for catching this New York Times Magazine piece on the erosion of privacy in the Internet Age [sic]. I saw it on paper Sunday , and wanted to link it.

It leads me to a very profound thought... in the Oberlin College story I linked below, people manufactured their own psychological privacy, since the college denied them any physical privacy.

The logical corollary is that, if the sort of thing mentioned in the Times article continues, will the public not have to adjust its degree of judgementalism? Our ability to be judgemental without appearing hypocritcal has always been founded on the fact that *our* dirty laundry hasn't been aired. This is changing, fairly rapidly: *everyone's* laundry is on the line.

Bug? Or feature?

Wednesday, May 3, 2000 @ 01:25 p.m. - Comment

Wednesday, May 3, 2000 @ 12:24 p.m. - Comment

this panel commentary of David's, at a meeting of the Western Regional meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, April 24, 1999.

It's probably just me, but isn't it wildly amusing that the initials of that organisation are SSSS?

Wednesday, May 3, 2000 @ 12:16 a.m. - Comment

Give it a read. He's always thought-provoking... even to me. PS: The ending isn't what you might expect.

Tuesday, May 2, 2000 @ 10:09 p.m. - Comment

If you wondered why the AOL/Time Warner merger might be a Bad Idea, read this.

[ Thanks to alert reader Jen Nagel ]

Monday, May 1, 2000 @ 11:31 a.m. - Comment

He's drunk the Kool-aid.

Whoa-yeah!

Monday, May 1, 2000 @ 09:31 a.m. - Comment

about the Dead People Server is that close to half the people listed there aren't actually *dead*.

The editorial comments are delightful, too; if you're into that sort of thing:

John Belushi. Dead. Stupidity.
Kurt Cobain. Dead. Angst.

For the best use *ever* of the <BLINK> tag, search for 'Schr'...

Sunday, April 30, 2000 @ 10:25 p.m. - Comment

Names Are Not Addresses; Addresses Are Not Names.

If we do not stop allowing people who are out to make a buck to make engineering decisions about the Internet, It Will Break.

Period.

End of report.

<loud, incoherent screech of anguished rage>

Sunday, April 30, 2000 @ 12:11 a.m. - Comment

Girlhacker posted a piece about Harley Davidson Corp filing a trademark application concerning the sound made by "[it's] V-Twin, common crankpin motorcycle engines when the goods are in use."

Pushed one of my buttons; guess what? :-)

Particularly her comment:

Its current status: "An opposition is now pending at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board." I suppose that other motorcycle maker is asserting their right to also add to our landscape's sound pollution.

No one can ever build a V-twin motorcycle engine again? Unh-unh; not in my country.

Saturday, April 29, 2000 @ 07:48 p.m. - Comment

Na, na na na, naaaa, na... Goodbye, Earl...

Saturday, April 29, 2000 @ 06:59 p.m. - Comment

[ Thanks to Wetlog, where it apparently is Penis Day. ]

Saturday, April 29, 2000 @ 01:15 a.m. - Comment

I understand that Tim McGraw lyric better this week than I ever did before. I'm not entirely certain whether the social failures and the business failures are causes or effects of one another, or maybe a little of both... but if you've been reading for a while, you know that I don't descend into this sort of self-involvement here often.

Anyone got any St John's Wort handy? :-)

My mom made it up to Massachusetts tonight. She's gone for three weeks to attend her 50th highschool reunion -- we don't know if classmate Robert Morse will make it or not -- and to visit my aunt and sister, who live Up There<tm>.

Not that that's pertinent to anything above...

Saturday, April 29, 2000 @ 12:31 a.m. - Comment

You know, I don't *mind* standing around all night waiting two and a half hours to sing a second song. I don't mind being mostly ignored by the people around me, whom I'm putatively there to hang out with. (The rest of you know who you are.) I don't even mind tolerating all the cigarette smoke. I'm used to these things. And it's sorta nice having an audience that's actually listening.

But if all I'm gonna get out of it is what I got, I'll do it closer to home than a 110 mile roundtrip, I think.

Friday, April 28, 2000 @ 09:22 a.m. - Comment

Thursday, April 27, 2000 @ 05:16 p.m. - Comment

Add me to the list of people posting a link to this parody of it, even though the AP doesn't want me to.

C'mon, AP: come arrest me.

Thursday, April 27, 2000 @ 01:27 p.m. - Comment

And there's the rub: since he was on assignment, they own the rights to it, and he can't make any money reselling it. Is that right?

Thursday, April 27, 2000 @ 01:17 p.m. - Comment

The Sarasota country radio station, 106.5 WCTQ is two! They threw a surprise party Wednesday night for their listeners at Joyland Sarasota, which was attended by Alecia Elliot, Chalee Tennison, Keith Urban, the lovely, talented, and way too young for me Jessica Andrews (:-), the really, really tall Michael Peterson (who, luckily, sat down for most of his set), and headliners Ricochet... and 1200 of their closes friends. Happy birthday, Heath... and please try not to break our DJ's next time you're in town...

The evening was anchored by unsung country heroes One Night Rodeo (who don't appear to *have* a website; what's up with that?), and benefitted St Jude's; it was a thank you to the listeners for raising over $100,000 last month in the St. Jude's Radiothon.

Also spotted wandering the aisles were Rob, Maverick, Duane, Tracy (with her new, much shorter hairdo), and or course Wanda, in spiffy new duds that showed off her 'stuff' nicely. (If you don't get that, start listening. :-) They were assisted ably by Donna and Mark from the office staff, and Courtney, the local St Jude's community relations and promotions lady. Oh, yeah , and Dave McClure was there too.

As was Ruth. Hi, Ruth. :-)

In any event, a helluva party, and don't miss it next year. If you didn't come here from there, some pictures (including some of mine) will be up on the station's website shortly (thanks, Mark). [ UPDATE: Those pictures are now up; the warmer-toned ones shot without a flash are mine. And thanks also to Donna for chasing Mark around for my negatives. ]

Thursday, April 27, 2000 @ 10:32 a.m. - Comment

if desperation and insecurity made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn on?" Albert Brooks is one of my favorites... This is supposedly the uncircumsized version of his Playboy invu, which I missed...

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 @ 06:05 p.m. - Comment

Check out this piece on chain letters...

I'm pretty sure someone's missing the point though:

"I don't think there's any way of slowing down these things until there's some way for consumers to authenticate where e-mail comes from," said Rubin, adding that's difficult to do.

Nope. There's no way of slowing these down until people get less gullible. By the way: did you realize that 'gullible' isn't in the dictionary?

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 @ 12:17 p.m. - Comment

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 @ 12:03 p.m. - Comment

Salon reports on the new movie The Lifestyle... and discovers that all is not as might be expected.

Sunday, April 23, 2000 @ 03:11 p.m. - Comment

There's a discussion going on over at Metafilter about the news photos of the raid; I've weighed in, down at the bottom of the page.

Sunday, April 23, 2000 @ 03:00 p.m. - Comment

to Wendell for pointing out this delightful piece about my absolute all-time favorite musical satirist, Tom Lehrer. I was introduced to him by Elana Wakeman, an old friend I haven't heard from in many years -- her sister is a popular local violinist (yes, I used the words popular and violinist in the same sentence; cope with it).

[ My mentioning Elana here, of course, guarantees that I'll hear from her; the web is too small -- I still have that picture in my wallet, Squirrel. ]

Friday, April 21, 2000 @ 11:28 p.m. - Comment

Douglas Hofstadter thinks so.

[ Thanks to Girlhacker ]

Friday, April 21, 2000 @ 01:05 p.m. - Comment

*here's* an interesting page: Notable guest stars on Happy Days.

Damn, I love the web. :-)

Friday, April 21, 2000 @ 12:56 p.m. - Comment

[ spotted by Wes ] on the dangers of letting the people who supply the water supply the hoses, too.

[ Um, oops. Putting the *link* in is usually a good idea. :-) ]

Friday, April 21, 2000 @ 12:36 p.m. - Comment

Does anybody think this is really George Bush's campaign site?

Apparently so...

Thursday, April 20, 2000 @ 01:55 p.m. - Comment

Captain Steven R. Ellison M.D.'s tribute to the previous generation.

Bring Kleenex.

[ From Jerry ]

Wednesday, April 19, 2000 @ 03:52 p.m. - Comment

over at Genehack, I guess we can say the ad campaign is a success.

Wednesday, April 19, 2000 @ 03:18 p.m. - Comment

Mark makes that point quite well here...

[ Thanks to Melanie ]

Wednesday, April 19, 2000 @ 12:07 p.m. - Comment

I've been pretty much miserable all week, for reasons that are way too in-depth to get into here... so this made a nice change of pace.

Remember the Darwin Awards? They're given to the person or persons each year who have improved the human race the most... by departing it. The story usually held up as the first winner is Rocket Car:

If you've never heard the legend before (in which case I can't imagine why you'd be reading this), here's the bare bones of it: Once upon a time, in some out-of-the way part of the country (take your pick of locations) a maniac took a rocket of some sort, and mounted it on the back of a car (make and model depend on automotive trends when the story is told). The maniac then sped down a deserted stretch of highway, and when he reached an appropriate spot, he lit the rocket. Unfortunately, the rocket (which was either a JATO bottle, a surplus ICBM engine, or an experimental Shuttle booster) proved to be far more powerful than the maniac anticipated. The car reached an incredible speed in a matter of seconds (somewhere between 150 miles per hour and Warp 9) at which point the car's brakes and steering became... ineffective. This development would've been bad enough on a straightaway, but through some error in planning or navigation, the maniac found himself hurtling down a road that curved sharply, not far from where he ignited the rocket. When the car arrived at the curve, it went straight ahead instead of negotiating the turn. Pilot and car then flew like an arrow (for a distance only limited by the imagination of the person telling the story), before crashing into an inconveniently-placed mountainside.

Tuesday, April 18, 2000 @ 04:59 p.m. - Comment

Spam, and how to get it, courtesy of Salon:

How long does it take a fresh new e-mail address to get spam? We decided to find out by creating a fictitious new Salon staffer, Wallis Sanford (a nod, of course, to the once notorious Spam King Sanford Wallace). We wanted our new "junior staff writer" to live life dangerously on the Web and see how quickly he fell victim to spammers. So we set him up with new accounts on America Online and Hotmail. We also set up a Geocities home page, posted a question on Usenet, and put him on the Salon masthead -- in each case, listing a separate Salon e-mail address set up expressly to collect spam. Then we sat back and waited to see which of the five lures would get the first bite.

Tuesday, April 18, 2000 @ 10:02 a.m. - Comment

he thinks my "Greenspunized" links are creepy...

but he certainly catches good links himself.

Tuesday, April 18, 2000 @ 12:31 a.m. - Comment

Monday, April 17, 2000 @ 07:09 p.m. - Comment

I love that.

What the site does, in effect, is electronically reproduce your mom. Sign up with IYP's service and your underwear drawer will automatically replenish itself on a regular basis, banishing forever that awkward moment when you're forced to wrap tape around your waist because the elastic on your skivvies is shot. They'll deliver new underwear, on a regular basis, for as long as you want. In short, InYourPants.com wants to be your Underwear Fairy.

Monday, April 17, 2000 @ 03:20 p.m. - Comment

What is it with the "V" words? Can you match the flurry of recent and past V-names with their products? Warning: Don't get these names mixed up when you're shopping.

Monday, April 17, 2000 @ 10:28 a.m. - Comment

Exxon has a tiger too. And Kellogg's doesn't think that's too grrreat...

Monday, April 17, 2000 @ 09:39 a.m. - Comment

Thought for the Day

[ Thanks to

Sunday, April 16, 2000 @ 04:44 p.m. - Comment

Nope. Website for a new Dean Koontz book.

I've linked it because the author note copy on the site is delightful... and I've spared you the silly Flash splash.

Ain't I a nice guy?

Sunday, April 16, 2000 @ 01:16 p.m. - Comment

Less than a month after a skater died from a head injury, officials moved Friday to improve safety on the old Gandy Bridge Friendship Trail, but they stopped short of requiring all skaters to wear helmets.

'Skating is inherently a dangerous sport, like snow skiing and scuba diving, and you can get hurt doing it," [local in-line skating instructor Michael] Schenker said. 'The nice part is that skating is just a lot of fun. We're actually lucky to live in a place where we have a lot of places to skate."

Saturday, April 15, 2000 @ 03:35 p.m. - Comment

David Goldman runs Hatewatch, a website that catalogs other websites run by organizations comprised of members who hate someone. Well, usually, they hate some group; you know: kikes, niggers, wops, japs, cripples, those kinds of people. People that aren't like them.

Roger Ebert thinks that's a bad idea.

This leads me to a place I go more and more often lately: does the fact that a collection of data has been made easily accessible via the web in and of itself make worse the problem that people can use that data for evil purposes?

Assuming, I mean, that the data was publicly available in the first place, without authentication or anything.

Is this a difference of degree? Or a difference of sorts?

I'd like to hear discussion; I don't have an answer, and the question's pretty important.

Friday, April 14, 2000 @ 01:02 p.m. - Comment

[ Thanks to Jon Katz ]

Thursday, April 13, 2000 @ 02:39 p.m. - Comment

Mindspring Internet access... well, what's the opposite of 'sucks'?

Thursday, April 13, 2000 @ 11:39 a.m. - Comment

But at least Ronald doesn't care.

[ Thanks to Veruca via Metafilter ]

Thursday, April 13, 2000 @ 11:18 a.m. - Comment

in agreeing with St Petersburg Times writer Martin Dyckman's piece on the flag-burning amendment. Of course, there were a couple of letters from people who just haven't gotten it, yet, too...

I find it pleasantly unsurprising just how many of the "no, there should not be a law prohibiting the burning of the American flag" letters come from veterans who've defended it. Those people understand that you cannot legislate patriotism -- and that if we see them burn it, at least we know who they are, now -- and that all it will do is make the people who are gonna burn a flag regardless into criminals.

This is a common thing for legislators: not being able to figure out that making some things illegal will not stop them from happening: they've done it again, too.

Thursday, April 13, 2000 @ 10:34 a.m. - Comment

I guess it's finally time for me to become Epinionated...

Wednesday, April 12, 2000 @ 05:26 p.m. - Comment

Arne Flones, in a LinuxCare opinion column pointed to by the Linux Daily News, opines that there's a geek gap between what we know to be good engineering (and other) practice, and what we see being introduced as legislation in the many Houses around the US: that is, that we, as geeks, are not being proactive enough on these topics:

The free software movement forms the core constituency of the larger Internet-centered technological revolution. We know this to be true because amongst our members are the very people who invented the Internet. Unfortunately, we still have to struggle to be heard outside our core. We have our own information infrastructure and even our own press. But when I listen to the radio, watch television news, or read a newspaper, the geek gap is all too apparent. What is the geek gap? That yawning chasm between fact and public opinion. Particularly when it comes to topics dear to geeks, the accuracy of information in the press is abysmal. If our message is getting out at all, it isn't very effective.

The problem is not with ourselves, but with our Stars.

Wednesday, April 12, 2000 @ 02:43 p.m. - Comment

The City of St Petersburg has come to a compromise with an adult book and video store in St Pete.

"As far as I know, it has been a very respectable place," said Carrie Ford Ellis, who lives in an apartment off the alley just south of the business.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't even know it was there until about a year ago," said Lillie Thomas, of 523 14th Ave. S, about a block behind the business. "We don't have any problem with it in here."

Morons.

Wednesday, April 12, 2000 @ 12:41 p.m. - Comment

Michael Moore, of TV Nation fame, weighs in with his opinion on the Elian Gonzales situation, which, to date, I have managed not to comment on.

My only real question, I guess, is: are these people related to Miriam Gonzales, who was in the "Millenium Playmate Search" and may be The Most Beautiful Woman On The Planet. :-)

Sunday, April 9, 2000 @ 06:45 p.m. - Comment

Astroturf, of course.

I expect the people who make the real Astroturf won't be especially happy about it, but that didn't help the folks at Hormel... They finally gave in.

And, BTW, what's that happenin' background music on the SPAM<tm> home page, anyway?

Sunday, April 9, 2000 @ 06:23 p.m. - Comment

piece on the scandalization of the net. I'm a bit surprised, actually, to see this caliber of thought in a general circulation outlet.

Pleasantly, of course:

However, those who condemn the Net, and seek restrictive measures against it, also often have a larger agenda. They not only want to suppress child pornographers, but all sorts of other information and imagery that is available on the Internet. They would like to limit what other people see, talk about, and look for. They take an offensive issue, child pornography, and use it to forward other agendas.

Sunday, April 9, 2000 @ 03:41 p.m. - Comment

"You are running Napster and may be running other server software," Cox's network management team wrote to 350 customers. "This email serves as a 72-hour notice to reduce account activity to compliant usage levels and to remove any servers." The email was sent April 4.

get out of the business, because that's what people want to buy.

Saturday, April 8, 2000 @ 01:41 p.m. - Comment

Four of his students.

What I wanna know is, are they gonna call him "Mr. Melvin" on the phone?

Saturday, April 8, 2000 @ 01:06 p.m. - Comment

is Sarah's Syrup (diggity) dot org. She's in Hawaii, you see... and she's female and cute, adn writes about sex. The perfect post-geek feminist.

Her latest catch is this list of "things to do to show me you love me"... although the writer wimped out on labelling it.

I agree, Sarah; they make me feel all warm and fuzzy too.

Night, ya'll.

Friday, April 7, 2000 @ 05:37 p.m. - Comment

Unfortunately, it's gonna cost you.

This is an excellent example of "pay attention to the world around you." Stupidity is supposed to be expensive...

Friday, April 7, 2000 @ 04:27 p.m. - Comment

Internet found in alley with bloody knife.

The decision to end trading at its famous St Vincent Street address has sent shockwaves through the Scottish book world. Its store at Byers Road in Glasgow's West End will also close, with the loss of 50 jobs.

How many more traditions must die...?

Friday, April 7, 2000 @ 04:14 p.m. - Comment

Al Santana, theirs is named Al Santos.

What; does even the guy's name go with the format?

Thursday, April 6, 2000 @ 05:25 p.m. - Comment

It tastes just like chicken!

Thursday, April 6, 2000 @ 04:55 p.m. - Comment

Rate your risk of being murdered.

No; I won't tell you mine.

...

The hell I won't; I scored an 8.

They did, however, forget to ask the question "are you dating a woman with an unstable, violent ex-boyfriend"...

Thursday, April 6, 2000 @ 12:34 p.m. - Comment

This Salon story combines the two, in a discussion of whether a US judge should be able to outlaw people linking to the DeCSS program -- created by two non-US hackers to break the encoding on the CyberPatrol parental control application.

In January, a federal judge prohibited 2600 and two other sites from posting DeCSS. (The judge had ruled that DeCSS was a violation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which considers anything that subverts "access control mechanisms" to digital content to be illegal -- regardless of whether the modifications to the mechanism are used to access the content or to copy it.) Now the MPAA is trying to keep 2600 from even linking to other sites that have posted the program.

But wait. Can hyperlinks be outlawed? Only last week, a California judge ruled, in a case brought by Ticketmaster against Tickets.com, that it's not illegal for one site to link to another. Among other things, that suit concerned "deep linking." Ticketmaster alleged that by bypassing its home page and linking directly to "inside" pages, Tickets.com violated its copyright. The judge, however, held that "hyperlinking does not in itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act."

Thursday, April 6, 2000 @ 11:57 a.m. - Comment

What I was thinking about was the lengths that naturists (you know; that's what we started calling them when 'nudist' became pejorative?) go to to make clear to everyone that their nudity has nothing to do with sex -- you'd think these kids at the family resorts were created by binary fission, they try so hard never to mention or even think about sex.

Why?

What's wrong with sex?

David Steinberg's new Comes Naturally asks, and answers, that question, rather admirably, I thought.

Tuesday, April 4, 2000 @ 03:59 p.m. - Comment