I don’t often throw a shout-out to a movie I’ve just seen, but I need to say something about No End in Sight, which I just saw last night. The odds are that if you’re reading this, you believe that the war in Iraq was poorly planned and incompetently prosecuted, but you may not be able to back up that assertion with facts. E.g., I certainly had no idea that there were many competent folks brushed out of the way (like Col. Paul Hughes, heh heh) who tried to warn those in charge how badly they were bungling things. Lingering doubts evaporate, leaving a sort of bitter nausea.
The filmmakers don’t resort to Michael Moore tricks to rile up half the audience and alienate the rest, because the facts really do speak for themselves. The hardest part for me is that there’s no obvious call for action. We broke Iraq, and leaving it to the wolves seems just as bad as staying there and maintaining the horrible status quo. See it before the elections, I guess.
Do you know Stephen Fry? Of course you do, whether you think you do or not. He’s been in a tremendous number of great film and television products over the years. Now he’s also blogging, and a fairly small subsection of nerds that includes me could not be happier. His most recent post, which starts with a pithy explanation of the politics that’s holding up internet video standards, ends with his lovely take on the next step in the evolution of electronic dental care. Think “Brush Brush Revolution” and you won’t be far off. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s just weird enough – what are you waiting for?
Tom reminded me last night that I’ve got a link to my shared items from Google Reader, and that I never mention it, though it is probably at least as interesting, if not considerably more so, than this little vanity project. I read an alarming amount online – seriously, don’t ask – and mark the most interesting or amusing posts as ‘shared’ unless I decide to blog them. I shared 48 items in the last month, whereas I’ve only posted 12 entries to INH, so there’s that. If you are Paul, you probably have already read most of what I’ve shared; otherwise, you may find some smart political thinking or freaky weirdness. I think there might be a way to post recent items over there on the sidebar, which, yes, is already overloaded. We’ll see.
I recommend Google Reader quite highly to anyone who checks in on more than a few blogs or other regularly updated web business. Actually, it may be best for irregularly updated blogs like this one – why keep checking back when you can just see new items as they’re posted? If you use it and start sharing items yourself, please let me know!
I don’t think this is porn, and what I saw certainly looks safe for work, but I think that the oddly named 911Bio-Med.com is pushing the boundaries of Rule 34. It’s like something out of Achewood – videos of hot young women undergoing treatment for cardiac arrest. No nudity, and the one I skimmed through seemed to treat it as a straight-up training video rather than get all porny – but the main page refers to a bizarre-sounding “drama” that strongly suggests they take it off the deep end. And yeah, they have memberships – the perfect Xmas gift for the father who has everything.
The ever-practical and witty Samantha Mastridge on why you are dumb if you leave anything you care about in an unattended car. Only she’s a bit nicer about it: I think you’re dumb, she just thinks you’re careless. Still, wise up!
This article is a month old, but still freshly awesome. Techies are working on an open-source plug-in that will keep commenters from posting until their posts are scrubbed clean of the signifiers of stupidity. Good idea, but I don’t know that we’re smart enough to pull it off yet. The lead programmer notes “that irony, to a computer anyway, can sound stupid.” Hmm…yes. Still, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
Over there on the top right you can view my Twitter business, because I’ve fallen into the six months ago hole, a late adopter to the core. Not sure how much I’ll use it, but for some reason I like the idea. It’s certainly easy to use.
It feels cheaty to review this as a book, but there it is, all bound up in a hard cover and splendidly designed by Dr. Jacob McMurray, so even though it’s only a few dozen pages long, you have to read my impressions.
Ted Chiang is the kind of writer who inspires others not to write. Whatever you think your strengths as a writer may be, he’s got them covered – he’s smart, intuitive, complex, witty and (weirdest but most important of all, given his talent) humble. Set in the premodern world of Islam, the story features a door that permits travel to the past. Ho hum, except instead of simply bending our minds or exploiting time travel in all the usual worn-out ways, Chiang dives briefly – but deeply – into memory, grief, longing and regret. He closes with a humanist take on the serenity prayer that reminds us where we are in time.
Genre prejudice is all I can think of that’s holding him back from a much broader audience. Well, he’s also anti-prolific (what’s that word?), but Salinger is pretty firmly ensconced in the canon, so there you go. Maybe if he adopted the name of a nice British lady and wrote a giant novel about magical doings in England he’d break the NYT list.
Thanks to Therese for such a lovely gift.
For Sale: One Useless Cat
Reminds me of my first, long-deceased cat friend Alexander. To absent friends!
You said it, sister