Truth is hidden on the Daily Show
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
It’s amazing how astute Jon Stewart really is. I was watching this excellent clip where he mentions the nature of old school politics.
He says that it used to be about laying out an argument and then going “there! Can you prove me wrong?”
And if they couldn’t, then you’d won. I wonder what would happen to a candidate today if they took that kind of approach. What if the next presidental candidates actually took a stand on a few issues, and then set out an arguement for why they were right? I think that’d be pretty damn interesting.
I can’t go portable
Ever since the original game bay, I’ve been called by the glamour of having a little carry-it-with you gaming box. It seems like the ultimate slice of heaven—the chance to play a little Mario, 
Tetris, or even GTA anytime, anywhere.
The problem is, I don’t seem to get it. I can’t play them.
I’ve only ever owned a Gameboy and a Gameboy Advance, myself. But my brother has bought just about everything in between (and he had a PSP for about a month before it got stolen, poor guy), and I’ve tried them all. It doesn’t catch me the way it should. It’s cool. It’s slick. It’s got some damn fine games…but I never play them. I’ve got my trusty GBA here with me now, in England. I brought four games and extra batteries, but I haven’t even turned it on yet.
Maybe someday they’ll come up with a little shiny device that I can stare at for hours. But for now…I just can’t do it. I don’t know why.
OK, the Crush thing is cool
Disney’s touting their new interactivity, by unleashing a talking, interactive, and completely digital version of that kick-ass turtle from Finding Nemo.
Virtual Chuckle Room
A lot of the things that I like to post are “asides.” They’re ususally the sorts of things that, were I in a room full of my friends, would elicit a short chuckle and a quiet “yeah, I guess that’s true.”
Yesterday, as I was writing my paper on Rousseau, I thought to myself: “Man, they used a shitload of commas back then. All the time. You get, sentences like, this one here. I should blog that.”
Wait, no I shouldn’t. But I just did—so I guess this is my little Virtual Chuckle Room.
Buying Butter
Buying butter over here isn’t as simple as back home.
There’s six different types of vegetable oil, 86% vegetable oil, butter from weird oil, sunflower butter, salted english butter product, and a host of other confusingly labeled options.
In the end, I settled on something that, while it may not be butter itself, proudly proclaims itself to be: “maybe a blend of different butters.”
Sources
I really dislike the idea of forcing students to find extra sources for certain papers. Some papers I understand. There are research papers, papers on events, locations, or situations. These types of papers require a broader understanding of the subject, and doing research does in fact help the end result.
But a question like this:
Rousseau claims that a person who is forced to obey the law is being ‘forced to be free’. Does this make sense?
Does not require anything other than Rousseau’s text. If I can read his argument, understand, and interpret it without the assistance of other writers, I should be rewarded for that , not punished.
The simple fact of the matter is that “finding extra sources” in a paper like this means “find smarter people who agree with you, thus validating your argument.” Bullshit. My argument can stand for itself.
Blood Elves
Blizzard has announced the official expansion to WoW (that everyone knew was going to happen anyway), but they also gave Gamespot a look at the new Blood Elves. This race was tagged on along purportedly to help balance the uncanny tendency for people to choose Alliance characters rather than Horde characters.
My question is this, though. Who is planning to buy the expansion and not create a Blood Elf?
Full of ourselves
There’s a lot of doomsaying on blogs.
For the past few days I’ve been tossing a little newsblog aggregation idea around in my head—something not terribly unlike Battelle’s Federated Media, but I just can’t see it working.
In a nutshell, the idea would be to capitalize on the declining faith in major media and the rising tide of blog-style “news” coverage. There are, I’ve concluded, a number of reasons this wouldn’t work, not the least of which that there just isn’t much of a market—not to mention the difficulty (espeically given the new debate around who owns my content?) of designing a service that has no content generation itself. In essense, the idea consists mostly of taking what other people write, and pointing to it. How much leeway can I reasonably expect when dealing with content I really don’t own? And if I monetize their content, aren’t the creators entitled to a certain amount?
Creating a site that aggregates, in a news-site style, the content of hundreds of freelance “citizen journalists,” categorizes their work and localizes it for various regions is certainly a cool idea. And it may even be useful.
But to suggest it as a viable alternative to the news media? Not going to happen.
Bloggers (myself included) are full of themselves. It’s a somewhat unfortunate side-effect of the way the blogosphere is set up: you’ve got to say big things to be heard, and to be believed, you have to be ten hundred percent right.
Doomsaying is one of the most popular things. The most popular bloggers are, quite often, proclaiming the early (or impending) demise of some industry or another. Jeff Jarvis will often talk about how media itself is being re-written, or how magazines are making wrong decisions. But, as far as the numbers go, magazines are doing fine. News media is changing, yes; but it’s not being replaced.
Tom Evslin wrote an article (a good one, too) on how vertical integration is dead. But at the same time I’m watching a massive move in the entertainment industry towards re-integration on a vertical level. Movie studios that were for years barred from owning their own theaters now do so again (Disney has it’s own theaters, which means they have in-studio ability to draft, write, produce, distribute, and present a movie. Oh they also have TV stations. That’s start to finish production. If that isn’t vertical integration, what is?) And let’s not forget Yahoo! — quickly moving into the field of media and content production like no other Web company, it seems to be snaking roots up and down through the production chain. Again, Tom: Doomsaying.
We need to remember that those of us who blog, in fact those of use who really, actively use the internet are marginal cases. We tend to use the services we find avidly and so frequently that it seems silly to us for others not to find value in them. Why would people read a magazine if they can get WIRED features online? Or better yet, read accounts from “real people” on blogs?
In short, a lot of the blogosphere is (if you’re a cynic) “as bad as” or (if you’re not) “more ludicrous” than the existing major media. After all, the blogosphere is really just one large collection of opinions. Unbiased news just isn’t much of a reality, and at least in your local Times the spelling errors are missing.
Scott Adams’ blog
The guy who makes Dilbert makes a blog.
Now I want Douglas Adams to come back from the grave and start blogging. I can’t wait until all the famous hilarious people blog.
Soooo much candy
I’m crying inside that It’ll be a month and a half before I’m anywhere near a computer that will run either Quake IV or F.E.A.R.
They both look incredibly incredibly cool, because I have always been a sucker for that kind of game. Also, does anything thing it’s time that PC Gamer put it’s content online for subscribers to access?
On the bright side, they have apparently started a podcast. This proves that they’re only ridiculously behind the times, and not actually deaf, blind, and ludicrously unaware of this “internet” thing.
MP3 Phones
The US Cell Phone industry is more than a little ridiculous. I talk to people here in England about the cell services we have in America, and they can’t believe how behind we are.
The most surprising step backwards is the phone technology. My guess, backed up by this Wired article, is that the major US carriers are dragging their feet on music technology until they can find a way to monetize it themselves. As a consequence, the US market has yet to see phones capable of carrying 1GB of photos, video, and music.
In America, consumers are also stuck paying for incoming calls and text messages. Over here, that’s unthinkable. Why would you pay for incoming calls? Of course, they don’t have free refils over here, so everyone has their faults.
But basically, in the US, you pay more and get less for your phone service. It’s a product of the giant providers sitting on technology until they can monetize it at the consumers expense. It also lets them sell phones in the states that are so hopelessly outdated abroad that people can’t believe you’d pay for them. So they get to sell their phones twice.
Something needs to crop up in the mobile industry. VoIP should hurry up. Cingular needs some competition.
A discussion of natural rights
Just as I’ve learned to expect from all of my IR and politics related seminars, the class I have wednesday afternoon consists largely of the TA asking something like “do you think there any fundamental, objective human rights?” and then waiting for the class to argue about it.
It’s kind of pointless, because nobody is really willing to take a strong opinion about anything. When I had to do a presentation leading into a debate, I started claiming ridiculous things just get people talking. But when he asked about fundamental human rights…nobody had an opinion!
It may seem a bit callous, but I think there are. I think the right to live is a right that every human should enjoy, regardless of what culture you come from.
“But,” come the cries of objection, “what about cultures that involve human sacrifice? Aren’t you just being imperialist and trampling their heritage?”
To which my harsh response is that perhaps it’s simply wrong to kill people. Whether or not it’s an imperialist position, those people who are being killed deserve, through their humanity, the right to live.
All that requires is a belief that there can be moral absolutes. One has to accept that there are things that should, in fact, not be done.
But nobody wants to say that in class. Why not?
Some civil liberties
In the age of the PATRIOT act, we seem to be caught in a limbo of civil liberties, granted or rescinded on an individual basis by various judges.
Personally, I think we need to see less of this, and more of this.
There was that excellent case a while ago (which I can’t find, mostly because I don’t remember much about the case, just the ruling) where the judge said something along the lines of:
“Our justice system is not broken. We have arrived at a correct sentence and thwarted an act of terrorism without infringing on any civil liberties, abridging the process of prosecution, or otherwise changing the rules that have safeguarded our society for over 200 years.”
Y’know. Something along those lines.
Goings and places
I finally booked the two trips I’ve been planning to take since the start of the term. I got them reasonably cheap, and I’m happy with the itineraries.
On November 10th, I leave for Barcelona with six other people. This will be a ridiculous weekend.
On November 19th, I visit my friend Brittany Fayette in Scotland, which will also become a ridiculous weekend.
Go England for being close to things.
Frustrating technology (rant)
Rarely am I frustrated with computers. I’ve spent most of my life living with their quirks and inconsitensies, and I understand that frankly, very few people actually understand what goes on in their depths.
But what I do get frustrated with—and what’s frustrating me now—is the non-technical part. I have to carry my laptop to the computer lab to get online, and more often than not I leave my power cord behind because it’s extra crap to carry. But when I leave my cord behind, I always end up running back for it. Of course, I try to use the touchpad as a mouse instead of bringing out my actual mouse, but then there’s some error online where I can’t click and move the mouse fast enough to convenintly get out of it without actually shutting down the program via ctrl + alt + delete.
So I bring my mouse. But the optical mouse doesn’t work on the desks they have for computers here, so I have to bring my mousepad. And with all this stuff, usually at least one thing falls on the floor between my room and the computer lab (which is how I broke my mouse). Also, I tend to hit my laptop on things (like heavy fire doors), and generally, when I do bring everything out here, I end up not staying long enough for it to be worthwhile. It’s hard to say when I’m going to want to be online for a long time without actually being online.
So for most of today, I think I’m just going to shut my computer off and let it sit quietly in the room, and worry about it later.
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