The blood bank called today to get me to schedule an appointment, and I told the woman that I wasn't going to be giving blood for at least a while. She was disappointed, what with me being one donation short of my three-gallon pin (though somewhere in there I got credit for a donation that didn't happen for reasons I no longer recall), but I was surprised at how sympathetic she sounded to my reasoning: the pointless discrimination against gay men, highlighted by the recent rule change for sperm donors, does not allow me in good conscience to continue to support the system. She said something to the effect of "They'll just ignore you; it's like with stem cells." And I said, "Well, they can ignore me without my blood, then." She was perhaps the kindest blood center person I've dealt with, though they have by and large been caring and competent.
I'm not even really advocating that people stop giving blood, since we need it; but after you've given a gallon or two, why not let them know what you think.
I got sick of seeing the 404s for favicon.ico in the web server logs, so I've thrown an icon up. Anybody who cares to do better is welcome to provide an alternative.
In their love-fest interview session included as a bonus on the first-season DVD release, the producers of Carnivàle assured us that HBO had committed to letting them finish the story. It now looks like not so much.
The verdict from Consumer Reports is in, and, to no one's surprise, it's the same as every other verdict: filtering software has a high false-positive rate, and doesn't do a very good job blocking anything as subtle as hate speech.
CR's recommendations are sound (#1: "Talk it over"), and of the resources they cite, the ALA and GetNetWise seem to avoid the hysterical edge that's all-too-common when talking about the net and our children.
In fact, the more I look at who GetNetWise is, the more impressed I am.
The next version of iTunes will have direct support for podcasting. I know some portion of their desire to keep people using iTunes is so they can enforce their DRM scheme, but if their success rate in keeping users on their app remains high, I can't help thinking how valuable an audience that creates. I hope Apple knows better than to try to exploit that audience's value in any way the audience notices.
Not that I likely would have run off to the UK to see them, but I would have thought I would have heard that Queen are touring. I note with some optimism the "USA?" in Sep/Oct.
If any DVD release called for a theme party, this is it: ABC's After School Specials!
I found the 2001 Futurama calendar, so I'm adding on to the Calendar Bonus Feature from previous:
Growing Up in Tier 3000 by Felix C. Gotschalk
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis
Kindred by Octavia Butler
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
The Funhouse by Benjamin Appel
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Earthman, Come Home by James Blish
Free Zone by Charles Platt
Quarantine by Greg Eagan
Up the Line by Robert Silverberg
Steel Beach by John Varley
Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
Dragon Masters by Jack Vance
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
The Zen Gun by Barrington J. Bayley
The Drive In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels by Joe R. Lansdale
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
The Movement of Mountains by Michael Blumlein
Halo by Tom Maddox
The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess
Bill, The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison
Crashcourse by Wilhelmina Baird
Immortality, Inc by Robert Sheckley
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
So I runs acrosst this mention of "Home Children" in Canada: more than 100,000 children sent to Canada during the Child Emigration Movement. I think, "Child Emigration Movement?" Sure enough, there's a whole history of settling the colonies with orphan (or as orphan as they needed to be) children.
Many of the children were sent to "farm schools," which lends a whole spooky air to the day care I attended of the same name (they had a sheep and some chickens).
I'd like to think any number of folks on any side of any religious question would find the Bush fish troubling.
A collection of Feynman's letters has been edited and published by his daughter. The Grauniad has a selection.
HBO will be airing (cabling?) a sitcom written by and starring Louis C.K. Now starts my long wait for a DVD release, since it isn't quite enough to make me buy an HBO subscription again.
Did I loan you the DVD of They Live? I can't find it anywhere!
Arianna Huffington's new site has a bunch of people I admire (and another several I have no particular feelings about) writing about things that matter to them, frequently with humor.
I can't decide whether the problem with this logo is a figure-ground issue or something else. If I try hard, I can see it as the designer probably intended, but the initial impression is very penetrating.
Update: crap, the page has been pulled. I'm sure someone has a copy somewhere, but my cache no longer seems to have it.
More update: Ah, BoingBoing has come through
A brown-skinned genius uses stereotypes to ease his passage through airports. I haven't gotten to listen to the full story yet, but your assignment is to brainstorm other disambiguating (rightly or wrongly) cultural accessories that might help you through airports.
I have frequently wished for good writers to rewrite movies with good premises but bad execution. At last, here's a taste:
Line from Revenge of the Sith: "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything's soft... and [touching her skin] smooth..."
Line as rewritten by James Lileks: “I hate sand. I was born on a planet of sand. It got in your eyes and your food and your clothes. It stank with whomprat piss. It was in your shoes when you woke in the morning and it was in your sheets when you went to bed at night. You grew up a slave, you grew up in a world of sand.”
The Phantom Edit was good, but needed to be even more invasive. Will someone please make these movies good? Maybe as a silent movie: put music over the awful dialogue and put some good dialogue up on cards?
Take a gander at a repro Levittown kitchen and maybe you'll spot my penguin-theme ice bucket. Well, Mine doesn't have the original nice lid.
If you'd like a taste of being an audiobook reader without having to move to New York, maybe you'd like to volunteer at the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library. Sure, you might end up reading the grocery ads, but they'll be the best-read grocery ads ever.
