ForcedPerspective

Can't be any worse than the De Laurentiis thing

So the trailer for the new King Kong is out, and I'm not entirely convinced I'll be able to hear Jack Black as anything other than the hipster doofus he has so beautifully portrayed in virtually everything I've seen him in to date.
But Peter Jackson sure can put together a beautiful cgi-fest.

Why I hate so much science fiction

This must have hit blogdex some time ago. I was reminded of it by reading The Year's Best SF from 1997 or so. The referenced piece seems to typify a particular kind of hard SF that the editor apparently admires. Bleagh.

An interesting, though flawed, strategy

Moral: if you want me to link to you, don't use spammer tactics.
Story: I saw some mail today from someone purporting to represent an outfit called Victor House Publications. That mail looked something like this:

From: "Name Withheld" <research@deleted>
Subject: Your current link to Snpp.com and a link to our site featuring new images licensed from The Simpsons
To: "registrant" <registrant@FP>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 16:06:14 -0400

Dear registrant@FP,

Please don't delete this! I am a real person contacting you at the address specified on your web site!

I visited your site as part of my research and discovered you have a site link to Snpp.com.

As licensees of The Simpsons, I am respectfully writing to ask you to link to our site, at www.deleted, as well.

It shows our new line of The Simpsons safety products featuring Homer and many of the other characters. We are very proud of the quality of these products and the fact that the posters are original and unique to us!

There was so much interest at our recent product launch I thought I would look for sites about The Simpsons like yours and make this link request. As your site is part of the community of sites that cater to the fans of The Simpsons, we would appreciate your link to us. Such a link would enable your users to see the new posters and images as they are released over the next twelve months and give them an opportunity to provide feedback and ideas.

Any link on your site to our home page at www.deleted similar to the one you have to Snpp.com would be really appreciated.

Thank you again for considering the link.

Kindest regards,

Name Withheld
Senior Researcher
Victor House Publications
research@deleted

2815 Pine Ave. Suite 6 Niagara Falls NY 14301
2085 Hurontario St. Suite 208 Mississauga Ontario L5A 4G1

To stop receiving emails from me, please return this message with the word "Remove" in the title. Sorry to bother you and thanks!

So I was a little torn: their products do look like the kind of thing that our readers might enjoy—though I personally prefer non-novelty safety signs in the home—but the mail was not sent to an address that's visible anywhere on this site. It was sent to an address that has never intentionally been published anywhere, the address the domain owner's friends use. Unfortunately, it got published by the .org über-registrar as the "Registrant" address in the domain's whois info (the naïveté of the domain owner way back when the domain was registered is charmingly appalling). I am shocked—shocked, I tell you—to learn that this whois info is being harvested to generate spam lists, so the address in question has had to be protected with extensive whitelisting (which is why the mail, though sent on Thursday, did not come to my attention till today). So, because the petitioner used an address she had no business using (especially when there's a perfectly usable mailto link on every one of my posts), I will not link to her site, though neither have I made it very difficult to find the site (just as I haven't made it all that difficult for you to send more spam to the domain owner).

Smorgy!

On of the postcards in the Lileks feature mentioned previously is Fjord's Smorg-ette. Which of course reminds me of Roy's Western Smorgy still operating in Richland, WA.

With the help of modern research techniques, here are some other extant Smorgs:
Sampan Chinese Smorgy (Stockton CA)
Perry's Smorgy Restaurant (2 locations in Honolulu HI)
King's Smorgi Restaurant (Roseville CA)
Peking Smorgi (Merced CA)
Wang's Smorge (Modesto CA)

And the Smorgasbords (with a few Smorgasboards thrown in)
Diner's Smorgasbord (2 locations in CA)
Smorgasboard (Reseda CA)
Two Tony's Smorgasbord (Carmi IL)
Charlie's Smorgasbord (Vincennes IN)
Knotty Pine Smorgasbord (Lebanon IN)
Paul Revere Smorgasbord (Ocean City MD)
Sveden House Smorgasbord (St Clair Shores MI)
Homer's Original Smorgasbord (Cincinnati OH)
Kay's Smorgasbord (Oil City PA)
Miller's Smorgasbord (Ronks PA)
Shady Maple Smorgasbord (East Earl PA)
Duff's Famous Smorgasbord (Pigeon Forge TN and Richmond VA)
Hermitage House Smorgasbord (Nashville TN)
George Washington Smorgasbord (Williamsburg VA)
Smorgasboard Restaurant (Barboursville WV)

Yet again, my thoughts are crystallized

Lileks hits the nail on the head (again): "But the pedestrian artifacts of yesterday take on extra meaning when the pedestrian artifacts of the present tend to suck." This is from his new series on postcards from restaurants.

Create your own joke

I can't decide whether it's funnier to imagine these folks are segregating drinking fountains or peeing in them. Take your best shot.

Progress in the War on Evil

The Senate hasn't voted yet, but let's hear it for the House for voting to allow library and bookstore patrons to read what they wish to read without risk of a warrantless search recording their habits.

I'm not all that British

I think I'll need to study Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship more thoroughly before trying to become a UK citizen: I scored only 9 of 15 on the BBC's sample test. The 150-page book does not appear to be available on the web.

Good Omens

This morning on the way out to the garage, I saw two brown rabbits on the lawn. Cute!

New name for search engine comparison tool

YaGoohoo!gle is now Twingine. Both Yahoo and Google got on the guy's ass, so he changed the name. jaguhugel is also available. Check out this blog post and marvel at the heavy East Asian traffic his site is getting.
Our traffic is mostly search engine spiders. Which is just as well, as I don't much fancy the effect being slashdotted would have on my finances.

House hits Hugh Laurie's homeland

I enjoy the roundup of reviews of House in today's Magazine Monitor on the BBC News site, especially the Paper Monitor's final comment.

Knitting and Iceland--convergence of two FP faves!

Artist and knitter Hildur Bjarnadóttir has cool ideas, more of which are here.