Category: Miscellany

Alerted to tonight’s lunar eclipse, B and I started looking outside around 8:40 pm hoping it wouldn’t be too hazy to see the moon clearly. It came up looking kind of vague, not nearly light enough to register on my camera lens, but after about 10 or 20 minutes the croissant edge got much brighter…

Today marks the tenth anniversary of my first post to Usenet (May 11, 1993). I actually posted four times that day, all to rec.music.gdead. None of the posts are especially memorable (though one gives a fair idea of my other favorite bands of that time), but I still find it noteworthy to mark the passing…

Psychedelics reconsidered. John Horgan makes the case for legalizing entheogens (psychedelic drugs) in Slate.

Geoff Faulkner has posted an informative article describing how he set up a computer-mediated entertainment center. His solution converges the functionality of his TV and stereo system with a computer for controlling everything.

Over the years, one of the most popular articles at Enterzone has always been the Unguided Tour of Pompeii by co-founder Richard Frankel, which appeared in our second issue, in early 1995. Rich had been on a dig in Pompeii a little whiel before before, and he wanted to show some of his photographs and…

Jeff Green, who’s been on a roll lately, has some choice words for us about iLoo. I suggest he go back and read my “Information pooper-highway” entry from The Internet Dictionary (Sybex, 1994, now sadly out of print). Weirdly, just a few weeks ago I was riffing with another friend about the idea of putting…

Mark A.R. Kleiman points to a “fun fact” that reminds me of my idea for a liberal tax-cut initiative that I think would call the bluff of the plutocrats running the show these days. Let’s stipulate that it’s important to cut taxes by $350 billion, or $550 billion or whatever fakey number the shills on…

Back when we started Enterzone, a “hyper web text media zine art” project, the goal was not just to produce a kind of ‘zine without paper or distribution costs but also to take advantage of the new internetworked medium to publish writing and art that simply couldn’t be represented fairly or at all on paper.…

Bruised my esophagus. If life were supposed to be fair I suppose I could complain the arbiter or ombudsmand that it’s completely unfair for me to have contracted yet another nasty flu within one month’s time. Then again, the answer might come back that I was just too happy in New Orleans and this is…

Bad Attitudes journal reports on Rumsfeld’s triumphal tour and the search for deadly precursors of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “Listen,” said the threateningly affable defense secretary, “wouldn’t you expect a man like Saddam to hide his weapons of mass destruction? Last time I checked, hidden means you can’t find them. In fact if…

I knew I wanted to have a seat in the Jazz tent for Ornette Coleman’s headlining set, but the question was how far in advance I’d need to squat there to manage it, because there were a few other acts scattered around the other stages that we wanted to see as well, earlier in the…

Scot Hacker is all over the new iTunes store story, dropping wisdom on theory and practice left and right. Caveat: a man who calls OK Computer “Radiohead’s lamest album” is a man who has outgrown cannabis. [UPDATE: Scot begs to differ, insisting that the album was merely dull. Great minds, it seems, don’t necessarily hear…

Promoters of regime change in the US who run the fooled-ya GATT.org website have developed an alternate deck of cards for quick identification of their most-wanted list.

Sue W. reminds me that WWOZ is broadcasting much of the Fest.

…took a bunch of pictures, here are just a few (insterspersed among a quick rundown of music and eats)… large iced café au lait 3 beignets Hackberry Ramblers (Fais Do-Do stage) … their 70th anniversary, fresh back from Europe and the Today Show, their 16th straight year at Fest… some technical difficulties, gremlins, intros, 3rd…

The feeling of vacation. “Are you going to do any blogging when you’re here?” my friend S asked me. I told him probably not. Maybe I’ll upload some digital pix from around town or from the crowds (or stage shots) at Fest. But I did have to get online to send a file I had…