Posts from — May 2003

Borges resources. From Abbasids to Zur Linde: A Borges Dictionary (pdf) ; Fantastic Zoology: a graphical interpretation of Borges' “Book of Imaginary Beings” (Edward Gorey would have been interesting); The Intruder: A Borges story in eight games. To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality [MetaFilter]

You have to like borges, well you don't have to, but you should like his work nonetheless. He is one of several significant librarian/scholar/writers that worked around the late 19th and early to mid 20th century. Bataille is another one, who you also should read, if you haven't already, but read more than his erotica, his work against fascism is interesting.

what we need is a tv show that satirizes reality tv by being about the production of a reality tv or similar concept show. so the show about the show, not the show itself, is the show. It would be hilarious, you could entitle it 'the making of' or some other representation of the medium of tv. ideas could be guest directors, and special guests on the tv show. every season you get to change out a significant number of the people, which would keep it fresh. you could spoof just about everything, and believe me, most people think it needs spoofed. this pops into my mind because i just saw the add for an espn reality show, which nearly spoofs itself…. while i was reading the multitudes list's postings on negri and balibar

copyright j.w.h. owner of this blog, distributed free as an idea, all other rights retained

The saving of pte Lynch. More on the “bullshit the American public” saga. The real saving of Pte Lynch. [MetaFilter]

this looks like an interesting presentation of the case, but be careful, someone might be misrepresenting their understanding of the truth…..

Robots Have Feelings Too – a group art show. Robots Have Feelings Too is a group art show at the Culture Cache gallery in San Francisco through mid-May. It features work by more than 60 established and emerging artists, illustrators, cartoonists and graffiti writers. The online exhibit is fun to surf, with samples and biogs for each artist, and links to their web page. Meet some new artists! (via HOPPE) [MetaFilter]

This looks like it will be a good show. Certainly it is pertinent to the discussions about mechanics of robothood, which is on everyone's mind more and more.

Overpeer and Media Defender are two of about a dozen tech companies developing software that would “sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music”, according to the New York Times. Programs, developed for record companies, include 'silence', which searches for and deletes music files from hard drives, 'freeze' which locks up a computer for 'minutes or hours', Trojan Horses and viruses. A Wired News article identifies Overpeer as appearing to be the leading generator of 'spoof' music files. If this wasn't in the New York Times, I would have considered it apocryphal hacker community jive… [www.gulker.com - words and pictures from Silicon Valley]

mmmm, yes, always nice to see that there are companies out there that are orienting themselves to harm people and people's possessions

This just in — now the mainstream media knows what everyone else does!. Did Bush know? An article in today's New York Times (link to mirrored site with no reg. req.) pieces together data that the author claims proves that Bush and his inner circle were well-aware that they were using false “evidence” of Iraqi WMD. Sy Hersh from the New Yorker is also chiming in, as is Salon's Joe Connason and Katha Pollitt of The Nation. A pretty decent subsection of media is finally descending on this story. If Bush or Powell or Rumsfeld are proven to have been knowingly deceitful, will the American public be even half as angry as the rest of the world? [MetaFilter]

as if everyone didn't know this….. once again, the is primarily about money, and by that i mean exploitation of natural resources.

Who should own comments?. If nobody owns the writing (or if each entry is owned by its author), that pretty much guarantees that the whole lot will be tossed into the garbage sooner or later. [Mark Bernstein]

It isn't rendered worthless, but the subjective value does not get transformed into objective value. Thus when the subjective value of the pursute disappears, the real value approaches the point where they may be 'trashed'. However, then we have the problem of author-owner vs audience-owner….