a satellite photo, howcome I've never seen anything like it before? http://www.chinapage.org/china.html

The globe logo above is a real satellite photo taken at a point 35,785 km directly above China, latitude 47 N, and longitude 117 E.


An English translation of the Chinese source-text for Disney's "Mulan": http://www.chinapage.com/mulan.html (rab)

Is China's gender-imbalance a well-known story yet? http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/971201.ex.CHINA.FemaleHolocaust.Spiked.UN.WHO.html

One study, conducted in 1985, found a village near Beijing populated by 100 boys to every 35 girls in the first five years of life.


The System spits out 70s feminist Kate Millett: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/6/23/7663.html

I cannot get employment. I cannot earn money. Except by selling Christmas trees, one by one, in the cold in Poughkeepsie. I cannot teach and have nothing but farming now.


One of the first high-content sites I found, several years back, was Don Hopkins's. Lots of smart, funny stuff, about software design and programming, mostly. It moved and I just re-found it: http://www.catalog.com/hopkins/ [SN]

Our new DejaNews forum: http://www.dejanews.com/group/dejanews.members.soc.jorn.rw-weblog

Clinton's national ID card looks very, very bad: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/metcalf/980621.comgm.html

Thanks in part to the Dianne Feinstein cabal, each individual must submit biometric identification which will be compiled in a national database


A great interview with 50s pinup Bettie Page: http://www.nervemag.com/Page/PinupLegend/

Nobody ever gave me any instructions. I did my own posing. Everything I've done -- the wild ones, the crazy ones, the ridiculous ones -- they were all my own concoction, my own making. One of the things I tried to do as a model was to try to think of something different every time I posed, especially for the same photographer, so that my pictures wouldn't all look alike.


Whaddya know: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/073791.htm

She said Russian, Lithuanian and Western scientists had agreed on the authenticity of reports from three seismic stations operated by the Soviet military at the time, showing that an earthquake measuring 3-4 on the Richter scale had occurred exactly 22 seconds before the Chernobyl reactor exploded.


Cooler than cool: (Chgo Reader) http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=357151466

A 25yo black Chicago ragtime composer has recovered 30 seconds of a lost Scott Joplin rag, by enlarging an old photograph.


Dvorak argues PC's have peaked: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak_print/jd_p.htm

In fact, WebTV's a dead end for Microsoft. The system is so impressive that I must assume Microsoft would just as soon kill it as promote it. After all, WebTV kills Microsoft's lucrative market for software upgrades.

I suppose there are a couple more killer apps, but the story is the same: Nothing exciting is happening. Does anyone notice that Microsoft's dominance is not helping the situation?



A long list of free etexts: [144k, alpha by title, maybe just Gutenberg again?] http://www.bb.com/freebooks.cfm

Getting Even : The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks by George Hayduke


An interesting tale of Toys'R'Us's decline: http://www.forbes.com:80/asp/redir.asp?/forbes/98/0601/6111056a.htm

Only in 1996 did Goldstein roll out a response to his new competitors. Concept 2000 was a big push to remodel the toy stores, making them less cluttered, cleaner and brighter, with lower shelves and better customer service. ... Concept 2000 didn't work.


This multi-part series on hackers looks excellent: [multipage] http://www.sptimes.com:80/Hackers/index.html

In the 1870s, several teenagers were flung off the country's brand new phone system by enraged authorities.

Six years ago, a massive party was thrown by a young computer bulletin board operator who goes by the name Dark Tangent. That party evolved into the DefCon annual convention, the biggest hacker gathering in the country.



Evil! Million-dollar contest looks like a hoax: http://www.azcentral.com:80/news/0621quest.shtml

But, two years later, Sirius Publishing Inc. has transformed its software conundrum into a mystery by refusing to fully identify the winner.


Hal Hartley in the LA Times:

"It would be great if every year the new James Bond movie would be made by a radically different filmmaker. One year Woody Allen, the next Nora Ephron, or me or Jim Jarmusch or Godard. That's what the James Bond genre needs."


[Face] YAY! A great piece on Julia Butterfly's heroic redwood protest: [includes nifty 2-min RealVid] http://www.abcnews.com:80/sections/science/DailyNews/treesitter980616.html (afu)

Loggers have already cut 97 percent of the ancient redwood forest that once stretched for over 300 miles, from Big Sur to the Oregon border, she said.


The debate about Indo-European origins continues in sci.archeology.moderated: [Deja URL]

      > -- nobody but Indian nationalists takes this seriously;
      > it's the usual we-were-first tripe, like Graeco-Macedonian
      > squabbling over the use of "Macedonia".

No, it isn't. It started as such tripe, and that's still a significant component, but it's become a whole lot more sophisticated than such tripe usually becomes. (For example, the Celtic Perfection Irish traditionalists are decades older, but I've never seen a footnote worth the ink in any of their works; this is hardly an issue with the Out of India writers.)


Sun, Jun 21, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1886, in Ulysses, Rudolph Bloom learned of his wife's death. In 1915, the Joyces left Trieste.

TV 2day: Iran-USA soccer war, 2pm CDT

Guerrilla marketing tips: http://www.gmarketing.com/tactics/tales_arch.html

...no one ignores coupons from Captain Tony's Pizza in Cleveland, Ohio. That's because they are printed on Post-it notes and placed each month on every door in their delivery area. ... It resembles the familiar UPS delivery notice and because it is sticky, recipients tend to post it on the fridge or by the phone where it acts as a constant reminder.


A poem Monica Lewinsky wrote at age 10: http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix.htm (agc)

I am a pizza
I can be a delicious lunch, dinner
or breakfast, if you're weird
I have a great deal of toppings on me
I am a round and flat piece of dough
with lots of toppings
I make your mouth water
I'm very good to eat, but I'm
fattening!
I am a mouth's best friend
I make you say "Yum,Yum'
I am a pizza.


AFP:

The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has to communicate through a computerised synthetic voice, is considering changing his US-built equipment for a new model which would give him back his native British accent, The Sunday Times reported.


A long, okay behind-the-scenes-er about Lilith and Sarah: http://www.calendarlive.com/HOME/CNS_DAYS/980621/t000057541.html

Where labels would typically sign dozens of male rock bands, they might sign just one female rock band each. Radio stations also generally limited the number of female artists on their playlists -- and almost never programmed two records by women back to back.

X-Files as "Northwest Noir": [longish] http://www.calendarlive.com/HOME/CNS_DAYS/980621/t000057530.html

As Thomas Pynchon wrote in "Gravity's Rainbow" (a novel that was to have been the subject of Duchovny's planned Yale PhD dissertation, "Magic and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction and Poetry"), "Paranoia! Even Goya couldn't draw ya!"


Sunday Washington Post book reviews: [multipage] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/m-bookworld.html

Including a surprisingly harsh verdict on the FBI crime lab: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-06/21/030l-062198-idx.html

Examining how well or poorly a powerful and secretive agency like the FBI performs its work is one of the most difficult and important tasks that any reporter can take on. Kelly and Wearne have met this difficult challenge, successfully documenting a shocking condition that should outrage every American concerned with justice.


[Carla] Brazil's National Booty: http://www.carlaperez.com.br/

The world's silliest virus: http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/agent.htm [Kibo]

The virus activates at random times, and will try to send the user's Word documents to Usenet newsgroups... including alt.hacker, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, alt.fan.hanson, alt.windows95 and alt.skinheads.


Sat, Jun 20, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1904, James collapsed drunk in the Camden theater hallway.

Brazil searches for a new "National Booty": http://reports.guardian.co.uk/papers/19980620-01.html

The growth in popularity of stars such as Perez has outraged intellectuals who believe that events like the competition for her replacement are a symbol of the cultural demise of the country.

Kahlil Gibran a false "Prophet": http://reports.guardian.co.uk/papers/19980620-04.html

Gibran's love poetry is second in popularity only to Bible passages for wedding services - yet his own relationships with women were messy and deceitful.

John Kenneth Galbraith on the economic crisis: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/papers/19980620-33.html

We should always bear in mind that, as is happening now in East Asia, the peculiar genius of the IMF is to bail out those most responsible, and extend the greatest hardship to the workers, who are not responsible, who are innocent participants.

...And while international trade can have some adverse effect on the American wage structure, we should never forget that it has a positive effect on employment in countries that are even more desperately in need of it.



Project of the day: A detailed walk-thru for the Bloomsday reading of "Oxen": http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/jj/oxen.html

Another really good review of "Bitch": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-06/14/032l-061498-idx.html

"No matter how much I came to learn about [Nicole Brown's] family over time, after a while only one thing stood out: all four daughters had breast implants, but not one had a college degree."


[Ana's eye w/X-Files msg] Drudge says X-Files did $12M yesterday [Ana-pic]

Contrarian of the week: http://themes.org/totd/guest/ [NTK]

Linux is only free if your time has no value.


Heh: http://www.panakids.com/phase3/html/body_swsrelease.html [NTK]

Unfortunately, because of a glitch in this [obscenity-]filter, a small number of Macintosh systems may encounter a situation where the voice enunciates several of these prohibited words from the filter database while vocalizing the child's text.

Also: http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/reviews/writing/1/sws/merge.shtml

However, if the passage is a little long and the user impatiently double-clicks the read button, the program proceeds to rattle off a string of obscenities before correctly reading the passage!


A nice long Castaneda obit: http://www.latimes.com:80/CNS_DAYS/980619/t000057116.html

Drooz agreed, saying it was an honor to represent a man with Castaneda's high moral purpose and impish charm. "I'm a very cynical, skeptical, atheistic lawyer, and I was deeply, deeply touched by Castaneda," she said.

Meta: I avoid breaking-news articles that will be widely-covered after 48 hrs. But I think there's a great opportunity for detailed reviews of news stories after the dust has settled-- so that even people who don't watch the news could be well-informed. They could also review the weaknesses in the mass coverage-- is anyone doing this?

Nando blurbs diverse editorials: [disorienting, unlinked] http://www2.nando.net:80/newsroom/ntn/voices/061998/voices11_26892_noframes.html

[Cool] Sony's robot dog! http://www.nikkei.co.jp:80/enews/TNW/page/cyber3.html

The prototype robot dog can walk, sit, and roll over.

The same site offers a great look at the GameBoy camera: http://www.nikkei.co.jp:80/enews/TNW/np/newpro11.html

The images are produced in four black-and-white shades on a 128-by-128 array of pixels. Pocket Camera costs 5,500 yen ($38.19).

Nintendo wanted to go against the trend of focusing on the latest technologies and make something more like a simple toy. Using common technologies also brings down costs ... taking an unabashedly amateur approach allowed his team to create a new way to play with a toy.



Local Rainbow coverage: http://www.azcentral.com:80/news/0619rainbows.shtml

An incident Sunday also has led businesses to lock their dumpsters. A small party of Rainbow women went into a convenience store and bathed in the bathroom, which is in the pantry. While there they also urinated on several cases of beer and food, police said. The goods had to be thrown out, and when they were, the Rainbows were waiting, according to Eagar police.

And a Burning Man preview: http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/06/18/DD16087.DTL

BURNING MAN 1998: August 31-September 7, Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Tickets: $80 before August 15, $100 afterward. Write: P.O. Box 420572, San Francisco, Calif. 94142. Call: (415) TO FLAME. Web site: www.burningman.com.


Controversial raves in LA desert: http://www.latimes.com:80/CNS_DAYS/980617/t000056212.html

He is still paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees incurred when, unknown to the promoters, an herbal ecstasy dealer passed out hundreds of bad tablets at his Seventh Heaven New Year's Eve 1997 party. Thirty-four ravers were hospitalized. The incident led to an avalanche of negative press, including "20/20's" "Stop the Rave" segment.

"I've never seen anywhere in society people coming together in such a positive fashion -- cholos, hippies, skaters, surfers, doctors, lawyers, artists, musicians, reporters, graffiti artists, drag queens -- and they all come to dance and have freedom."



Rent a weekend teepee: [Messy URL]

The tepees have "beds" and are warm at night - they are heated via a wood-burning fire in the middle which shoots out smoke through a vent at the top.


Scam captures passwords when telnet-sites are misspelled: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?980619.whaoffline.htm

The domains are primarily FTP or Telnet sites designed to look like the correct sites when accessed.


The B-52s are back: http://my.excite.com/news/r/980619/12/music-b52

Wilson moved to Atlanta with her husband, and they had a baby girl, India, who is now 18 months old. She also was very careful not to spend any of her "Cosmic Thing" windfall, living only off the interest.


Fri, Jun 19, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1919, James returned Marthe Fleischmann's letters to her 'guardian', who blamed him for her nervous breakdown.

TV 2nite: Sean Lennon on Letterman.

New Science News looks at the Mission-Impossible power-source crack, dino dung, and electric ink

Don't miss: New Progressive Review clearly summarises FAIR's hard-to-read inquiry into whether the press are liberal:

The only survey question in which journalists appeared to the left of the public asked respondents to choose whether stricter environmental laws "cost too many jobs and hurt the economy" or "are worth the cost."


[Diagram] A terrible site for a new metadata product: http://www.onemeaning.com/products/marlowmodel.html

Susie Bright follows-up her get-Kip-Kinkle-laid piece: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/brig/1998/06/19brig.html

I'll never forget the time I was on some inane talk show and the host suddenly demanded to know what age I was when I first "had sex." "Sixteen," I answered, and he blurted back, "Wouldn't you say that was child abuse?" No I wouldn't, Mr. Donahue. Actually, it was one of the best days of my whole life.


McLibel, the movie: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/6/19/6964.html

But, as the defendants prepare to go back to the High Court next month for the first preliminary hearing of their appeal, it looks as though our film will never be seen by a British TV audience. Instead, it is being distributed the new way: on the Internet, on home video, on cable TV in the US, at international film festivals, local screenings and by travelling solar-powered cinema.

Watch the film on the Internet at: www.spanner.org/mclibel/vdo/.



New The Nation has a long, sad look at Gina Kolata (28 Apr, 12 and 26 May below) 's pro-corporation science reporting for the NYT. Over and over, it repeats-with-variations: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980706/0706DOWI.HTM

Scores of independent scientists wrote to the Times complaining about Kolata's coverage of environmental hormones. None of their letters were printed and not a single correction of Kolata's mistakes was run.

GK is Earth-Firster Judi Bari (the bombing victim) 's sister!

She rarely spoke of her, except on occasion to say, 'I suppose Gina and I were sent here to cancel each other out.'

And a strange essay-contest includes funny bits by Woody Allen and Paul Krassner (also Vonnegut, Blount, et al): http://www.thenation.com/issue/980706/0706WEIM.HTM

[PK:] One morning I accompanied Wavy Gravy as he made the rounds inspecting the tepees to decide which was the best. When we opened the flap of one particular tepee, we gasped with delight. We knew we were entering the winner. The kids had created a veritable shrine on the ground. Beautiful shells and stones and twigs and pieces of jewelry were carefully arranged in semicircular rows that became smaller and smaller, so that your eyes were led inevitably to the center, where, on a miniature throne, sat a personal computer.

...let a thousand Matt Drudges bloom.

'Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is how dogs spend their lives.' --Sue Murphy.



The BotSpot monthly newsletter looks pretty invaluable, given the rate of new search-agent development: http://www.botspot.com/newsletter/archives/v1n5.htm

You don't want to know about minor changes - you want to know when an airfare sale occurs. DICA solves this problem. It does so by periodically visiting the site - but it lets the user know only when something interesting has occurred. It does this through a machine learning engine, which the user can train to know what is interesting to her.


Carlos Castaneda died April 27: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/050775.htm

The web-merchandising model: Jane Siberry auctions off stuff: http://www.sheeba.ca/bulletinboard.html

2nd Auction: The Gold Record for The Speckless Sky...now residing with a NYC cabbie.

And she hacks her own HTML: http://www.sheeba.ca/hotnews.html

I thought I would begin working on the web-site by starting out of the driveway at 60 mph. Driving standard (which I don't drive). And putting on lipstick. And drinking espresso. And not waking up my grandfather in the backseat.


Howcome the major-media attention I get is almost always for ascii-art??? http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,13735,00.html

Why prices end in 9: [short] http://www.demographics.com:80/Publications/AD/98_ad/9805_ad/ad980516.htm

Essentially, people stop processing the information after the second digit in the [3-digit] price.


Kibo on ark:

Somewhere Ginger Spice is walking around stopping passersby and asking, "Where can I get the other 4/5 of a personality?"


Meta-ascii art: [Deja URL] (Runs ascii-pics thru Figlet's ascii fonts)

Now that's high tech: http://my.excite.com/news/r/980618/19/culture-disneyquest

The results include CyberSpace Mountain, which allows customers to design their own roller coaster, then ride it inside a 360-degree pitch-and-roll simulator.


Id abandons single-player design: http://www.gamecenter.com:80/News/Item/0,3,1883,00.html

He described a paradigm shift from the traditional client/server model, in which one computer handles all the busywork and the other connected computers are just dumb terminals and windows into the action for the other players. Carmack's new concept is closer to the peer-to-peer model, in which all the computers share the processing responsibilities.


Third annual Virtual Humans conference: http://www.wired.com:80/news/news/technology/story/13074.html

In "scripting" a personality, which is similar to HTML coding, a designer can make links between statements and responses using simple letter and number codes for such things as frequency of responses.

If it's crowds you want, Gibb Ltd. has connected the Arrive/Depart application to Superscape's virtual-reality authoring environment to let designers and planners analyze how passengers will move through airports.



Thu, Jun 18, 1998

This Day in History: In 1815, Napoleon met his Waterloo. In 1858, Ibsen married Suzannah Thoresen.

[Siberry] New Red-Shoes trophy holder: http://www.sheeba.ca/

Great issue of the Progressive Review:

Prior to defeating the whole anti-tobacco measure, the US Senate set a cap of $4,000 an hour (about $8 million a year assuming no over-billing) for lawyers in tobacco cases. Senator Slade Gorton argued that the attorneys were "tremendously gifted and imaginative."


At the Foresight Exchange, futurologists can put their virtual money where their mouths are: [multipage] http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=Clone

This claim will be judged YES if a clone of an adult (16 years or older) human is created and lives to one year of age. Information necessary to judge this claim YES must be reported as fact in New York Times. The clone must live to one year of age prior to January 1, 2005, but the report may be published as late as December 31, 2005.

The full list of active claims is here: http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/ListClaims

By the end of the year 2005, 20% of US households will have videophones which they use at least ten times a year.

Before 1/1/2006, official US government sources will claim that a major act or set of connected acts of terrorism, war, crime or rebellion has resulted in at least 200 human deaths in the United States within some 48 hour period.

And a good tips-page from a successful trader: http://www.diku.dk/students/juul/IFtips.html

Even under the assumption that vehicles of extra-terrestrial nature visit us from time to time, the claim still should be priced somewhere between 0 and 1! Because the chance of proof being found and "generally accepted by the scientific community" within that extremely short span of years up to the year 2000 is next to nothing.


Can this be true? [Deja URL]

Camilia, one of my happiest norns, really threw me a curve yesterday. She was looking back and forth between an herb and carrots, comparing their catagories with me. Suddenly she stood straight up, looked herself up and down, and said, "Camilia norn." I typed in, "yes." This resulted in a great big grin. Again, she looked herself up and down and repeated, "Camilia norn." I typed, "yes," again. This time she not only grinned; she danced! Camilia showed me that she is not only self-aware; she is aware of her own species.

And later: [Deja URL]

To top it off, today two of my other norns were running around Albia when the male decided to eat one of the weeds. This is not the first time he has munched that weed and others, so I smacked him on the tail. His mate was near him and when he said, "ow," she looked at him and said, "Cameron hurt." Go figure!


Regarding the gods of the Proto-Indo-Europeans: [Deja URL]

...The Indians call them the Deva and the Ashura; the Deva are "good" and the Ashura are "bad" (in fact, 'Ashura' is usually translated as 'Demon'). The Zoroastrians, on the other hand worship the Ahura and vilify the Deva. Gathic and Vedic are very similar dialects; some recent work (by Ms. Hannah M. G. Shapero and others) suggests that this is an echo of a political conflict, or rebellion of the military caste among the ancient (at least 1500 BC if not earlier) inhabitants of Aria.


The new FBI FOIA-section is in ~5mb PDF lumps: http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/foipa.htm

HISTORICAL INTEREST


Kibo on ark: [Full msg!]

      > ...It is my belief that in order to get the 5th
      > dimension  you would have to inverse the fourth; then go in 
      > reverse, giving you a total of 10 dimensions.

No, that's anniversary gifts. Dimensions go: rock, scissors, paper, time, nougat, Olestra, goldfish water, swirly marble center without the glass part, green Kleenex, Panty Cat.


Really dumb rocket science in the new New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980620/nspacemirror.html

If the idea catches on, they say, it could spell the end of ground-based astronomy by dazzling their telescopes. "I cringe to think that we could lose the night sky because of all these companies with their brain-dead ideas..."

And some insights into whalesongs: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980620/nwhales.html

He suspects this repetitious song helps blue whales map ocean basins.


Wed, Jun 17, 1998 Last Quarter

This Day in Joyce History: In 1918, Nora debuted in "Riders to the Sea".

Cute: http://www.press.co.nz:80/24/980616c4.htm [NT-Tamagotchi]

With Buzzword Bingo loaded on hand-held computers, employees can sit through boring meetings checking how many industry buzzwords their bosses utter, ticking off suspects such as "proactive", "win-win", "synergy", "bottom-line", "end of the day", "mission-critical", and "leading-edge"


Tue, Jun 16, 1998 Bloomsday

This Day in Joyce History: In 1915, James sent brother Stannie a postcard detailing the structure of Ulysses. In 1955, Stannie died.

[Clamshell] New MicroTimes includes a cool gizmo form-factor: http://www.microtimes.com/180/infoappliance.html

Which bestseller's author has which literary agent? http://www.agentresearch.com/bestsellers/bestsellers.html [VV]

2. PANDORA by Anne Rice; AGENT: Lynn Nesbit


A strange archive of airline gossip: [multipage] [Messy URL]

[Myth:] If a gun is fired in an airliner, it will explosively decompress the cabin and make the plane crash. This one is true in the movies, but that's the only place. Even if the bullet in question hit a cabin window and blew it out, it would only make a hole the size of, well, a window.

None dare to call it fine art: [Deja URL]

I have 3 genuine Indignico Inc. black velvet portraits of Bill Gates ...

Funny titles for mysteries: http://www.mystgalaxy.com

DEATH WORE A SMART LITTLE OUTFIT and
DEATH WORE A FABULOUS NEW FRAGRANCE


A great new Risks Digest includes a Y2K problem with the Shuttle Imaging Radar: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.81.html

There is a Year 2000 problem with the SIR-C processor and it is unlikely that there will be funds available to fix it.


In the new Village Voice, a gonzo tour of the vestigial NYC punk scene: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/25behrman.shtml

It's always weird to see squares groove to Chic's ''Le Freak'' alongside punkers.

And the dizzying self-references in media-crit: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/columns/25ledbetter.shtml

For years, Columbia Journalism Review has been funded by Time Warner and The New York Times Foundation. So when, earlier this year, CJR published an exhaustive critical investigation of Rupert Murdoch's media schemes, even appreciative readers had to wonder if they weren't looking at one more salvo in Time Warner's war with Murdoch.

So far it looks like everybody associated with Content -- Brill, Kurtz, former Time writer Michael Kramer, former FCC commissioner Reed Hundt, and former U.S. News & World Report editor Amy Bernstein -- is a consummate insider.

In my experience, people dissatisfied with media tend to cluster around ideological, moral, and even demographic prejudices (e.g., the media doesn't represent enough people like me). They like their media criticism to confirm those prejudices; neutral reporting leaves them, um, neutral.

And various tidbits of web-gossip, including Alexa: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/cyber/25bunn.shtml

"Federalist Papers 2.0"


Blockbusters vs botulin-burgers: http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/06/16media.html

They are sneaking up to the slaughterhouse. The atmosphere is tense. The doctor whispers, "Allowing meat irradiation is just an invitation for the industry to allow that much more contamination to get in during processing in the hopes that it will all be killed by gamma rays at the end. You'll notice even with irradiation the industry insists the onus is on the consumers to handle and cook the meat in a way the industry considers proper."

Strange ethical quandaries when a breastfed baby starves: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/hot/1998/06/16hot.html

It decreases infection and the likelihood of illness in general; it decreases the cost of medical care and food in the first year of life; and in the long term, it decreases allergies and increases intelligence. You want to sweep all those benefits out the door because of one case where a baby dies who happened to be breast-fed? I hope not.


Bloomsday readings on RealAudio, linked from: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/jj/ulysses.html

A closer look at the book-on-demand printer technology (3 Jun below): http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/13003.html

Lightning Print itself expects to have 10,000 titles in its digital library by the of the year. Already it has signed up 36 publishers including Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, Chronicle Books, Harper Collins, Oxford University Press, and Simon & Schuster.

Lightning charges publishers an average of US$100 to $300 to set a book up in its printing system, depending on the size of the book, whether it has to be scanned in or is formatted in a Quark or PageMaker file. Then it's $12 a year to store the file...



Mon, Jun 15, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1889, in Ulysses, Milly Bloom was born. In 1904, the General Slocum burned in New York, and Mrs Palmer played Hamlet at the Gaiety. In 1914, Dubliners was published.

TV 2nite: Sinead on Letterman.

Dept of useless trivia: (asg) http://imusic.com/news/07229604.htm

The real name of the Girl from Ipanema was Heloisa Pinheiro (nicknamed "Helo").


Sure-fire movie-of-the-week: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/6/16/6456.html

Last week Mr Possuelo announced that the jungle murder mystery had been solved: the killers were an Indian tribe whose existence was previously unknown.


'Evil' hackers make good: [Is it a URL... or PGP key block? ;^] [NewsHub]

One of Viaweb's three co-founders -- and doubtless one of Viaweb's newly minted paper millionaires -- is convicted computer felon Robert Tappan Morris.


Wired looks at chatterbots: http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12938.html [NewsHub]

Where Shallow Red's profanity filter had been just going "stop that" or "chill," suddenly YouSuck.G was going "Why don't you walk up to a real person and say that, LOSER? 'Cause you'd get your ass kicked, that's why!" The next string our friend entered was "You're cool."

And at international activism via the Web: http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/12969.html [NewsHub]

In other words, the teenager, who countered charges that he publicly insulted state security forces with the argument that online comments were hardly public, was absolutely right.


A study just like NEC's found a smaller answer: http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/whatsnew/sem.html [SN]

This means that the Web doubled in size in less than 9 months and is currently growing about 20 million pages per month.


DejaNews puts newsgroups on websites for a fee? http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12970.html [NewsHub]

"It's incredibly difficult to aggregate a critical mass of discussion on anything," says Deja News spokesman David Wilson. "We have that."


Since Dave Winer shut down the Userland mailing lists, I've lost touch-- has he withdrawn the 5.0.2 betas, too? Where do people discuss stuff? [Mail me]

[Graph] Summary of the NEC web-size survey: http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/lawrence/websize.html [SN]

The fact that the queries used were mostly from scientists, and for harder to find information, improves the accuracy of the estimate (if popular queries were used the estimate would be biased lower).

A technical paper about NEC's meta-search engine: http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/lawrence/papers/search-www7/

Rather than working with the list of documents and summaries returned by search engines, as current meta search engines typically do, the Inquirus meta search engine works by downloading and analyzing the individual documents.


Sun, Jun 14, 1998

Kibo on ark:

      > ...they know literally NOTHING about the source and cause
      > and function of GRAVITY.

But we know how to USE gravity, even as children, for practical applications such as making penny-shaped holes in the heads of bald men walking past the Empire State Building.

Kibo also parodied this shocking sex toy advertisement: [parody DejaURL] http://www.nazorin.force9.co.uk/main.htm [crashes my Netscape??]

It is the first ever, TOTALLY SAFE method for performing AUTO-EROTIC ASPHYXIATION.


Language Watch: (LA magazine)

"I didn't have to fight for anything. She came in loaded for bear." --Sidney Lumet on Sharon Stone


Last week's Voice has snuck a couple of extra pages onto the Christina Ricci interview, praising Terry Gilliam and dissing Hunter Thompson: [multipage] http://www.villagevoice.com:80/ink/film/24hoberman2b.shtml

A good short piece on the Taliban dilemma: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp9806.htm

Unocal, they say, must display social responsibility and stay out of an Afghanistan that practices "gender apartheid" toward women.


YAY! The Consortium has dropped its password-policy, with new articles on Indonesia as an extension of the Indian wars: http://www.consortiumnews.com/consort1.html

In effect, the Vietnam War was the first time Americans got to witness the pacification strategies that had evolved secretly as national security policy since the 19th Century.

And CIA incompetence (re India's nukes etc): http://www.consortiumnews.com/consort2.html

But there is a reason why the CIA analytical division has lost that "contrarian view," a proud part of an older tradition in which analysts had the professional confidence to contest the conventional wisdom and bring bad news to policy-makers. That dissent within the CIA was beaten out of the analytical division during the early 1980s when President Reagan insisted that his Evil Empire vision be accepted -- and President Clinton failed to correct the problem when he took over in 1993.


An ambitious daily fan-site for pre-release movie gossip: http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/news/index.html (agc)

Includes this Star-Wars budget-fiasco rumor: http://www.canoe.ca/JamMovies/jun6_starwars.html [AIC]

Still, critical eyes have been on the subject ever since the recent controversy over the "Plot Does Matter" anti-Godzilla poster...

[Comparison] And this Duke Nukem level based on "The Shining": [multipage] http://home.earthlink.net/~rnet1/index.htm [AIC]

FBI FOIA-files headed for Net: http://www.sltrib.com/06121998/nation_w/38104.htm?st.ne.fd.mnaw [McR]

Jim Lesar, a Washington attorney, was there the other day with a college-age research assistant, combing files for a book he is considering. He's mum about the specifics of his research but says his topic "deals with an aspect of J. Edgar Hoover's life."


[Shoulder?] Without the unique economics of web publishing, random beauty like this would never be shared [Ana]

Righteous! Friday's Congressional Record is already online: http://thomas.loc.gov/r105/r105d12jn8.html

A nice short FAQ-like interview with Chris Carter (X-Files): http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/3380.htm (agc)

PP: Who's the Well-Manicured Man?

CC: In the Syndicate, he is the opposite of the Cigarette-Smoking Man. His approach has been one of containment and civility, and he seeks to control through release of information and disinformation. He is not to be trusted, but there is a point at which his humanity springs forward.

Hi-tech voyeurism evades prosecution: http://www.newsguy.com/~mayday/biohack/journals.html (agc)

Some of the "up-skirt videos" made here are for sale nationwide - which means men may be sitting at home right now looking at intimate unauthorized films of you, your mother, daughter, wife or girlfriend.


Tommy the Terorist's biology hackers' news-links: http://www.newsguy.com/~mayday/biohack/journals.html

Includes the terrifying journal Emerging Infectious Diseases: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/current.htm

Could Myocarditis, Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus and Guillain Barre Syndrome be caused by One or More Infectious Agents Carried by Rodents?


These etexts look like pirated-Gutenberg, mostly: http://www.1stbooks.com/cgi-bin/gate2?amt~library/indexin.html

Joyce Maynard has a lunchdate with Hillary: http://www.joycemaynard.com/wwwboard/messages/2962.html

Discovered yesterday that various 15 year old boys in this town have been using our calling card to contact their pals all over the country--over a thousand dollars' worth of calls.


A great longish piece on Japan's so-5-minutes-ago youth culture: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1998-06/05/081r-060598-idx.html [TN-Lovegety]

One popular way of hooking up with potential dates is to dial numbers at random on the cell phone and chat with anyone who sounds cute. Many teens start with their own phone number and change just one digit, looking for soul mates among their numerical neighbors.


The norn anti-cruelty movement expands: [Deja URL]

I am president of FAMAL, the Federation Against Misuse of Artificial Life, which has recently been founded by German and Austrian Creatures fans. ... The whole thing was put in motion by an article in the German magazine "Der Spiegel" about norns being used as pilots in flight simulators by the British government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.


Sat, Jun 13, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1904 (new moon), in Ulysses, Gerty's mother celebrated a birthday, and Paddy Dignam died.

TV 2nite: "In the Name of the Father" (ABC)

Cat Yronwode on the original Cretan lotus-eaters: [Deja URL]

...the crown elements are opium poppy pods (not flowers) and they are sculpted with a taxonomic precision that renders them unmistakeable to anyone with a botanical background.


New The Nation (finally) includes an okay piece on arts funding: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980629/0629YEOM.HTM

And these attacks are part of a larger political strategy, which begins with the election of "stealth candidates" to local office. "They're schooled during the election to espouse no ideology. After the election, out comes the ideology..."

And a great piece on alternative news selling out: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980629/0629BATE.HTM

Over the past two years national ad revenues for Association of Alternative Newsweeklies members have nearly tripled; 69 percent of that money comes from the tobacco industry. Cigarette makers and alcohol producers are both financing the trend toward consolidation and profiting from it.

"That's the big fear in the alternative press now," says Patty Calhoun, editor of the New Times paper in Denver. "At some point will someone who buys a lot of the alternative papers strip them down, make them as lucrative as possible and make them revenue driven?"



An incredible hour-by-hour reconstruction of Diana's last day, from a LaRouchite perspective: [Deja URL]

...at the moment that Diana and Dodi and Henri Paul, and Trevor Rees-Jones got into that Mercedes 280S, you see a figure standing across the street, slightly down from the exit of the hotel, immediately getting on to a cell phone and placing a call.


The new Eugene-bomber has already been profiled in witty detail: [Deja URL]

He concluded that there was a substantial probability that the man dropped out of high school in the 10th or 11th grade, hates the IRS, has several guns, makes racist and anti-semitic remarks at the local bar, works in a blue-collar job, has a tattoo, and his middle name is Wayne. He is divorced and now has a girlfriend, who is not happy with her catch and would be very talkative.


Training by VR: http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/scitech/wires2/0612/t_rt_0612_15.sml

The training mimics every aspect of the manufacturing process, down to putting on bunny suits and the color of employee lockers. This level of detail helps smooth the transition from the training world to the plant, Orton believes. The results are impressive: VR training takes one-tenth the time and cuts the cost in half.

Austin's multimedia alliance: http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/scitech/wires2/0612/t_rt_0612_16.sml

"We're working to create specific content for the new delivery systems-WebTV, 200-plus channel cable, Direct TV, Primestar, all of those and more."


I just realised my radar's been missing Nerve. Here's a memoir about Allen Ginsberg's sexuality: [xx] http://www.nervemag.com/Silberman/AllensBoys/

"So it's been ten years, huh?" he pondered, looking me up and down, with X-ray vision. "You'll forgive me -- did we make it?"


WebTV continues to evolve: [Ludicrous 200+ character URL]

How far can Slate go on $4M per year? http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/daily/980611f.html

Sony shills for a robotic future: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980612S0008

Sony researchers demonstrated robots scampering after a ball, kicking it, and exhibiting other behaviors sophisticated enough to give people the illusion they were playing with a puppy or a kitten.

Therefore, the modules support hot plug, sort of like an electronic Mr. Potato Head.



I've been swayed to keep my ICQ on: #10881335 if you want to say hi.

Web Nielsen-ratings don't rate: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980612S0022

Real-life X-Files: http://online.guardian.co.uk/science/897492769-antarc.html

Kapitsa, who will be giving a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society on Wednesday, is one of an international team that hopes to send a robot in search of strange life in a body of water the size of Lake Ontario, sealed off from the rest of the planet by millions of years of ice.

A nicely-written update on archeopteryx: http://online.guardian.co.uk/science/897490392-flight.html

The sceptics charge that the arms come from a bird and the legs from a dinosaur. Yet Catherine Foster of the State University of New York excavated Rahonavis' forelimb bones which were "either next to or touching the hind portion of the skeleton".

More on the GameBoy camera: http://online.guardian.co.uk/technology/897493472-.html

The camera is going to be every teacher's nightmare - and that's just how Nintendo is marketing it.

You can even use the pictures as characters in the console's games.

When the camera was launched in Japan two months ago, it sold 500,000 copies in its first three weeks and was well on its way to selling a million by the end of the first month.

El Nino brings a plague of butterflies: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/6/13/6053.html

When he got home, coated in blue dust and broken wings, he found his windows covered in butterflies and his wife grumbling and picking them out of the soup.


Fri, Jun 12, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1976, Giorgio (son) died.

A lovely very short story about caring: [Deja URL]

"I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?" "The sun is up, and the tide is going out. And if I don't throw them in they'll die."


A nice short story about beds: [multipage, beautiful design] http://www.fray.com/hope/strange/ [Feed]

Memories of my lovers' beds are often more vivid than the memories of the lovers themselves.


Burton on ChinaGate: [Deja URL]

One of the biggest problems we have had, Mr. Speaker, is that 94 people, 94 people, have either taken the Fifth Amendment or fled the country. Now, when I had the FBI director, Mr. Louie Freeh, before my committee not long ago, I asked him if he had ever seen anything of that magnitude, and the FBI director said, 'Well as a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman, I have.' And I said, 'Really? When was that?' He said, 'When I was investigating organized crime in New York City.'

Now, during this past week, the Washington Post, on the Federal Page, for the first time of any major newspaper in the country listed everybody who has taken the Fifth Amendment or fled the country, and I commend them for that. The Washington Post is not a bastion of conservatism, as most people know, but the fact of the matter is, they have listed all these people and given a brief explanation as to why they have not testified before our committee or any committee of the Congress.



Patrick O'Brian addicts (17 Feb below) can get a fix via the Gutenberg edition of Masterman Ready, by Captain Marryat: [500k] ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext98/mmrdy10.txt

Masterman Ready, for such was his name, had been more than fifty years at sea, having been bound apprentice to a collier which sailed from South Shields, when he was only ten years old. His face was browned from long exposure, and there were deep furrows on his cheeks, but he was still a hale and active man. He had served many years on board of a man-of-war, and had been in every climate: he had many strange stories to tell, and he might be believed even when his stories were strange, for he would not tell an untruth.


[Face] Toby Simpson, Creatures designer

A detailed report on the next generation of norns, Creatures 2: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/4433/e3.html

What's really cool is that because of the weather, everyone's world will be a little bit different. ... For example, when seeds fall, the wind carries them until it falls. The wind isn't going to carry the same seeds to the same spot every time so each Albia will have different plants in different areas.

[Sad imp] Sheesh! No sooner is an alife marketed, than a subculture arises devoted to torturing them: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/2495/

Her name is Slave. After I created her I started by hitting her constantly for about 5 minutes. Then I taught her all the words (using the SST) so it would be easier to make her scared of her surroundings. After she knew all the words, I placed her in a small area, surrounded by the FF Cob, with 5 Grendels. I left her there for about 20 minutes, beating her when she attempted to defend herself from the Grendels.

(Alt.games.creatures has big controversies about this site.)

New Science News

Rainbows headed for AZ: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/048204.htm

A superb long sampling of Mike Niman's book about the Rainbows: http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/info/Niman-Quotes.html

DID YOU KNOW ... Billy Ball billed the taxpayers for a long-distance call to every phone number in the Rainbow Guide to spread a rumor that Texas '88 was canceled?

...the organizational overhead for the Gathering was only 25 to 30 cents per participant. The U.S. National Forest Service, in contrast, playing a minor and arguably unnecessary role at that Gathering, spent about $310,000.

African-Americans, however, are still underrepresented at Gatherings. A primary reason is that African Americans are also underrepresented in the middle class, from which the Rainbow Family draws many of its members.

'A' Camp is the border where the Rainbow meets Babylon. Unfortunately both cultures are at their worst here.

To banish power-hungry and violent individuals, for the Rainbows, would be to admit that violence and hierarchical order can't be vanquished.

While 'lazed' was the most popular [media] verb, 'ragtag' was the most popular adjective to describe Rainbow people.

The fact that Rainbow Gatherings continued to grow in number and size around the world in the years since the article was published would suggest that 'a scene from the future' might have been an equally appropriate description.

The meaning and events of the Gatherings become obscure, as journalists conform them to the crime/mayhem model of reporting.

The greatest danger of government/media propaganda linking Rainbows with hard drugs is that it may become self-fulfilling. News stories promising a 'drug party' lure people looking for one.

In a media environment habitually producing stories of innocents going to Rainbow Gatherings and getting turned on to dangerous drugs, stories of addicted persons going to Rainbow Gatherings to get off drugs just don't fit.

Even in their official reports, not all law enforcement officers are against us. Gatherings have been termed "rewarding and interesting," "legitimate use," "a holy experience" that might "broaden one's horizons."

A Somerset, Kentucky, attorney writes: 'I thought it was a terrible waste of taxpayers' money on the Fourth of July weekend to harass a group of people who appear to be engaging in conduct no more seditious than to offer prayers for world peace.'

The evolving 'consensus minus one' policy, however, limits individual power in the interest of maintaining greater group cohesion in the face of a persistent consensus blocker.

Their goal is unwavering. Eventually, they hope, everyone everywhere will always be at a Rainbow Gathering.

And Niman's glossary: http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/info/glossary.html

Blissninny: A person at a Rainbow Gathering who does not contribute much work; overly spiritual and out of touch with the physical realities and demands of the environment. (Derogatory).
Drainbow: A person who demands a lot from the Gathering and does not return anything.
F___ You: "A" Camp greeting used like "Hello."
Snifting: Looking to meet someone, primarily for sex.
Welcome Home! Standard Rainbow greeting for someone who is entering the Gathering from `Babylon.'


[Tiny prism] Eyeglass Display FAQ: http://www.microopticalcorp.com/eyefaq.htm [Slashdot]

Who funded the development of the glasses? The glasses were developed with a combination of company resources and funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through a contract with the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Command.


Geek pranks, with QuickTime how-tos (and links, too): http://www2.be.com/~dbg/antics/ [Slashdot]

By some bizarre twist of fate, we happened to be eating lunch right next door to the Mountain View Ice Store (404 Villa Ave) which proudly displays a sign claiming: "No Dry Ice Sales to Minors". That bit of fortuitous luck was too much to pass up.

For most people, the $160 price tag would put them off. However for us, no expense can be spared in the pursuit of life, love, happiness and blowing stuff up.

Once the lens is focused, water will boil instantly (boring). Asphalt will catch fire in a few seconds.



Weird-looking ASCII string: [SN, 568 days and counting]

 
 
                      1/1/00

Improbable-but-true poker-buddies: (LA magazine)

Johnny Carson, Steve Martin, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, and Barry Diller


Diana conspiracy theories: [Deja URL]

Why has the physician Mailliez, first at the scene, changed his story consistently, ever since the fatal night? Why have the police not given a reasonable explanation as to why every traffic video between the Ritz and the Tunnel was not functioning that night? ... Why have they denied that blood samples of Diana were taken? Why have the police consistently not allowed Mercedes Benz to examine the car?


Wired publishes an XML-for-want-ads piece by an avowed XML advocate: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/12888.html

...Wellman is doing research on "auctionbots," seeking to standardize the "rules" for auctions.


A brandnew weblog already has good links: http://www.ed.mtu.edu/~jowilson/weblog/

And another: http://www.whump.com/news.html

[Blue sun] A fringe-science site has great graphics: [bandwidth-hog] http://www.eagle-net.org/phikent/orbit1a.html

[Flooded N Amer] But its worldmap is visionary, not scientific: http://www.matrixinstitute.com/maps1.htm

If parts of Swan Lake flew past you, here's the official plot summary: http://www.swanlake-usa.com/text_story.htm

The Prince enters and decides that the only way out of his misery is to throw himself into the depths. He leaves a suicide note on a park bench and stands by the lakeside, ready to jump.

The Prince begins to imagine himself dancing with the Stranger but his dream soon turns into a nightmare.

As much as the Prince could not live in their world, the Swan cannot exist in the human world and the flock destroy him.

The original Swan Lake plot: http://webserver.rcds.rye.ny.us/id/Dance/dancepagesp.html

[Cool display] Three new dedicated etext notebooks: http://www.sjmercury.com/columnists/gillmor/docs/dg061298.htm [SN]

They say they've come up with hardware and software methods to keep people from making unauthorized copies.

(That dooms that!)

Lewin on Pinker is worth reading just for its summary of Chomsky's theories: http://www.newscientist.com/sciencebooks/reviews/languageinstinct.html

First, many of the sentences each of us utters or responds to is a novel combination of words. ... Secondly, children rapidly learn grammatical structure without formal instruction and are able to interpret novel sentences well before they are two years old.

In any case, 'a blank slate is a dictator's dream'.

And Jared Diamond's two books look good: http://www.newscientist.com/sciencebooks/reviews/whyisexfun.html

Darwin was unusually emphatic in his reply. If they did not have a hypothesis, he wrote to his friend the economist Henry Fawcett, they may as well "go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours".

Specifically, those cultures whose environments contained animals which could be domesticated and wild plants that could usefully be cultivated, developed farming.



Here's proof the academic AI world doesn't want to share its insights: [jargon, postscript] http://www.cs.washington.edu:80/research/jair/abstracts/srivastava98a.html

A short, very clear piece on RealPlayer's new XML syntax: http://www.techweb.com:80/tools/proddesign/9806/980608realnetworks.html [NT-XML]

G2 introduces support for two new XML-compliant data types, RealText and RealPix, which you can use to create streaming text and slide shows.

And Free Speech Internet Television offers a $2000 web prize: http://www.internetnews.com:80/wd-news/1998/06/0902-prize.html

G2 was chosen "because it supports multiple datatypes--not just proprietary ones -- and because it conforms to the W3C's SMIL recommendation," stated Manley.


A knowledgeable opinion on the Lycos spider-patent: [Deja URL]

IMO this patent should never have been accepted because is a trivial extention of a spider that anybody would think of if asked to optimise it.


More details on the Lovegety (16 May below): http://www.wired.com:80/news/news/culture/story/12899.html

Affectionately called the "Lovege," the oval device has three buttons the user sets according to the kind of activity she or he has in mind: "talk," "karaoke," and "get2." (The latter is a wildcard -- but perhaps could mean "get to it.")

Erfolg is hoping to overcome such concerns when it launches an expanded version by the end of the summer with an added talking device, expanded coverage area of 100 meters, and a wider selection of modes that include "movie," "drinks," and "dinner."

"Right now we can't produce enough of them to meet demand"



A witty analysis of evolution's new glamour: http://www.newscientist.com:80/ns/980606/review.html

In the middle [between pro- and anti-selectionists] sits the lone figure of Steve Jones, a man so universally sceptical that unless he had his birth certificate he would doubt his own existence. This scepticism is, to my mind, a necessary antidote to the hype. It might strip the gloss off seductive theories, but so be it.

(NS's book-review archive looks spectacular.)

Shameless sexploitation sexposed: http://vh1459.infi.net:80/living/docs/sex061298.htm [NT-marooned?]

Although the movie itself makes no attempt to glamorize Bette's - and hence Lange's - appearance, the ad does, to a considerable extent. Signs of aging, care and wear that clearly line her face in the movie have been whisked away in the ad. Moreover, Lange looks out at the viewer with a look of calculated and sophisticated seduction, a pose she never adopts in the movie.


Alternative-newspaper economics: http://www.latimes.com:80/CNS_DAYS/980611/t000054257.html [NT-KarenF]

Two years after the Village Voice switched to free distribution in Manhattan -- via street-corner boxes, bookstores and other outlets -- the weekly is boasting that its circulation has risen by 100,000, to a total of 250,000.

Overall circulation of U.S. dailies dropped from 61 million in 1992 to more than 58.3 million in 1997, while ad spending on the dailies climbed, from $30.6 billion to more than $41.3 billion.



The hilarious stupidity of Stephen Glass: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/081977.htm

"He had developed a particular reputation for being able to do this sort of thing over and over again. So, I am afraid there was a certain reaction built up over time of, 'Here's an extraordinary anecdote; that's Steve Glass for you.' Because he did seem like the kind of reporter who could and did deliver the goods to an unusual degree."

A longer and sadder piece on Glass: http://washingtonpost.com:80/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-06/12/100l-061298-idx.html [NT-Hoax]

Since being fired as associate editor last month, Glass, 25, has told two acquaintances that he is under a suicide watch, accompanied by someone at all times. "I'm going through this process of trying to figure myself out," he told one. During a conversation with the other acquaintance, he burst into tears.


Don't tell Gates! Fault-tolerant computer experiment: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/014644.htm

The machine was loaded with bugs -- more than 220,000 identified hardware defects -- but it worked, and in some cases it outperformed by 100 times today's high-end computers using a single unflawed chip.


[Gargoyle] The rape of the Web: Salon's two reports on Michael Wolff's "Burn Rate" were so offensive to me I wasn't going to blurb them... but I'm realizing criminals like him are probaby getting most of the resources that should be going to the Web: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/books/1998/06/12booksb.html

"'Just think,' I said, warming to the moment, 'how many stupid people there are in this world who we can take advantage of.'"

http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/books/1998/06/cov_12booksa.html

At CMP, the computer trade publisher, he finds clueless suburban squares desperate to purchase "the secret of cyberspace."


Thu, Jun 11, 1998

Michael Stutz suggests this promising site for breaking tech news: http://www.newshub.com/tech/bytime.html

Unix-for-Macs for Dummies: http://www.mackido.com/Dojo/UnixNMac.html [MacOS]

The best thing about X is that by itself, it doesn't do anything. For it to draw windows, you need a window manager. There are several of these, and each has a separate look and feel. There are window managers that look like Windows95 and ones that look like MacOS. There are some that are very plain, and others that look like alien landscapes.


DeliveryCam next Tuesday at www.ahn.com: [Messy URL]

Because of Elizabeth's tendency to deliver quickly, her doctors were planning to induce labor even before they were approached by the cable network.


An unusual personal memoir (Midwestern farming childhood) in rec.arts.books: [Deja URL]

Cattle mostly aren't too bright but they are smart enough to figure out how to eat grass.

I spent a lot of time mowing. One nice thing about mowing is that you are alone on the open prairie. You get to know the land. It isn't just flat, it is rolling. You get to know its individuality, the shape of the land.

When I was young we had work horses; sometime before WW-II, however, my father got our first tractor. Every year he used to take it apart, grease it, and clean up all the bits and pieces. Every time he did this he had a few parts left over. I was of the opinion that eventually he would have enough parts left over so that he could build a second tractor.



A useful breaking news page: [fixed small fontsize, headlines only] http://www.7am.com/worldwires/ (thanks, cr)

[Head] CNN has NO idea how to use Quicktime efficiently, as their almost- worthless 5Mb illustration to this interesting piece on motion-capture animation proves: [multipage] http://cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9806/10/motion.capture/

A righteous drug encyclopedia (no hype): http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/drugdope.html

Overheard (Chuck Collins):

The Labor Movement: the folks who brought you the weekend.


Someone has pirated the infamous "Turner Diaries" (McVeigh's racist handbook): [multipage] http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6856/TheTurner/tdforwar.html

My first thought was that they were robbers. Robberies of this sort had become all too common since the Cohen Act, with groups of Blacks forcing their way into White homes to rob and rape, knowing that even if their victims had guns they probably would not dare use them. Then the one who was guarding me flashed some kind of card and informed me that he and his accomplices were "special deputies" for the Northern Virginia Human Relations Council. They were searching for firearms, he said.


The future of online music sales: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/reviews/1998/06/11review.html

You choose up to 72 minutes of music from their catalog of music; they burn your CD and toss it in the mail.

The first track on your CD is $4.99, and each additional track is $.99; with 72 minutes available, you can fit roughly 10 to 12 songs for a cost of around $14 to $16 plus shipping and handling.

The main hurdle for make-your-own-CD projects like CDuctive is that the library is limited to its licenses.

(Combine this with Joyce Maynard's personal-selection trick... and it adds another variant for the merchandising model for supporting websites.)

If this novel reads as well as the review, it'll be great: http://www.salonmagazine.com/books/sneaks/1998/06/11sneaks.html

Financed with inheritance money from June's family, the Campbells hunker down for a year in the shadow of Mount Philip, determined to complete a study on blood parasites. Instead, they succumb to a creeping spiritual decay far more insidious than anything the local microorganisms can provoke.


New Boardwatch (finally) includes Dvorak's argument that Wintel can't dominate embedded/palmtop PCs: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/june/bwm33.html

The reason for this is that unlike other emerging computer markets, this one is not led by the so-called early adopter.

Curiously, the machines coming from beneath the Microsoft layer - these pocket computers - are also machines that are supposed to never crash. The weird aspect to this is that it seems that only within the one layer of computerdom - the PC-centric world and which readers of this column are part of - do we accept machine failure as a way of life.

The fact that Microsoft is already adding features to CE shows that it is still thinking the same old way.

And a charming comparison of the Internet to the railroad: [near end] http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/june/bwm61.html

He chose Abilene, as a sort of network access point, which he said was "a very small, dead place, consisting of about one dozen log huts, low, small, rude affairs." Sounds like a peering equipment room, but one of the trails up from Texas to this little cattle trading spot had been laid out by a trader named Chisholm.

And some experiments with wireless community networks: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/june/bwm25.html

There were three Ricochet modems all apparently operating normally within a few feet of each other. The group was pretty impressed when this became evident. Resistance to interference is a key characteristic of spread spectrum radio systems, and this was the first time that any of us had witnessed it firsthand.

Odds'n'ends from the letters page: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/june/bwm2.html

The concept here is to develop a barrier price that makes spam quit working economically. In doing so, we might as well structure it so that there are stakeholders across the realm - including ISPs. In doing so, we rather accidentally create a funded, stable clearinghouse for electronic money ideally suited to micropayments.

We've found about a 4:1 multiplex of dialup customers works pretty well - in other words you can support 4 dialup 28.8 Kbps connections with 28.8 Kbps of upstream bandwidth in large quantities with little noticeable degradation.

Web pages transit at about 12 Kbps per second no matter how fast YOUR connection is.



Sig quote of the day: (rec.arts.books)

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." --Winston Churchill


[Worms] http://www.popsci.com:80/content/science/news/980610.s.html [NT-Bizarre]

These hermaphroditic worms try to stab one another with their penises, while at the same time trying desperately to avoid being stabbed.


Wed, Jun 10, 1998

This Day in Joyce History: In 1904, James met Nora at a garden fete. In 1919, Scofield Thayer gave James $700. In 1921, James got the first galleys of Ulysses from Darantiere. In 1923, James got false teeth.

TV 2nite: Gillian Anderson on Leno; Swan Lake (PBS) (Aeiouw! On beyond zebra!!!) http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/dance/23finkle.shtml

The notion behind Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is, like many brilliant notions, simple: male swans.

...it's impossible not to see Elizabeth II, which, of course, implies that the cheerless prince is meant to be mistaken for Charles. [2Mb Quicktime preview]



Minimal Instruction Set Computing: http://www.dnai.com/~jfox/mup21.html (afc)

A convenient choice is to limit the number of instructions to 32 and implement a microprocessor with 5 bit instructions.


McVeigh's full political essay: [Deja URL]

If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of "mass destruction" ...?


Neo-luddites burn biotech farms: [Deja URL]

Last night, in an escalation of popular action against 'frankenstein food', at least seven separate crops of genetically engineered rapeseed were destroyed across the UK.


A short review of a Newton bio: http://www.newscientist.co.uk/sciencebooks/reviews/isaacnewton.html

Newton also frequented brothels and bars in the effort to hunt down counterfeiters, whom he would have hung, drawn and quartered.


Kia Mennie on afkm:

Among my six-thousand-plus Bad Entrepreneurial Ideas, I'd like to start a slum tour service. I've seen things in the US that've made me nearly soil myself -- "People LIVE there? But those are GARDEN SHEDS! OLD garden sheds with GRAFFITI!" "Look! That man is wearing nothing but potato sacks! PLASTIC potato sacks!" "Why do none of the stores, or, more frequently, bars on this street have windows?" All this, er, slummery, and people claim I ain't seen nothing yet, etc, and nobody ever wants to take me to the Really Bad Parts of Town.

I'd get a very beat-up van, renovate it so it'd be appropriately luxurious inside and bulletproof with wee (tinted) portholes for people to peer out of, and charge $50/head for a good look at the most disgusting parts of major US cities.



Mission-Impossible crypto attack: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.80.html#subj3 [delayed?]

In SPA attacks, an attacker directly observes a system's power consumption. The amount of power consumed varies depending on the microprocessor instruction performed. Large features such as DES rounds, RSA operations, etc. may be identified, since the operations performed by the microprocessor vary significantly during different parts of these operations.


Kibo on ark:

Hey, is it my imagination, or does everyone else expect that when Mir "burns up" this fall, most of it will smash into Australia?

Australia, the international dumping ground for bad space stations.

                                  -- K
I think the Aussies should paint camo texture all over their continent so that astronauts won't be able to find it when they throw stuff at it.


Chelsea's nervous breakdown? http://www.nationalenquirer.com/mod03/mod03-story-1370.html (agc)

"She's strung out with all the sex scandals and jokes about her dad. She's also worried about not doing well on her final exams."


Raphael Carter's posted five nifty sonnets on science: http://www.chaparraltree.com/scison/

We care not if you hatch from eggs, accrete,
Or crystallize or split or grow from seeds.
Just take our hands -- with tentacle or thumb --
And talk to us a little while. Our race
Has been alone for far too long now: Come.


New New Scientist includes surprising germ news: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980613/ntoilet.html

At the start of the study, the researchers found a million times as many bacteria in the fluid wrung from dishcloths as on toilet seats.

And they claim there's a mechanical hack to bypass music copy protection with CDRs (which should be posted to netnews in a day or two): http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980613/ncd.html

And a neat argument that the Cambrian explosion was rainbow-hued: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980613/ncambrian.html

But while examining fossils from the Burgess Shale ... Andrew Parker of the Australian Museum in Sydney noticed patterns of ridges on the bristles of two sea worms and a primitive crab related to trilobites. The ridges ... can reflect light into a rainbow.

And a basic new challenge to Einstein: (Astrologers take note! ;) http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980613/ngravity.html

It would also suggest that distant galaxies affect the properties of nearby particles by contributing enormous potential. The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and the galaxies and dark matter that make up the "Great Attractor" which is pulling on our Galaxy would both change how quickly neutrinos oscillate near the Earth.

Re-Animator reanimated: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980613/nbladder.html

At last week's American Urological Association meeting in San Diego, the researchers revealed that they have now succeeded in growing an entire bladder in a culture dish.


New Scientific American looks at AIDS, and at butterfly courtship

The CIA wrestles with the Israel problem: http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/06/10news.html

Keen, who is not Jewish, flunked the "loyalty questions" on the test twice, then read a book called "How to Sting the Polygraph," by former Oklahoma policeman Doug Williams. On the third try, he passed easily.


Harper's Index May figures: http://www.harpers.org/harpers-index/listing.html

Number of former U.S. representatives who are now Microsoft lobbyists : 3
Factor by which the average suicide rate in a city where gambling is legal exceeds that in a city where it is not : 2
Percentage of parents who say that they would abort a fetus found to be predisposed to obesity : 11
Percentage of Ford Explorer owners who have never taken their vehicle off-road : 87
Number of nuclear-plant accidents in Ukraine since 1993 : 418


Yahoo's World Cup page explains the first US game is next Monday afternoon against Germany, to be carried live on ABC: http://soccer.yahoo.com/wc98/

A long bland profile of Robert Stone: http://www.newsday.com:80/features/fcovtue.htm [NT-RS]

"One thing that acid taught me," he says, "is that perception is functional. It's not definitive. We see the way we see things because we developed our perception in order to function in the world. But our perception is not the definition of what's out there. Since I know that, that leaves me with no choice but to be agnostic."


Tabloid archeology: http://www.tabloid.net:80/1998/06/09/D1.html

Jesus Christ spent three years and 11 months of his childhood in Egypt, according to the study of a 4-5th century Egyptian papyrus by a historian at the University of Cologne.

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