Archives
- 30 Dec 2008
- 10:30am EST
- Uncategorized
links for 2008-12-30
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VHS is now officially dead: the last supplier of VHS tapes is about to dump its last remaining stock into humid Florida landfills.
- 29 Dec 2008
- 12:26pm EST
- Travel
india update
I’m near death from uncomfortable guest beds, mosquito attacks, and the sadistic traffic patterns around the Bhat family’s home here in Pune. We leave tomorrow for Bhopal, via Indore. In the next several days, we three (Mom, the sis, and yours truly) will be witnessing or participating in several Sathe family events in the two cities, including:
* Vivek Mama‘s [uncle] housewarming shindig
* Cousin Devashish’sª munja [thread ceremony]
* Sathe aaji‘s [grandma] 75th birthday hullabaloo
* Vijay Mama‘s classical indian recital for said hullabaloo.
I’m traveling four of the next six days, and I’m pretty sure that if I don’t get that upgrade on the Delhi-Amsterdam leg, it’ll be my cold, lifeless body arriving at Dulles on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll live to see you jerks later.
ª – DJ Salty Pretzel, for those of you just joining us
- 29 Dec 2008
- 10:31am EST
- Politics, War & Peace
- This post contains political opinions. Reader discretion is advised.
now the indian gov't tries to convince others to fail their citizens
Ever in adherence to tradition, India’s government fails to make the distinction between “peace” and “rolling over and taking it”, just as each successive government has done since about the reign of Ashoka:
“The Government of India urges utmost restraint so as to give peace a chance as the peace process may well get derailed irreversibly by Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip and continued violence,” [Indian External Affairs Minister Vishnu] Prakash said.
I believe it’s called “protecting your citizens,” you inept windbags. Perhaps External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee might know something about it if he didn’t hail from a state that—while once the most industrialized in India—has led the nation in failing to provide its citizens with a basic level of governance at every level.
- 29 Dec 2008
- 10:30am EST
- Uncategorized
- 27 Dec 2008
- 10:30am EST
- Uncategorized
links for 2008-12-27
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Rafael Vela makes an excellent argument: If Wade Philips were judged by the old school front office philosophy, he'd have a 10-year extension á la Tom Landry. If Tom Landry had been judged by today's standards, he'd never have become Tom Landry.
addendum: of course I add this link a day before the Eagles land and salt the effing earth. I’m rather happy I couldn’t watch that game.
- 26 Dec 2008
- 7:21am EST
- Pop Culture & Memes
bollywood chutzpah
A Hindi film titled Ghajini is set for release over here this weekend with an exciting plot: a man with anterograde amnesia tries to hunt down his lover’s murderer(s). Oh, wait: I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that plot before. It’s not that I’m particularly surprised by the cinematic plagiarism—Hindi films haven’t come up with an original plotline since about 1977.
No, what gets me is that Aamir Khan, the lead whose primary contribution to the film is having spent six months in solitary confinement in a gym, can say with a straight face that the movie isn’t a ripoff. Except it might be, but only of the Tamil movie of the same name. “Amir said that…storyline, screenplay, direction and everything is totally different. You watch both the film and you realize how different the two films are.” Yeah. One is among IMDb’s top 25 movies, and the other takes one of IMDb’s top 25 movies and drops it into a fecal bucket of song-and-dance and poorly choreographed fight sequences. That’s a pretty big difference.
- 25 Dec 2008
- 10:30am EST
- Uncategorized
links for 2008-12-25
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Why current economic conditions look more like 1873 than like 1929.
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I, like Jason Kottke, like that LeBron is off in his own category.
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Legal scholar and former FEC commish Hans von Spakovsky describes his father's desperate escape from the Bolsheviks in 1919.
pessimism we can believe in
Yeswecanhopechange, it seems, stops at science’s edge: the New York Times‘s John Tierney notes that his august holiness President-Elect Barack Obama (peace be upon him) has selected Dr. John Holdren as White House science advisor. Dr. Holdren was a key ally of pessimistic entymologist and alarmist Paul Ehrlich during the latter’s famous bet with Julian Simon, and would a decade later be a part of Scientific American‘s scathing rebuke of Bjorn Lomborg’s blasphemous scientific critique of Global Warmism.
I would think that bowing to the Malthusian OMGWTFBBQ!!!!11one lobby, the Wahhabists of science, is the opposite of, y’know, hope and hope-related change. But maybe it’s just because I’m a heathen who hasn’t yet accepted Barack in my heart.
[via Marginal Revolution and Gautam's shared links]
- 22 Dec 2008
- 10:30am EST
- Uncategorized
links for 2008-12-22
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Do want. Reminds me a lot of Vignelli's (in)famous über-modernist 1972 subway map—as I presume it's supposed to.
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I should actually scold the WSJ and others for not running this until, oh, 6 weeks after the election. This is EXACTLY why I found it paradoxical that Silicon Valley would be so happy about an Obama victory: their preferred candidate has every intention of regulating the life out of VCs and the IPOs they profit from. Biting the hand that feeds them? More like unleashing a shotgun blast to their food source.
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Net neutrality is important only when it means you get to play "Cops and Characters from V for Vendetta". Fight the man—until you realize your rallying cry is full of crap!
- 22 Dec 2008
- 1:52am EST
- Travel
"and what's up with airline food?!"
A collection of observations from the first leg of the ’08-’09 India trip.
* I had no screaming babies on my IAD-AMS flight, but my seat-neighbor smelt as if he had done step aerobics in a compost heap before boarding the flight. And then, it seemed, he tried to cover it up with some Deep Woods OFF.
* At least I got some entertainment through taunting the poor, smelly, obviously-frustrated Indian (*sigh*) fellow by flashing the American Apparel ad on the back page of this week’s Onion.
* Swear to God my flight attended looked like Leslie Feist. Particularly while she was counting things.
* Wine and Oreos is something no one should ever experience. ’nuff said.
* The more I think about how awesome an iPhone tethering arrangement would’ve been, the more I wish the punk who stole said iPhone is sodomized by an un-sanded, sentient, and sadistic baseball bat before being beaten to death with his own leg.
* I could listen to Schiphol Airport’s English announcer tell me about Dutch smoking regulations for hours. She is a classy lady.