31.07.04
travel madly
august with all of its carelessly open suitcases in people's rooms is hitting me hard with travel fever. i want to leave and hit the road and not look back.
no democratic candidate
russia's 'russky kuryer' writes:
To a great degree there is no Democratic party candidate John Kerry. There is an abstract "anti-Bush" candidate who has been compelled, in accordance with the US electoral system, to take on human form and assume a human name...
via bbc news
29.07.04
kerry against vietnam
kerry's 1971 statement to the senate committee of foreign relations is quoted a lot by the right wing during this election campaign.
usually there's no reference to what document they're quoting, and as customary in our zero-attention-span society, only a single sentence from this report is quoted as a catch phrase over and over again without background or context. god forbid people would have to read/hear/say full paragraphs.
i think it's a great read.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
this weekend: free stuff in boston
lots of free and discounted stuff this weekend in boston. via ryan:
Colleagues: This weekend, Mayor Menino and the business, art and cultural communities say thank you to Boston area residents and DNC volunteers by offering discounts and freebies at attractions thoughout the city-- giving local residents an opportunity to enjoy many of the wonderful things that have been showcased this week to visitors from around the world.
Check the web site for details.
to that i say: museum, shmuseum -- free dessert at legal sea foods...
hype
weird network phenomenon happening on this site. at this moment almost all the searches leading to my blog are related to the ali g commencement speech. the only thing is that they all lead to the searches page, which is filled with referencs to the words 'ali g commencement speech', so my search listings is a big hit on google for these words, which only reinforces this phenomenon.
i guess it's time for a robots.txt file...
update: er, except that i don't own the top level directory in this domain - so i'll have to improvise something especially for googlebot.
Fri, 30 Jul 2004 16:26
I've been struggling with the robots.txt issue too (I don't own the root directory of my blog either). If you do improvise something - I'd love the scoop.
- Ady
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 20:12
I had the same problem. Fortunately google-bot (and others, in my experience) are well behaved and respect the meta-robots tag. It's probably a bad idea to list the tag directly here, but you can read about it on:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html#meta
(that page links to a more indepth description, but there really are only the two options - excluding the current page (noindex) and not going any deeper (nofollow))
- jesse
28.07.04
anecdotal
from a radio ad for an erectile dysfunction drug:
a scientifically supervised anecdotal study has shown that 98% of the participants reported an increase in sexual potency.
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
27.07.04
tony: clinton on fire
tony pierce cites president clinton, and reminds me why i loved him so much:
If you think its good policy to pay for my tax cut with the Social Security checks of working men and women, and borrowed money from China, vote for them. If not, John Kerrys your man.
Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:24
I've been reading some of the speeches, here's one from tonight. Maybe I'm a sucker for oratory, but when I got to this point I had tears in my eyes:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
- Udi
Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:38
i'm pretty sure he ripped this part off from somewhere, but you're right, his speech is beautiful.
i hope the message will resonate.
- guy
Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:44
Uh, isn't that from the constitution?
- vlvl
Wed, 28 Jul 2004 07:31
Are you two ok? it's a quote from the declaration of independence. It's a source "ripped" from in almost every other political speech over here.
I just meant that this passage always stirs something in me, not just in that particular speech.
- Udi
Wed, 28 Jul 2004 09:02
god...i was joking about the ripped off thing.
- guy
Wed, 28 Jul 2004 13:21
*lol*
- cynthia
26.07.04
dnc security idiocy
sure, it's been two weeks since i was in boston, so at first i was sure it was just a coincidence.
but then i figured that it might be that the dnc security idiocy has led to the removal of the newpaper boxes from kendall square?
they should remove buildings, since they could conceal explosives, too!
Mon, 26 Jul 2004 15:57
*lol*
i was surprised to be able to find a trash can today to throw out my coffee cup.
- cynthia
police cabs?
Mon, 26 Jul 2004 11:11
we were actually walking down Essex st., not Grand.
- innocent bystander
Mon, 26 Jul 2004 11:18
funny, with the major police presence in boston this week i immediately assumed you were talking about boston, until you mentioned nyc...
- cynthia
Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:12
that's interesting - i wrote 'east broadway' at first, and then i thought that you (innocent) would probably point out that it wasn't the right street, so i looked up a map and tried to retrace our steps, and eventually came up with 'grand street'. i guess i'm not even precise enough when i'm making an effort.
fixed the entry.
- guy
Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:52
we turned from Grand to Essex and headed south towards E Broadway. we saw the first cop-cab on the corner fo Essex and Canal.
Of course - it's not really important. not even slightly.
- innocent bystander
new column: the sensor world cup
this week's column is up, entitled 'the sensor world cup'.
25.07.04
latecomers
leafing through this month's 'wired' on the plane to los angeles, i noticed that for the second time this summer, my column identifies a trend picked up by the big players only later.
first it was the phenomenon of political blogs, that was featured in 'time' magazine a few weeks after i wrote about it.
and now 'wired' suggests that the internet has reversed orwell's dystopia of some centralized power monitoring us all the time - it's us who can't stop photographing and publishing these photos everywhere. the anti-orwell.
update: to top things off, the topic of my last column was just repeated by the new york times, and the political blogs story was picked up by cnn tonight, too.
good job, time, wired, cnn and nyt. you're getting there.
20.07.04
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
countup complete
nine days after it was announced, the the countup is complete. thanks for participating. the 10,000 log entry belongs to a reader from israel, who reached my site searching for this blog specifically.
naturally, apple beat me to it.
Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:13
This countup thing seems more like something I would do than you...
I thought I was the sole narcissist in here...
- moran
12.07.04
continental
off to l.a.
Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:39
Funny. You're in my neck of the woods (sort of), I'm in yours. A couple of days in Boston... Maybe we can have coffee on my next visit.
- Ady
Tue, 13 Jul 2004 06:05
Welcome.
- Paulette
new column: photographic evidence? don't make him laugh
this week's column is up, entitled 'photographic evidence? don't make him laugh'.
they forgot to add my credit to the article. it's there on the main page, but not when you click into the column itself.
so much for journalistic professionalism.
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.
a visitor in my own town
"i'm like a visitor in my own town. life went on without me. there's nothing there for me now.
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
10.07.04
replaced old motd
buy land. god is not making any more of it.
countup
in perfect sync with apple's countup to 100 million songs, i'm counting up to my 10,000th blog hit since march 2004. this count started at around 9270 entries.
the winner here, too, will receive a gift certificate for 100 free viewings of future blog entries.
prepare to be interrupted
- Present your ideas clearly and get directly to the point. Prepare to be interrupted in the course of your presentation.
don't go
did you know that the lonely planet tells you to not go to israel?
they were careful enough to call the israeli strikes 'retaliatory', though.
i wonder whether some israelis are proposing to boycott the popular travel guide now. couldn't find anything on that on the web.
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
suggestion: comment roll
since we're on the topic of comments, here's a quick streetpoll - what's the level of interest in a 'recent comments' section on the right bar?
there's no real easy way for anyone (except me) to know about newly posted comments.
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 12:14
i can't say that i've ever paid attention to those 'recent comments' sections before, so there's my two cents.
- cynthia
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 16:50
me neither, but if you can save some "recent spam" on the side, it would be nice to see what you filter out.
- udi
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
07.07.04
replaced old motd
"Today, I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the
Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am
fighting for the work of the Lord."
--Adolf Hitler (Reichstag speech, 1936)
"I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not
this country's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty's
gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the
greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation
to help the spread of freedom."
--George W. Bush (Press conference, 2004)
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 01:54
Beautiful comparison. I wonder what the people wasting away in Guantanamo would think of Bush's "obligation to help the spread of freedom."
- drew
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 10:15
damn, i had no idea that drew's script-o-rama is your site. you're so prolific. how do you do it?!
- guy
debut
co-hosted a radio show today on wmbr cambridge. a long time dream of mine, to be on the radio. maybe dreams still do come true.
when i got into the studio, i was put completely on the spot because i had no idea what the show was about, or what was expected of me. quickly i found out that i had a ficticious character and i had to ad-lib a whole life out of nothing.
now i usually don't consider myself a spontaneous person, but somehow the tension dissipated quickly and i got into the flow of things. there were even some good moments.
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 07:50
what was the show about? what was your fictitious character?
- cynthia
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 10:16
there's only so much i can tell at this point :)
- guy
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:55
Maybe you can get a recording of the who and post it online..? I, for one, would love to hear it.
- Ady
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:58
a recording of 'the who'?
- guy
happy to announce
new column: just one bubble away
completely forgot, my weekly column was up two days ago, entitled 'just one bubble away'.
i've been really bad about setting up the local copies of the columns, and i wish that haaretz would already move to unicode like civilised human beings.
04.07.04
meet your meat
there seem to be three types of people when it comes to sickeningly brutal realities: (a) those who want to know, then know, and then decide to do something about it, (b) those who want to know, then know, but think it's actually ok, and the vast majority: (c) those who would rather not know.
Sun, 4 Jul 2004 23:20
just curious--have you seen franju's 1960 documentary 'blood of the beasts'?
- cynthia
Mon, 5 Jul 2004 11:29
no... i heard about it - is it good? easily available in the video store?
- guy
Mon, 5 Jul 2004 14:42
it's an amazing film. not very available to rent, though. most video stores probably don't have it. some of the more specialized ones might. mit's film library might.
- cynthia
Sat, 2 Oct 2004 16:39
You don't have to be a vegetarian, you can buy your food at places like wholefoodmarket, where meat and poultry comes from animals that are grown in natural conditions. In addition being vegetarian doesn't meam you don't buy fruit or vegetables that were raised in the same mass production methods, causing damage to the enviroment. But as far as I know, the earth can't scream and convulse so maybe we can live with that...
- Tal
Sat, 2 Oct 2004 19:21
that's true, i don't have to vegetarian. i don't even have to care.
but sarcasm aside, any food related decision cannot be logically defended with a hard line. any logic will make you stop eating almost anything, and the reverse - to not care at all also doesn't make sense (would you eat things made out of human flesh, where children are being killed to make some delicious eye-ball soup? probably not).
since there's no real line that you can stand behind, everyone needs to decide where they draw their own line. for almost everyone it's humans, for most people in the west furry animals that look cute. for me it's animals, for someone else it's anything that's not home grown.
that's what my conscience tells me, so i follow it.
what i do think is that people should be aware of what they're eating. they can decide whatever they want, but i don't like the 'i don't want to know where this came from' attitude. but that's also just my personal opinion.
as to the earth screaming etc. - i don't like that argument, because i have no problem saying that yes - i do care more about an animal dying than about a plant dying. i have no problem slicing a banana off the tree, but i do have a problem slicing the throat of a cat. similarly, i don't have a problem with wheat being grown too close together, but i do have a problem with calves not being able to move their whole lives. if you think the two are the same, it will be hard for me to convince you otherwise.
- guy
Mon, 4 Oct 2004 16:34
I know everyone sets his own rules, and his own boundaries. My point was that if you're opposed to the practice of mass-producing live animals in factories, but not to easing animals in general there is another way. That other way is buying meat and poultry that come from animals that are grown in natural condition, and are killed in the less painful ways. Of course, this meat is expensive, but I think paying more money, and knowing the the meat you're eating was produced the way it should be, is a better solution.
- Tal
Mon, 4 Oct 2004 22:42
that is true and i agree. if everyone would eat meat that's produced in a more reasonable way - the world would be a better place. for me, personally, there are other reasons for not eating meat.
but...for meat to be produced the 'right' way, meat production will also have to be more expensive, which means that less people can get it. because of that - or maybe even regardless - less meat will be produced, which is also a good thing.
i personally would be happy if everyone would just eat meat only once a day :)
- guy
Mon, 4 Oct 2004 22:43
what i meant by 'regardless' is that it might just be that the industry might not be able to produce the current amount of meat with more normal methods.
- guy
anti-climax
there's no doubt now, greece is the new germany.
03.07.04
whatever...
just in time for the fourth of july, this is the american dream:
"Do not settle for something ordinary...Sign up for something extraordinary"
get the world's longest email address.
gotta love their tagline:
Abcde... Whatever...The World's Longest Alphabetical Email Address
via the raw feed
and btw, what's the deal with everyone showing browser windows stacked like playing cards. is this the new web design trend now?
02.07.04
good news, bad news
heard this today from a brit:
the good news is that saddam is getting the death penalty. the bad news is that beckham is taking it.
Sat, 3 Jul 2004 20:49
i had to have a greek explain that to me, and he said "that's great."
- cynthia
Fri, 29 Oct 2004 04:54
-
pretty damn f-blank-blank-blank-blank-d up
had lunch in the big city tonight, and saw the following inscription on a big building:
"the new england shelter for homeless veterans"
use filters on the right to see additional content by month or category
content here by guy hoffman .. as seen times since march 2004
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 16:14
The new color theme is hideous
-
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 16:17
even after i changed it back to gray?
- guy
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 18:28
yeah, I just logged in on IE and saw this and thought that it's an IE bug then I checked it on safari and realized that you actually chose this color set.
- udi
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 18:35
and you're not talking about the blue from earlier today, right? you're talking about the gray that is very similar to the gray that i had for the first few months of this blog?
this whole color thing it weird. i have no idea why it looks so different on different OSs. maybe it has something to do with all the smart coloradjustment thingies that Macs do?
- guy
Sat, 31 Jul 2004 19:21
it actually looks prety much the same both on windows and on the mac.
- Udi