Elizabeth Loftus, the myth of repressed memory, and the malleable nature of memory.
The Visby lenses indicate that the Vikings may have had working elliptical lenses centuries before they were though to have been invented. "But it seems clear that the Vikings did not make the lenses themselves. 'There are hints that the lenses may have been manufactured in [the ancient empire of] Byzantium or in the region of Eastern Europe.'"
Busy day today. First of
Busy day today. First of all, I went down to my old place of employ and had lunch with some friends of mine. Always nice to see those folks. My old boss, Scooter, walked by while I was lounging in a chair waiting for Ben to finish something up. Not wanting to be rude, I said, "Hi, Scott." As he passed, he glanced in my direction, realized who it was, and kept right on walking without returning my greeting. Scott, you may be running one of the larger Web firms in Minneapolis, but does that entitle you to act like such a little kid? Grow up, please.
After lunch, Ben and I went to Any Given Sunday. Not too bad. The only real problem with the film was that it was a football movie, and hence full of cliches and such. We learned "what football was all about" approximately 12 times. And we finally get to see Elizabeth Berkley play the role she's been meant to play: a high-priced call girl who lounges around naked. Not that I'm complaining....she's a very attractive girl. Maybe if I had a $1000 lying around....
After the movie, Ben realized that he had Timberwolves tickets for the evening and asked if I wanted to go. So, we went. The Wolves crushed the Bulls. The Bulls suck so bad, I can't even believe it.
The first thing ever sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.00.
Simply Porn on TV
Simply Porn got some play on ZDTV's Silicon Spin today....in a roundabout sort of way. If you want, you can even watch the entire show via RealVideo....or fast forward to 23:45 for the good stuff.
Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis
Last week, I finished the excellent Founding Brothers, an attempt by author Joseph Ellis to "render human and accessible that generation of political leaders customarily deified and capitalized as Founding Fathers". You know that old adage that history repeats itself? It's true. My favorite quote from the book concerns the early workings of American-style democratic politics:
"...the very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office."
How refreshing and quaint.
How well does the 6 year-old analysis of how we use and will use information technology contained in the pages of Interface Culture hold up? Not too bad, actually. Consider the following paragraph from the "Windows" chapter on what metaforms the Web might be capable of supporting (paragraph breaks and links mine):
Over the next decade, this stitching together of different news and opinion sources will slowly become a type of journalism in its own right, a new form of reporting that synthesizes and digests the great mass of information disseminated online everyday. (Clipping services have occupied a comparable niche for years, though their use is largely limited to corporate executives and other journalists.)
Total News gives us a glimpse of what these new information filters will look like, but the site neglects the defining element of a successful metaform, which is an actual editorial or evaluative sensibility. Total News simply repackages the major online news services indiscriminately; it may be a more convenient format, but it adds nothing to the actual content of the information. More advanced news "browsers" will include a genuine critical temperament, a perspective on the world, an editorial sensibility that governs the decisions about which stories to repackage. The possibilities are endless: a filter for left-leaning economic and political stories; a filter for sports coverage that emphasizes the psychological dimension of professional athletics; a filter that focuses exclusively on independent film news and commentary.
The beautiful thing about this new meta-journalism is that it doesn't require a massive distribution channel or extravagant licensing fees. A single user with a Web connection and only the most rudimentary HTML skills can upload his or her overview of the day's news. If the editorial sensibility is sharp enough, this kind of metajournalism could easily find enough of an audience to be commercially sustainable, given the limited overhead required to run such a service.
When the whole blog thing blew up huge and then people like Rafat Ali, Andrew Sullivan, and Nick Denton started making money off of them, Johnson must have danced around the apartment in his underpants (perhaps like Tom Cruise in Risky Business) shouting, "I told you so, I told you so, I called the hell out of that one! In your face!"
Bread is dangerous. Here are some frightening stats: "More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread" and "Bread is made from a substance called 'dough.' It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!"
A listing of the 100
A listing of the 100 bottom films on Internet Movie Database. Space Mutiny, a movie I've never heard of, tops the list. The trivia notes for this movie say that "all space-battle footage [in the movie] is from the TV series 'Battlestar Galactica'". Hee hee. Surprisingly, I've not seen any of the "films" on this list.
EFF decides on 10 patents to fight in their Patent Busting Project. VoIP, personalized subdomains, online testing, and video game emulators are among the patents they're pursuing.
Mena steps down as CEO of Six Apart. A good move...6A is a fundamentally different company than when it started and it needs different leadership.
Short list of hot dog places in NYC. What, no Crif Dogs? That's unpossible.
Photo of Vermont foliage. "Among factors that combine to give Vermont an edge in the U.S.'s foliage sweepstakes are the abundance and density of broad-leaved tree species, each with a contrasting color scheme, and a climate inclined to bring out the best in all of them."
This NY Times article on
This NY Times article on superstrings is most interesting, with multiple universes, metaverses, multi-dimensional spacetime, and the like. Superstrings are little vibrating packets of energy which are hypothesized to make up everything in the universe. How little exactly? According to a graphic accompanying the story, the size of a string compared with the size of an atom is the same as the size of an atom compared with the size of the solar system. That's pretty small.
I posted the answer to the rope burning logic problem from last week. Note: the answer does not involve time travel or impossible knots.
The Face2Face Project takes similar photographs of Palestinians and Israelis and displays them together in pairs. "After a week [in Israel and Palestine], we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families. It's obvious, but they don't see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize." (via 3qd)
Horrible Segues, With Local Anchorman Clive Rutledge. "After seeing that clip featuring the hottie in the halter-top, something else is rising, too, heh-heh, if you catch my drift -- that's right: interest rates. Today the Federal Reserve recommended they be upped by half a percent."
Clever technique for pinching the colors from famous paintings using the Match Color tool in Photoshop. "The Old Masters of painting spent years of their lives learning about color. Why let all their effort go to waste on the walls of some museum when it could be used to give you a hand with color correction?"
The Outline of History
I'm just getting into The Outline of History by H.G. Wells. Written in 1919, it's basically a history of the world from its formation several billion years ago up to the end of World War One. It's a little out of date here and there, but it's such a treat to read history written by such an excellent author.
All Thoroughbred horses born in the Northern Hemisphere technically share the same birthday: January 1. Happy birthday, horsies!
Not wanting to drag my current hardcover with me to the beach, I grabbed The Great Gatsby off the shelf as I left the apartment this morning. I cracked it open on the platform as I waited for the subway and continued reading on the train. Once I arrived at Rockaway Beach, I had a quick lunch and walked down the boardwalk to find a good spot for me and my blanket. Between swims and relaxing naps in the sun, I continued reading. A few hours later, I got back on the train toward Manhattan, reading all the way. As the train slowed for its stop at 14th Street, I read the final paragraph, closed the book, and stood just in time for the doors to snap open in front of me. Fitzgerald, some 80 years ago, must have written the book just for my trip today.
Wired magazine ticking up
Jason is right, Wired magazine has been getting better in the past few months. Or at least it's getting better for me and what I'm interested in. The credit goes to Chris Anderson, the new editor-in-chief. The most recent issues have been filled with great stuff from great writers, and it's focused & well-designed without going overboard (like the Wired of old sometimes used to do). I'm anxious to see if the redesign continues the improvement.
A disappointment of mine about Wired is their lack of involvement on the Web. Since selling off all their Web properties to Terra Lycos, all they've done on the Web is put their back issues up on their Web site (although the entire current issue is online now...I wonder if that's a new trend?). They don't need a full-blown effort like HotWired again, but they need to be connecting with the growing population of folks who are creating and living a wired culture on the Web.
Stop-motion human Space Invaders. The must-see video game and stop-motion video related link of the day. (thx, janelle)
Update: This looks like the official site.
Jason Fried was recently in
Jason Fried was recently in Europe as well and took lots of pictures which are currently featured in Jason's Europe Tour 2001.
Continual fools
Today's posts have nothing whatsoever to do with April Fools Day. We're foolish here every day.
The realest real
So, I'm writing a script for a reality show. In it, a team of fit-but-insecure aspiring actors and models (plus one nerdy, self-confident Asian college student) work together to restore and pimp out a 1974 Winnebago motor home, inside and out, over the course of several weeks. The team will be coached by a custom car aficionado from Southern California and five homosexual gentleman, learning from them not only how to weld, but how to make their bead profiles all they can be.
During the restoration process, the team will be judged and heckled by a panel comprised of Debbie Gibson, Warren Buffett, and a weekly guest panelist of C-list status. Each week, viewers will vote on which judge they liked the least using their cell phones. That judge will have to take a whipped cream shower with Dom DeLuise and marry a random member of the studio audience. The audience member gets $1,000,000 and a phone call to a friend. That friend will choose one of the team members to be "fired" from the show. On the final episode, the last remaining team member wins the Winnebago, drives it across the country with Tara Reid and Brittany Murphy to NY to start their new job at Orange County Choppers. At some point, someone will eat a handful of live earthworms.
It can't miss.
Story in Time magazine about Thomas Keller's move to NYC. Call me naive, but shouldn't there be a big disclaimer that his restaurant is opening in the Time Warner building?
I suppose I am contractually obligated to tell you that Malcolm Gladwell was on the Colbert Report the other night.
Why I love Wikipedia, reason #4193: the entry for buttock cleavage. Also called the "coin slot", "builder's bum", "plumber's butt", or "Dagenham smile".
"Waste" 20 minutes of your
"Waste" 20 minutes of your life by playing with this gravity applet. Oh. So. Cool. (via boingboing)
James Surowiecki discusses the waste of holiday giving. "Waldfogel's main finding is that, in general, people spend a lot more on presents than they're worth to those who receive them, a phenomenon that he calls 'the deadweight loss of Christmas.'" This is one of my big problems with the whole Christmas thing. Related: gift cards worth billions of dollars are left unredeemed each year.
Once again, I don't what
Once again, I don't what all the fuss is about. I already have a full-sized keyboard and precise optical mouse for my PC. Of course, it'll be nice for the Mac users to catch up. Now, if only there was more than one button and one of those scrollie deals on that mouse....
The new Apple G4 Cube, however, is a thing of beauty. I'd love to have a computer that small on my desk. A downside of the Cube is that it's not all that expandable. In this Failure Magazine interview, Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple, points out that one of Apple's early strengths was the expandability of the Apple II:
Woz: "Tandy, like Commodore with their Pet, was non-expandable. You would buy it with 4k of memory and you'd have 4k of memory for life. Early on we came out with our floppy disk drive. How do you add a floppy disk drive to a Tandy? It turns out there was no designed way built in. So the Tandy machines and the Commodore machines, because of their lack of expandability, lost out in the early exciting things, which were floppy disks and VisiCalc. They had to go back to the drawing board. They tried to make their products go for a while longer, which was another mistake. They would have been smarter to get to the drawing board sooner. That's really where Apple won out."
Now, the situation with the Apple II then and that of the Apple G4 Cube now is not really the same, but I think there are some interesting parallels and lessons to be learned there.
Help me out
You like to help, right? Sure you do. Here's how you can help Jason out in three easy steps:
1. First, determine whether or not your Twin Cities-based company needs a full-time professional Web designer with lots of experience and talent. If yes, continue on to step 2. If no, ask your friends, neighbors, relatives, etc. You gotta know someone.
2. Go check out my online resume/portfolio located at:
http://www.kottke.org/forsale/index.html
3. Give me a call or drop me an email. It's that simple.
Remember folks: helping is fun for the whole family!
Farecast, a site which predicts airline ticket prices so that you know when to buy them cheap, has added more than 50 cities to its roster.
"Lord of the Bings" cherry advertisement in supermarket. "One bing to rule them all" and in the parfait bind them?
Is flea market design successful for eBay?
Victor speculates that eBay's not-so-great site design might be responsible for their success:
Conventional wisdom - at least with the folks I hang out with - says that auctions, plus EBay's first-mover advantage - is such a compelling experience that people will tolerate the bad design. But what if EBay is succeeding because of its bad design? What if, like a flea market's rough, seller-created environment, the amateur design communicates the idea of bargain?
I remember talking about this issue with Stewart and Jason in preparation for our panel on Simplicity in Web Design for SXSW 2002. I can't recall if we talked specifically about eBay, but we did discuss The Drudge Report and Google. Drudge maintains his independant DIY credibility with the site's amateur design and Google's simple design and unprofessional visual branding gained the allegience of geeks and general Web users looking for no-nonsense search results.
Like Peter, I believe eBay could benefit significantly by a "tightening up of their experience", but Victor is right in emphasizing the importance of the site's flea market feel. Useful design doesn't necessarily need to be "slick" or "high tech" (a feeling which eBay needs to stay well away from, except when it comes to their security and fraud prevention efforts). Look at Ikea. They're known for cheap home furnishings and housewares, yet they focus a great deal of attention on design, not only for their products, but for their stores, catalogs, factories, signage, etc. eBay could definitely achieve a similarly successful balance with their site.
Inexplicably, I continue to find
Inexplicably, I continue to find the Pets.com spokespuppet very amusing. In this video from Good Morning America (RealAudio), he rescues socks, plays fetch with dogs, and makes fun of Charlie Gibson. I don't know what it is....I just can't get enough of the puppet. Did you notice I even used the word "spokespuppet" without a trace of sarcasm? Jeez....
MeFi offline
In case you're wondering, the T1 line that provides bandwidth for MetaFilter, Megnut, A Whole Lotta Nothing, and Q Daily News has been down for the last day and a half. No word on when it will be back. If that didn't make any sense to you, feel free to ignore it. Update: the T1 is back up...read all about it.
Peeps are the reason for
Peeps are the reason for the season:
"Marshmallow Peeps are a candy celebrating the ressurection of Jesus Christ on the third day following his death. They are manufactured by the Just Born Candy Company in Bethlehem, PA. Bethlehem, PA is is named for the Biblical town of Bethlehem where Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born."
Some shots from yesterday's hike in Sonoma:
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Paul posted some of his pictures from the hike as well.
Pixar's profits tripled since last year. And it sounds like a Disney reconciliation might happen as well.
The September that never ended
From the Jargon file, the September that never ended:
"All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on newsgroups."
NBA playoffs
Many basketball fans don't care for the pro game, but you'd have to be made of stone if you're not appreciating the NBA playoffs this year. Have you been watching? What a bunch of great games and series.
Round one featured an old-fashioned duel between LeBron James and Gilbert Arenas, Phoenix battling back from a 3-1 series deficit against a perplexing Lakers team (with Kobe playing team basketball!) to win, and an aging Shaquille O'Neal -- after the refs demonstrated that he was no longer good enough to bull his way through defenders in the post and not get called for offensive fouls -- going for 30 points and 20 rebounds in game six, playing a finesse game unseen from him since his college days at LSU.
And in the second round, the Clippers and Suns are going at it like cats and dogs (2 overtimes in game five, 253 total points in game 1), the defending champion Spurs are trying to come back from a 3-1 deficit to the Mavericks (3 of the games have been decided by 2 points or less and another went to overtime), and the Pistons, who by all accounts should have swept the Cavs in four, find themselves down 3-2 to a team with the best 21-year-old basketball player ever.
Despite the NBA's dogged insistence on promoting individual players as the primary reason to watch games, watching the team play has been the most compelling part of the playoffs. Detroit, Phoenix, San Antonio, the Clippers, and Dallas are great to watch on either end of the court: how a team's offense changes in response to their opponent's defense, how the defense changes to compensate for the tweaks made by the offense, and so on. I don't have a favorite team in the playoffs this year, but this is the most fun I've had watching the NBA since rooting for the Bulls in 1998. (I know, I know.)
Things That Sounded Crazy In 1993
Letter to the editor, New York Times, June 23, 1993:
If landlords could double or triple the rent on vacant apartments, it would be a compelling incentive for them to try to drive current tenants out by any means necessary. (During the East Village's gentrification in the 1980's, my landlords neglected or cut off heat and hot water, called us late at night to tell us to leave, let crack addicts stay in warehoused apartments and rented storefronts to drug dealers.)
Under luxury decontrol, what would stop them from renting only to tenants who make more than $100,000 a year to get apartments permanently deregulated? Warehousing would burgeon as landlords kept apartments vacant for months waiting for a sucker to pay top market rent.
Fun facts about the number
Fun facts about the number 28:
- 28 is a perfect number.
- There are 28 digits in one cubit.
- It takes the Moon a little less than 28 Earth days to orbit around the Earth. The lunar day is also a little less than 28 Earth days.
- A 28-sided polygon is called an icosikaioctagon.
- February usually has 28 days.
- 28 is a triangle number.
- The string 28 was found at position 33 counting from the first digit after the decimal point in pi.
- XXVIII, 11100, 34, and 1C are all different ways of expressing the number 28.
- The color corresponding to the hexadecimal value of #282828 is . The color corresponding to the hexadecimal value of #1C1C1C (hex for RGB values of 28,28,28) is .
- Also, some funny-lookin' cranky dork is 28 years old today.
I've never really appreciated my birthday all that much...just any other day really. This year it seems to mean a bit more. I'm glad to hear from friends and family, appreciate their thoughts, and happy that they are alive and well.
You'll find more in the archives or you may peruse the books, movies, remaindered links, or further afield separately.
