Gulfstream

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021014;s=hitchens Hitchens, in his final “Minority Report” column, wearily argues for war with Iraq.

Plus: “Moreover, it’s obvious to me that the ‘antiwar’ side would not be convinced even if all the allegations made against Saddam Hussein were proven, and even if the true views of the Iraqi people could be expressed.” I have this problem too: neither the pro- nor anti-war sides make clear the limits to their support. If it is right to wage war against Iraq, how would the circumstances have to change for this to be wrong? (If it were demonstrated that Iraq is not trying to acquire nuclear weapons? What would constitute evidence of this?) Contrariwise, if it is wrong to wage war against Iraq, under what circumstances would it be right?

This applies to any issue: if you cannot imagine a situation in which the opposite action to that which you advocate is warranted, then you lack sufficient imagination to make your argument in the first place. You have an irresponsible argument if you can only bound it on one side. 10:39

http://www-bcs.mit.edu/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html This is an amazing illusion. (A proof.) 15:20

http://www.snopes2.com/food/origins/caesar.htm I HATE THE LITTLE BASTARDS: THE INVENTOR OF THE CAESAR SALAD DIDN’T BELIEVE IN THIS ANCHOVY NONSENSE EITHER. 09:20

http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20020917IE15 A real nutty story about children in East Timor learning Finnish (!) because “Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesian, English, and French are all associated with colonialism.” This is proving hard to verify. A story in The Australian (not online) says that “The World Bank donated Finnish picture books for children in Year 1, and Portuguese texts for Year 2.” After this the kids get mostly Bahasa Indonesia, with Portuguese “reintroduced in the final years of high school as a foreign language, along with English.” 16:32

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40517;cid=4314220 “God bless your pure, innocent love of databases.” 11:15

http://www.skateboardermag.com/photo_searchresults/index.html?
terms=meally The Sunday morning extreme sports show this week interviewed a Mike O’Meally, a photographer for Skateboarder Magazine. I’m quite taken by his stuff. (The samples here are a little weak and, well, small but Mike does good shit, I promise.) 23:42

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2262074.stm This is so strange: North Korea kidnaps Japanese citizens in the late 70s and early 80s, forces them to teach Japanese language and culture to spies. Most have since died, but four are still alive, and are living (some married, with children) in North Korea. 17:46

http://www.forbes.com/2002/09/13/400fictional.html The “Forbes Fictional Fifteen”: the fifteen richest fictional characters. Lex Luther was elected President of the United States in 2000? When did this happen?

Related: The Founders’ Club, the 58 Americans who’ve made the Fortune 400 every year since 1982. Forbes argues that “the high churn rate is due mostly to the dynamic nature of American capitalism, which never settles into the sort of equilibrium that would give rise to a permanent aristocracy of wealth.” Is there a British equivalent? Is the churn rate there any different? The piece also explains that the list is limited to 400 names because:

“The Four Hundred” was a familiar shorthand term for high society during the Gilded Age, when Mrs. William B. Astor Jr. was the social arbiter and only 400 people could fit into her Fifth Avenue ballroom. Well, times change: The non-exclusive Empire State Building now rises where Mrs. Astor’s mansion once stood, and not a single Astor, Vanderbilt or Morgan rates a mention on the current Forbes Four Hundred.

(Three Rockefellers made the list.) 14:15

http://www.tantek.com/log/2002/09.html#L20020902t2359 Fun little “Amelie” tour of Paris. Found through a google search for link:http://www.mirrorproject.com/.

I was searching for this because in the article below I’m quoted as saying: “Have you noticed that one of the more popular sites amongst webloggers is the Mirror Project—mirrorproject.com—made up of webloggers’ self-portraits? … Not at all the sort of thing that appeals to geeks.”

I didn’t think this was very controversial (neither that nor the argument that webloggers are more image conscious than geeks) but it appears a few don’t agree! I think we’re talking about different sorts of geeks—by geeks I mean people like Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox (Linux), Brian Behlendorf (Apache), Larry Wall (Perl), Guido van Rossum (Perl) and Richard Stallman (the sort of people who fit the Jargon File’s A Portrait of J. Random Hacker)—but just to check I did this search. Are there many geeks on this list? I don’t see many, although Tantek (funnily enough) qualifies. (Dave Winer is another example.) 16:30

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,
5744,5114395%5E2702,00.html “Exposed: my life as a blog” (I’m quoted in this.) Soft, supportive, focuses on the traditional, “old-school” bloggers. The Australian media—even though Australian political blogs seem to be pretty tight with Media Watch—doesn’t seem to know very much about blogging: I got a few calls from radio stations yesterday.

(The printed version sports a screenshot of this site in which the cursive Beebo in the header has a grey, not white background. It’s fixed now: cross-browser compatibility testing via the newspaper!) 11:44

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/magazine/15WTWT.html Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore: “When the picture was taken, I was thinking, Are these the best minds of our generation? ‘Howl’ starts with that phrase. I’d say it was a bit of a satirical question. I am the only one in the picture still alive, because I work out all the time. They didn’t work out except raising the elbow or rolling joints. … I think they [the Beats] would have said that I was a jovial bookstore owner—not really a poet. I hadn’t published anything yet. I just wanted to be considered a poet. I did get my wish. My book of poems, ‘A Coney Island of the Mind,’ sold about a million copies. That’s more than ‘Howl’ sold.” 10:53

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,55093,00.html Paul Sahner will make you a personal OS X icon (from a photograph) for US$15. They’re quite cute. Why is this less tacky than mall cartoonists? (Also: real stupid lead.) 10:51

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/11863.html Fuse 18: Experimental typography. 02:34

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34792-2002Sep3.html A thrilling mix-up in the Washington D.C. Democratic Mayoral primary: incumbent Anthony Williams for some reason failed to get his name on the ballot which meant he had to run as a write-in candidate. But there’s nine Anthony Williamses in the phonebook, and four Tony Williamses, and each could claim to be the Anthony Williams people actually voted for! And they can do this up to three days after the election! (In Slate, Timothy Noah is trying to get each of the Anthonys to promise they won’t try to make themselves Mayor.) 10:43

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0237/parker.php Hip-Hop Goes Commercial:

Dr. Dre protégé Xzibit is wary of liquor companies that openly court him—though he proudly sports a Hennessy logo tattooed on his arm. “They offer you free bottles, but what the fuck is that?” asks Xzibit. “They try to get you to [drop their name] by giving you a bottle or two. I’m not stupid. [Hennessy] don’t pay me shit. I just love the product.”

“My Adidas” is a great song, by the way. 10:22

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2070210;entry=2070707 “Does Globalization Cause Terrorism or Cure It?” Robert Wright, often wild, is doing a good job with this series. 13:15

http://daringfireball.net/2002/08/unix_switchers.html “Only Mac OS 9 users see anything to complain about with Mac OS X, because they’re the only people accustomed to something even more polished.” 13:00

http://www.rosemarylaing.com/art/bw6.html There’s a print of this fantastic photograph (by Rosemary Laing) in the building I work in. (It gets better if you imagine it 8′ wide…) 12:50

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1389/33160.html Donne: “No man is an island…” I saw About a Boy a few weeks ago. It’s based on a Nick Hornby book and it’s a pretty good adaptation, and a good movie. In it, Hugh Grant carries on about how it’s not true that no man is an island because he is an island an so on. (I don’t remember this being part of the book.)

But this is not what Donne meant! In his essay, “no man” refers to other men. Donne wrote: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 19:12

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2070360 Andrew Sullivan and Kurt Andersen talk about weblogs! Andersen once wrote a sublime piece on the irrational exuberance that drove “new economy” for Inside.com called “The Revolution Is Glorious, and the Sky Is Falling. Get Used To It.”

Relying on journalists and stock-market professionals for one’s view of the Internet’s future is like relying on a referendum of sugared-up 11-year-olds for an assessment of the Jolly Rancher and Pokemon industries. In the mid-’90s, no two groups of high-end professionals had migrated more swiftly or come to depend more absolutely on PCs and the Internet to do their work. No two occupational groups have a more highly excitable, adrenaline-addicted nature, or a greater tendency to skitter along in unthinking packs, sheep-like.

In the same article Andersen declared that we are living in an age of paradox—one in which it was possible to be simultaneously successful and unsuccessful—and famously compared internet pioneers such as Jim Clark and Jeff Bezos to Columbus:

… Christopher Columbus Was a Failure. His business model did not pan out: no western route to Asia, hardly any gold, abandonment by his investors, not much of an enduring first-mover advantage for Spain … but he fucking discovered America. Netscape is vestigial and may cease to exist before long, and Amazon.com may or may not be a Fortune 500 company a decade from now, but Jim Clark and Jeff Bezos will always be Columbuses.

(The article costs 40¢, but I don’t think they actually bill you until buy $2.00 of stuff.) 15:03

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/26/142858/258 “Reparations for the Descendants of Women” 15:41

http://www.usachcs.army.mil/Container/Container1.htm A Containerized Chapel! Fits in a standard shipping container! “The container includes a 30kw tactical quiet generator, heating/cooling units, an additional heater, fluorescent lighting, 100 chairs, sound system, keyboard, hymnals, literature and everything needed to provide religious services for Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim personnel.” 12:30

http://www.dtic.mil/armylink/news/May2002/a20020523sandwich.html Army responds to soldiers’ “needs, wants and desires,” produces a sandwich that lasts three years. The bread completely encloses the filling. 12:19

http://www.msnbc.com/news/800751.asp Wasabi is almost always horseradish, Argentinian beef is never Argentinian, camembert isn’t camembert because it’s not made from fresh milk: these are some of the lies (American) menus tell. 14:56