Gulfstream

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=sullivan102604 Andrew Sullivan: Why I am supporting John Kerry. 23:23

http://slate.com/id/2108778/ “… most of us believe, mistakenly, that a poll is a simple tabulation of a random sample of voters. In reality, polls are full of additives and preservatives, subtractions and selective multiplications, none of which are generally published.”

(Note also the less condescending “most of us believe…” instead of “most people believe…” device.) 20:25

http://www.infoukes.com/faq/the_ukraine/ It’s not “The Ukraine,” it’s “Ukraine.” 08:59

http://www.ukdps.co.uk/WhyIsItCalledADeedPoll.html (What else (apart from a name) can you change “by deed poll”??) 23:33

http://www.apple.com/itunes/ Apple uses Lucida Grande italic! (“Stream Music Wirelessly to Your Home Stereo”) Looks kinda crappy too. (Oh yeah, this is noteworthy because Apple doesn’t provide an italic version of Lucida Grande with OS X; the “italic” Lucida Grande here is probably Geneva or Verdana italic. As far as I can tell Apple doesn’t use Lucida Grande italic anywhere else on their site.) 22:14

http://slate.com/id/2108714/ Who Slate staffers are voting for. Interesting: Christopher Hitchens (what is he going on about?), Steven Landsburg (idiot—but thinks he’s a contrarian), Robert Neubecker. Dahlia Lithwick is Canadian?

Update: Hitchens went for Bush in The Nation—? 21:35

http://www.hpmuseum.org/ebaywarn.htm eBay advice (scams, tricks sellers get up to, etc.), from the Museum of HP Calculators, but fairly general. 23:11

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/24/business/popups25.html On temporary, “pop-up,” stores that sell limited edition brand-name gear to generate buzz. 19:12

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html The Long Tail: in an Internet economy, you can make money by selling stuff most people don’t want (e.g. Bollywood films)—because you can find them, or they can find you. True, but is it really the case that “more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles”? This didn’t sound right; I emailed the author who referred me to a paper which estimates that “47.9% of Amazon’s unit sales fall in titles with ranks above 40,000.” (Seems much more likely; am investigating further.)

(Whilst Amazon may have approximately 5% of total book sales, it almost certainly has a much greater percentage of rare book sales; the tail is likely to be “artificially” lengthened because consumers can’t (easily) buy rare books from physical shops.)

Update: Chris Anderson, the author, says that the Long Tail uses the same technique as the paper linked above, but with 2004 data. He’s also suspicious of the figure, though, and suspects that the actual 50% point falls lower in the rankings. If only Amazon would say! 10:08

http://www.storyglossia.com/blog/archives/2004_02_08_archive.html#107671216122166193 Close & instructive analysis of two versions of a Raymond Carver short story. 09:09

http://www.thesuperficial.com/images/20041025_tyra2.jpg The Superficial: “If you’ve ever wondered what a $10 million bra looks like, wonder no more. And if you’ve ever wondered what an armpit vagina looks like, wonder no more as well, because this is an armpit vagina…” 08:36

http://slate.com/id/2108561/ Whether Republicans or Democrats are more civil. The comments are worthwhile too: “Leftists, on the other hand, are raised on viewing any sort of restraint as tantamount to self-censorship, so we tend to speak our minds in public a lot more. I think that leftists are more aggressive and in-your-face in person.” 08:20

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3933579 John McWhorter wonders (in RealAudio) why all the people in New Yorker cartoons are white (text). 08:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43680-2004Oct18.html Wow, there exists someone who doesn’t like The Catcher in the Rye! And (partly) because the writing is bad!? I admit the dialog sounds a little odd sometimes (I’d put this down to it being set in America, and in the 1950s), but I have no problem with the other components of his prose. 23:23

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/
review_posner_novdec04.html Richard Posner: Law Reviews suck, because they’re edited by students. For some reason, Posner makes it sound as if Law Reviews are edited with almost no faculty (or professional) oversight at all, which doesn’t sound right. Why is he trying so hard to avoid criticising faculty? 22:26

http://slate.com/id/2108438/ Newton the loser: “Newton never married, apparently never had a lover, and never even had a real friend, as we use the word in our sociable times. He never had a scientific collaborator; indeed, he fought bitterly and ruthlessly with other great philosophers. Having been a fellow and professor at Trinity College, Cambridge, for most of his adult life, he left behind not a single person who claimed to have been his student.” 18:48

http://www.powells.com/review/2004_10_03.html On censoring textbooks: “Almost two dozen states have state-wide textbook adoption policies, and two of these states, Texas and California, are so large that they represent a substantial portion of the market. Textbook publishers are therefore in thrall to these states. California has strong liberal lobbies, devoted to the idea that no cultural group be discriminated against with regard to language and imagery. Texas is dominated by conservative lobbies that concentrate on moral content. The combination produces textbooks that are severely curtailed in both directions: at once attuned to political correctness and deferential to so-called family values.” 22:43

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,
1329858,00.html Letters the Guardian received in response to their ill-conceived Clark County project. (… which has now been aborted.) 00:02

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2004/index.html Nobel Prize for Literature committee is still fucking up citations. The subjugating power of cliches? What? (Compare them to the citations for physics, chemistry, economics…) 23:28

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?041025crat_atlarge Malcolm Gladwell: the high price of drugs is not (just) the fault of drug companies. 19:01

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/arts/music/17tind.html Some (non-trivial) percentage of professional musicians on beta blockers? 23:42

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/41886681.html Cute w4m ad let down by: (a) poor subject line; (b) poor last sentence. 06:34

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/arts/television/07heff.html Great headline: “What (Sex) Boys (Sex) Think (Sex) About.” The unusually titled Jennifer 8. Lee on the NY Times’s headline-writing process (first question). 18:59

http://slate.com/id/2108192/ The Poncho: not a good idea. I actually don’t have any great problem with the poncho, especially when worn with brio. (Wearing a poncho to avoid dressing up, on the other hand, is not such a good idea. This encounters a problem similar to that of wearing a No Fear t-shirt during non-hazardous activities, such as mowing the lawn, or shopping at the mall…) 18:32

http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html Extracts from jwz’s diary leading up to the Netscape 0.9 release.

Kurt Andersen on why Netscape matters: “Paradox No. 2: 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.” (Inside Magazine, 2000-12-13) 22:10

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/14/isp_takedown_study/
ISPs don’t check the legitimacy of takedown notices. 19:30

http://www.harmendehoop.demon.nl/amsterdam8.html Art in public spaces: Harmen de Koop’s “Sandbox.” (more) 00:09

http://www.tian.cc/hanzismatter/ “Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture.” 23:07

http://www.howtofoldashirt.net/ Fold a t-shirt in about 3 seconds! This is awesome! 21:54

http://www.livejournal.com/users/plinko/296642.html “If you are voting for a leader, why would you pick the LESSER evil? Wouldn’t you want a GREAT evil to lead you? Who wants to be led by a completely mediocre evil?” 02:01

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/opinion/09dadich.html A comparison of Bush and Kerry’s logos: “Loose letter spacing between the ‘K’ and ‘e’ communicates inexperience.” 21:55

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html CIA World Factbook entry for “World.” Includes a brief history of the 20th Century, many mentions of environmental/developmental problems, and an unusual map projection. 02:13

http://slate.com/id/2107744/ “The year ahead in the Supreme Court.” 23:31

http://europeanbusiness.eu.com/features/2004/sep/happycampers.html Camper’s new restaurant: “Europe’s craziest company has just opened the world’s weirdest restaurant. … Not because it doesn’t have tables or chairs. It doesn’t. Not because you can bring your bicycle in. You can. And not because–while you eat stuffed rice-balls with your fingers–you’re offered big screen images of, say, sports events or pop concerts. You aren’t. Diners are treated to pictures of donkeys in Majorca. While listening to soothing sounds of the sea.” (Sounds like a McSweeney’s restaurant.) 07:52

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3710946.stm “Australians hold anti-war rallies.” 1. However messy Iraq might be, the situation doesn’t seem to have reached the level of war. Were any of the protestors actually describing it is such, or is this just the BBC making things up? 2. How does bringing the troops back now help Iraq? Fine, you didn’t want to send troops in the first place. But to bring them back is petulance, not good judgement. (Arguing that it’s to make Australia safer is not only probably factually incorrect, but unbecoming and cowardly—sometimes the right thing to do help others, even if it puts you at risk.) I would still have voted Labor had I been able to, but with less pleasure… 07:10

http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/20040901facomment_
v83n4_siegle-weinstein-halperin.html Foreign Aid should preferentially be given to democracies; they’ll make better use of it. Also, according to this piece, the World Bank and the IMF are actually prohibited from “considering democratic legitimacy” in making aid decisions. (They were set up this way to encourage the Soviet Union to participate, and to “minimize the role of politics in macroeconomic policymaking.”) 22:35

http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/pregnant.asp True: Newspaper photograph shows a pregnant, cigarette-smoking woman worrying about the effect of construction noise on her unborn child. 05:29

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/science/28toon.html “Researchers will also be looking for physiological markers that could be humor signatures.” 23:17

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm Why Word, uh, randomly changes text styles. (Still don’t know why it keeps moving my graphics around…) 22:47