News

Blogs

Other stuff

Comic Strips

Radio Stations on the web

Online references

• Yahoo! Maps
• MapBlast
• Mapquest

Weblog:

Sunday, January 30 2000

Savaging Gary Bauer

I read Dan Savage's article at Salon about trying to infect Gary Bauer with the flu a coupla days ago. I had minimal emotional reaction to it; I thought it was amusing, and I thought it actually made Savage look pretty pathetic. Perhaps my lack of reaction was due to the fact that I've never had the flu (just the occasional really bad cold or food poisoning). Perhaps also because I've read his ridiculous sex-advice column before, and so find it hard to take him seriously. A lot of people took the article very seriously, though, and Salon Magazine feels the need to justify running the story. Checkitout.

Of course, Dan Savage is the author of Savage Love, a causticly humorous column (carried in some indie newspapers) about sex and love. Choice quote from the latest column: "people should avoid licking come off floors."

Friday, January 28 2000

Torah, Pi, Patterns

A friend recently wrote a short story regarding synchronicity and hidden messages/patterns in ancient texts (the Torah, for example). Another friend pointed out a fairly thorough debunking of the concept of finding hidden messages in the Torah, based on skip letters and patterns of words/letters.

Related: a few years ago a cheap black-and-white movie called Pi came out, in which a young scientist uses computers to try to find patterns in the Torah to reveal patterns in the world around us - among other things, patterns in the U.S. stock market. Cool movie; definitely worth the $60,000 the filmmaker spent to make it and your $4 to rent it. Otherwise related: Adrian Lyne made a kick-ass movie in 1990 called Jacob's Ladder; IMDB recommends it for Pi fans. Not quite related: The Renaissance, an online exhibit I worked on for Annenberg/CPB.

Rape Is Evolutionary?

Washington Post article on a new book by Professors Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, putting forth the theory that rape is a "natural" phenomenenon, and men rape women because evolution has, essentially, worked well for rapists. Linked without comment, aside from: it seems the you could say the same thing for the combined desire and ability to steal, kill, or read minds without getting caught; so thieves (those who are good at it) are a product of evolution? In the same sense that non-thieves are, yes.

Best online reference on rape I could find on short notice: Rape Brochure from The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

Utterly Useless

Useless page number 4080: Derek's Big Website of WalMart Purchase Receipts. Scanned-in images of every receipt this guy has gotten from WalMart since 1996, plus plenty of user commentary on his purchases.

Bush and the "Hispanic Community"

Bush Reaches Out To Hispanic Community With Generous Tip. Generous tip, as in a $20 tip on an $83.42 restaurant bill. From The Onion, of course.

Wednesday, January 26 2000

G21: The World's Magazine

A cool zine which I've been reading for a while - G21, which started as a print zine many years back and migrated onto the web. Not every article is stellar, but it's generally got some juicy bits.

Recent articles:

• A Motherless Child - Rod Amis, the site editor, drives home a historical point and reveals some painful personal history. The historical point: the fact that Martin Luther King was assassinated as a result of his efforts to end U.S. injustice is what people should remember more than his "I Have a Dream" speech. The personal history: the two abortions his most emotionally destructive ex-girlfriend had, neither with real consent from him.
  
• The Mother of Invention - lament that web workers (esp. contractors) get treated and paid poorly, and can't afford rents in Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley. This is an article I couldn't relate to; I'm getting paid pretty damn well, and live just outside DC...
  
• Wall Street's Cum Laude - argument that U.S. public education is designed not to give us better citizens and thinkers, but better consumers
  
• Africa - a prescription for ending (or ameliorating) strife in Africa
  
• Newsweek Kills Gore Drug Story - an interview with a former Gore "confidante" on Gore's drug use, and Gore's misrepresentation of it; and how the story was killed by Newsweek.
  

Monday, January 24 2000

The Future and Forever

I didn't realize it before, but the Wall Street Journal Millenium Special doesn't require registration to read. I've only hit the Futurology section so far, but it's interesting stuff. Includes predictions from as far back as the 1800s as to what the year 2000 would be like. There's also an interview with zoologist Edward O. Wilson who takes the view that human nature is heavily dependent on evolution, and that it hasn't changed appreciably in the last 100,000 years. Not sure if he is oversimplifying, or hopelessly biased by his current spot in history, or spot on.

Also, from last month's print issue of Wired: Don't Die, Stay Pretty - the prospects for immortality. According to a side article, those of us who are 30 (which I almost am) may live to see the year 2100; but we won't live for 500+ years, which experts are guessing those born in 2020 will be able to.

Sunday, January 23 2000

Barenaked Middle-Aged Ladies

Off-the-wall article in the New York Time: a group of women in the UK, age 45 to 66, posed nude (maybe) for a calendar they produced in order to raise money for leukemia research. They expected to make $2000; ended up making $500,000.

About the nudity: they apparently used "sieves and plants and apple presses and the like" to cover their naughty bits.

Thursday, January 20 2000

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

Front-page article in the Washington Post talks about possible widescale changes in North America's climate and worldwide weather pattern changes, as well. At the University of Washington, there's a more detailed/technical discussion of the theory behind this - which says that weather patterns in the Pacific shift dramatically every 20-40 years, from "warm" to "cool" and back. It's supposedly leaving the warm phase right now.

Crappy commercials and a hate for Robin Williams

Two strange little articles at smug.com: first, a critique of a dumb Budweiser commercial where five black men lounge, drink beer, watch basketball, and keep saying "Whazzup." Maybe Bud's ad director is a big Martin fan? Or maybe I'm out of touch.

Second, Brian Thomas would apparently like to take a two-by-four and smack Robin Williams upside the head a few dozen times with it.

Looking around the smug.com site further, looks like they do advertising critiques on a regular basis. From issue 35: an ad in which a blind girl is rewarded for finishing her Braille lesson with a trip to McDonald's. One problem with the commercial: a blind person would have to listen pretty carefully to figure out it's about McDonald's, and that the little girl is blind.

Why Kids of Differently-Named Parents Get Daddy's

Salon.com: an investigation into why women in marriages where both spouses retain their own last names tend to acquiesce in giving their children the father's last name. The somewhat-believable "conclusion": to increase the bonds between father and child. Subtext: Mom already has a huge biological experience with the kid; and Daddy's never really sure the kid is his, anyway. Side article: a couple that gave their kid (and their dog, too) a last name of "Flysch" - a combo of her "Fisch" and his "Flynn."

Sunday, January 16 2000

Today's Most Important Unreported Story (according to edge.org)

A very good article at Feed - 8 answers, from participants at Edge, to the question "What is today's most important unreported story."

The best answer from those published at Feed: "Maybe Media is the Real Opiate of the People," from Denise Caruso. The most worrying, if it's true: "Abrupt Climate Change," from William H. Calvin. You can read answers from more big thinkers at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/story/.

Saturday, January 15 2000

Salon breaks story on government paying for anti-drug messages

The Internet wins again: Salon magazine broke the story on the U.S. government giving "incentives" to TV networks in exchange for the ability to influence plotlines and scripts on popular shows. The Washington Post also has a story on the "payola." When I first heard about the controversy, I didn't care much, because I know that the US Postal Service and all the US military branches have script doctors who work with movie and TV producers to encourage pro-USPS and pro-military messages. And, of course, movies routinely contain product placement - use of brand-name items, or just shots of brand-name logos in the background, in exchange for money. And an anti-drug message is a better use of media than any of these, I think.

But the prospect of further social engineering is a scary one; and, rather than saying an anti-drug message is innocuous compared to pro-USPS, pro-military, or pro-corporate placement, I'd rather say get rid of 'em all. I don't trust the messages Hollywood scriptwriters give off (purposely or inadvertently) when they're working un-influenced; but at least, when not paid to put forth a certain point of view, there's a chance for diversity of opinion and experience.

If you haven't seen The Truman Show - which was all about the walls that Hollywood is placing around our experiences, whether by putting forth innocuous messages or product placement - check it out.

Friday, January 14 2000

They Might Be MP3 Giants

EMusic says They Might Be Giants was the most-often-legally-downloaded-MP3 band of 1999. Phish was #2. I'm guessing it only counts downloads from their own (EMusic's) site.

FAIR's Media Advisory on AOL-Time Warner

FAIR has put out a media advisory, pointing out the issues involved in the AOL/Time Warner merger that they think the press should have covered. Open access to high-speed cable, privacy issues, the fact that AOL is way over-priced, and the future of media all would've been worthy topics. The Freedom Forum also has an article on the merger. For more corporate-friendly coverage, try The Industry Standard's coverage.

I'm conflicted on the merger; my thoughts tend to center around the statements "Corporations are becoming as powerful as nations" and "There's a difference between being the biggest player in the game, and having the power to change the rules of the game." But I also have to ask myself: aren't mega-corporations doomed, due to their size and internal politics, to fail? If AOL gives preferential treatment/access to the media outlets (CNN, Time magazine) it now owns, it's actually backing losers; if those outlets were worthwhile, they'd be able to fight against their competitors without benefit of a corporate parent that controls people's Net access. If/when AOL treats them favorably, CNN and Time gain something; but AOL loses the revenue it could gain from these properties' better rivals.

Thursday, January 13 2000

Top 50 African Websites

woyaa.com, "Your window to Africa on the Internet," has published a report on what it considers the top 50 websites in Africa. The majority of highly-rated sites are in South Africa; they conclude with advice on how to encourage Internet development in Africa.

MP3 Wristwatch

Casio showed off an MP3-playing watch at CES in Las Vegas - it can store 66 minutes of "FM-quality audio," comes with headphones, and plays for 4 hours. Oh yeah - it also tells the time. (There's a Wired article on this and a coupla other Casio super-watches.)

Wednesday, January 12 2000

Vampiros lesbos

Donna Minkowitz asks Josh Whedon, creator/director of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to make Willow a lesbian. I assumed that's what would happen anyway; I tend not to watch the show, but the scene in the part-silent episode (too bad they couldn't get the advertisers to run silent commercials) where Willow's exchanging meaningful (?) glances with the Wiccan chick seemed like setup to me...

BTW - Alyson Hannigan (Willow) had a great, though small, role in American Pie. "And this one time, at band camp, I stuck a flute up my..."

Tuesday, January 11 2000

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

"The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is a national, nonprofit institution that conducts research on public policy issues of special concern to African Americans." They have various opinion poll results, publications, etc. on their site. From their 1998 Politics Opinion poll: "For the first time in a Joint Center survey, a greater proportion of blacks than whites say they are better off financially than the previous year."

How've your Y2K bugs been?

The only somewhat serious Y2K problem I've seen so far has been with hypermail 1.02, which I was using on a client's machine until investigation this week revealed it wasn't working quite right. The latest version of hypermail is a beta, version 2; the web page says hypermail 1.02 has a problem sorting year 2000 messages, but shouldn't crap out, which is what it did to me.

I don't know that this is a Y2K problem, because the hypermail 1.02 binary I was running came without source code (it was handed to me as part of an already-built site) and so I can't check; I believe it was source code modified by the prior programmer, too.

Aside from hypermail, I've had display problems in a few Perl programs, which've shown 100 instead of 00 as the year, and were easily fixed; but nothing that would cripple a system's functioning.

Monday, January 10 2000

Forget Space, the Net's the Thing for Sci-Fi

Excite News has a good article on how science fiction is being "revived" on the Internet. Includes a link to Robert Sawyer's site, which they call "the first science fiction Web site." No fiction, there, or info on science fiction in general; just info about Sawyer. Also, a link to Dark Planet, a zine publishing science fiction and fantasy on the web. I haven't read any yet; that site was last updated in October, and is planning a new issue in January. Another site worth checking out: Infinity Plus - reprints, mainly, of stories from some fairly famous science fiction authors.

Total lunar eclipse coming...

From Slashdot:North America'll get a total lunar eclipse January 20th; the (full) moon will slip into shadow, stay there for 2 hours, and then slip back out into brightness. Should be an interesting look... Read the MSNBC article on that, plus bits about scientists watching the births of distant stars, and why it is that the moon appears bigger on the horizon than when it's overhead.

Ethnic Portals Comin' to the Web

The Industry Standard has 4 articles about the rush to fund minority-focused portals. And therein, again, lies the folly of the Internet: 6 months ago, nobody would talk to the folks at The Black World Today, which has always been a good site (despite gratuitous use of Java); now people are beating down their door because (U.S.) minorities are a "hot" market. Lemmings all, ye venture capitalists.

Time Warner, AOL to Merge

Santo Cleopatra! Time Warner and AOL are merging. Lesson: Internet companies won't make (big) profits by making (big) profits; if they don't get acquired, they'll make profits by wielding their huge market caps to acquire profitable businesses.

Of course, maybe the government will step in and stop this media consolidation power play. (Not.)

Death Row Inmates Critiquing TV Shows

At Fade to Black: Death Row Inmates give their opinions on new TV shows. As with many things on the Net, I can't tell if this is real or now.

Write Market Webzine

Pointed out by a fellow aspiring author: Write Market Webzine, with information on science fiction/fantasy/horror short story markets, as well as publishers accepting novel-length genre fiction.

Sunday, January 9 2000

What People Search For

Curious about what people are searching for at various web search engines? A lot of search engines have pages where you can find out; Search Engine Watch has gathered a list of links to such pages, and links to lists of "top search words."

Friday, January 7 2000

PC Memories: How I Didn't Create the PC

At The Edge, a high-brow Net collaboration: an essay/semi-autobiography by David Bunnel, who was a technical writer at MITS when that company (not the University) started building PCs. Title: "PC MEMORIES, HOW I CREATED THE PC".

I read the intro, and then the first page of narrative, until I was stopped dead by this text: Note: This story is from a fictional autobiography that David Bunnell is writing. Fictional. The note goes on to say that part of the narrative is true, some false.

I tend to like to know what's real and what's not of what I read. Am I naive? Does it matter if there was a man named Ed Roberts at MITS, or if he's portrayed accurately? If everyone believes what Bunnel writes - is it as good as true? People were asking questions about constructed/communal truth on the Net back in 1992 and before; they still haven't been answered.

Thursday, January 6 2000

Worldwide (non-U.S.) search engines

DC-local mailing list provided a pointer to a Washington Post article which provided a pointer to the Mother of Search Engines - a list, broken down by region and country, of search engines all over the world.

New York Times edition from January 1, 2001

Worth reading: the front page from the New York Times 100 years in the future. Articles on weather-control satellites, r'bot equality protests, the Atlanta metro area grows to encompass 5 states, Senate seats for sale on a monthly basis... Viewing the articles requires registration with the NY Times site, which is free, and worth it.

Somewhat disappointing: all US news, aside from one article on Iceland winning the gold for quidditch (broom-like ice hockey game?) in the Olympics. Whatever happened to a global economy and global network?

Wednesday, January 5 2000

Baldy vs. Baldy: Captain Picard vs. Assistant Director Skinner

Ran across this while looking for an online schedule for premium channels (which I've got free for a month, so I've gotta tape a coupla dozen movies before I cancel this intro cable deal) - You Sexy Thing - Patrick Stewart vs. Mitch Pileggi. The question - who's sexier?

The picture of Pileggi actually seems unflattering to me; he looks better in a suit and glasses with that hard-ass look on his face. Currently, Patrick Stewart leads, 68% to 32%.

Uncultured Perl

Slashdot.org pointed out an article by the ever-entertaining Larry Wall: Uncultured Perl at Linux Magazine.

If you haven't seen it already (and you're a programmer), take a look at Larry's home page. His list of State of the Onion speeches is especially worth reading.

Gore and Bradley Go At It

From the Washington Post: Democrats Take Off the Gloves. The campaign for Dem nomination is getting nasty; with paid and volunteer hecklers, and physical confrontations between campaign staffers. Despite it all, "We'll all be friends again in April," says Gore's research director.

An odd story from a few days ago about Bradley: Bradley Tries to Redefine the Privacy Zone. Apparently, Bill Bradley is refusing to answer even the most basic questions which he considers private - including what religion he follows, what his favorite books are, and who his foreign policy adviser is. Maybe religion should be out of bounds; but you can't reveal who your foreign policy adviser is???

Sunday, January 2 2000

Song: Terrible Funk. Album: Ultra-Obscene. Artist: Breakbeat Era

Dive to dive and they come from nowhere

Big black suits the numbers on their jackets

Holy cow no I don't tell them nothin

I'm on your side

Don't go out they think I've learned my lesson

Day to day we fight a losing battle

Shine outshine it's on the surface baby

On the other side

Track 13.

Saturday, January 1 2000

10 Predictions for the Year 2000

Over on ahref.com: Predictions for the Web for 2000. I've already gotten one wrong, but left it in for the article anyway: ahref.com is finally listed in Yahoo.

I don't know that the Yahoo listing will have a huge impact. It's in what I consider the wrong category; and ahref.com has been steadily gaining readership anyway, through word of mouth and being linked to from appropriate other websites.

Year 2000 Roundup

If you're accessing this page from a concrete bunker, you can come out now; the world did not end. The press reported few problems across the world (though the press often underreports problems - for example, the stats on hunger in America seem pretty extreme to me, but I tend not to hear about hunger from traditional news media).

Anyway, few problems around the world.

From Mercury Center: It's just another day for the Web: "For several hours Friday, Auckland International Airport in New Zealand posted a notice on its Web site advising travelers that '.. No Y2K problems have been experienced and all operations are continuing as usual.' But the release was dated Jan. 1, 100.."

From The Washington Post: Computers Pass Their Date With Destiny: "In Japan, the radiation-monitoring systems at two nuclear power plants malfunctioned a few minutes after midnight..."

At news.com: a bunch of Y2K coverage: "The West Coast greets the new century without disruption..."

Happy New Millenium! (I won't quite say that 2000 is the start of the new millenium; but I'll call it a transition year, like that short period of time when the seconds hand on your mechanical watch is moving from 59 to 00, and it's not quite today, and not quite tomorrow...)

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...