Category — General

How to convert a Unitarian [bOing bOing]

this just irritates me to no end, why does everyone proselytize. I mean the new conservatism of the u.s. is just fascist in its orientation , it seems. but if you look through history, there is always a strong conservative movement before world change, so maybe this will happen.

Congestion charging 'could boost bike sales' [Ananova: News]

this would be great.. just shut down every 2 lanes of a 3 lane highway and make it bikes only…

Privacy: Going, Going…. Privacy invaders are like termites. They undermine, eating away at the structure of your personal life, until you wake up… [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

i wish someone would do a nice geneology of the concept of privacy, so that everyone would know that it never really existed.

Chancellor Clinton. And the alternative… [Kieran Healy's Weblog]

i told some friends about this a while ago, they laughed.

31 songs that changed my life. Arts: In a new collection of essays writer Nick Hornby reveals the 31 songs that have provided a soundtrack to his life. So we asked 31 music fans, including authors, musicians and artists what song is guaranteed to make their spine tingle [Guardian Unlimited]

it isn't every day that one gets to post trivial information about j.g. ballard to their blog, so i'll do it.

1983 Other Makes :Custom : Ford Escort Customized [Bidboy]

one of these should be a mandatory trade for every suv driver without passengers.

New four-in-one from Panasonic.

Panasonic has a new four-in-one gadget out that combines a digital camera, an MP3 player, a digital voice recorder, and a camcorder that records video directly as MPEG-4 files and stores it on SecureDigital memory cards. The SV-AV30's predecessor, the SV-AV10, didn't exactly find a warm reception, and the SV-AV30, with the resolution of its still images (640 x 480 pixels) and a low 15 frames per second frame rate for video, doesn't seem like much of an improvement. Maybe next time.
Read

[Gizmodo]

oh wow, this is way cool, event htough the resolution is a bit weak.

Jenny: “I will never buy SimCity 4 because I can tell how addictive it is just from the web site.” [Scripting News]
I agree completely….

The Length of Two Lives. Not so long ago. [Kieran Healy's Weblog]

it is always hard to get students to realize their place in context, and this is a form of that problem. everyone wants to believe deep down that they are some world historic figure…

Proposed: The Bixby Snyder Law.

Larry Lessig has a clever workaround for the Sonny Bono all-copyrights-default-to-perpetuity law, recently upheld in the Eldred decision: Charge a “tiny tax,” as low as $1.00, on all copyrights upwards of 50 years old, which their owners wish to keep out of the public domain. It's a great idea. In fact, I think it would be a politically smart move for Hollywood and the publishing industry to get behind it, so they're less than 100% hostile to the very idea of the public domain.

Larry calls it The Eric Eldred Act. That's fine, but it's a bit too… memorial, perhaps. I think it needs a better hook. I propose calling it The Bixby Snyder Law.

Bixby was the host of It's Not My Problem, the only show running on TV in the movie Robocop. Every time a TV appeared in the movie, there was Bixby, blurting his laugh line: I'll buy that for a dollar!

Whatever we call the law, we should get behind it. Write your local congresscritter, and watch Larry's blog (Eldred too) for further developments.

Meanwhile, Steve Waldman wants us to think about civil disobedience.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

this is a good idea, promote it.