Posts from — January 2004

Bon Anniversaire Tintin!.

My first Tintin album, The Blue Lotus, was given to me for my 6 year birthday. It was one of the darker and more exotic albums, a story where our hero fights international drug smugglers set in 1931 Shanghai under a difficult political situation (the unpleasant presence of the International Settlement and the forthcoming Japanese invasion), and a social climate where discrimination, abuse and violence were the order of the day — a totally unfit read for a little boy! Although I wasn't able to understand much of this yet, of course, the world of Tintin captured my imagination like few other things have. Ever. Den bl&aring Lotus remains one of my favorite albums along with Flight 714, The Calculus Affair, The Castafiore Emmerald, Land of Black Gold and Destination Moon. Happy 75!

More fun stuff:
Official Homepage of Tintin
Nationmaster Encyclopedia: The Blue Lotus Synopsis
Visit the Loch Lomond Distillery
Les Autos de Tintin (My fave is the Lancia Aurelia)
Tintin Wallpapers [No Sense of Place]

Cass Sunstein on the echo chamber (Clay Shirky). Cass Sunstein piece on NASA’s culture and the stifling of dissent, which may have ramifications for the weblog world. My research shows that on a three-judge panel, a Republican-appointed judge is often far more likely to vote conservatively when sitting… [Many-to-Many]

Like-minded people, talking only with one another, usually end up believing a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk.

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tada, norm building happens… but most people knew that already… but this is an important part of small groups dynamics that feeds only somewhat into large group dynamics, and that is why you have to analyze human interaction on multiple levels to really understand it.

Schwarzenegger proposes billions in cuts

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a $99.1 billion budget plan Friday and proposed cutting billions of dollars from public health and welfare programs to help pay for it.

A Republican wants to slash public health and welfare budgets? Now there's a shocker.

Schwarzenegger did not include any new taxes in his budget plan Friday, but in addition to the cuts, he requested higher state park fees and tuition increases of as much as 40 percent for college students

Ah, “no new taxes”, just lots of hikes in non-tax revenue sources. Would someone remind me again why Arnold is a new kind of politician?

Expect howls of protests from cities, counties, and other municipalities – regardless of party affiliation. The party is over. The wars begin.

[Politics in the Zeros]

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sounds more or less like what they did in virginia a few years back, cut the car tax, cut the schools, raise tuition, etc. amazing… it didn't solve the budget problem in any real sense.

Ê The reality, however, is far grimmer. State funding for Virginia Tech, whose situation is typical, falls 300 positions, or $40 million, short of the 60th percentile in faculty-student ratio. It falls an additional $45 million short of the salary standard; Tech is not at the 60th percentile but the 19th.

this is great! i'd like to see more of the same, as appropriate.

Friday reading. PV Comics has hundreds of pages of free comics from a dozen talented artists. Friday reading fun! [MetaFilter]

Wikipedia timelines. Whoa. Wikipedia — the free, user-edited, almost-3-years-old, 191466-article-strong, encyclopedia that's just raised more than 30,000 dollars from surfers like you — features a truckload of hyperlinked timelines, many of them quite detailed. Astronomy, biology, chemistry…
[Seb's Open Research]

Tongue-mounted vibrators [bOing bOing]

Marginalia and Other Crimes. Marginalia and Other Crimes: I‰¥úve always had an intense hatred for people that deface books, and if they're my books, the intensity is doubled. But imagine the atrocities the average librarian faces every day‰¥Ï

Witness this display of damaged and defiled books from the Cambridge University library, with attached sarcastic commentary. The horror! Not for the squeamish.

[MetaFilter]

valerie is an android, who knew?…. most people on first inspection is probably the best answer.