Monthly Archives: April 2009
FIRE, Detroit, GOP, Microsoft
[FIRE = Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate] MOFT: At Microsoft, we see a future full of potential. We’re working to expand the possibilities for computing every day, by continually improving and advancing our current products and embarking on fundamental research that paves the way for tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Fleishman: Microsoft has revealed that Windows 7 will [...]
Needed: new notation systemz
The IPA can’t touch this: Massive FAIL of yet another descriptive system in the face of hybridization.
Posted in language, media, standards, trend Tagged beatbox, body, IPA, linguistics, music, performance, phonology Leave a comment
Patient 0 2.0 [updated]
Some random bloggorother points to Veretect’s (twitfeed, timeline) claim that it’s traced swine flu to a (drift|drove|sounder) of Patient Zeroes in a Granjas Carroll–operated (i.e., Smithfield-owned) pig farm in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico. The next illogical step in the construction of this moral tale was anticipated by Critical Art Ensemble and Richard [...]
Posted in environment, international, language, media, medicine Tagged epidemiology, swine flu Leave a comment
Makes you wonder about the Keebler elves
Infoshop: Eighty eight years of the day Trotsky directed the suppression of the anarchist uprising in Krondstadt, a group of bandits scaled the walls of his former house in Mexico City during the late hours at night. We broke the lock on his mausoleum and we expropriate the content inside it: a silver large vase [...]
Einstürzende Altbauten
Mumford’s Technics and Civilization meets Ehrenreich’s Fear of Falling: Nice rendering engine. (andrew sullivan, for whom video = “mental health break”)
OurTube
youtomb.mit.edu, a repository for videos removed for copyright complaint. (rp)
Convoy
saveourtacotrucks.org (va)
Long line
Bank execs “await a federal assessment of their firms” (Blankfein, GS; Dimon, JPMC; Kelly, BONY Mellon; Lewis, BoA; Logue, State St; Mack, MS; Pandit, Citigroup; Stumpf, Wells F. ) Timeline of the line:
Hypochondria by proxy
“Electronic health records raise doubt,” Boston Globe (Wangness, 13 Apr ’09): It turns out that Google Health uses information from billing records, which can be inaccurate, undated, and was never intended to be used by doctors. Transferring existing paper records could take years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Insurance data, by contrast, is already [...]
Posted in digital, government, knowledge, medicine, privacy, standards Tagged google, healthcare Leave a comment
Postie Mac
Georg Jensen performs an excellent pre-mortem on the USPS then hatches ghastly plans for bringing it back to life—which include, naturally, “creative destruction,” “rightsizing,” the “the 21st century,” “natural selection,” and “revolutionary technology” that “reshapes the Universal Service Obligation to fit the mobile, digital, multiple-location life- and workstyles of many consumers” (as opposed to, say, [...]
Posted in digital, economics, government, media, neighborhood, standards, trend Tagged mail, privatization, USPS Leave a comment
Gone dumpin’
Johann Hari in The Independent (“You are being lied to about pirates,” 5 Jan ’09): As soon as the government [of Somalia] was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed [...]
Posted in LDCs, environment, government, international Tagged crime, mafia, nukes, piracy, Somalia Leave a comment
1974
Gordon Pask: Also in ’74: “GWOT ca. 1974,” “1974est guys in the room,” “Just another future song.”
“Satellite abuse”
WiReD says Brazillians are using “high-performance antennas and homebrew gear to turn U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios.” <cane-wave>Not like the good old days when equating something with CD radio meant it was boring.</cane-wave>
Posted in international, language, military, network, rural Tagged Brazil, CB radio, hack, satellite Leave a comment
“a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm”
Former CIA official sums up Shrub admin’s embrace of torture—though it could just as easily be ___ summing up Shrub admin’s embrace of ______________. (nyt)
Consumer confusion
In Roubiniworld, metaphors are shaken not stirred: While the worsening employment outlook is in line with Wall Street’s expectation, persistently high monthly job losses and the accelerating rise in the unemployment rate will further dampen Main Street’s consumption and animal spirits in an economy already facing considerable headwinds due to massive wealth destruction. Disambiguate.
Apres moi, CRM
This classification of royal stalkers is generalizable, though proportions may vary by context: delusional (26.9%), amity seekers (16.5%), intimacy seekers (12%), sanctuary and help seekers (8.8%), persecuted (3.2%), counsellors (11.2%), querulants (6.4%), and chaotic (14.9%). (somewhereorother)
TPB4, TPB3, TPB2, TPB1
Press conf with the TPB1. Note the kabuki starting at 1:17 when the interviewer feigns a question about where the other 3 TPBs are and TPB1 feigns an answer: Q: How come the other guys, they are not here? They are not in Sweden I think. A: They don’t, uh, they don’t live in Sweden [...]
Sign of the times
An email from a car dealership: SATURDAY, [MONTH] [DAY], 9:00am–3:00pm Use our lot to Spring Clean your Attic, Garage, Barn or House! SELLERS Spaces & Tables available for $10/unit fee with all fees donated to [CAUSE] PRE-REGISTER FOR YOUR SPACE & TABLE Call [DEALERSHIP] at ###-###-#### and ask for [NAME], [NAME] or [NAME]. Setup Starts [...]
“the first documented case of election fraud in the U.S. using electronic voting machines”
So says Schneier. He quotes Matt Blaze: The indictment describes a conspiracy to exploit this ambiguity in the iVotronic user interface by having pollworkers systematically (and incorrectly) tell voters that pressing the VOTE button is the last step. When a misled voter would leave the machine with the extra “confirm vote” screen still displayed, a [...]
Posted in digital, government, law, standards Tagged election, ES&S, fraud, Kentucky Leave a comment
Old pix
LAT: NASA was so preoccupied with getting an astronaut to the moon ahead of the Soviets that little attention was paid to the mountains of scientific data that flowed back to Earth from its early space missions. The data, stored on miles of fragile tapes, grew into mountains that were packed up and sent to [...]
Evolution of the GOP
’67/’68: (im)
The body vanishes in a cloud of greasy black smoke!
Army of Dude runs through the Iraq-based videogame possibilities: (jl)
Black humor