A feisty talk about nuclear power

Posted on September 28th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

This afternoon’s panel on the resurgence of interest in Nuclear Power
got off to a quiet enough start; but climaxed in a few emotional
exchanges among its five panelists shortly before the end. 

An embarrassingly rough transcript (as usual, better
ones to come) is online.  A quick summary
: big power gorups are conflicted; both trying to support their existing
power investments and trying to pursue nuclear and other options
without taking on more risk than necessary.  Few energy activists
(or policy-makers in the right gov’t offices!) have the money or
authority to put their necks out, even when they feel they know the
right technical steps to make.

The big point that noone picked up was nuclear education :
how to educate the public about nuclear power; something which hasn’t
happened well.  This is also one place where Wikipedia-style
projects could help immensely… There wasn’t enough interest in the
panelist fesponses to tell how much if any they would care for such a
development.

2 comments.

Lexica and you

Posted on September 27th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

Presroi has a new section for notes on lexicons around the world : Category-lexika
He also recently gave a well-received talk to a group of European KM mavens… let me see if I can post a link to the presentation.

Lexica and you …

0 comments.

On abstinence

Posted on July 17th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

The purpose of Wikipedia is to make as many edits as possible.
Therefore, experienced Wikipedians abstain from adding whole articles,
coherent sentences, or even intelligible strings of characters, as this
wastes a great deal of time. Common techniques of successful editors: …  (read more)  — From the Uncyclopedia essay on Wikipedia

0 comments.

the bounty of summer

Posted on July 14th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

News from the wiki: a lovely idea for Wikipedians to offer and send gifts to one another in exchange for serious research is taking on steam.

In other news, Wikipedia and Google are showing up together in newsfeeds again. 

0 comments.

LA Times Learns about Wiki Vandalism

Posted on June 25th, 2005 by .
Categories: poetic justice.

Weekend America interviews Jimmy Wales about the Los Angeles
Times’  wiki, which they had to remove, on the Iraq war and the problems they had with
vandalism.  Jimmy points out that without a giant community of
guardians, policing wiki vandalism is very difficult.  He thinks
some vandals can be deterred by posting community rules.

Just to make things more fun,  Weekend America misidentified Jimbo
on their Web site as Jim Dale and provided a .com URL for  Wikipedia.  
I
wrote to them, saying “Were your site a wiki, I could correct the
problems myself and not bother you with this bit of correspondence.”
Within minutes, I received a response from their Web staff indicating
the errors had been corrected.

LA Times Learns about Wiki Vandalism …

0 comments.

Bite-sized knowledge

Posted on May 29th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

Answers.com is sexy, corporate chic. But Factbites is extraordinary. I think I’m in love.

Bite-sized knowledge …

0 comments.

Julie Klein, unbearably hot soprano

Posted on May 9th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

Sorry, that would be Julieanne Klein, singer and now apparently a budding musicologist. Don’t get that wrong, or you’ll have a heck of a time tracking her down. I did, at least. Turns out she has been stowed away in Montreal, finishing research into the development of Modern . That’s not really my bag, but I figure any diva worth her vibrato can do as she pleases. Don’t take my word on the perfection of her voice; thanks to the miracles of modern technology, you can hear for yourself.

Through her site, I also discovered
the Alignment project, which introduces musical notation PDQ Bach would be proud of. Fleur’s fave Project for New Music around here is doubtless green with envy.

0 comments.

Just can’t stop!

Posted on May 8th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

I love this instantaneous upload business so much, I just can’t help myself! Here’s a better view from the patio, now that the sun is coming up:

Another lovely view from the F.C. Folk patio.

And this one’s for Mikey, a find from yesterday afternoon. Sometimes a long chute and a long fence just aren’t enough.

Maybe this should become SJ's long fence, or SJ's longest chute... Satan's Finest Laundry Service should like this picture.

0 comments.

laugh riots

Posted on May 1st, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

0 comments.

The sex appeal of smoking

Posted on March 12th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

I’ve long maintained that a group of non-smokers should start up a non-profit advocacy group promoting the sexiness of smoking, before even the idea of it has been censured from polite company. Friends have chalked it up to recurring insanity, but I maintain that this is the only sensible point of view.

Happily, I am not alone:

I discovered that I like smoking.

Not personally. I don’t smoke.
I don’t particularly like when others do, but am loath to complain
about it. I’ve dated smokers, some of my best friends are, and I think
smoking restrictions are bordering on insane lately. But I have always
found the habit slightly distasteful.

And now I know why. They were smoking all wrong.

This man - forties or fifties, Chinese - smoked like a character in a film noir. Elegantly. Beautifully. His hands held the cigarette just so. It was delicate yet masculine. Instead of blowing out a guilty jet of smoke to the side, he exhaled a beautiful silver plume around him. He was confident in his smoking, he liked his smoking, and he was
unapologetic. He did not finish with the nervous tap-tap-squish of the
teenage closet puffer who continued the habit into adulthood or the
pitch-and-ignore of the furtive doorway smoker. He did it with a final
and decisive chess move of extinguishment. It even bordered on sexy.


–via belle de jour

1 comment.

Wayne State scorns Wikipepedia, spelling

Posted on March 7th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

At least they didn’t use an article on it.  Not much juice in this article beyond the cute title.  A prof says accepting WP citations from undergrads is ok, but not from grads.  The author intones,

Without formal peer review, there exists the possibility of Wikipedia articles being slanted to particular points of view.

I’m still waiting for someone other than a brilliant librarian to address the inverse of that statement.

Wayne State scorns Wikipepedia, spelling …

0 comments.

INTERLUDE : By the curliecues : reaping the sown

Posted on February 19th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

When exposed to goodness, feeling good about themselves, or thinking about the world at large, people are fundamentally good. This can change, when surrounded by others who are passionately struggling for personal and local success; who view getting a leg up at the expense of others as a minor victory. But most people remember what it is like to feel, to be fundamentally good, what it feels like to do well by others. Even the joyfully cruel may notice with a tiny corner of themselves, in the middle of relishing someone else’s suffering or downfall, each time they avoid doing something to help another person in need; and acknowledge with that remote corner that whatever their conscious moral beliefs, they are being unjust. (I am reminded, somehow, of JACK, the Pumpkin King.)

And there is a thrill in the air, a sense of inevitability, an unmistakable look on someone’s face, when he has been hoping for and secretly betting on, even assisting, the failure of another, and profiting thereby (if only through ego and amusement)… and then that weakness disappears, success is relentlessly extracted from failure, judgements and justice prepare to be served. In the throes of this vulnerable mood, stubborn criminals will meekly accept prison and even confessions, bullies quail and retreat, the most deeply hidden truths give themselves up. (I am thinking now of the German widow scolding the muddy, belligerent Nazis who came to take her property, demanding that they remove their boots and recall their manners, and never being bothered again.)

I saw that look on his face today, felt the air of fear and certainty and guilt; though I could not be sure of the victim or the secret hope and profit. The vulnerability was more palpable than its source; I could have pushed him gently and he would have fallen down, confessed — heaven only knows what. It seemed that by steadily going about my business I was somehow realizing his fears; he tried, quietly, without enthusiasm, to divert my attention; then left. Though we have long been friends, I could no more bring myself to ask him what was going on than he could manage to ask me to stop.

My logical self, superimposed on my intuition by decades of training and pilpul, notes that I may be wrong about all of this. You will be the first to know if I am; I will write you straightaway. But the rest of me wonders what repercussions of my work he has foreseen and how they will affect him; and I marvel at the strength of that unspoken mood, the universality of that fleeting look, the immediacy and insistence of its impression on me; the smile that touched my lips as half-hearted diversions convinced me that I was somehow unwittingly righting distant wrongs. It occurs to me that he may one day overcome his guilt, discover my awareness of it, and berate me for not reaching out to him (however much he may expect or deserve the result). On that day, there might be a thrill of tension in the air, a sense of inevitability, the briefest flicker of an unmistakable expression on my face…

4 comments.

SCO prepares for delisting from NASDAQ

Posted on February 17th, 2005 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

As SCO prepares to be delisted, the rest of the world (at least those of them who give a damn) wonder idly what will happen to their IP.

SCO prepares for delisting from NASDAQ …

0 comments.

President Bush to audience : “[Fuck you]“

Posted on October 28th, 2004 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

Our sitting President gets frisky with his media support before an interview, and clearly the person behind the camera can’t stand to see such glorious footage brushed away on the cutting room floor.  So, instead of being incinerated, the clipped vulgarity ends up afloat in everyone’s favorite cesspool, Al Gore’s InterNet. 


Bush shoots the birdie like a no-nonsense expert, but giggles afterwards like an amateur…  this short has been posted all over the place, but I like the simple humanity of the clip.  Fwiw, I like the Bush in this clip a lot better than the Edwards foppery making the rounds.

President Bush to audience : “[Fuck you]” …

0 comments.

John Romero is on my desk

Posted on September 21st, 2004 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

Or a protagonist that looks surprisingly like him. An old housemate left me a copy of Daikatana, in its original box… the orange color perfectly matches my title, and a certain banner-message I can think of. I haven’t opened it yet, but just having the ION STORM logo on my desk makes it seem heavier, somehow.

0 comments.

Christina rants about using time efficiently

Posted on September 18th, 2004 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

That’s the kind of ranting I like to hear. University professors beware, we’re watching how you spend your minutes… and ours. Now if only that would extend to other teachers, and other seminal professions (such as filmmakers).

Christina rants about using time efficiently …

0 comments.

Supersimultaneity - piling up of events

Posted on June 29th, 2004 by longestnow.
Categories: poetic justice.

So, there are hours and days and weeks and months where nothing happens. Or where things endeavour to happen but never in any sharply time-delimited fashion. And there are weekends when fifteen different crucial things happen, all magically fitting together, and 90-hour stretches when there isn’t enough time to catch a breath or sleep. And sometimes there are four-hour periods during which five or six different unreschedulable nonrefundable irreplaceable events take place — in the middle of a week in which no others do. Is this a natural property of life? A quality of certain environments? A taste of karmic circumstance? I can’t be the only one to whom this happens; fess up.

8 comments.

Older » « Newer