The Bad Turtles
An inventory of New Years.
2003
160 Posts, 12 Publications, 137 Links
Santas
A throng of drunken Santas, rampaging.
A New Website for Harper’s Magazine
On December 1, 2003, a new website for Harper’s Magazine launched at Harpers. org .
Medium of Exchange (Revised)
“I tried once to imagine the path that a dollar takes when it leaves my wallet, when I buy a can of soup.”
Commentary: Decoding the Money Puzzle
Commentator Paul Ford makes money as a freelance web consultant. Understanding XML and HTML is easy for him. But understanding the making of money is harder.
Losesome, Lonesome
Q: Maybe we could have a threesome? A: Maybe you could have a onesome.
The Chinese Cats
Recalling a friend, finding her identity in her early 20s.
Themes and metaphors in the semantic web discussion
poorbuthappy.com Nov 15Peter Van Dijck does a wonderful job breaking down the argument over the Semantic Web that took place last week, cartoon-style. I (Paul) am represented by a picture from 1999 taken with several plastic bags stuffed in my mouth (c.
Scott David Herman
scottdavidherman.com Nov 11Scott David Herman’s site, a portal for his many projects, is chock marvelous.
No topless pictures of Jessica Lynch
nydailynews.com Nov 11It turns out that Hustler magazine will not run tit-shots of sort-of-POW Jessica Lynch after all, which means that the American press, instead of lamenting over the exposure of Jessica’s pert little nipples as an awful symbol of our lost national innocence in an insolent, amoral age, will actually have to cover the war in Iraq. Q: What do you call masturbating to naked Jessica Lynch pictures?
A Response to Clay Shirky’s “The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview”
Clay Shirky, a well-regarded thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies, has published an essay called “The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview,” a critical appraisal of the semantic web which claims, in essence, that the Semantic Web is a technological pipe dream: an over-specified solution in search of a problem. As someone who has spent long hours attempting to fathom the standards which define the Semantic Web (see and ), I can empathize with Shirky’s frustration, particularly his frustration with the more lofty of the Semantic Web evangelist’s claims.
Jill
A conversation after some events.
The Beard and Moustache Contest
news.bbc.co.uk Nov 4So amazing, so beautiful.
Jack Rusher’s Triple Store
rhetoricaldevice.com Nov 4“A random triple can be retrieved, on a cold cache, in around sixty milliseconds. Organic workloads perform very well because the system attempts to place data together on disk so that, for instance, the string table for OWL Lite can be stored in one data page that is kept in cache by frequent accesses.
The XML Book Business
xml.com Nov 4... is in trouble.
Wayne Coyne’s Philosophy
observer.guardian.co.uk Nov 4I think the Flaming Lips are proof that without skill, talent, money and good recording gear, you can make good records. Shadow animals aren’t as easy to do as they look.
Memex Simulator
memexsim.sourceforge.net Nov 3Hypertext like Vannevar Bush wanted it: a MacOSX Memex simulator.
Chemical Plants
Memories of the chemicals of childhood.
Rx4RDF
rx4rdf.liminalzone.org Nov 3“Rx4RDF is a specification and reference implementation for querying, transforming and updating W3C’s RDF by specifying a deterministic mapping of the RDF model to the XML data model defined by XPath. ” All in Python—shows some truly nice thinking.
The Flood
There is a huge flood right here in my neighborhood, and it’s about to come up to my door. It’s already up the second floor, and I’m on the third.
The Media History Project Timeline
mediahistory.umn.edu Nov 2So much media, so much time. A chronology of media, from cave paintings to weblogs.
Masthead
Publisher Paul Ford ford@ftrain. com Managing Editor Paul Ford ford@ftrain.
How I Thank Them
notpretty.com Oct 29A young woman is trapped by her drunken father. An absolutely outstanding piece of writing.
Flash
It was so simple to execute, and for such great results. First, a definition: Flash mob — a work of situationist art whereby individuals communicate over the Internet in order to come together as a group without warning, perform some random, pre-defined action intended to disrupt and confuse the people nearby, and then disperse.
How to Put a Finger on Motherhood
tremble.com Oct 27“Look at this baby! ” she broadcast through her snide remarks.
DVD Player
Buying a thing, and what it gets me.
Letter
A letter to the president regarding the Philippine war.
Easy Way Out
Elliott Smith, and stories about music, and false connections.
Seppuku: Practical Guide
kyushu.com Oct 22A loose kimono should be worn. As soon as the Sambo tray with the knife is placed before you, allow the kimono to fall open, reach forward, pull the tray toward you, pick up the knife and cut from left to right.
Scaling the Heights of Celebrity
members.shaw.ca Oct 22The Smile
She looks out the window, wearing a T-shirt with holes chewed into the collar, nervously stroking her nose. What can I say to her?
Venture Capital Failures
bvp.com Oct 16“Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation’s oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.
Chinatown and Back
The parade! The perspective! The joy!
Obsessively Tracking Down Jeff Mangum
atlanta.creativeloafing.com Oct 9Journalist tries to track down the man behind Neutral Milk Hotel . Mangum doesn’t want to hear about it, wants to be left alone, and the author says: “He’s wrong, of course.
Joke
Where does Björk live? Njörk.
All The Brands Names I Can See While Typing Without Turning My Head or Moving My Eyes
Iiyama Monitor . Gateway Laptop .
Intercourse
Finding a penny, my friend held it up to the light, and said, “Make a wish. ” “I wish that I could keep that penny forever, and it would always be shiny.
A tenuous connection to me
plainlayne.dreamhost.com Oct 8A strong, straightforward piece of writing about looking for your biological parents: “I was proof of something ugly to him, maybe the same way the divorce was proof of something ugly. But he didn’t want to talk about that.
Orrin Hatch, Who Pisses on the Constitution to Help His Friends, Shitty Musician, Worse Politician
sltrib.com Oct 8Orrin Hatch wants to change the constitution so Schwarzenegger can be president. Related: Heal Our Land , the 7th album by Orrin Hatch and Janice Kapp Perry.
Schwarzenegger, Rimmer
groups.google.com Oct 8She said [Schwarzenegger] then whispered in her ear: “Have you ever had a man slide his tongue in your [anus]?
Schwarzenegger Anecdotes
anecdotage.com Oct 8Fun Schwarzenegger anecdotes, including the time he smashed pie into a 12-year-old girl’s face.
Schwarzenegger, Lover
groups.google.com Oct 8Tell-all on Schwarzenegger, the gubernatorial lothario with a pig-valve heart. Say it with me: “eating is not cheating.
Progress
From there to here, then to now.
Marking Up Bureaucracy
Marking Up Bureaucracy September 24, 2003 Paul Ford If there is a perfect user of XML, it's the huge, sprawling United States government. With thousands of diverse offices, from the Navy to National Park Service, each federal agency routinely exchanges gigabytes-worths of documents and data with other offices, businesses, and citizens.
Medium of Exchange
Layers of language and millions of dollars, all confounded, all tied together.
The Morning News party, September 20, 2003
themorningnews.org Sep 16At the Royal Oak, 594 Union Avenue, Brooklyn NY. Buy me a drink.
Concession Stand
Paul: I used to go to this movie theater operated by a dyslexic. Scott: And he would put the times up all backwards?
Accordion Time
Time folds and unfolds in the rhythm of heartbearts, which leads to a theory.
Review
Looking at it two years out.
Commentary: A Theory of Time
Airport waiting areas are often mind-numbing places. The harsh fluorescent lights and not-quite-comfortable chairs aren't exactly conducive to formulating a new theory of time - unless you are commentator Paul Ford.
Planespotting
Refractions on flying.
Talking With Mom
Funerals, free meals, and nagging.
An Interview with Steve Burns from Entertainment Weekly
ew.com Sep 4Any more kid stuff in your future? My best friend Paul Ford and I are working on a rock opera for children about a squirrel and a rat who become friends.
Justin Timberlake Live at Roseland Ballroom, NYC, 8/29/03
anil.typepad.com Sep 3A review of a Justin Timberlake show by Anil Dash. Dash Knows Pop, and the review is as much about marketing as it is about musicianship and stagecraft.
June-August, 1994
A long summer in upstate New York.
Processing Processing
Late night thoughts on little computer languages, the web as a form, and my own ignorance.
Experiments in Processing
Exploring the small computer language Processing.
Red Rotator
Left, right, up, down, click.
Pat Freestone’s Love Life
lostandfrowned.com Aug 28“Another perfectly good relationship destroyed by a hole in the rubber. “I’m assuming it was a hole—if not a complete rupture—in one of the methamphetamine-filled balloons resting somewhere in my colon that allowed a hefty bump of speed to seep out into my bloodstream at the most inopportune time and give old Pat Freestone a wakeup call from the front desk of the Heartbreak Hotel.
The Alley Watchers
The women who live on Rebecca Dravos’ side-street are mothers, and judges of men and women.
Black Box Theater
Being in the audience can put you on stage.
I Have a Dream
In the intervening years, this speech has been reinterpreted and co-opted by: those who would make King into a good negro, forgetting his uncomfortable, “Why We Can’t Wait” radicalism; those who would make King into an Uncle Tom, claiming that he didn’t go far enough, that his non-violence can be equated with weakness; those who would throw the first stone, and use his philandering as a convenient reason to dismiss his nights and days of work, his jail time, his constant labor; and those who take pleasure in the rhetorical grace of the speech, but ignore its native substance, and sample the speech for pop songs, layer it into montages, or use it in television commercials. None of this co-opting changes the fact that the speech is one of the few excellent pieces of exhortatory, visionary rhetoric ever written, and certainly the last great city-on-the-hill vision of America that we’ve received—written by a man who lived under segregation in the old, bad south. 40 years to the day later, the vision is far from realized. But at least it’s a lighthouse towards which to steer.
Square/Sphere/Static
Left, right, up, down, click.
A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters
One of the most agonizing pieces of prose ever written, and a warning to all who would use puns.
John Jones’ Monument
With $50,000 over the course of his life, what did John Jones accomplish?
Taking the Edge Off
Things we love that do not love us back.
Give the Country the Facts
The country is tired of the Philippine War. It would like to close the account.
New Discoveries in Acoustics.
A description of the Pyrophone, an early sound synthesizer utilizing tubes and fire.
Looking for Something Stable
What we talk about when we talk about fetishes.
The Moral Character of the Monkey
Monkeys are ungrateful creatures, but can be caught with pitch-lined gloves. They like to ride pigs. A monkey will unfold all your papers and scatter them about the room.
New York’s Sixth Borough: Rikers Island
choiresicha.com Aug 18“Rikers is a massive secret waystation in the midst of the towering Gotham of wealth and privilege.
The First Honest Gay Personal Ad
choiresicha.com Aug 18“If we actually become boyfriends, my anarcho-feminist mega-lesbian mom will fly in from Oakland and rip your politics apart until you’re crying on the floor like Trent Lott at Farrakhan’s house. ” Choire Sicha makes me wish I wasn’t straight, except I’d be a big fat bear and more or less totally unlaid in NYC.
Telescope
Seeing with prose, and letting the cat out of the box.
Not GOSPLACS
Feedback on .
As Brooklyn Slowly Drunkened
The blackout of 2003.
The Chinese Room Thought Experiment
Imagine that you carry out the steps in a program for answering questions in a language you do not understand. I do not understand Chinese, so I imagine that I am locked in a room with a lot of boxes of Chinese symbols (the database), I get small bunches of Chinese symbols passed to me (questions in Chinese), and I look up in a rule book (the program) what I am supposed to do.
How They Telegraph Chinese
How did they telegraph Chinese? The managers of the China Submarine Telegraph Company have solved the somewhat difficult problem of how to transmit telegraphic messages in Chinese.
Sadness After the Condiment War
The cost of war is very high.
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Gustavus Adolphus, late king of Sweden, plans a trip to Palestine, and requests international compatriots.
A Chinese View of the Statue of Liberty
“And this statue of Liberty is a gift to a people from another people who do not love or value liberty for the Chinese.”
Dust Mites Gone Wild!
News about an album release. It is a good album.
A New Technology for Emergent Democracy
novaspivack.typepad.com Aug 11Nova Spivack proposes a collaborative group-thinking system, like a community-driven version of flash mobs: “Members of ThePeople. net agree to give 15 minutes of their time each week to do whatever ThePeople.
The Condiment War
The catsup’s red glare, cabbage bursting in air.
Antlers
We were driving through West Virginia, a little numbed by the road. So we stopped at a resort, and we Paul Ford sat below chandeliers—6 of them at least—made of interlocked antlers.
Web Pidgin
Standards and schemas, pidgins and islands.
Commentary: Web Standards
Theoretically, pages on the Web are governed by standards. Commentator Paul Ford makes his living developing Web sites, and he says that if the standards were really standard, it would make his job a lot easier.
The Ftrain Sitekit
Spinning the plates.
One's Self I Sing
ONE'S-SELF I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Shameful Pedantic Pettiness
Sometimes I can’t help myself.
Neutral Weblog Hotel
I rarely discuss weblog-world stuff here, since Ftrain is not a proper weblog, for reasons I don’t want to explain now, and the word “blog” gives me hives. But still: There is a concerted effort underway by a group of the well-informed and enthused individuals to create a common, standard format for “ weblog syndication, archiving, and editing .
Commentary: Software
Late at night, commentator Paul Ford converses with his computer. It promises him power -- if only he will learn the latest version of Photoshop. Then, he falls asleep and dreams in Photoshop, grabbing chunks of his environment and moving them around.
Software Story
Visions of Photoshop, visions of PowerPoint.
We really don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go
football.guardian.co.uk Jun 12”And the reason? Much as it pains a feminist such as myself to say so, Beckham has been grotesquely, massively, pussy-whipped by his talentless, ambition-hound of a wife.
Bruce Cockburn - Albums - You’ve Never Seen Everything (2003)
cockburnproject.net Jun 12What a weird coincidence that the non-North-American distribution cover of the album would find and use the same 1"x1” piece of clip art at the top right corner of a back page of a German encyclopedia republished by Dover.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is she? A lady An easy lover The one So unusual A black magic woman So heavy Always a woman to me What has she got?
My Ethnic Identity
A short story.
I Met a Woman at a Bar
A friend insisted I come out despite my absolute non-desire to go out on a Sunday night, and a pile of work remaining at home. I showed up in sartorial shame, jeans and a button shirt, hair sticking up, full of self-hatred.
Nice Cup of Tea and A Sit Down
nicecupofteaandasitdown.com Jun 8This community site discusses, primarily, biscuits. Its mission statement in entirety: “Well I think we should all sit down and have a nice cup of tea, and some biscuits, nice ones mind you.
Advertisement
From Scientific American Magazine, 27 November, 1869, p. 352.
Only the Dead
Only a handful were there this afternoon, in the light rain and strong wind. Among Green-Wood’s nearly 600,000 dead are Currier, Ives, and Basquiat; mobster Albert Anastasio and Governor Dewitt Clinton; Horace Greeley and Boss Tweed.
Plushie Forest
otter.transform.to May 26Remarkable animals.
The Dominion
dominionpaper.ca May 26Great-looking lefty Canadian paper edited by Dru Oja Jay.
What Were They Thinking?
Gkronuk, River God: Wasn’t really thinking, actually. Esseltaub, Forest Spirit: That I should never have given that woodchopper three wishes.
Alex Golub
lancelot.uchicago.edu May 25Read the intro, then LOOK at that picture.
Taxidermy Postulate
...the sweetness of the morning fox.
Extreme Ironing
extremeironing.com May 21Only for truly hardcore ironers.
Doctorate
A trip to Pittsburgh.
Hugo
textism.com May 16A verdant green, with weimeraners.
The Veblenite: Thorsten Veblen. Writings - Startpage
de.geocities.com May 15A veritable orgy of high-quality Veblen.
The Mechanical End
Calling it a day in the information age.
Like Ezra Said
Notes from the night out.
Spending
Why I don’t have a name.
Shaving the Eyebrows
A version of this piece was originally broadcast by NPR on the 12 May 2003 edition of NPR’s All Things Considered . It can be heard on their web site via RealAudio or Windows Media Player (the link is about halfway down the page).
Commentary: The Milt
The Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Penn., was founded as a boarding school for orphans in 1909. Commentator Paul Ford, who attended The Milt during high school, recalls how one day his roommate rebelled openly and bizarrely: He shaved his eyebrows.
My friend the Arb
Notes from the hypertext sweatlodge.
Is You Wicked?
nytimes.com May 7Ali G takes on Baker, Scowcroft, and others.
Opportunities to Learn
There will be a test on this, later.
Until the Water Boils
...something you do with cloth and paper.
Berkeley DB XML: An Embedded XML Database
Berkeley DB XML: An Embedded XML Database May 7, 2003 Paul Ford Berkeley DB XML is an open source, embedded XML database created by Sleepycat Software . It's built on top of Berkeley DB , a "key-value" database which provides record storage and transaction management.
Uraniborg
es.rice.edu May 6Tycho Brahe’s legendary observatory, with blueprints.
The Payoff
A word on astronomy.
The Monkey on Lafayette Street
Are they any other sightings to corroborate this story?
Clean Paths
Watching, walking, in Prospect Park, under the airplanes.
Elevator
Making a terrible noise.
Missed Connections
Ftrain, 6:30 PM, between 23rd St. and Smith and 9th St.
A Spell to free oneself from Excessive Computer Enchantment
taliesin.clara.net Apr 28Majickal rebooting.
Letter-by-Letter Word Games FAQ
gtoal.com Apr 28Impressive list of word-guessing games (i. e.
Library of Congress Overseas Offices
loc.gov Apr 25“Since 1962 the Library of Congress has maintained offices abroad to acquire, catalog, preserve, and distribute library and research materials from countries where such materials are essentially unavailable through conventional acquisitions methods.
Selected Remarks from the House of Representatives
Repeal the Cork Tariff!; Visa the beloved snoop; the Museum of Dentistry heals America; Palestinians should be nonviolent.
Letters to American Political Institutions
With replies, if I ever receive more than a form letter in return.
Horse in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Letter to Senator Santorum
Oh, Senator Santorum, why do you say those things?
Gargoyle in Albuquerque, New Mexico
All the prosperity in China
guardian.co.uk Apr 21While the Western economies move ever slower, China hits 9% growth annually.
States, Facing Budget Shortfalls, Cut the Major and the Mundane
nytimes.com Apr 21Ugly news for state spending, especially in the face of tax cuts.
Vacuuming the Lungs
How to breathe deeply when you’re nervous.
Message to the Republican Mob
Rap by a Democratic Congressman from New York, originally published in the Congressional Record, 23 July, 2002.
Man bites dog
syracuse.com Apr 21Had to happen.
XML Pipeline Definition Language Version 1.0
w3.org Apr 21Great Caesar’s ghost, a new standard--and from the World Wide Web Consortium! This one is XML related and pretty good; it doesn’t really touch webloggers, so there won’t be the moronic hooting there was over RSS, but it does actually gets in the same territory as Cocoon and Ant, that is, the definition of series of transformations of XML documents into other documents using a set of rules.
How Things Ended Up With Rachel Lange
Rachel had her hearing on 11 April, 2003; this is the result.
Letter to the Supreme Court
Regarding RSS feeds. Submitted via email 21 April, 2003.
Parking Lot in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Letter to the Senate
Regarding RSS feeds. Submitted via email 21 April, 2003.
Four Letters to the United States
Correspondence with government institutions of the United States regarding different ways they could use RSS to increase awareness of various government actions.
Letter to the White House
Regarding RSS feeds. Submitted via form 21 April, 2003.
Letter to the House of Representatives
Regarding RSS feeds. Submitted via email 21 April, 2003.
Drawbridge
Raising, lowering, somewhere in Florida.
Brokentype
brokentype.com Apr 18Alex continues to shine brightly, weighing in on the potential cuts in the NYC zoo funding: “Have you ever seen an Orangutan begging for money on a subway platform, soaked in its own urine? Have you watched the mighty gazelle hustling for tricks under the 59th street Bridge?
Moments of Weakness
A tiny, ad hoc catalogue of guilty pleasures and poor judgement.
The time I did lines with a bunch of grad students upstate and we ran around in the woods naked firing guns at each other at random
Paul asked me to elucidate this a little bit. So here’s the short version.
City of Tomorrow
All those buildings. A photo illustration done at work.
DJBorg
sourceforge.net Apr 16In Python, runs on Windows: “DJBorg turns your MP3 playlist into a personalized radio station, adding randomly-generated DJ banter between tracks. Song information (based on ID3 tags), news, weather, and headlines are announced via a text-to-speech engine.
A Remedy Will Be Long in Coming
Not for a while; it will be so much work.
Still missing
sfgate.com Apr 16Solid editorial about media coverage of the Laci Peterson case, from the reporter’s POV.
Fuzz Acid & Flowers
borderlinebooks.com Apr 16An “extensive guide to U. S.
Track 3: Horse Canyon
The third track from the album “Oat Songs in the Dropsy.”
Dana Gioia’s Rhyme and Reasoning
washingtonpost.com Apr 15Not very revealing, but still engaging profile of NEA-chair Dana Gioia.
In Broken Baghdad, Photo Negatives (washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com Apr 15The meaning of images of war, of a looted museum and an armless boy.
Terrible Tales
lostandfrowned.com Apr 15The collected works of Timmy and Jenny, including the compact, elegantly told “No more p-p bathes tonight! ,” the dark and revealing “Someone Called the Cops,” the remarkable, uplifting, and joyful “It takes a steady hand,” and the newly released, potently surreal drama of childhood choices, “Horse of Darkness.
Obstacle Course
ryerson.ca Apr 15A well-considered article by Kate Guay, a friend of this site, on the representation of the handicapped in Canadian media.
Waiting for the Train at 23rd St.
And what happened.
Space Shuttle
The Escape
At the end of winter.
Machinery
The Most Dangerous President Ever
prospect.org Apr 11That George W. Bush is trouble, man.
Sea
In Defense of Pittsburgh
A response to Rachel Lange.
Team Techno
teamtechno.com Apr 11Not war related: Team Techno (“we chose the name because it was the most annoying possible thing we could come up with”) has an album online in the handy MP3 format. Newark, Delaware has never sounded so good.
You can only read this if you’re in Australia!
onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu Apr 11Texts with expired Australian copyrights, but illegal to read, in this public domain form in the U. S.
Iraqis not all that excited about the statue
prorev.com Apr 11Unfortunately, it looks suspiciously like a big photo-op.
Another Statement on the Legality of Rachel Lange’s Case
A legal explication of Rachel’s case.
Track 2: Skinning the Chickadee
The second track from the album “Oat Songs in the Dropsy.”
Ftrain.com Editorial Policy
Regarding emails and letters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Notes from a cold morning in Brooklyn.
Kingfish
Melting in the Dark
turksheadreview.com Apr 10Rhetoric - and rational argument - as a past art.
Florida Images
Sunshine State
Words and Images from Florida
Accordion Time, Liquid Time
Travel in machines is always a miracle; ask any dog who sticks his head out a window.
Pelican
An Interview With the Dolphin
Takoma is one of the U. S.
Mike K Responds to Rachel Lange
Mike K writes in with some concerns about Rachel’s essay--a good representative email from some of the people who weren’t sure whether to believe her or not.
Rachel Lange’s response to Mike K
Rachel replies to concerns about her story.
Rachel Summarizes
The end result, until the hearing.
Chad Thornton Replies to Rachel Lange
Chad Thornton writes in in to show support, and emails the city of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh, PA and Followups
Rachel Lange, who lives in Pittsburgh, PA, was accosted by police and jailed for 30 hours for nonviolent protest. She writes in with her story, and Ftrain readers respond.
Responses to Rachel’s Letter
Two of the responses to Rachel’s email.
Scott, Paul, and Takoma the Dolphin
A dialogue.
Pittsburgh, PA
Rachel Lange is arrested.
War Diary
War Journal: March 24, 2003
turksheadreview.com Mar 27Jim Esch knocks one out of the park on the US/Iraq war.
Democracy is in an undisclosed location.
Protest signs from last Saturday’s march.
Zabibah and the King
jonathonart.com Mar 21Add copyright violation to the list of Saddam’s crimes against humanity.
The Salt Lake Tribune—Mitchell’s Father Asks for Leniency
sltrib.com Mar 19Unsettling profile of Shirl Mitchell, father of Brian Mitchell, the man who abducted Elizabeth Smart, in which Shirl admits to raping his wife: “Shirl Mitchell denies allegations that he physically abused his wife, but said, ‘I forced the issue of sex once in a while,’ prompting her to leave a poster in the master bedroom accusing him of rape.
‘Prophet’ opens theme park for our alien heritage
observer.co.uk Mar 19Daniken, author of “Chariots of the Gods” etc, opens Swatch and Coca-Cola-backed bazillion dollar horseshit theme park.
Pensioner’s ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ tattoo
news.bbc.co.uk Mar 1985-year-old woman has death wish tattooed on her chest.
Girl writes English essay in phone text shorthand
portal.telegraph.co.uk Mar 19The teenager’s essay began: “My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kds FTF.
Bryan Adams brings girl out of coma
reuters.com Mar 19A comatose girl, brought to a Bryan Adams concert in Munich, regains partial consciousness.
Postal service offers tips for mail to Kuwait
dtic.mil Mar 19To cut down on Anthrax, the zip codes for Kuwait are unlisted.
Marines Hold Strong Man Contest
stripes.osd.mil Mar 19How far can you push a humvee through the desert? The prize is a half-eaten package of cookies.
NPR Ombudsman
npr.org Mar 18NPR has an ombudsman who answers your criticism about whether the network is doing its job. In this case, the question is “is NPR pro-America/anti-war enough?
Fifteen Times Scarier than Saddam
tbray.org Mar 1815 things that we should worry about more than Hussein, from XML star Tim Bray.
TAMS Home Page
educ.kent.edu Mar 18Text Analysis Markup Software - application for marking up documents for ethnographic research.
How We’re Coping
With things all aflutter, and no good protest songs, we need to do something. Also, God tells us to protest.
75,000,000 Toddlers Can’t Be Wrong
‘People are wondering why I would leave this fantastic kids show and try to make it as a musician,’ Steve Burns says, holding a guitar pick in his hand. ‘And it was fantastic.
Baltimore Conversion
A trip to Baltimore to see my brother.
Commentary: A Religious Conversion
Commentator Paul Ford spent his life revering his much older brother from afar. But when Greg called to talk about becoming a Catholic, Paul realized he did not want to witness his brother's conversion -- but he went anyway.
Esther Dyson’s Vision of 2023
edventure.com Mar 6Microchip pills, Steve Ballmer, and Moldovan newspapers.
Adverdate
brokentype.com Mar 5“She had gone to Princeton, and she had this strange and unidentifiable patrician accent that made me feel inferior. In a good way, I mean—like a favored student.
Gnusto
gnusto.mozdev.org Mar 5Play Z-machine IF games inside of Mozilla. Whoot!
The Horror of Blimps
teemings.com Mar 4A classic example of the ancient struggle of man man vs. blimp.
The case against Conrad
books.guardian.co.uk Mar 4Chinua Achebe on Heart of Darkness: “Yes, you will notice that the European traders have ‘tainted’ souls, Marlow has a ‘pure’ soul, but I am to accept that mine is ‘rudimentary’? ” He shakes his head.
Dinner with a Billionaire
A work of fiction, in which any relationship between actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Prejudice Unveiled
hti.umich.edu Mar 3Prejudice unveiled and other poems, by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer, from Boston, 1907.
Pirate Riddles for Sophisticates
mcsweeneys.net Mar 3Q: What’s a pirate’s favorite aspect of computational linguistics? A: PARRRsing sentences.
The Hyperion Yacht
yachtmodels.com Mar 3Jim Clark was a founder of Netscape, made a mint, and created this monument to his own folly: a monstrish yacht filled with bleeping Silicon Graphics computers and massive sailing masts. A floating emblem of moral and technological obsolescence.
At-Risk Teens
They need to do some yachting.
Lucky Ducky Purgative
Working that orange alert out of my system.
The Astrakhan Awareness Network
In which I encourage Paul to get a haircut.
Cool 2B Real
at the first meeting at Circle 1 Network , a marketing company that specializes in getting brand messages to kids age three and up, creator of cool-2b-real. com National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Rep: …I came home one night and my daughter was eating a garden burger.
Wm. Gibson on Terrorism
Author William Gibson nearly blows up the world.
Shellacking the Challah
The ivy league and elsewhere.
A Genuinely Small Piano
guimp.com Feb 22A remarkably tiny Flash-based piano.
Run from Ground Zero
A brief collection of essays on politics and the personal.
Progress Report
How it’s going.
“Jesus has monkey toes and breasts”
Jim Valvis is writing again.
Images from Science
rit.edu Feb 18Dozens of pictures from a gallery show at RIT. Flies and intestines galore.
Saturday
A march in February.
It’s fun to rhyme with my friend Hesta Prynn
I skin an eggplant like no other.
Place: Sense of Place
augustana.ab.ca Feb 14A bibliography on the concept of “A sense of place.
Enigmatical List of Young Ladies in the Borough of West Chester
Love expressed as a series of early 19th-century riddles in the newspaper of a Pennsylvania village.
Marketing Idea
Waiting for news of poison gas, Paul & I banter.
Annoyance
A quick conversation between Paul & me, in which I gain the upper hand effortlessly.
ProfQuotes
profquotes.com Feb 11Goofball quotes from professors.
Studs Terkel: Conversations with America
studsterkel.org Feb 10Massive and wonderful “official” Studs Terkel site.
Ftrain Sponsors
A list of those who have helped Ftrain.com, and to whom I am very grateful. If your name isn’t here, and you helped me out, please tell me - I’d like to keep this list as complete as possible.
Selections from My Name is Blanket, © 2046 Blanket Jackson
Pop star Michael Jackson’s son Blanket has already made headlines because of the bidding war for his story, with //300 million new credits paid by Sony House for audio, film, 3v, interactive, game, expert system, and prose rights. While the book won’t be released until next month (except for privilege copies for the Masters), we were able to secure several tantalizing preview sections. Read on!
The End of Technology
A night out, then over.
Circuits of Change
oblivio.com Feb 5Great piece of fiction about the total lack of corporate cultural resonsibility.
INFRANGIBLE v3.1
infrangible.com Feb 4Beautiful site - a mix of still life and portrait photography with great music (needs Quicktime). Slow over my dial-up, but still worth it.
Kiki, the Legendary Goatrilla
A tale of genetics and budget cuts.
Cooking of Eggs
The table of contents from Many Ways for Cooking Eggs by Mrs. S. T. Rorer.
IMPEACH BUSH
radio.weblogs.com Feb 2Call for impeachment, written by a law prof.
An Extremely Incomplete Taxonomy of Cinematic New Yorks
Looking for New York over the last 7 years, I’ve gone from the bottom of Staten Island to the tip of Pelham Bay Park, to the far end of a pier off the West Side Highway, to edges of Flushing Meadows, to the shores of Red Hook. I found wonderful places, components of a whole, but what I ended up with was a collage of impressions, no unified sense of the place.
Nanobot Comix
A comic strip for the very, very small.
The Rhetorica Network: Analysis of Rhetoric, Propaganda, and Spin in Politics and Journalism
rhetorica.net Jan 31Snazzy weblog focusing on the rhetoric of current political speech.
A Patron Saint for Hopeless Clickers
washingtonpost.com Jan 30Washington Post: “The patron saint hunt is a subset of a boom in saint recognition under John Paul II’s reign. These days, saints aren’t so much marching as flooding in.
Getting Close to the Machine
A collection of quotes from a book by Ellen Ullman, prefaced by some good-natured technical meandering.
The dumbing-down of programming
archive.salon.com Jan 29Ellen Ullman on installing Linux, with a dab of archeology.
THEMATICS WEBLOG
cruzio.com Jan 29“An informal ‘Weblog’ on: WEB FILTERING BY CONTEXT AND CONCEPT. ” Yikes.
Techno-culture ala Ellen Ullman
twurled-world.com Jan 29Output from a truly weird search engine/auto-classifier.
Interview with Ellen Ullman
archive.salon.com Jan 29Ellen Ullman is a programmer who writes about the way programming fucks with your mind. She’s a neat person with big ideas.
Japanese Vending Machines
www3.tky.3web.ne.jp Jan 29Yeah, there’s the panties, but how about “catch your own lobster? ” And the fresh vegetables....
Japanese Fringe Groups
www3.tky.3web.ne.jp Jan 29Right wingers, anti-Giants, Hikikomori, Otaku, and Ganjuro. “After a political cartoon making fun of right-wing leader Shusuke Nomura was published, he came to the Asahi offices to receive an apology, and committed suicide by shooting himself, shouting ‘Asahi and I will die together!
pat freestone’s head
lostandfrowned.com Jan 29Pat Freestone, in order to improve his videogame skills, dopes his blood, slams heroin, and has a problem at the mall.
Beginnings and Endings
personal.psu.edu Jan 29A collection of the opening and closing sentences of a few famous works.
Have You Read This Movie?
jcld.lib.or.us Jan 29Neat list of books upon which recent films are based, with summaries.
Keeping Your Nose Clean
It is your right to sneeze!
THE Key to User-Friendly Computers?
businessweek.com Jan 28Jeff Raskin reinvents EMACS on the way to greater things.
Mr. Roboto - Lyrics and Interpretation
styxnet.com Jan 28“The time has come at last/To throw away this mask/So everyone can see/My true identity... /I’m Kilroy!
Some Dogs I Have Known, and How They Died
It’s hard on dogs when the people around them don’t have their acts together. Back when things were confused and I was always broke, I knew a lot of dogs that died. These were the three that I remember the best.
Science, Technology and the CIA
gwu.edu Jan 27Dozens of documents making up a huge book on the CIA’s use of technology, from satellites to psychics.
Reagan and Aziz
gwu.edu Jan 27“Ronald Reagan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz meet at the White House on November 26, 1984, as the U. S.
More and More Like the Machine
Some miscellaneous thoughts on software and soul, which I will try to focus on forthcoming Mondays.
The Lovable Cat: Mimicry Strikes Again
faculty.washington.edu Jan 24Enjoyable William Calvin essay on how cats mimic infants, which is, he suggests, why we love them.
Dante and the Bowery, by Theodore Roosevelt
bartleby.com Jan 23“What infinite use Dante would have made of the Bowery! Of course, he could have done it only because not merely he himself, the great poet, but his audience also, would have accepted it as natural.
ESP: Electronic Scholarly Publishing
esp.org Jan 23Great online pub site, plenty of books on genetics and other sciences, as well as the essays of Francis Bacon entire.
A Dithyramb for Spam
An imperfect alternative to fighting spam which no one will implement, but which would be more satisfying than existing proposals.
LifeWay: Biblical Solutions for Life
lifeway.com Jan 23Like shackles, just prettier: “This beautiful sterling silver stretch bracelet can be a beautiful symbol of a teenage girl’s pledge to sexual purity.
My Financial Career
A classic from 1910.
U.S. Schools Resegregating, Study Says
newsday.com Jan 21Simply, bad news.
Sea Oak
google.com Jan 21Great sci-fi-ish short story from George Saunders, a new writing hero.
Medium of Choice
The web is my medium of choice, not a medium of last resort.
Bayard Rustin Texts
socialdemocrats.org Jan 21Small collection of articles and interviews by Bayard Rustin.
Fireland
fireland.com Jan 21In January, 2003, Josh Allen has been updating Fireland frequently, parsing his (narrator’s) teen memories, sampling brand names, and looping his reminisces into a rare, unique collage of language that matches its form exactly.
Choke!
turksheadreview.com Jan 21Jim Esch on Philly and the Eagles: “This city is best known for its chokers. When the chips are down, and the game is on the line, you choke.
The Operating Systems Handbook
snee.com Jan 21Meaty overview of different OSes - VMS, MVS, Unix - from 1994. Good for computer genealogical research.
An Enemy of Nixon and Baraka by Nat Hentoff
villagevoice.com Jan 20An article on Bayard Rustin, essential pacifist civil rights leader who came from my home town.
Late Night Thoughts on West Chester, PA
Prejudice is inside the statistics, and inside me; and, towards the big rock candy democracy.
Creative Comments: On the Uses and Abuses of Markup [Jan. 15, 2003]
xml.com Jan 20A critical article on the Creative Commons ’ use of XML by Kendall, with solid advice for improvements.
Cinemaware
cinemaware.com Jan 20Cinemaware is resurrected with Defender of the Crown for the Playstation 2.
0format: 100 Thrilling Updates in a Day
0format.com Jan 16Dennis Mahoney shines as he reaches hits wits end (around #30) in order to update his Web site 100 times in a single day.
Dow - A Chemical Company on the Global Playground
dowethics.com Jan 16Did you know Dow was responsible for the global environment movement? Excellent, subversive, hoax.
Beautiful Minds
nylawyer.com Jan 16David and Gregory Chudnovsky’s patent lawyer reflects on the brothers, who built a supercomputer called m zero to calculate pi in their apartment.
The McKee Recursion
An academic curiosity, prepared by the author immediately after sending out his graduate school application.
Robert Horn
stanford.edu Jan 12Interesting thinker with a technique of “information mapping” for technical communication.
Class Struggle! The board game.
aardwolfgames.com Jan 12Bertell Ollman’s 1978 board game: Monopoly meets Marx! Rules available in PDF.
More fun with DMCA: hands off my, uh, toner?
arstechnica.infopop.net Jan 12A chip in a toner cartridge keeps you from using a competitor’s cartridge - unless they emulate the chip. Which is what happened, and Lexmark’s suing.
Rate my Kitten
ratemykitten.com Jan 10I gave them all 10s.
Literary Theory and Computer Games
citeseer.nj.nec.com Jan 9Interesting article, criticle of Aarspeth.
Review of Bolter and Grusin’s Remediation
altx.com Jan 9Critical assessment of Bolter and Grusin’s remediation, calling for a focus on tools akin to Foucault’s genealogical method - absolutely right.
KAIROS: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy
english.ttu.edu Jan 9All good stuff - a lot of the usual suspects, very academic in tone, but some of the articles are solid and almost all are well-researched.
The Smoking Gun: Archive
thesmokinggun.com Jan 9There is one commander in chief, and all other commander in chiefs must be eliminated!
Earthships
Learning about off-the-grid housing in Santa Fe.
EAT SHIT. (v2.00001)
eatshit.diaryland.com Jan 8According to this, I’m an example of “how certain select members of the ‘web development community’ hide behind the idea of ‘accessability’ to dangle their dom/css/xhtml DICKS in YOUR FACE” and, if I just wrote and worked on hot graphics, instead of doing all that CSS coding, the world would be a beautiful place. This guy is outstanding.
Gorge
A gorge, on the way to the earthship.
pat freestone’s head
lostandfrowned.com Jan 7Pat is the best blogger, and a huge fan of video games. Pan down for his list of the things he’d prefer hearing instead of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.
Rear Subway Window
A look out the back of the F train
Tram Spark
tramspark.blogspot.com Jan 6Weblog mostly in smart, enjoyable blank verse.
openDemocracy
opendemocracy.net Jan 6Nice-looking lefty pub out of London, with a fairly well-defined strategy for what they wish to achieve and how they want to use the Web; i. e.
Chris McKinstry: master hoaxster?
robotwisdom.com Jan 6Lengthy RW timeline the net-life of an AI researcher with a crazy CV and several severe emotional problems (armed standoffs in Winnipeg).
Coding an artificial neural network (ANN) in PHP
freebsd.mu Jan 6Nifty article about building a simple ANN that can be called for Web toys; the technique should work in most languages.
The Big Book
A trip to the BU library, and to linguistic Spain.
Ftrain FAQ
Frequently asked, or implied, questions about this Web site.
Orion’s Arm
orionsarm.com Jan 4A collaborative science fiction world, written en masse.
Companies in U.S. Sing Blues as Europe Reprises 50’s Hits
nytimes.com Jan 4New York Times article about the dread influx of copyright-free music from Europe, most of it recorded by dead people, which will flood the market with legal, high-quality, medium-priced Callas recordings, etc. The music industry, as a whole, needs to shut the fuck up forever.
Internet Alchemy
internetalchemy.org Jan 4A+ web site covering XML and Semantic Web topics.
evacuate & flush
lopati.pitas.com Jan 4Always nice to see what’s up at the Evacuate & Flush weblog.
Screenplays
geocities.com Jan 1Lots of screenplays in English, including the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the Seventh Seal, and Triumph of the Will.