Category: Miscellany

  • Testing, testing. OK, someone managed

    Testing, testing. OK, someone managed to ping my trackback ping metablog, so once again I’m trying to ping it myself. This post may disappear.

  • On the waterfront

    Most years we hold the annual Waterside publishing conference in San Diego’s Mission Bay, but this year we are holding it near East Shore State Park in Berkeley. Author, consultant, entrepreneur (and author of ‘elm’) Dave Taylor, attending the conference, took a walk along the waterfront this morning and posted some observations about this “lovely…

  • R.I.P. Babatunde Olatunji

    I first saw Olatunji as the opening act at a Grateful Dead new year’s eve concert at the end of 1985. (That night was also the first time I saw the Neville Brothers, which started me on a strange odyssey through the Meters to Jazzfest and James Booker, but that’s another story.) He enraptured the…

  • Operation Iraqi Liberation

    It’s been over three weeks since this (Who’s leading Who?) appeared in my in-box and it still creeps me out every time I go take a look. I think it’s the phallic nose. And, no, I’ve never thought this conflict was merely about oil, but it still amuses me to imagine the operation named as…

  • IM status seen today

    Spotted this IM status message from the environs of Chaif consulting today: YANKEES MAGIC NUMBER – 156

  • Google as OS

    Every few years some new technological framework comes along to challenge Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop. Since the advent of the Internet, Microsoft has managed to fight off Netscape (IE), Java (.Net), application service providers (Hotmail), remote process calls (SOAP), and U.S. antitrust law (Bush). OK, I’m waving my hands here. Not all these things…

  • OK, OK, dullest blog

    This one keeps showing up on my screen, so I might as well note it. The Dullest Blog in the world is a deadpan satire of inconsequential web journaling. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Yahoo’s crack crew of editors can hardly contain their mirth: Web logs have reached critical mass and become ubiquitous…

  • CSS layout problem in my personal blog

    I’ve been trying to sort out the design elements at X-POLLEN. Right now I’m trying to track down a CSS (style sheet) error, and it helps me visualize the various design blocks to give them distinct colors and ugly borders. The problem is in the left two-thirds (links) area of the page. The banner (across…

  • Euphemism karma

    As I recall, “regime change” first entered the vocabulary back in 1998, when it stood for a stronger position against Saddam’s regime in Iraq than disarmament, essentially promising that post-Gulf War sanctions against Iraq would never be lifted as long as the Saddam Hussein regime remained in power there. There may have been a whiff…

  • Rhymes with bogosity

    Measure the buzzosity (suit or geek) of any website.

  • Hippies smoked my website

    Via MediaSavvy (a site whose brand combines two of my favorite buzzwords of recent times), I found this article called The Web’s Hippie Period is So Over. It’s an amusing take on the usual web dev chitchat, despite its ahistorical spin on the recent past. Gerry McGovern, the article’s author, is a content guy, web…

  • Almost ready for TiVo

    Screwed up taping the first half of Daniel Deronda Sunday night. These VHS tapes hold so little at the high-quality speeds. Juggling the incoming TV stream is becoming unmanageable. So far I’ve managed to avoid cable except when I was rooting for Jerry Brown on the road to the whitehouse in ’91 and ’92. Now,…

  • The word of the day

    The word of the day is \’fesm\’. Hard to explain why. Trust me on this. fesm.

  • Guardian on bloggers and Rachel Corrie's reputation

    The Guardian looks closely at how bloggers covered the aftermath of the Rachel Corrie story, finding an unsavory pile-on in the echo chamber. Cointelpro Tool takes on this line of reasoning and finds that it echoes the Indymedia line.

  • Ich bin ein Oaklandischer

    I think I followed Scot’s link to Justin Hall’s environs and ended up at the Beast Blog (“Because East Bay is Pig Latin for Beast”), reading about this Oaklandish logo: A deco tree with big branches and big roots both – “Oaklandish.” I first saw it on a sticker in the window of Walden Pond…

  • Some people who should have blogs

    off the top of me head: Jeff Green Dan Brodnitz Nicholas Meriwether Robert Meriwether Jennifer Crumlish Arthur Crumlish (pear and fills) don’t get me started on Crumlishes! Jeff Tiedrich Justin D’arms Doris Lessing Louis Menand Christopher Hitchens

  • Rumsfeld denies reports he ignored advice

    According to this CNN story: Rumsfeld on Sunday dismissed “hyperventilating” critics of the war in Iraq and called reports that he vetoed plans by top officers for a larger invasion force “fiction.” Is anyone else finding themselves annoyed by the extreme spin being put out by both sides in the continuing Iraq war debate?

  • It's Dave Winer's world… we just live in it

    Gary Hart has a blog. Let’s see if he can keep it up through a grueling campaign. A presidential blog would be cool but somehow I don’t see it.

  • Talking Points Memo taking flak

    For an analysis of the growing scandal [Isn’t scandal a bit strong for a story that can be spun multiple ways? –ed. {Who the hell are you? Go back to Kaus’s blog! –xian}] around the idea of Rumsfeld and other politicos ignoring the best advice of the military brass and needlessly exposing our servicemen to…

  • I'm sorry, but the '80s bit

    Over at Hyperbole, Jim Haefele reminisces about what he refers to as his decade. Well, we can’t choose the time and date of our own birth and one’s own memories always end up entangled with the cultural detritus of the period, plus he’s in Tunisia and I know when you are away from home, it…

  • Ain't no thesis like a

    Ain’t no thesis like a P-Funk thesis…. Is the academic world ready for the awesome power of a fully operational mothership? Scot Hacker reports that an article he wrote on Parliament-Funkadelic for a book by Pagan Kennedy has inspired a master’s thesis. Now maybe his seminal writings on Liberace will finally get the attention they…