14.07.07
two harper's quotes
two quotes i read this morning in harper's magazine. one inspiring (but hard to live by) and one insightful.
About the scientific approach to environmentalism, from Curtis White's "the idols of environmentalism":
The establishment of those principles by which we might live would begin with three questions. First, what does it mean to be a human being? Second, what is my relation to other human beings? And third, what is my relation to Being as such, the ongoing miracle that there is something rather than nothing? If the answer to these questions is that the purpose of being human is “the pursuit of happiness” (understood as success, which is understood as the accumulation of money); and if our relation to others is a relation to mere things (with nothing to offer but their labor); and if our relation to the world is only to “resources” (that we should exploit for profit); then we should be very comfortable with the world we have. If it goes to perdition at least we can say that we acted in good faith. But if, on the other hand, we answer that there should be a greater sense of self-worth in being a human, more justice in our relation to others, and more reverence for Being, then we must either live in bad faith with capitalism or begin describing a future whose fundamental values and whose daily activities are radically different from what we currently endure.
About the shallowness and fictition of the press, from a 1986 interview with Austrian novelist and playwright Thomas Bernhard:
INTERVIEWER: But when you describe yourself as a "destroyer of stories," that is a theoretical statement.
BERNHARD: Well, people say a lot of things in fifty years of life. If a reporter is sitting in a restaurant somewhere and he hears you say the beef's no good, then he'll always claim you're someone who doesn't like beef, for the rest of your life. You go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it.
13.07.07
visions of women
continuing to report on my study findings, and as another gender issue, i found it striking that the only really significant gender bias was in the ranking (on a scale of 1-7) of the following sentence: "I was the most important member on the team."
10.07.07
vision of men
last month i ran human subject studies in which people worked with a robot to solve a task. as part of the post-experimental debriefing i asked the subjects whether they felt the robot was male or female.
aur being a lamp with no humanoid features, i expected the answer to be somewhat diverse. instead, all but one thought the robot was male.
this might have to do with a number of things, like the fact that i am male and i 'represent' the robot, or the fact that highly powered motorized tools are considered male, or the fact that i designed its motions and they have a male feeling to them.
however, when asked why they thought the robot was male, i almost only received disparaging explanations: 'it's male because it's lazy', 'because it does what you tell it to do', 'because it's like a dog', 'because it's sort of stupid' etc.
it was particularly curious that subjects would tell me (a male stranger) this without embarassment. maybe there's something in the experimenter-subject relationship that makes people be more honest.
this sort of response was true for both male and female subjects, although more so for female ones.
nice to know that our gender is held in such high esteem in this day and age.
Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:03
mmm... maybe because aur is male in Hebrew :)
- ram
Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:10
considering the number of hebrew-speaking subjects in my study was exactly one, i doubt that's the reason...
- guy
Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:00
About the disparaging explanations, it is simply politically correct.
Try to think which of the following is
more likely to get you in awkward social position:
"I chose male because it is lazy"
"I chose female because it is lazy"
"I chose male because it is efficient"
"I chose female because it is efficient"
- yoad
Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:26
but i first asked them what the gender is, and they said 'male', and then when asked for an explanation they could have said something neutral, like: it's blue, it's metal, etc.
instead many chose to say something insulting... which i still find surprising.
- guy
Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:13
I would say that if 90% of them first thought : "I thought it's male because it was so efficient" or "I thought it's male because technical stuff seems male related", no one would say that.
In fact, you would get exactly the results you got. This is of course unprovable.
- yoad
Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:12
This is most interesting, but not surprising. Women often control the social dialog, and hence it is politically correct to insult men. It is always amazing to me how often late night talk shows make insulting jokes about men, but an insulting joke about women is very rare. Men are always dogs, sex-obsessed monsters, stupid husbands who can't even find the can opener, or violent bullies.
My suspicion is that they all thought your question was silly, so they were giving you the most obvious and common politically correct answer, as the first thing that popped into their heads.
- Vince
26.02.07
what's good about aging
one big advantage that i find about aging, is that increasingly more literature makes sense to you.
Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:25
i agree, although the reverse works as well...some stuff i used to think was brilliant i now realize is not.
- cynthia
Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:23
yeah, but you still understand it. so you're really only gaining...
- guy
14.12.06
jean piché
just cam out of one of the most stunning music/video performances i've ever seen. makes me feel very lucky to be at the media lab.
words are particularly misfit to describe jean piché's work, so let's just keep it at that he really captures a lot of what i love about music and video art. if he plays in your town, go see him.
my favorite: express.
26.11.06
dream
in my dream today, i was watching a video in which benjamin bernake was posing an economics challenge to his students. he explained a lot, and wrote down a lot of equations, but it was too complicated for me to follow.
which made me think how strage it is that my brain can produce information that's too complicated for myself to understand. and in real-time, no less.
a friend of mine said that it reminded him of descartes's argument for the existence of god.
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:03
Maybe the complicated stuff was actually rubbish, while the real trick was your brain making you think rubbish is complicated. Which is no less impressive.
- yotam
08.11.06
america, politics, boston, comments-on
massachusetts votes 'no' on wine in supermarkets
hard to believe (for me) - massachusetts voters voted 'no' on a law proposition that would allow local towns to give permits to supermarkets to sell wine.
since there are obviously few more dangerous issues in the world, this was also the most expensive ballot question campaign in state history breaking the record held since 1988, when the state voted on nuclear power plants.
supermarkets shelled out $7 million on trying to get the law passed, while liquor store and beer distributors paid $4.5 million to stop the law from being passed.
at the end of the day, this is a common story of legislation.
a stupid-ass law is in place, protecting some economic special interest of a small group. this lobby-propelled law has over the years thoroughly been twisted into some heap of moralistic bullshit related to 'protecting our children', just about the most hipocritical thing you can imagine from liquor stores. and now some other special interest group wants to get in. so both groups shell out millions to make up campaigns tarteting some deeply emotional decision centers in our brains, making the decision about 'consumer choice' or 'teenage drinking'. yeah, right.
trying to appease the traditionally alcohol-spooked american voter, the law in question was phrased so carefully, that i couldn't believe anyone in their right mind would reject it. it basically allowed towns to hand out a limited number of permits to grocery stores to sell wine, and only wine. towns could of course not grant permits if they didn't want to.
but at the end the scare campaign funded by the liquor companies ("foreign owned grocery stores", "190 additional drunk driving fatalities per year", "fail to stop underage buyers"), worked. astonishingly, even very liberal voters that i've talked to, were flailing on election day on how to vote on this question. when pressed to explain why exactly they oppose it, they couldn't muster any good explanations, which is not surprising, since the campaign was mainly emotional and not rational. they usually said something like: "i mean, i'm for consumer choice, but...hmm.. i don't know something.... hmmm.... don't know if it's a good idea, really."
much has been written about the difference between campaigns of hope vs. campaigns of fear. but it really comes down to the emotional response at the ballot box - when you're all alone there with the pen in your hand, and something inside you that you can't quite explain is making you uneasy about a question, it's always a little more comfortable to vote with your fear than with your hope.
Wed, 8 Nov 2006 14:05
that's pretty dumb. in maryland we booted out our republican governor and passed a referendum outlawing governors from selling off any park lands without approval of the general assembly, after our outgoing gov had attempted to sell park lands to a politically connected friend. sends a pretty strong message. still can't buy liquor after 8pm in montgomery county, though. :)
- cynthia
02.11.06
cute check-out flow
having just bought ljova's debut album on cd baby, i was quite enchanted with that website's cute, informal, but efficient and professional registration and check-out procedure. even the bad graphics sort of work with the overall feel.
i should remember to vote for them on some web award thing.
also - i hear that cd baby is 'a kind middleman', so if you produce music independently, you might want to consider them for distribution.
update: just got their shipping confirmation, and what can i say... cute.
Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Thursday, November 2nd.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
22.10.06
bullshit security
dropping off a friend at the airport today i once more realized what bullshit this whole airport security really is. better people than me agree with my longstanding claim that most of the measures that the t.s.a takes to secure flights are nothing but snakeoil. and today i experienced two new examples for that.
without going into details, for about 45 minutes i engaged in what by all means is an unusual and suspcious behavior at logan airport this morning. i had my reasons, but i was sure that within minutes someone would approach me and try to figure out what's going on. no such thing. t.s.a officers walked by and didn't even seem to care. i guess they were busy ridding people of their toothpaste.
what they don't understand is that there's only two kinds of airline security: one - trying to find the terrorists long before they're at the airport. this is done using intelligence, be it surveillance or snitches. two - if you really failed to find them in time, the best thing you can do at the airport is to detect suspicious activity and investigate it.
unfortunately, there is no 'trick' for that. you need to observe people, know what's normal, and try to spot when something's fishy. like, for example, me, today.
the problem is that this is totally opposed to the american way of doing things, especially in these kinds of underpaid jobs. here, everything must follow rules. if something changes, new rules must be drawn up, they come into effect and everyone starts to follow them.
unfortunately, this is perfectly useless for the task at hand. as soon as they are rules, perpetrators can change their behavior to adapt to the new rules. what you need is not rules, but an eye for human behavior, and some honed people-reading skills. and in a culture that favors eye-aversion, this is not an easy feat.
to top things off, my friend, who was traveling with a computer in his check-in luggage was told that no computing equipment can be shipped. after all, we know how dangerous computers can be. even cellphones apparently can crash a plane.
but the best part comes later: after much discussion, they agreed to check his computer, under the condition that he removed the c.p.u from the machine. now there's security for you! sigh. also, i'm sure the t.s.a officer was in a perfect position to judge whether my friend actually removed the c.p.u.
Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:51
what in the hell could you have been doing suspiciously for 45 minutes? maybe it's because you are blonde. anyway i agree that security is a joke but you can't write the whole country off as eye-averting, mr. eye averter yourself. only the northern half of this country favors that.
- cynthia
16.10.06
comments-on, america, religion
it's hip to be good
during a recent conversation at a fancy boston restaurant, in a scene so ironic, it might have just been lifted straight out of a mike leigh movie - i noted that the big trend these days was for not-do-gooder types to "do good". the non-hippie hippie, the good samaritan capitalist. since this phrasing was met by some surprise by my co-diners, i thought i'd say a little something about it here, too.
so yeah - if you want to know what the hippest thing in america these days is, it's charity and changing the world. everyone who's someone is into it, and it's so trendy that even the biggest and coolest corporations are digging their hands deep into the do-gooder game. but don't confuse it with dreamy-eyed hippies. the deciding factor about the new do-gooder movement is that they're also looking out for themselves. turning a buck while saving a life, so to speak.
it's a strange blend between extreme capitalism and light tree-hugging. apple is doing it, bp is doing it, fucking timberland has now become a world leader in sustainability, and of course the list is endless - these are just the latest three examples i've seen in the last 24 hours.
timberland's slogan really captures this new trend: "make it better" - the vague "it", meaning: make great and expensive shoes, but also make the world better. no need for birkenstock, ma'am.
wherever you go in the high-powered circles in which i seem to commute these days, every over-privileged person i meet is working on some sort of idea on how to make the world a better place. this seems to come especially from people with professions that have not traditionally been connected to the love-and-peace crowd: investment bankers, economists, tax attorneys, and venture capitalists. they all emphasize the 'pragmatic' side of it, making sure i understand that this is not some lefty bullshit, but that there's a lot of money in it. as in: "i just want to say one word to you...just one word." -- "yes, sir."-- "are you listening?" -- "yes, sir. i am." -- "solar energy".
one of the reasons this new trend is possible is exactly that new twist on doing good: you can still look out for yourself, work in a top-notch creative job, get rich and famous, eat in fancy restaurants, and have only the nicest champagne at home. it's even part of the image!
another crowd that's drawn to the samaritan table is the designer crowd. the coolest names in design are all donating some of their time to good causes. some visionaries have caught on early, but designer houses around the country are catching on rapidly. here is the designer version of this trend: no need for crummy xerox prints of shiva drawn by untalented hippies. now the finest looking stuff in true haute fashion can be counted towards your global karma.
the trend has two big slogans. one is "like you give a damn", emphasizing the combination of caring and cool. the other is "doing good". you will see these come back over and over again.
it seems that this movement has been born out of a rebound from two extremes, meeting in the middle. on one hand people have become disillusioned from being unrealistic hippies (many have just gotten into the 30-something bracket, which requires a little more selfishness), and on the other hand people are getting a little sick with their selfish and empty lives after realizing that there's little satifsaction in choosing a great-earning or superficially hip or fun career. even the frequent dinners at the best bars in town are not helping. so the fusion of these two rebounds, has become this new 'good' movement.
i've been thinking about this for a while now, but it finally really hit me how big this has become, when i realized that the movement now even has their own wired-style magazine. and this is what their first editorial statement said:
We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let's call it GOOD. We're here to push this movement and cover its realization.
afterword: i realize that this is a much bigger and more complex issue, which i have only touched on very lightly and from one angle. maybe at some later stage i'll write something a little more thoughtful on it.
Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:58
yeah it's something that has been happening for several years, especially after the success of films such as the corporation and supersize me etc. in fact i'd say those films (and a few others i can't recall at the moment) drove it more than anything else. but don't worry, there are plenty of us lower-class people out there who don't give a shit about doing good. :) your perspective is tainted by the crowds you hang with.
- cynthia
Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:47
there is more to this- part of it is a change from the idea that the govt shoudl be looking out for public welfare to the idea that individual citizens should be-- part of the trend. don't make it a 'public'/govt issue, don't make it an idealist vision based on fuzzy feelings... make it pragmatic and market-based so that the solutions are sustainable.
But you seem to imply there is something wrong with mixing the market and social change projects? The only things I see wrong with it are:
1) govts ought to be more accountable and this lets them not be so accountable
2) when people talk the talk and don't walk the walk. corporations like you mention aren't really that big into it-- many of them are just for PR. but if a corporation really mobilized its infrastructure around things and genuinely had a great double bottom line (like check out: www.worldofgood.com), why is that bad?
- paula
Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:10
i was careful to not say that there's anything wrong with it. that's because i don't think that it's bad. my tone might be a little
suspicious, but i haven't really made up my mind either way, so i'm just pointing out the trend.
in complete honesty, something about it rubs me the wrong way, but i can't quite place my finger on it. maybe i'll figure it out at some point.
- guy
Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:29
Yeah-- there's something that makes me uncomfortable too. Namely, the
self-congratulation about all of it; the sheer arrogance of young business people
thinking that all they need to understand is the market and apply market based
solutions and naturally social change will follow. Like they're the heroes of the
new order. When many of them have little background or training in the very very
complex issues involved in social change work, and need to, if they truly want
sustainable solutions as they suggest.
So: I think it needs to be made much more careful and humble. And as I said
before, shouldn't distract us from also holding govts responsible for the aspects of
public welfare they're responsible for. But overall, I still think ( or think I
think) it's a trend with some promise.
- paula
Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:16
i've had conversations like this before and it's always tricky. people who are very
invested in doing good are very sensitive about any hint that the impulse is
anything but good. and it's hard to argue otherwise, of course. and i'm not arguing
otherwise, necessarily. but there are subtleties, and the knee-jerk offended
reaction they give always smacks of a certain closed-minded self-righteousness.
i'm sounding like a republican. i'm not at all.
- cynthia
10.10.06
charlie is here! and should be shot
this post is long overdue. it concerns the horrendous conception and execution of the 'charlie ticket' project for the boston subway system.
i mean, where to begin? how about with the simple fact that there was *nothing* broken with the previous fare system, or at least nothing that was fixed with the new one. if someone can point me to a single acquired benefit of the new system except profit for the developers (who i'm sure are friends of some mbta officials) and employment for their workers, please let me know.
to the uninitiated, the boston transport authority (mbta) has, in what seems to be another case of new-york penis envy, converted its token- and change-based system to a new system which includes stored-value magnetic paper cards. in parallel it has replaced the turnstile system with stupid-ass glass gates that already look like they're some 1980s joke on futuristic design (and notice the slight misalignment of the gates. this station is no exception, apparently it's part of the bad design).
but what's really wrong with the new system:
- paper waste. every fucking time you buy a ticket, you get another piece of magnetic paper trash. even if you want to refill your card, they actually replace your card with a new one. if you use your debit card to buy the ticket, you also need to accept another piece of magnetic trash which has your receipt printed on it, whether you ask for it or not. the previous system had reusable tokens and reusable federal reserve currency.
- the death of the monthly ticket. it used to be a collector's item with its new design every month, and obviously it was easily distinguishable from a token (one's a card, the other is a piece of metal). the new ones look like the stored-value tickets and you have to read the print on the ticket to distinguish them. real helpful when the gates are broken and the station is manned.
- the ticket vending machines. god, what an improvement. if you're quick and well-rehearsed, you can sometimes get a ticket in only double the time it took you on the old token machines. but hey! it has a computer screen on it! so it must be better. most people just stare at the machine with the horrible 1990s unix user interface (including sgi blue) and don't even know where to start. luckily, the credit card slot is not marked for insertion direction, resulting in an average of 2-3 insertions before you get it right. the interaction flow of the machines can be described in one sentence: the programmers designed it. to name only one example: you have to press 'confirm' after you've selected your payment type, but before you actually can insert the payment.
- the transition management. months (a year?) after the first station was converted, the mbta still runs on both systems. it's a dice roll to anticipate whether you will need a charlie ticket or a token (or exact change) for your return trip, making ticket/token buying a nightmare. obviously you can't buy tickets in tokened stations and vice versa. that would be too easy.
- but i left the best to last: the stupid-ass glass gates. these are really a work of art. not only did it take them up to an incredible three months to install in some stations, they also seriously suck ass, and i can't for the life of me understand why they are supposed to be better than the turnstiles. (a) there is a significant delay between activation and opening. this means that every person who leaves the station needs to stop, wait, and then cross the gate. if you ever used a subway station you can imagine how annoying that is, and how that scales in rush hour. (b) the glass panels with the 'smooth' swoosh action look like the most fragile mechanism imaginable. i expect one out of five to be jammed within weeks. if you see it in action, you can only reach one conclusion - this is not something you want to lead millions of people through. (c) once the system senses a person in the gate it won't (hopefully - see below) close, enabling any number of people to pass through on a single fare. good thinking there, mbta. (d) given the asinine design of the vending machine software, i imagine that very soon we will find out that someone has been crushed to death by an erroneously closing gate because of a software bug. these motors are strong, a fact you can confirm for yourself if you try to hold the gate closed when it wants to open (how's that for investigative journalism?)
in short - everything in the new system is fucked up and useless. the people behind it should be investigated, and probably fired, and i'm sure the dig will uncover some huge conspiracy there at some point involving mitt romney's favorite prostitute's brother.
coz, while admittedly slow and unreliable (and closing early), the one nice thing about the t was its informal fare system, with the free buddy ride on the weekends and the it's-ok-if-you're-a-nickel-short attitude for exact change. now they killed that, too with what will probably go down in history as the worst fare system conversion in any mass transit system ever.
i probably forgot some additionaly annoyanced, so feel free to chime in.
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 07:52
well, i'm always a new version junky, even when the previous is good. but this indeed seems to suck. and still, i hate the turnstiles too. they tend to bump into my legs in ways that break physical laws. anyway the delay you mentioned in the opening of the gates is really unforgivable. that would have pissed me off much more then the legs annoyance.
- yotam
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:49
i'm glad i left just as this was being installed. though i didn't get
out before having to buy a stupid token-ticket at south station that i
then couldn't use anywhere else because no other station had the stupid
glass gates. maybe i'll mail you my ticket that has a dollar still on
it, i won't ever need it again.
i should add though that i expressed sadness to one of the mbta guys
that the colored monthly passes were gone and he said they'll be back,
and they will again be different colors every month, and that the
current system is a stopgap while they get a system up and running that
will combine bus and subway passes into one. which probably means
higher fares all around. and still makes it a ridiculously bad
execution of the new system.
and i will also add that the excellent dc metro system just announced
that it may turn off some escalators at some multi-escalator stations
in order to save money. boston never bothered to announce that, they
just never had them running, even at stations that had only one
escalator.
- cynthia
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:48
p.s. i know you think all things new york are wonderful but the ny subway system is shit too. it's just more extensive and runs all night, those are the only advantages i see. and i dont think it's new york the boston system is trying to emulate--the dumb new system seems much more like a very horrible imitation of d.c.'s system.
- cynthia
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:43
yeah, one of the most annoying parts of this is that it's not like they don't have *very* good places to invest their money in - like getting the trains to run faster, on time, and with some sort of indication as to their schedule (and no - saying that the next train is arriving _now_ is not an indication). and i'm not even talking about the continuously broken escalators, which still seems to be technology too hard to handle for kone.
and about nyc - i totally agree with you cynthia. i actually have an old rant about the ny subway system from my first days in new york lying around somewhere. the ny system does have the advantage of getting you faster further.
i think the best investment the mbta can do is to send their execs on a trip to european capitals. it might be quite an experience for them.
- guy
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:51
here it is: http://web.media.mit.edu/~guy/misc/nytales-subway-series.txt - written a mere 11 days after my arrival in the states.
- guy
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:32
yeah i was considering getting a bike in nyc too. seems a few of the things on your list about nyc have since changed. only the very minor ones though, of course.
- cynthia
18.09.06
gondry exhibit at deitch
deitch projects, a cute little gallery in new york that keeps not disappointing, is showing a michel gondry designed exhibit this month accompanying the upcoming release of "the science of sleep".
if you're in town, it's well worth a visit. the piano piece depicted above was one of the more compelling interactive art installations i've seen since hansen and rubin's listening post - while obviously on a much smaller scale, it had a certain gondryesque elegance to it that just tickles my delight.
and speaking of tickling - who knew that the human palate was ticklish? maybe that's why we like soda.
Sat, 30 Sep 2006 18:52
Brilliant. Quite an original corelation between video and sculpture (if you can call it sculpture). I loved seeing the city model and above it the video of the train that rides through. I'm glad I made it in the last day. Now we need to see the movie. I'm expecting a swtn review :)
- yotam
Mon, 2 Oct 2006 09:49
One of the best films of this decade. Such visual pleasure. Left me speechless.
- yotam
05.09.06
homogeneous heterogeny
my cousin, who has just moved to boston and had her first social gathering here, noted a very interesting fact about her new hometown: while boston with its large foreign student body is on the one hand very international, it is - on the other hand - pretty homogeneous, with the same social class streaming in from all around the world to study together.
so in the end, it's almost like it doesn't really matter if you're a fairly well-off worldly upper-middle class person from serbia, india, oregon, or israel. you're still in your social comfort zone.
globalization truly at work.
Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:30
bourgeois is always an accidental tourist.
- rea
Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:18
boy, your cousin is so smart and observant!
- jana
17.06.06
couple more espn/abc gripes
after watching the u.s.a-italy game today (btw, the yanks fought like tigers with 9 players vs. 10 - they even kept controlling the game - by karma alone they deserved to win this game):
cutting away to (the pretty empty) times square in the middle of an attack is not cool. and cutting to the u.s locker room during the czech game is also not cool.
then, why is 10% of the screen obstructed by the top bar, when the top half of it is just blank?
and covering up a quarter of the screen every 10 minutes to promote future broadcasts should pretty much cost a channel the fifa broadcast rights.
11.06.06
sports, comments-on, nostalgia, america
world cup fever in america
world cup fever is upon us once more and although i'm not much of a sports fan, the world cup moves me like a bad romantic comedy on an airplane.
Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:20
with all my love to nedved, I believe the czech republic won't pass the first round. squadra azura will be there instead. The one problem with the world cup this time (at least in israel) is that it was hectically discussed for so many months before it actually started, that by the time it started, i'm already sick of it. Add to that the 300 nis that they charge just to watch all of israel's worst coaches pretending to be comentators, in a studio built as a Dr-Gav living room, and the will to watch it this time is the lowest i've ever had. Lastly, I hope brazil doesn't win. It will be too boring if they do. Being france's only fan in israel, I'd say viva la france, but they look pretty bad. So forza usa, if that's what it takes.
- yotam
Mon, 12 Jun 2006 09:03
well - we'll see in a few hours whether the czechs have it in them or not :)
i can't say that the cup was over-discussed here. even on june 8th people who supposedly cared about football asked me when the first match is starting. so at least my excitement could build properly.
but i agree with you - just not brazil.
- guy
Tue, 13 Jun 2006 01:02
3-0. you win :)
- yotam
Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:22
You be speakin' my mind sometimes.
about the many data on players/countries e.g. Cote D'Ivoire/Ivory Coast is in the middle of a civil war, there were requests to not let Iran play!!! (because of the nuclear talks), I must admit I learn some useful stuff, like i learned that the Trini goalkeeper in Saturday's game went to my undergrad university. H.U. U know!
German compound words crack me up. fussballweltmeisterschaft. ha.
-
Thu, 6 Jul 2006 13:55
Such a great world cup! I just got back from germany. I watched France-Brazil! I was disapointed by Brazil.
- John
09.03.06
stop the logo
will someone please stop redesigning great logos? first nwa changed a brilliant logo design (combining the N with the W and the NW direction on the compass) totally draining it out of its cleverness.
and now at&t bastardized saul bass's classic to give it a totally meaningless twist:
Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:07
dude... maybe take yoga or something :)
- ram
Sat, 18 Mar 2006 17:31
haha ... seriously though you SHOULD take yoga it's the greatest thing in the world...
- cynthia
Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:01
i love his logo for unknown, done in unknown. it reminds me of something, but i just can't put my finger on it. wait, yes i can. that feels good.
Sun, 7 May 2006 09:26
To put this another way, same old same old
-
Sat, 29 Sep 2007 22:51
As for me, AT&T redesign is number one in Top 10 of ugliest redesigns. The worst feature of the new logo is this attempt to go 3D while not taking into account that Saul Bass's original already had it's famous 3D illusion trick.
27.02.06
the 'me-factor' or why debate never works (but films do)
the older i get, the more i get convinced that political debate does not reach its intended goal. that is, if the intended goal is for one party to persuade the other of its opinions. maybe the intended goal is just passing time, or entertaining. in which case, political debate works well enough.
people use so-called political debate mostly to reinforce their existing views. the only way people can really change their mind is by either studying (i.e. listening to someone else on a matter they have no knowledge or opinion of) or experiencing something first hand. this is why i increasingly believe that if i want someone to accept my views, i should lead by example, rather than explain why i think i'm right (or have people read my book list). the latter two will only work in the above mentioned two cases: you either don't claim knowledge on the matter, or you want to get more arguments for what you believe in anyway.
i'm starting to think that this phenomenon (not being able to be convinced by verbal communication) is an inherent human trait. call it a 'me-factor'. that this not-changing-your-mind is something etymologically important to us as humans almost the same way language itself is. not a big fan of evolutionary explanations, i'll just say that it might just be something deeply rooted in human nature to have to experience things yourself in order to shape your opinion. it's about dominance, perhaps. or about exploration. for humans, when they form their opinions based on experience, it feels a lot more like it's your own distillation of external facts as opposed to the redigestion of someone else's thoughts (to which we humans seem to be pretty opposed to). the satisfaction of reaching the opinion is much higher, as is our commitment to these new opinions.
propaganda movies pose a special case, which also explains their excess danger in the lineup of political tools. watching a movie seems to fall between the two extremes of verbal persuasion and first-hand experience. the fact that movies hold something of the 'magic of reality' or at least the pretense of objective representation (and i won't get into all that boring film theory stuff from college) makes the viewer believe they experienced something first hand. combining that with the 'me-factor' makes for a powerful mix.
still, films that are extremely different from your opinion will probably be filtered out. and the more educated masses are beginning to question the filmic medium's claim to objective representation, pushing political films more into the realm of 'someone else's opinion'. which is good.
just something i wanted to put out there for now.
Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:20
I think you've been hanging around intelligent and strong-minded people for so long that you forgot that not eveyrone is like that. I know quite a few people who are so eager to align themsleves with the mainstream, that they will listen to anyone; if that person convinces them that the opinion he is presenting is the one held by a large enough plurality of people, they will adopt it.
- udi
Fri, 3 Mar 2006 01:34
I get the feeling your thoughts don't deal with political thoughts alone, but to stick to the subject, this preelection period is a great example of them. I do believe though that one's surroundings is a strong factor of opinion forming next to expirience.
-
29.01.06
42 up - director's commentary
i have just re-watched all episodes of the up series, still one of my favorite documentary projects ever made, tracking 14 people's lives from age 7 to today. it was the first time i watched '42 up' and i am eagerly looking forward to the just-released '49 up'.
if you're hooked on the show as i am (and if you're not, i strongly recommend that you start being), you will be interested to know that the '42 up' dvd includes a director's commentary track. this is a wonderfully open, at times regretful, always self-conscious but rarely apologetic, account of the making of this series with its ups and downs, its successes and failures, and most of all - director apted's loving and caring stories of his relationships with the people who star in the series.
if you're not yet familiar with this unique documentary endeavor, i think the best way to watch it is one episode a week or every 2 weeks, perhaps with a steady group of people. because of its strong repetivie nature, it is not so great to watch back-to-back. and also, the anticipation is really part of what makes this project work.
watching this series alone, or with friends, is bound to make you think about life, and isn't that what documentaries are all about? to my big surprise, i found myself mostly saying during 42 up: 'wow, their kids have really grown up since we last saw them'. like some old uncle.
26.01.06
cite, journalism, nostalgia, comments-on
steve jobs interview in wired and stuff - part ii
after slight delay, here are some of the most interesting excerpts from the february 1996 wired interview with steve jobs. as discussed in a previous post, this now 10-year-old piece has a lot of remarkable prophecies and claims from a technologist who seems to get it right many times over.
24.01.06
cite, journalism, nostalgia, comments-on
steve jobs interview in wired and stuff - part i
it all started when i typed hello.
next thing you know, i'm on prodigy chat with a guy named 'fool4love.' what a trip! anyway, 'love' (that's what i like to call him) and i started talking about everything imaginable. old flames, careers, movies, and meeting online. turns out he's a real computer whiz. 'love' showed me all this great stuff about prodigy including their web browser, bulletin boards and this genius feature called interest groups. i can instantly plug in to the specific area i feel passionate about, like the adventurous traveler, without unnecessary tooling around on home pages. i know what my interests are and i don't want to waste time to get to them. speaking of interests, 'love' and i are still very much involved. we always get online and explore. you never know what you'll find out there. after all , that's where i found 'fool4love.' in fact, i'm meeting him here tonight. i can't wait to see what teal blue eyes look like.
28.09.05
ipod impulse shopping
'so how big are those ipods?' 'the regular ones? we have a 20 Gig and a 60 Gig model'. 'and the 20 Gig is...'. '299 plus tax sir'. 'ok i'll take one' (whips out his credit card) 'here you go sir, is there anything else you'd like with that?'. 'no that's all'.
01.07.05
politics, comments-on, america, israel
a naive view on the gaza evacuation
the way i would imagine the gaza evacuation going down around here is:
(1) IMPORTANT DEADLINE: last date for application for monetary compensation is July 1st. If you are eligable for compensation, you MUST complete Form EVC-G/05 and Form MON-G/05 and mail them before July 1st. Late applications will not be considered.
* Please note important regulations regarding disorderly conduct and monetary compensation (p.23) . If you are arrested during the evacuation you might lose eligability for monetary compensation. Please contact your local Army civilian relations office for more details.
Fri, 1 Jul 2005 21:10
yeah, that suggestion has been made by quite a few people, and I wholeheartedly support it.
one thing you didn't touch upon was that we're dealing with fanatics. The people who are moving into Gaza right now would not be interested in filling out any forms. They don't care about they compensation. They believe they have to live on this land; Everything else is details. They will kill an Arab that passes by with much less thought than most people in this country give to most of their dealings with the government. That's a central part of this issue. It's true that a lot of the settlers moved to the occupied territories because of Israeli government incentives, but these people don't mind picking up their check and moving out. You currently have people moving from Hebron to Gaza just so they can resist the evacuation. For them Massada is the way to go.
They don't give a shit.
- udi
Fri, 1 Jul 2005 23:34
really? i sometimes wonder how much of that is sincere, and how much is just a behavior that they can allow themselves because they know there won't be the worse repercussions. i think that beneath the facade most people put on (especially when the world is watching) people give a shit and an ultimatum like this will dwindle the 'extremist' population to a handful.
- guy
Mon, 4 Jul 2005 16:27
There is no reason wat so ever to believe
that the vast majority of the settelers are not idiologically motivated. They are living for several years now under day to day terrorist attacks and the equivalent of mortar bombardment. We also know their religious background and motivations.
Assuming that everyone shares your values is a simple mistake, we know what their values are, they declare them, they educate by them and they live by them, for many years now. (Note that despite all the economic incentives, the life in the territories are MUCH harder then in then the center of israel).
Another point is that the idea of "leaving them to themselves" is not practical at all.
Suppose for a second that only a few families of extreme fanatics will be left there.
Now the IDF leaves, and Hamas enters.
You may assume of course that the jewish fanatics will do everything to highten the tension.
Well, the battles are televised of course, including what happens when the settelers defences are breached. Imagine the scenes,
heads of jewish babies are paraded through gaza, for example. How long do you think will the IDF stay without reacting to save the settelers?
The "I dont want to see them and I dont care about them" approach does not originate from the rational side of us.
yoad
- yoad
Mon, 4 Jul 2005 16:54
yeah i agree that it's a good reason to pull out the civilian population to prevent an escalation of violence after that. however, i still think that despite the declared values - when push comes to shove, many people are more pragmatic than they are when things are easier.
and even though it may be harder to live in a settlement than in the heart of israel, it's still easier than the situation that you describe in the horror scenario.
- guy
Wed, 7 Dec 2005 14:51
well - looking back at it, i guess the setters were less ideologically motivated than we thought, huh?
- guy
10.06.05
please. stop.
sigh. another one. this time it's 'break. through.' what is it with copy writers being so enamored with the cheap pun of taking a phrase and splitting it up into two one-word period-separated demi-sentences? does it really enhance the effectivity of sale?
or is it just some people think they're smart with words? it's become one of the most annoying trends in advertisement. we get it. you're smart.
and while 'forward. thinking.' still made some sense, 'break. through.' is just plain stupid.
make your own (not two-word) slogan.
Fri, 10 Jun 2005 22:11
ha i wrote about that. once. also. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ceerock/2004/02/20#a353
- cynthia
08.06.05
apple switching to intel
anybody who has been working with cross-platform code must tip their hat to the fact that everything from hd video to image processing, to networking, opengl, file access, audio streaming, database indexing, etc all just runs on a pentium on the day of the announcement. without blue-screening in the middle of the presentation.
Thu, 9 Jun 2005 06:01
I beg to differ - Windows2003 server is a significant new O.S.
- vlvl
Thu, 9 Jun 2005 09:09
i know nothing about it. how is it significantly different?
- guy
04.06.05
that was quick
in conclusion, the press release finally gives in and mentions the mac mini by name, shrugging off any conspiracy-like allegations that this pc was modeled to compete with it as 'ironic, considering that the Mac mini was designed to compete in exactly that market.'
ah, the irony.
21.05.05
google presents: the 90s!
the register's favorite andrew orlowski says is well: 'google catches portalitis'.
my google boldly goes all the way back to the world that was before they themselves salvaged it from portal clutter.
have they learned nothing?
off-topic and old, also from orlowski: new copyright law for iraq
18.05.05
wedgepertise
when you don't have a lot of experience, you never know when a little more pressure is too much pressure and will break, bend, or damage the system. once you've done a few, and broken a few others, you get a good sense of how compliant your wedging victims are, and you can really feel when you should stop. this is why experience can never be replaced with information-based teaching.
01.05.05
thunderbird threads rant
just switched back from apple's mail.app to thunderbird, since apple mail didn't seem to be able to cope with my growing mailboxes without seriously slowing down.
then i remembered the biggest reason i switched the last time - the totally idiotic way 'sort by thread' is understood in thunderbird. for some reason, the mozilla designers think that i would like to have the threads sorted by the date of the first message in the thread, where i think it's pretty obvious that i want them to be sorted by the last message in the thread. i.e. if there's a new message in a thread, i want this thread to be all the way to the end (new) of my mailbox, not hidden somewhere in the middle of all the old messages right?
a little search didn't reveal that anyone else is annoyed by this, which makes me think that maybe i'm just missing some simple option to make it right. does anyone else out there get frustrated by this small annoyance?
update: apparently i'm not the only one, but it seems unlikely to get resolved.
the workaround seems to be to sort by date, instead of by 'order received' and resort when you have new mail. that results in the correct behavior.
however, on an unrelated note, i accidently ran into the 'group by sorted' option in thunderbird. simply brilliant. i think my mail reading will be a completely new experience now...
17.04.05
reflecting on your conversations
for an assignment i am doing, i happen to be recording some of my (and my friends') conversations and then transcribing them with the goal of eventually analyzing the interaction. this is turning out to be much more interesting than i thought at first.
at times the recursive thinking i get into is almost enough to drive me crazy. for the most part, however, i manage to not think about the recording and be pretty natural. but when i get back home with the voice recorder and the text editor it turns out to be surprisingly intense to look deeper inside the way you act and react to other people. powerful stuff.
you don't often have the opportunity to go back and see what you're like with other people in such an objective way. i found that writing it down, specifically transcribing, is the real key, because just listening doesn't really make me feel so lucid. maybe only the act of putting it to paper makes you be real honest about it. especially the parts on which you have the uncontrollable urge to cheat, to change your phrasing every so slightly. to omit just this one remark or word.
another thing i realized is that it's a perfect screenwriting exercise. i've taken a lot of screenwriting classes, but nobody ever told me to record conversations and write them down verbatim. it really opened my eyes about how dialog really works. and let me tell you, it's nothing like what comes out when you try to write something that's supposed to sound 'natural'.
strongly recommended - and try to choose emotionally intense interactions, not just you asking to renew a library book.
Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:05
are your friends aware you are recording them?
- cynthia
Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:06
of course they are.
the results are usually better than most scripts. i'm still amazed.
- guy
Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:25
i was joking.
- cynthia
Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:48
sounds very interesting, i'll try it sometime
- ram
12.04.05
hofstadter talk at mit
doug hofstadter gave a charming talk at the media lab today, and aside from the fact that i felt like he thinks a lot like i often do (the presumption!), he used transparencies, which made his talk so much more fun to listen to.
08.04.05
michel gondry @ mit
at one point gondry said (relating to the fact that he doesn't like to do too many commercials) that whenever he does something he tries to think what his high-school buddies with the punk rock mentality would think about him, back then. he imagines that he goes back to show them and he couldn't stand them "telling" him in his mind that he betrayed them. "i only want to feel that i didn't betray them". call it immature or naive, but i think it's a pretty good measure to keep as you grow up. maybe not your high school buddies, but i do think that there's no happiness in succeeding through a betrayal of the basic things you believe in.
Sat, 9 Apr 2005 07:08
i'm suspicious of any artist who's too willing to explicate their creative process. but i am also suspicious of overly reductive binaries like the yes-no one listed above. but that's another post...
- cynthia
Sat, 9 Apr 2005 15:30
Another contemporary example of "successful without selling out" is Google. Check out the article about the in this week's Newsweek...
- Ady
07.04.05
quick powerpoint rant
yeah, i know the currently popular system makes it easy to present talks, but it makes it pretty unbearable to listen to them.
28.03.05
supermarket moments
at cvs today, easter monday, all the easter candy is 50% off.
that makes most chocolate incredibly cheap, cheaper than the same weight of chocolate that's not easter themed.
at a time where both my friendly neighborhood cvs and my friendly neighborhood star market are redressing their calendar-driven sections in preparation for the next holiday (i spotted sunscreen and american flags, but i'm not sure what the holiday is), being so-last-week is apparently really bad for business.
so chocolate actually gets penalized for being bunny-, egg-, or chicken-shaped. a bag of regular m&m's is $3.49, but an equally heavy bag with egg shaped m&m's goes for $1.49 today. as if it matters what shape your m&m's are. similarly, a huge chunk of easter-bunny shaped chocolate is only $.99 today.
star market has basically completely redecorated by the time i walked by at midnight tonight. only a measly shelf of easter chocolate was left there. and to think that only yesterday the resurrection of christ and related sugar products were still big sellers.
i love the days when all the supermarkets change colors.
on an unrelated note, i can't help but smiling at the somewhat depressing job-application terminal they have there. it's basically a big carboard back with a little screen and keyboard standing in front of it inviting passers-by in english and spanish to apply for a job. right there, right now. at the machine. no human interviewer necessary.
it's almost as if they're telling people: come work for us, apply right here to get a first hand impression of how efficiently we downsize workers and replace them with computers!
Tue, 29 Mar 2005 08:09
i hope you avoided the easter bunny-shaped chunk of chocolate. it's always waxy and gross. sunscreen and american flags sounds like independence day, but that's not until july. maybe it's just a general summer's-coming section. and i never noticed the job-application terminal, what a strange concept. mc-job application. i wonder if they do eventually get an interview with a robot. but lots of places want online job applications these days, and perhaps grocery stores are aware that some of the people who would want to work for them would not have regular computer access.
- cynthia
Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:21
yeah, and the terminal is also strangely tucked away in the corner between the 'rent-a-vaccum' shelves.
- guy
Tue, 29 Mar 2005 11:07
The real deceptive part about the chocolate bunnies is that the big ones are hollow. Cheap, thin, hollow bits of brown wax. But the M&Ms are normal.
Can you apply to be an automatic checkout machine? Can I build a robot to apply to be an automatic checkout machine?
- Alea
25.03.05
politics, america, comments-on
democracy labs
i like the idea that the states are like little testbeds for policy ideas, keeping the justice and government systems heterogeneous and experimental in a safe way. good policies ideas will eventurally travel between states, but if there's some fuck up, it can be more contained. finally the really good ideas will be implemented on a federal level.
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:10
i must say that i disagree with you on this one. from my limited experience of the U.S. i do feel differences between people in different parts of this country. probably in most cases, two adjacent states are pretty similar (though i did feel a shift crossing the state line from MS to LA), once you've travelled a thousand miles, there are pretty significant differences between the peoples.
if you tried to reconcile those differences on the federal level as they come up in all matters that call for legislation, you wouldn't be able to get any law passed. the death penalty is just one easy example. gay marriage is another one.
just because most of the world doesn't know where ohio is does not make its identity insignificant. most of the world doesn't really know where israel is either.
- udi
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:40
as you would from asking people in meah shearim (a religious neighbourhood in jerusalem) and tel aviv about gay marriage, or eating cheeseburgers. or as you would get from asking people at Haifa University and in the factories in Yeruham about whether Arabs should have civil rights. So there are differences, I still think that there is a national identity and that it wouldn't be right to give people from the university and the factory or from the orthodox sector and the liberal sector different driver's license.
- guy
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 19:50
I think that in this case - size does matter.
- udi
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 20:52
what american ever argued for state's rights based on preserving a state's "character"? culture has never had anything to do with it, it's always been about preventing too much centralized power. you non-americans and your "culture" stuff. :)
and you can't judge america by the interstate. the interstate is like its own state and has little to do with local "culture". if you rode the whole way down side roads it would be a very different ride.
- cynthia
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 21:22
i don't judge american by the interstate, and it was a different ride on the side roads, but not a ride that would prompt me to say that it's a different country...
- guy
Sat, 26 Mar 2005 01:30
ignoring the historical background, decentralization of power, cultural changes, it's also a simple question of size and identity (culture being just a component thereof). the u.s. is so huge that the gap between the federal and the municipal is simply too big. there are so many things that the federal government simply doesn't deal with - a burden that would otherwise make it ineffective.
the u.s. is not unique, i believe, as an interim level can be found in germany, russia, canada, brazil, among other places, even if the division of power in those cases differs per case.
also, "we" (non-americans, israelis, whatever...) sometime overlook how significant the state is as part of the identity of americans. i think that growing up without such a component in our own identity our "social receptors" lack the apparatus to see it.
- shai
Sat, 26 Mar 2005 09:41
it's funny, i have had conversations with other americans about how most small countries are the size of american states, and how weird it would be to have each neigboring state speaking a different language.
- cynthia
Sat, 26 Mar 2005 11:30
i guess that in this case too size matters. the point of this post was that i heard a convincinv argument *for* state legislation. but since more words were devoted to explain my prior anti-state stance, that's the only thing that people took away from it.
- guy
Sat, 26 Mar 2005 12:57
that's one of the risks you run writing a blog, isn't it?
people might sometimes comment about and question your long-standing presuppositions, not only your new insights.
- udi
28.02.05
just the right grunge
you might think that people who despise the control of the conservative establishment around them would not care about these things, but it's only quantitatively different than showing up at a high-school prom in kentucky wearing jeans and a rainbow-colored t-shirt.
Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:44
yeah there definitely is a uniform for hipsterdom, whichever branch of hipster one might be. my sister's husband is a bike messenger...or he was, but is now still living the lifestyle even though he has a regular job...and he definitely has a very specific anti-style. right now he has shaved just the top of his head and has shaved his beard into an amish-looking ring around his jaw. and he definitely has plenty to say about what others wear.
- cynthia
Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:58
everyone is always trying to make a statement by what they wear, even if that statement is that they do not care.
16.02.05
politics, comments-on, journalism
apples sues to reveal sources
the register has a story about apple suing to reveal three reporters' email correspondances that exposed some of apple's business plans. the e.f.f now decided to back these people, saying that
Rather than confronting the issue of reporter's privilege head-on, Apple is going to this journalist's ISP for his emails. This undermines a fundamental, First Amendment right that protects all reporters. If the court lets Apple get away with this, and exposes the confidences gained by these reporters, potential confidential sources will be deterred from providing information to the media, and the public will lose a vital outlet for independent news, analysis, and commentary.
the question of whether it's ethical to expose a company's plans is a valid one over which i'm divided.
but i sure hope that corporations will not be granted the right to get people's email correspondances whenever they feel the need.
no google bugs
today i encountered a bug on google. a page didn't load and it said 'server error - please notify bugs@google.com with a description of the query that led to this error'.
or something.
i'm saying 'or something' because i couldn't even reproduce the bug in order to cite it.
this incident made me really notice how google, with all its application power, doesn't really have noticable bugs. some things don't work exactly as expected, but this is probably the most active 'website' in the world, and it is hardly ever crashing.
some people over there really know what they're doing.
05.01.05
no need
not getting married seems to be the trend around me these days. people are having kids, living together - but don't tie the proverbial knot. the ones that do often choose a minor ceremony instead of the usual $40,000 fanfare affair.
and honestly? why bother?
talking about non-marriage with some friends here recently, i remembered something my old landlady once told me. when i first signed the lease with her, i was very surprised at how informal it was. the whole thing was one page without much legalese and it just sort of sketched out an agreement and put our names together.
when i asked her - 'is this the whole lease? are there not going to be items concerning this and that and the other?' she - a 85 year old woman by then - replied:
'with honest people you don't really need a lease to start with; and with crooks, no lease in the world is going to save you.'
21.12.04
warcraft update
three of the six application updates in today's os x 10.3.7 are improvements to make 'world of warcraft' more playable.
guess it's an important game.
19.12.04
santacon boston
at first it's embarassing, but once you let your ego drop a little, there's a lot of pride in being that random weird guy that makes people's christmas shopping walk or subway ride a little less ordinary.
Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:24
ha!
- cynthia
Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:26
I shot for 'hop-ktantanim' some two weeks ago. A children channel in Israel (maybe US too). Dressed as a clown - doing sports exercise.
Felt extremely ridiculous - and loved every moment of it.
- moran
Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:15
were there any slutty-dressed female santas?
- cynthia
Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:23
there was one lace-panties and see-through cleavage female santa. but not really my type.
- guy
Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:45
ew. well it's good to know that the gender rules for halloween costuming apply to other holidays as well.
- cynthia
Sun, 6 Feb 2005 10:10
great thing you did over there... i liked the pics!!! santas watching sport TV
- hoffman
Sun, 6 Feb 2005 10:11
great thing you did over there... i liked the pics!!! santas watching sport TV
- hoffman
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:50
can you contact zoz and ask him to send me or the yahoo group his picts from last year. we're attempting to get things together in a more professional manner and, if he's agreeable, i'd really like to have some of his shot's up there... esp the ones of the speeedo santas in the bar...
this year went well, we had about 40. there are picts. up but i'm sure you know that already.
Thanks
- ghetto claus
12.12.04
egypt-israel-u.a.e
looking for a cheap ticket from germany to israel for my winter vacation, i'm also trying german 'billigflug' sites, who cater charter flights to the have-nots.
charter flights, for my american readers, are non-standard flights that are operated especially, but not only, around holiday season by just selling as many tickets as they can, and then - once they sold 300 tickets - using crummy planes and getting people to places without bothing so much about luxuries like drinks, clean seats or functioning toilets on board.
the funny thing, though, is the search forms on these sites.
first of all, they don't seem to really draw distinction between the various countries.
as anyone who has been to varadero or aya napa knows, they're all just 'holiday destinations' not real places. so under 'destination' you can choose between 'any' (i kid you not), 'near', 'midrange', 'far', and then more specifically, 'egypt-israel-u.a.e', 'asia-thailand', (and don't try to be funny about that), 'mediterranean', etc.
or - as my friend yariv noted, they could have just as well said 'places with camels'.
and, on the search results, there's not only the price, but also the forecast water temperature at your destination.
so far, no cheap ticket to cairo-tel aviv-abu dhabi for me yet. but thanks for asking.
09.12.04
amazon trick?
bought something on amazon from a 3rd party retailer. the next day i got a message that my credit card information was wrong, and the order was canceled. i was already surprised that they didn't just ask me to fix the information, which btw hasn't changed since my last successful amazon orders.
instead they had me re-order the item. but lo and behold, the item is no longer available from the retailer i chose.
is that a new trick amazon employs to get out of being responsible for their site not being up-to-date with out-of-stock items?
i asked them, and will keep you posted.
Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:25
I rented a car a few weeks ago, and they put on some pressure for me to upgrade to a better car. I gave in for the first two uprades, since they only cost 30 cents and 50 cents a day and got me to a cavalier (what was I at before?). The third upgrade, to an elantra, was $5 a day and I wouldn't budge despite their repeated efforts; finally the guy gave in and grabbed some keys.
We walk around the lot, all the while he's muttering things out loud like, "its not over here? weird!". Eventually, with a careless tone, he says, "oh well, can't find it, you'll get upgraded for free to the elantra!". So as near as I can tell, the cavalier was an empty threat, they never even had one, and the whole walk around the parking lot was a face-saving tactic.
- jesse
Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:54
naturally, amazon never replied.
i once rented a car in munich and being the po'boy that i am i rented the cheapest class. lucky for me they didn't have any class A or B cars, and i had to settle for a free upgrade to a mercedes A130.
- guy
07.12.04
froogle knows me?
just went to froogle and was somewhat disturbed to see a little line on the top of the page saying:
| My Shopping List | Sign out
now they can also tell what i'm shopping for? and maybe what kind of emails i write before deciding to shop for an ipod? and maybe, just maybe, target ipod ads to people who write similar emails?
to quote the unbelievably inspiring, entertaining, and intelligent talk by mark holser i attended tonight (and remember: if you were on rcs, you would have known about it, too):
they didn't use to have advertisements on the back of gas pumps when i was a kid.
03.12.04
jury duty
i was invited by the commonwealth of massachusetts to perform my duty as an american citizen and serve on a trial jury.
naturally, i'm not allowed to do that, since i'm not actually an american citizen. i just need to fill out the right circle, telling them that i'm not, and send it back.
don't they have a way to tell who's a citizen and who's not other than asking the person? isn't that like an interesting statistic about people that the government would want to save on some computer file?
it seems odd (but not surprising) that the most powerful fingerprinting and photographing superpower doesn't even know which residents are citizens and which aren't.
Sat, 4 Dec 2004 11:58
that's hilarious. i've never been called to jury duty, but you have.
- cynthia
Sat, 4 Dec 2004 12:35
you got it probably because you registered with the RMV. That's when I got it here in NY.
I think it's part of the american aversion to having the government know everything about them - instead they let the government know everything about them less efficiently. They don't want to have a national ID card like we do in Israel, but somewhere someone in the FBI knows which books you read.
- Udi
Sat, 4 Dec 2004 14:22
don't think so because it was forwarded from my old address in cambridge. there was a place to fill out your address if it changed, but i was too lazy to do so. er, not too lazy, i just don't think it's democratic to update the government with my address.
that reminds me of this report i'm reading from the MIT-CalTech project on the vote. where they say that it's undemocratic to have a citizen ID.
and btw, cynthia, i was called for jury duty in NY state as well, i guess i have that 'fair and honest' look to me.
- guy
Sat, 4 Dec 2004 17:04
hmmm...i wonder if they allow the 'jury selection' interviews to do the filtering and are just too lazy to do preliminary checks. do you just ignore the notice, or do you notify them somehow that you're ineligible? or perhaps the government is actually only pretending to want you for jury duty and is instead keeping tabs on foreigners. i was never called here or in maryland.
- cynthia
Sat, 4 Dec 2004 17:48
forget that first question, i should read more carefully...
- cynthia
02.12.04
craigslist semitism
last night i was wondering why it's politically correct to write that you're only looking for a jewish mate. is it also ok to write that you're only looking for a non-jewish mate, or would that be considered antisemitic?
Fri, 3 Dec 2004 02:57
i would say that only the "non" is the problem. you could say you wanted only christians or muslims or atheists or aliens but "non" any of those would be politically incorrect. though you could say non-drug-addict or non-wife-beater and be ok.
- cynthia
25.11.04
deserted
nope, you can't get just one more thing done. and you can't pick up a bottle on your way to dinner, and you can't just grab a coffee, or just buy that 3/16'' screw you just remembered that you need.
Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:47
I was really hungry one thanksgiving night, and tried for a long time to find somewhere to get food. Finally someone had the good idea that a hotel restuarant would have to be open, so we went to the marriott lobby bar and grill or something. Next stop was the hospital cafe, luckily it didn't have to come to that.
- jesse
14.11.04
taking exams and dating
while my more achievement oriented friends just counted how many chapters they had left to finish and what they could skip to get to the finishing line -- i insisted on understanding what we learned, even if it meant that i won't get to half of the material. eventually i did cover almost all of it, and when the exam came, it seemed very simple to me.
Sun, 14 Nov 2004 12:44
yes i think it is similar, though girls sometimes take the casualness as lack of interest and then adjust their own behavior so that in the end nothing happens.
- cynthia
the free life of my roommate
beats me how she does it, but my roommate is getting everything for free. after an s.u.v (no kidding) it was a violin, and then an antique banjo. the latest addition to the collection is a 12'' powerbook and a digital camera.
how does she get people to give her stuff?
then, when i think of it, she sometimes misunderstands some of my offers and interprets them as me wanting to give her something for free. maybe that's how you do it.
it's a little like the difference between getting laid and not - maybe it's just being in the frame of mind that you are going to get the girl, so when an opportunity offers itself you just naturally take it.
coz it's not like the other person came to the table with a complete agenda, and maybe they just think you know what you're doing and they should go along with it.
01.11.04
halloween
if you ask me people should dress up for every party. it's just so much fun. there's always something to talk about and you are smiling like an asshole even before you had your first drink. not to mention what being dressed in a miniskirt riding the t does to your sense of self consciousness.
also girls seem to really embrace the holiday to dress down and dirty for that occasion. it's almost like the alcohol excuse - as if the high boots and sexy top are not really 'they', it's just a costume innit?
in general my anecdotal observation finds that guys try to dress up funny whereas girls really try to walk the boundary between having a recognizable costume, but still looking sexy. you don't see many of them dressing up in baggy bunny costumes, or covering their faces.
it's one of those lovely american things, where prudence and decadence fight it out. as long as it's a costume, it's fine. anything for the holiday spirit.
Mon, 1 Nov 2004 11:06
ugh i HATE the costumes girls wear on halloween--kitten ears and devil's horns and a slutty outfit. so much for feminism.
- cynthia
Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:07
It IS the holiday spirit: being something that you're not. So yeah, I put away my grad student t-shirt and jeans and pull out my short skirt and tall boots for Halloween. What of it? It's nice to let yourself go and try out living on the other side every once in a while. It has nothing to do with feminism or chauvinism, and everything to do with mixing things up a little.
- hap
25.10.04
apple laptops gaining
the same, though, seems to be true in both the university settings i hang out in and in manhattan and boston cafes where apple notebooks seem to sprout up like mushrooms.
another interesting question to me -- noticing that most of the windows laptops have by now pretty much copied the apple design completely -- is what the next line of apple laptops will look like.
17.10.04
"rpn"
ever noticed how the american phrase 'quote-unquote' (the closest americans can get to sarcasm, as in "this hotel is quote-unquote fancy"), is really in reverse polish notation?
15.10.04
quarter life crisis
people fear the big three oh, but it's nothing more than a sigh of relief - if only from the big three-oh fear that's been haunting you for the last 5 years.
Sat, 16 Oct 2004 08:22
so what's the explanation when you feel all of that at 32?
- cynthia
Sat, 16 Oct 2004 08:32
that you're young at heart :) ?
- guy
Sat, 16 Oct 2004 10:18
ha. well since no one can believe i'm 32, i'll take that answer.
- cynthia
Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:28
last night at a liquor store the lady at the cash register asked me how old I was. I was happy to show her my ID. I took it as a compliment.
- Udi
Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:14
So I am miserable and boring.
and have terrible taste in rugs.
hmm...
I should re-think this relationship...
- Orit
o'reilly comments
just short of deleting yesterday's o'reilly entry, i adjusted it and took out some - true, but irrelevant - paragraphs. the whole thing got carried away out of my glee for someone who is such an asshole getting hurt, and looking back a day later it seems unproportional.
14.10.04
o'reilly has a dirty mind
o'reilly is one of the most annoying people in the world, and very high up on my dream assassination list. so there's nothing better than having this asshole pretentious egoistic prick finally get hit.
Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:54
your sidenote is barely readable. why are you obscuring it with that color?
- udi
Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:33
it's been my footnote style for a while. it's not central to the main argument, so i make it blend in with the background.
- guy
Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:35
someone forwarded me this.
- guy
05.10.04
signalling on the road
the late father of my best friend in high school once told me the only thing anyone should really bear in mind when driving:
it doesn't matter so much what you do on the road, as much as that everyone around you knows what you're about to do.
on my way back cycling, two near misses between me and the random yuppie were because yuppie didn't signal before he turned. now i know you have your cellphone to attend to, but seriously. how hard is it to signal?
is the energy you need to put into your pinky worth someone you don't know not spending 6 months in intensive care?
honestly, i don't care what dumbed-down version of darwinism or adam-smithism you believe in, the answer to this question is a simple 'yes'.
two euphemisms on soymilk
reading my soymilk carton this morning, i noticed the following ingredient: ground evaporated cane juice. correct me if i'm wrong, but is that not the definition of "sugar"?
Tue, 5 Oct 2004 11:48
ha--that's true of most products that heavily market themselves as heart-disease-reducers. i think they should instead say that if you are a fatass with high cholesterol, switching from loads of full-fat cow's milk to soy milk will make a difference. but maybe it won't?
- cynthia
Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:03
1. This reminds me that you can hear sport commentators
say something like "I'll take the risk and say there is 70% chance X will win over Y". It always alludes me what risk are they taking, suppose Y will win it can always be explained by the 30% chance left for Y to win.
2. Note that most miracle diets promise something like "lose upto X Kg a month". This seems quite redundent because I can easily setup a diet that if you keep I promise you wont llose weight at all.
- yoad
03.10.04
simple truths
- when you drink alcohol, you pee a lot
- 'blind faith' is a good name for a beer
- you and your mind and everyone else around you and the infinite...wow.
- ups and downs, not even in any particular order.
- some people just race through life, others - less so.
Mon, 4 Oct 2004 15:29
which are you, a racer or less so?
- cynthia
Mon, 4 Oct 2004 15:34
i often think of my self as a less-so trapped in a racer's life.
- guy
Mon, 4 Oct 2004 18:12
i'm a less-so who feels guilty for not being more of a racer.
- cynthia
Tue, 12 Oct 2004 11:24
I'm a racer who will die when I become a less so.
- Ady
28.09.04
room-mating
i would not be surprised if one day i'll find the love of my life looking for a roommate. if i won't have to get married before that, being a nice jewish boy and all.
Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:35
i agree completely. in both interviewing candidates and being interviewed by candidates i've always felt the mutual checking-out going on. and when i interviewed candidates with my former ape roommate it was amazing to learn what they were attracted to--the most bland and boring girl would come through and once she left they'd say how hot she was.
- cynthia
Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:25
er, i'm not sure he referred to her level of intellectual stimulation when he made that comment.
- guy
Wed, 29 Sep 2004 19:47
ha--true, but i mean bland and boring physically as well as intellectually--but then again, what i find bland and boring physically is generally what dopey guys traditionally find hot.
- cynthia
25.09.04
how about the eat less pizza and exercise diet?
someone told me that ¼ of americans are on a low-carb diet.
i don't know if that's true, but judging by the cereal-box and fast-food restaurant index, it might well be. if kellogs come out with a low-carb cereal and even burger king have a low-carb menu, everyone wants low carb (not to mention low-carb beer).
on the other hand, my instincts tell me that if burger king and budweiser are supporting something, i should probably steer clear away from it.
but really, i commend anyone who has the discipline to be on any diet. chapeau.
for me, in the past, only the eat the fuck less pizza and chocolate and exercise daily diet really worked out.
'but it's scientifically proven!' you say.
which reminds me of the old joke, in which this guy hits on a gal, and tells her that his watch can read her mind. and now it tells him that she has no underwear on. 'wrong' says the lady. to which the man counters 'damn, it's an hour fast'
at the rate that diet science moves, i'm always on the scientifically proven diet. my watch is only a few months off.
24.09.04
is boston the fucking lamest city i ever lived in?
yes, it is.
where else can i go out to meet someone at a bar on a friday night at 1am, just to be told that they're closing. and i love how they turn the lights up superbright to drive everyone out, and you have a bunch of people standing outside, not tired, still chatting with nowhere else to go.
oh, and public transportation is already closed, of course...now you can get a cab for $10/mile.
Sat, 25 Sep 2004 19:30
be thankful you have someone to meet at 1am. if your biggest problem is the time bars close, you've got it pretty good.
- cynthia
Sun, 26 Sep 2004 01:29
amen to that.
- Udi
Sun, 6 Feb 2005 10:16
ahhhhh so it soooooooo boring there??? should i open a BAR next to your home?
i will do millions of dollars no?
if everything is empty or closed, and i stay open and everyone will be there.... ha great idea
- hoffman
the stupidity of airport security
it's almost as if, whenever we wanted to send an email, we would have to fill out a form saying that we are not sending spam, and that our attachments are safe, and that we are aware that our email can be read, then we would have to click through 4 pages of disclaimers, and finally we would have to move all our executables from the desktop to another folder.
only then could we send the email.
the economics of airport wheels
remember when airport luggage cars were free?
it was also when almost nobody had those funky wheeled suitcases. the expense of putting wheels underneath your luggage was covered by the airport.
then they decided to charge a rental fee for those carts. and suddenly people didn't really need them anymore. oh it's just a short walk, and a little exercise wouldn't kill you.
who ever paid for those carts? who pays for them now? i've never seen one in usage at the airports where they cost money.
but people really like wheeling their luggage, and they don't like carrying it. it's not worth $5, but it's definitely worth something. so then the market opened for those wheely bags, and gradually - everyone got them.
so now instead of having a certain amount of luggage wheels when you need them, everyone buys their own set of wheels.
and now we're back to almost where we started, except the economy has shifted. there's still wheels underneath every suitcase, they just have been privatized, in true republican spirit. to each his own wheels. take responsibility for your life and money.
instead of everyone paying another $1 in airport taxes for everyone's wheels, we all pay another $20 when we buy the suitcase and then we have our own wheels.
i'm sure there's a better way to say all this, but i can't think of it.
14.09.04
the new 줏?
now, everyone with a jewish or a korean mother and some knowledge about the other kind knows that there is a deep cultural relationship between these two types. oversimplifying, it's a heritage of guilt, mixed messages and passive-aggressiveness.
Tue, 14 Sep 2004 18:01
I'm sure I heard this theory about a year ago. I forgot from who.
- Udi
Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:02
Interesting I had a similar discussion about how the indians are the new jews... for reasons to long to cite here.
- Ady
Mon, 1 Nov 2004 19:34
-
13.09.04
voice mail
but you probably knew that, if only based on their advertisement spin, that's always so hip and cool and 'now' and motion blurred and pastel blue on a white background.
Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:41
There's another explanation, based on greed rather then incompetence. The cellular service providers (rather then the phone manufacturers) have much to gain from the older interface, since it significantly lengthen the time you're on the phone with your voice mail server.
Since the service providers decide which phones to support and market......
- skeptic
Tue, 14 Sep 2004 01:16
i thought about this, but seriously doubt that that's the incentive, at least in the US, and certainly not for the landlines.
checking your voicemail accounts for an insignificant amount of your calls.
- guy
12.09.04
non-add people
seriously, i'm amazed by people who don't have an attention disorder. turns out i don't know too many people like that.
i could watch them for hours -- er, if i could sit still for hours, that is. the way they just sit and write a document for two hours without getting up, without checking email, without fixing a sandwhich.
the way they get a new gadget in the mail, and don't open it for days, when they find the time for it.
i should probably go back to do what i really need to do.
02.09.04
assembly line
helped someone move today, and at some point i encouraged my fellow movers (there were four of us) to switch to assembly line style: one person will unload the truck, one will get it to the door, one from the ground to second floor and the last from the second to the third floor.
Thu, 2 Sep 2004 21:08
I don't know if you noticed, but we ended up doing just that when we moved your stuff a few weekends ago. I didn't think of all those reasons, but it still felt like the better thing to do.
- Udi
Thu, 2 Sep 2004 21:13
yeah of course i noticed, it's what gave me the idea today.
- guy
Thu, 2 Sep 2004 21:14
and i only thought about the reasons on my way back, trying to figure out why it worked so well.
- guy
Fri, 3 Sep 2004 08:25
so who was stuck with the task of taking everything upstairs?
- cynthia
Sun, 5 Sep 2004 19:32
I agree it worked better. Although it did seem that taking the stuff up the stairs was a more difficult task than getting it off the truck.
- oren
new imacs
not exactly breaking news anymore, but the new imacs are pretty sweet. just had to explain to another person why macs are the right choice, and i'm getting a little tired of it.
what i find amazing about the new imac campaign is that apple is marketing it almost as a large-size ipod. i guess they try to appeal to the huge ipod crowd that doesn't use macs, which is smart (who would have thought that a once mac accessory would some day become a mac incentive). but it's definitely weird when you think of a computer as being sold as an oversized music player.
12.08.04
xm-8
so are there more machismo letters? more badass ones? and then more subtle, and gentle letters? and if so, why?
Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:19
b d l m n v w y - gentle
c f h j k p q r s t x z - badass
All vowels - unisex
- Ady
Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:28
K is a strong letter.
- jodi
Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:24
I am deeply insulted.
- yb
08.08.04
'this is my wife'
his mission was to investigate suspicions on undeclared food sales on an amusement boat run by a local smalltime businessman. so he went on the boat and ordered some turkey skewers and fries.
u-haul insurance
i know i'll have grown up when i won't feel stupid to have taken out insurance for a u-haul truck.
06.08.04
collaborative games
you know how computer games make kids all just stare at a screen and ignore everyone around them? so yeah, then they came up with multi-player games. great. now we have two kids on the subway with gameboys staring into a screen each with a cable running between them.
Fri, 6 Aug 2004 23:54
i can see my twin nephews coming to blows over these games. they already nearly do with the less-interactive xbox games.
- cynthia
28.07.04
go anywhere
and he's right - at the end it all boils down to who you know and what they think of you.
Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:48
Sadly for us loners it is very true. But sometimes it is the starngers that comes a long and the unique encounter create a new opportunity and a new life path. Here here for strangers!
- Loner
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 06:02
They say: "friends help you move. Real friend help you move bodies".
- moran
19.07.04
yet another way to spam blogs
Mon, 19 Jul 2004 21:00
we get referer spam all the time on the harvard blogs. for some reason no comment spam (knock wood), but lots of questionable referers. some political ones too, not just the dirty stuff.
- cynthia
Mon, 19 Jul 2004 22:49
I *love* this approach. I wonder how it can be applied to business...
- a
Tue, 20 Jul 2004 13:58
I don't get it, what do they gain from being a referer, or even from you getting to their site?
- stupid me
11.07.04
buying a suitcase
was gonna write this whole rant about money, and buying a suitcase, and consuming, and how almost everything i own predates my arrival to the states or was bought in a thrift store.
but i don't feel up to it. too much other shit to do.
i'll just say this: it's true what they say. you always live up to your spending limit. no matter how much more you earn, you just up your lifestyle and spend more (up to a limit of course), and then you're always in for more money, wanting things you didn't even stop to think about when you had so much less, dreaming of the next better life style, keep the ratrace going.
i should have totally gotten a thrift-shop suitcase.
nostalgia, comments-on, israel
bauhaus lab
writing an essay about an israeli film, i was looking into tel aviv and bauhaus, and noticed to my surprise, that a site about tel aviv is the first google result for bauhaus architecture. i knew that tel aviv was famous for its implementation of that german design philosophy (a fact little appreciated by the city's residents), but i didn't expect it to be the nr. one site for that style.
then i noted another curious fact: looking through the photographs, i was struck by the similarity of my hometown's token architecture to that of the media lab building, where i spend most of my waking hours these days.
i heard there's an early 20th centrury german link to m.i.t architecture in general, so maybe there's the connection.
Sun, 11 Jul 2004 20:17
isn't there a link to just about every kind of architecture in mit's architecture? i've never seen such a hodgepodge of architectural styles in one place. and they all seem to be aimed at making humans feel small.
- cynthia
Sun, 11 Jul 2004 21:52
i don't know - the first time i came to visit mit, i was stunned by how much it reminded me of my childhood in germany, and then someone told me that there's a lot of german architecture at mit.
i love the architecture here, btw, compared to harvard, which tries to look like a jane austin book cover.
- guy
Sun, 11 Jul 2004 22:04
yeah harvard's architecture is pretty boring and crusty. but i at least feel "humans are welcome here". i walk past the green building at mit and i feel an overwhelming sense of doom.
- cynthia
Sun, 11 Jul 2004 23:33
true. the green building is monstrous. but what about this?
green
(mit)
wjh (harvard)
- guy
Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:28
ha--did you know that's my building?? it's pretty monstrous, though not really ominous like the green building with its nondescript stairwells and cement stilts.
- cynthia
09.07.04
young programmers
young programmers think that the only thing it takes to write code is to produce a binary that at one point in time does what you expect it to do.
they pride themselves with rapid protoyping and quick turnouts, but don't stick around long enough to see how their fragile codebase evolves. or rather - collapses.
as of tonight, i'm officially sick and tired of trying to clean up after them.
Sat, 10 Jul 2004 13:46
"pride themselves with rapid prototyping and quick turnouts, but don't stick around long enough to see their fragile codebase evolve..." sounds like typical male behavior...
- cynthia
08.07.04
spam comments?
but if option 1 or 3 is actually the case, let me give you spammers two words of advice.
there's a reason i once had the nickname 'karma police', and with me, retribution is swift.
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 22:32
made some changes to the comment code, let me know via email if you have trouble commenting.
- guy
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 23:08
that's crazy.
you could use those distorted letter sequence images to verify that it's a real person submitting.
- udi
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:54
Unbelievable. I now get spam on my cell phone (SMS), PDA (1XRTT data network) and via messenger (Yahoo and MSN). I guess Blog comments are the next big thing. If you do find out how they are doing it - let us know. (Oh, one more thing, you might be overestimating your readership's IQ...!)
- Ady
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 08:36
mystery continues. i have no idea how, but something in my new code seems to actually break the spammer's code. i thought i just blocked them, but now they seem to still be able to spam, only with their URLs blanked out.
so i get spams that only have the 'great site' comment, but nothing in the signature URL.
i don't know if i should consider this a success or a failure.
- guy
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 12:12
man, i lost $50 in that damn online casino... :)
- cynthia
15.06.04
childhood memories, today
seeing into the future through the eyes of my friends' 2.5-year-old, i envision a conversation like this:
- who is coming to visit?
- guy. remember him?
- no, have i ever met him?
- remember when we used to live in america when you were a little kid?
- sort of, i have seen pictures.
- he used to come and visit us all the time. you used to call him 'guy, the blonde'.
- i don't remember that.
- he was a good friend of ours.
- i remember all sorts of grownups coming to visit...but, well. never mind. i gotta go.
- here, this is a picture of us with guy in boston.
- yeah, nice. alright, anyway, i'm meeting tali at the mall, so have fun tonight.
it's fascinating to me to think that someone's childhood memories are being created today.
29.05.04
cleaning
guy ross once noted how cleaning your physical space makes you feel more in control about your emotional life.
Sun, 30 May 2004 00:02
sorry you didn't get a fix. the cleaning usually works for me, if i can get up enough energy to do it. if not, i get the vicarious thrill by watching the cable show 'clean sweep.' i am addicted to that show.
i like the new colors.
- cynthia
Sun, 30 May 2004 01:41
Yeah, I also like the new colors ... spring cleaning. I did my bathroom today, and installed one new blind.
- udi
27.05.04
email: filmmaking
Too bad most people who want to be filmmakers are sociopaths and control freaks. Myself included.
17.05.04
the first gay marriage in the u.s
one by one, couples waving the coveted paper slip came out the door beneath the gold inscription telling the commoners about god's ten commandments, and while high above the american flag waved in sync with the p.o.w/m.i.a banner, on the lawn below a stars-and-rainbow was joined by signs saying 'mazel tov'.
13.05.04
spring
spring is amazing in cambridge. just as i had no idea that weather can be so painful before being in a boston winter, i had no idea that spring can be so refreshing and beautiful. maybe it's the (long long) expectation that does it, or maybe it's just that everything blooms and everyone seems so much happier. i come from a two-season climate: blazingly hot and bearably warm.
12.05.04
show me your wallet!
public speaking
- public speaking is totally against our biological communication instincts. our brain is made to communicate ideas in a one-to-one setting. we use the other person's body language, gaze and back-channel communications to adjust our own utterances. talking into a big (and - for these purposes - empty) room kills many of the cues our brain needs to be able to talk normally.
11.05.04
restaurant style
the coffee machine in the lobby promises "coffee house taste", the cheese in my fridge boasts "deli style" and the tortilla chips in my cupboard are proud to be "restaurant style". as if mass-production vouches for fine taste.
in the little mediterranean country where i'm from, it's usually the opposite. you're supposed to feel ashamed that you're even buying packaged food. when you do, the label will reassure you that it's all "home style" and that it "tastes like self-made". no brand would want to be "restaurant style". hell, most restaurants try to call themselves "home style".
i guess in the u.s. there's more faith in the commercial.
06.05.04
what makes an artist
that's when i learned that good art equals fearlessness. especially fearlessness of yourself.
user interfaces
28.04.04
the effortless smile of the psychiatrist
from 'the elementary particles' by michel houellebecq:
The psychiatrist discreetly shifted in his chair and said, about nothing in particular, "good." Depending on how much of the hour had elapsed, he would prompt Bruno again, or simply say, "we'll leave it here for today?" stressing the last word a little to make this a question. As he said this, his smile was polished and effortless.
how to design a user interface
on the verge of despair here at chi 2004 by the total lack of innovation and interesting stuff, i walked into a talk by microsoft research asia, who got an assignment to redesign the ui for 2d morphing. anyone who has ever used morphing in 2d animation tools knows how much it sucks and how obviously it is that these ui models were devised by programmers and not by animators.
so msr asia went completely blank slate and gave many designers and animators strips of papers with one drawing on one side of it and another one on the other side, and asked them to draw or write whatever they wish in the middle to describe how they would morph shape 1 into shape 2. based on the metaphors the artists used they designed what the new interface should look like, and it makes so much more sense. go cleverness!
27.04.04
conferences
no idea why (well a hundred ideas why), but conferences depress the hell out of me.
travel, comments-on, politics, america
why europe is different
- alcohol is served and consumed in public. i was particularly shocked when the border police walked by a group of students drinking beer on the train without telling them something like "sir, you might want to put this beer can away. it is against [fire?] regulations." (btw, i love the north-american polite-imperative construct "you might want to". on the face of it, so vague - in reality, very distinct).
Wed, 26 May 2004 16:20
Very nice. You know I share your view on our beloved America, but just from curiosity it will be interesting to do the same list for America and Israel. Maybe it will give us some perspective.
- oh-riit
Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:23
thanks guy for a very nice piece! i just got back from a very short visit to holland (after 4 years in the states) and observed the following:
- people have time: when you stop someone (anyone) in the street (any time) to ask for help - they stop and explain lengthily until they are sure you are satisfied.
- variation: in the states you can drive for days but stay at the same place.
- the local trains suck.
- momi
10.03.04
stranger in a strange land
walking home from lab today (admittedly in a melancholy mood), i noticed a saddening fact.
during almost two years of living in the united states, and knowing little about this country before i got here, i kept being surprised, amazed and shocked about various aspects of the culture here at the "hub of the empire". ever so often i would shake my head or rub my eyes in disbelief that such a place really exists.
but tonight, walking in the dark, when i tried to think about the ten biggest oddities of this place, what i came up with was pretty much a list of the most clicheed statements about america one can think of. it felt pretty useless realizing that my wildest emotional revelations, upon inspection, are nothing more than just the stereotypes i already had before moving.
29.02.04
film, robots, journalism, captain, comments-on
robot stories
pak's short films use robots as a vehicle to unveil our inability to cope with what we crave. this can be a child, a slave to do our dirty work, or the promise of immortality. the director envisions a future in which every additional dream-come-true opens the door to more questions as to the dark side of our human nature. i wouldn't call pak apocalyptic, but he definitely has his doubts as to the future of our relationship with the tools that we create.
27.02.04
a very mit moment
some things remind me that mit is the special place it is.
yesterday, for example, i was walking down the corridor, and there were these three very cute girls standing there. they looked straight out of a tv show, low cut jeans, full make up, stylized hair. their body language spelled out "gossip", clutching their notebooks and waving one hand in expressive gestures. it was only when i came closer that i heard one of them saying: "so i, like, couldn't get that to work, even when i tried the cross-product, so i had to use sine theta, and basically based everything on the exponent."
16.02.04
more is more
the hard part seems to be to cross that first barrier, the idleness valley. to take off the warm lead boots.
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content here by guy hoffman .. as seen times since march 2004
