A while back I posted about the upcoming godspeed you black emperor! disk, and the mysterious (to me) chart on constellation's website. There is now an explanation (and an error correction):
The back panel of both the CD and LP jackets contain a chart linking four major record labels to their respective holdings in the military industrial complex.Extensive internet research was conducted to compile and confirm the information contained in the chart. These pages and documents can be accessed from the chart graphic itself and also through the text version of the chart.
Currently listening to: joi - everybody say yeah.
Another excellent Public Dreams event last night: Parade of the Lost Souls. Can you believe I took some pictures?
Currently listening to: Jeff Buckley - Grace.
If you get a chance to go see Fly Pan Am & Do Make Say Think - do it. Groovy, mellow, jazzy, rocking, all in good measure. Go.
Top Ten Tips for digital photography. By the way, I want an UltraPod II.
RSS Validator. marginalia's rss 1.0 and rss 2.0 feeds have been upgraded to validity.
Currently listening to: DNTEL - in which our hero is put under a spell.
Fully functional retrofitted prop computer. A mac connected to a typewriter. Very Brazil.
Currently listening to: DNTEL - in which our hero finds a faithful sidekick.
Proof that marginalia.org is evil!
Find your own evils.
Currently listening to: Godspeed You Black Emperor! - - Terrible Canyons Of Static.
Famous Authors on Famous People
Atlas Books and HarperCollins Publishers are in talks to revive a series of minibiographies that married famous authors with famous subjects -- like Mary Gordon with Joan of Arc or Garry Wills with St. Augustine.
...
So Mr. Atlas and Jesse Cohen, the other top editor at Atlas Books, signed up the novelist David Foster Wallace to do a biography of a Georg Cantor, a 19th-century German mathematician. As Mr. Cohen explained, "He's the one who discovered that there are different levels of infinity, and some are bigger than others."
I imagine the challenge will be to limit DFW to 200 pages. Maybe if they tell him to write a long essay instead of a short book.
Currently listening to: haujobb - Perfect Average.
The sad thing is, this Ralph Wiggum fig is $30USD and I'm tempted. I mean, it's RALPH WIGGUM, man.
Currently listening to: Rheostatics - Junction Foil Ball.
Canadian holding dual citizenship deported to Syria
Global National has learned the U.S. government is now using racial profiling to force Canadians born in one of five specific countries to be fingerprinted and photographed before they are allowed entry the U.S.
Under a controversial new program, Canadians who were born in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan will automatically be placed on a terrorist watch list.
"All nationals of these five countries listed as state sponsors of terrorism will be registered under the system," confirmed Jose Martinez of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington.
According to the National Post (here's your grain of salt) Vancouver is the healthiest city in Canada.
Currently listening to: Tosca - Honey (Biggabush Dub).
Documentary I hope will be worth seeing: Fix: The Story of an Addicted City. (imdb.) The filmmaker, Nettie Wild, was just on the CBC discussing the film - seems like there has been lots of internal dissent within the NPA about the Four Pillars plan (aka The Vancouver Agreement). I guess people remain unconvinced that Harm Reduction - and the safe injection sites it implies - will work. The NPA mayoralty candidate, Jennifer Clarke, has endorsed the plan, as has her main opponent, Larry Campbell, although there's this:
I watched as Mayor Philip Owen's Four Pillar strategy for the Downtown Eastside was obstructed and thwarted by his own supporters, including the person who would become his own party's nominee for mayor.
Battling politicians, what fun. I think there is, at the very least, realization that something needs to be done now about Vancouver's East Side - ignoring it didn't make it go away.
There is some Vancouver-centered research on harm reduction here - all PDF files, unfortunately. Canadian stuff here.
I'm having a hard time finding anti-harm reduction stuff, but I'll update if I dig up anything beyond fact-free bulletin board chatter. ("The reason drugs are illegal is that they cause _more_ harm than alcohol and tobacco.")
Currently listening to: Strunz & Farrah - Caracol.
Slate Dialogue with Robert Wright, Steven Pinker and Martin Seligman.
Or take romantic love, with all its perfidy and heartbreak. Donald Symons has pointed out that if people belonged to a species in which each couple was marooned on an island for life, the absence of romantic rivals would not select for lifelong bliss; it would select for no consciousness at all. There would be no falling in love because there would be no alternative mates to select from, and falling in love would be a huge waste. Nor would there be pleasure in sex, which would be done for reproduction and would provide no more feeling than the release of hormones or the production of gametes. The richness and intensity of the emotions in our minds are evolutionary testimony to the preciousness and fragility of our relationships in life.
Currently listening to: Low - Below & Above.
Quicksilver - amazon.ca has a July 2003 pub date, amazon.com has January. Here's hoping .com is right!
Another Steven Pinker article for perusal. I picked up his The Language Instinct on the weekend.
- Tickets to Sigur Ros
- Tickets to Do Make Say Think and Fly Pan Am
- Learning and using (and to some extent teaching): Java, Ant, Struts, Velocity, Tomcat, log4j and JUnit. Almost overwhelming, but not quite.
- Having a half-dozen books on the go, and looking forward to finishing them all.
- 50 pounds down, less than that to go.
- Plus, how cute is this:
Currently listening to: Love and Rockets - Voodoo Baby.
So, I'm ready to release mt.el into the wild. If an emacs interface to your movable type weblog sounds like your cup of tea, you can download the code you need here:
http://www.marginalia.org/code/mt.el
http://www.marginalia.org/code/xml-rpc.el.
Complete documentation is included in mt.el. Let me know if stuff breaks, because it will. Have the appropriate amount of fun.
There is a mailing list for discussion and announcements here.
(And yes, this was posted using my text editor. Do you have a problem with that?)
Currently listening to: Beck - The Golden Age.