Maxon

Maxon Crumb, brother of Robert Crumb, has a book out called “HardCore Mother.” This looks like an amazing piece - artwork and fiction all in one.

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Oh, and Rageboy's been busy turning spam into art, and talking about it (art, that is).

Art, the Web and dialogue

A small detail of thelonegunman's collage

September 10: An artist calling himself “thelonegunman” posts a provocative piece of art on a website, and adds a little rant in his comment. Here's a piece of what he said:

...people died. a terrorist some people call president goes out and kills innocent people. nothing changes.

though i don't have an answer, i am pointing out the problem. the problem is a fake war on terrorism, the problem is the patriot act, the problem is people believing what they are told and not searching out the truth, or the cause of why someone would fly a plane into a building.

the answer is not more dead bodies. if you are going to find one, it involves more information, not less. ...

A right-winger lashes back: “Land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!” A fascinating thread follows, with numerous points of view from a number of different countries. A true international conversation.

View the whole piece/read the thread

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A pattern of misrepresentation

9/11/03: "We know [Iraq] had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with al-Qaida in particular, and we know a great many of bin Laden's key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime to attack in Iraq."

9/13/03: "Zarqawi is actually the guy I was referring to - should have been more precise. It's not a great many - it's one of bin Laden's key associates - probably better referred to that way than a key lieutenant."

- Paul Wolfowitz

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Hole-y...

From: Warren
Re: Yahoo! News Story - Antarctic Ozone Hole Biggest Ever

10.81 MILLION square miles.
10.81 million SQUARE MILES.
10.81 MILLION SQUARE MILES!!!

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Look who's hiring

Ad on the NYTimes.com job board

Back Atcha
Good to have Seal back on the scene with new stuff after five years. He said he was two years into creating the album, and didn't like where it was heading, so he scrapped the whole thing, moved back to London, and started over. Then, he went back to L.A. and teamed up with Trevor Horn to finish the thing. You can hear the album online. They've set up a streaming player in Flash. Click one of the “Launch Seal Player” links, and it opens in a new window. I'm also liking “Tinsel Town,” “Where There's Gold,” and “Let Me Roll.”

The “Waiting for You” video is on the site too. Looks like it was mostly shot in two locations – on Broadway, just north of Houston; and at the southern tip of New York State Plaza, near the ferry. The shots are tight most of the time, but there's one time that the camera pulls back and you get enough of the facade of the Broadway building to locate it, and that inverted pyramid lamp at the Plaza is very recognizable.

Seal was on the Today Show this morning. The camera crew didn't do a very good job. There were a couple of good shots of Seal from a low angle with buildings towering behind him, but it got monotonous after a while, and the other musicians didn't get much coverage at all. You couldn't get much of a sense of the connection between the musicians and the audience.

I caught several glimpses of what looked like two digital audio workstations attached to the keyboards. When Seal sang “Crazy,” I heard one thing that they were used for: Seal had sampled his own backing vocals, so that the keyboard player could trigger them as needed.

Odd thing – right in the middle of “Crazy,” NBC went to commercials. I'd never seen that with any other act. They came back from the break just in time to hear Seal wrap up the last few bars of the song. I couldn't help but think they'd directed him to stretch through the break.

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We have a new Poet Laureate. Her name is Louise Glück. Check out some of her essays on poetry here.

At a poetry workshop last night, we did an analysis of “The Architect at his Mountain Villa” by Clive Willmer. This is good stuff. The crafting is exceptional, and the poem works on many levels. Bonus: the page features several other poems by Willmer and a brief bio.

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RIP Johnny Cash and John Ritter.

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Friendly fire

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. soldiers mistakenly opened fire on a group of Iraqi policemen chasing bandits Friday, killing eight policemen and wounding seven other Iraqis...

Mmm hmm. That's what I call a public-relations coup.

A Sweeping Moral Victory...
for the record industry. I'm sure this is just the sort of publicity that helps RIAA sell records: nailing a 12-year-old who lives in a housing project with her single mom for $2000. Nicely put by Bill Barol.

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9-11-01
I debated whether I wanted to post these pictures. For the last couple of days, I've been seeing replays of the towers falling on TV, and it reminds me of an eloquent post on Baghdad Burning:

September 11 was a tragedy. Not because 3,000 Americans died… but because 3,000 humans died. I was reading about the recorded telephone conversations of victims and their families on September 11. I thought it was… awful, and perfectly timed. Just when people are starting to question the results and incentives behind this occupation, they are immediately bombarded with reminders of September 11. Never mind Iraq had nothing to do with it.

The last thing I want to do, is continue to feed into the paranoia and resentment connected with the events of that day. It saddens me, the way this tragedy is being used to justify and cover up so many things that are going wrong in this country right now; just as it was used to fulfill the long-standing aims of the Project for the New American Century – as spelled-out in a letter to President Clinton way back in 1998. If the language in that letter sounds familiar, it should come as no surprise. Take a look at the cast of characters at the bottom of their statement of principles. (Dan Quayle! You mean that guy's not dead?)

It boggles my mind that people are buying the notion of a connection between Saddam and the attacks. It amazes me that this President can now declare Iraq as the primary front for terrorism in the world, but I digress.

I'm sharing these images because there are a millions, no more like several billions, of personal experiences of that day, and I find value in each person's account. I'm sharing these because the event was more than shocking close-up images of planes crashing into the towers, or watching them collapse. Much of that day's story could only be seen by looking around, not up at the cloud. That day represented a collective awakening - a signal that perhaps something was very wrong.

As it was for many, my experience of 9/11 started with the television. Even though the towers were only about three miles from my apartment, I watched the coverage on TV, never expecting them to collapse. A short while after the collapse of the second tower, it occurred to me that it was ridiculous to experience something as historic as this – and happening in my own back yard – through the distorted filter of TV news. I grabbed my camera, and set out walking toward the towers...

Fulton Avenue, Brooklyn. Still at least two miles from the towers. That dust and smoke plume would hang over everything for many weeks.

Fulton Avenue, near Jay Street. Buses were lined up back to back for blocks, and they were packed. From this picture, you really can't appreciate how many people were crowding the streets.

Near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. This was one of the first of the masked people I saw.

People would walk off the bridge, holding dust-covered umbrellas. They were well out of the area of falling dust, but never thought to close those umbrellas.

Police were trying to keep people from crossing the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. I walked up the service road to get a closer look. Others had gotten the same idea. Standing there, I spotted a way onto the bridge...

Several dust people came across the bridge, their hair, faces, and clothes transformed. Only now, are we starting to find out what was in that dust. A neighbor of ours spent considerable time in the dust during the first days of the tragedy. She said clumps of her hair fell out in the shower when she got home that first night.

When I got to the far side of the Brooklyn Bridge, Police were turning people back. I headed back across the bridge, toward the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, where I'd last stood and gazed toward the towers at sunset on September 9, 2001.

There seemed to be TV and newspaper cameras everywhere around the Promenade. Time and time again, a reporter would shove a microphone into someone's face and say something like "Tell us what you saw," or, "What did it feel like?"

The patriotic displays were spontaneous, and immediate. This guy literally wrapped himself in the flag.

As the day wore on, people's energy began to sag, and the enormity of what was happening began to show on people's faces.

A passenger riding the bus home that evening.

Hobgoblin of Little Minds
A bunch of virus-looking messages have been getting past Earthlink's spaminator and the junk mail filter in my Apple Mail to reach my in-box over the last several days. The messages have subjects like "Thanks!," "Your details," "Re: That movie," "Re: wicked screensaver," etc. The virus is also spoofing my e-mail address from the machine(s) that is infected, so every once in a while I get a message telling me that some e-mail "I" supposedly sent was infected with a virus. I haven't checked the known spam bin at Earthlink, but I've probably been getting 30-50 messages of this sort each day for the past 3 days or so. That's definitely an up tick from earlier.

I think I know the source: the host computer for a company that I did some subcontracting work for may be infected. I deduce that by the "To" address used in most, if not all of the messages I've received. Also, that company's mail host was down for an extended period a couple of days ago – perhaps they were trying to deal with the problem then. So far, it hasn't worked.

Apparently, the culprit is the SoBig.F worm that's still making its way around the Internet. So Big... is that the creator's ego talking? Perhaps the usual compensation – the guy can't afford an expensive penis-shaped car, so he sits down and writes a virus instead...? He doesn't have a girlfriend, but he dreams of a woman cooing "Ooh, it's So Big..." You get the picture.

Since I'm running Mac OS X, I figure I'm only susceptible to Unix worms, since it won't run Windows Executables, and I barely ever run Virtual PC. I'm also not running Outlook, which is a major culprit in propagating these nasty bugs. One other potentially big problem is Word macro viruses, but I rarely get Word files from anyone else, and I often open them in AppleWorks. Finally, the other major attack point for these critters is Microsoft's SQL Server, which I'm also not running. I got some confirmation of this via Technofile, which says flat out that the worms can't attack Macs.

I still think there are some Unix worms out there, that my machine might be susceptible to. But an interesting thing is going on: There are so few viruses written for Macs right now, that there appear to be no freeware anti-virus apps being made – there's just no market for them. Norton and Virex make products that run on OS X, but I'm not so sure they're scanning for much. In other words, they're working pretty much like any other insurance.

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Patch-Happy

A patch released by Microsoft to fix a critical security vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser does not work, according to security experts.

More on CNET News.com

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Good for Laughs

“Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration's positions on civil liberties in the original German.”
- Bill Maher, on Schwarzenegger running for Governor

“Just like Europe, this country has a social safety net as well. Only we call it 'prison.'”
- Bill Maher

“They're saying Arnold will get 95% of the vote. At least according to his brother, Jeb Schwarzenegger.”
- Craig Kilborn

“President Bush has been silent on Schwarzenegger. Of course, he can't pronounce Schwarzenegger.”
- David Letterman

“Well, we're all excited because President Bush has started his 35-day vacation. He's down there in Crawford, Texas and on the first day of his vacation he went fishing. He didn't find any fish but he believes they're there and that his intelligence is accurate.”
- David Letterman

“President Bush's economic team is now on their 'Jobs and Growth' bus tour all across America. I think the only job they created so far is for the guy driving the bus.”
- Jay Leno

“The United States is putting together a Constitution now for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It's served well for 200 years, and we don't appear to be using it anymore, so what the hell?”
- Jay Leno

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The Blank Check

Although administration officials have blamed Iraq's poor infrastructure for some of the unanticipated costs, $65.5 billion of the $87-billion request is earmarked for military operations — including in Afghanistan — not rebuilding.

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that of the $87 billion the administration is seeking, $65.5 billion would go to support military operations in Iraq. That is $14.5 billion more than the White House estimate released Monday.

Specific line items were not detailed, but the general breakdown listed $32.3 billion for "day-to-day" operations, $18.5 billion to cover military personnel costs, $2.2 billion for coalition partners, $3.3 billion for depot maintenance, $1.9 million to buy armor and other equipment, $600,000 for health care, $400,000 for military construction and $6.3 billion in classified and other expenses.

- LA Times Report [Requires registration]

No news is no news
Well, I just got confirmation about the job I interviewed for a couple of weeks ago, and was most interested in – they selected someone else. The guy said the person they selected had qualifications that matched the job description perfectly. Translation: I was overqualified (and possibly too old). I'm not good at pretending to know less than I do, but I might do well to learn how.

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iN-PUBLiC.com is a street photography site. The Picture of the Month section has some fascinating images. Check out September (charming, isn't it?), May, 2002, and January, 2002. The navigation is a bit goofy in the individual photographers' sections. Two little semicircular "ears" appear at the margins of the main area, containing left and right navigation triangles. If you don't look for them, you can miss them, since they're not associated with any of the other navigation.

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Some of my latest creations in Photoshop:

Oh yeah, in case you're keeping track, I'm not at the ColdFusion course today. It got postponed.

I think this is what happens when the Pentagon Press Release department decides that no news is good news, and boy do we need some good news.

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More pix from Saturday
This guy was downtown on West Broadway playing Dobro. Never said a word. He let his music do the talkin'.

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The record industry has already filed 261 lawsuits (and counting) against file swappers...

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The Dems eye their own hawk...
As if the field isn't goofy or confused enough, some Dems are trying to get retired 4-Star General Wesley Clark to run for President too. Check out this background:

Although Clark was raised in Arkansas, he was born in Chicago just like candidate Carol Moseley Braun. And even though Clark grew up a Baptist and converted to Catholicism, his father was Jewish like candidate Joe Lieberman...

Yipee. A man of (all?) the people. He probably has an African-American aunt, too.

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87 Billion + 79 Billion = 166 Billion and counting...
I think there's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza.

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Where's the beef?
Schwarzenegger is running around using phrases like “Game over” and “Hasta la vista, baby” in his campaign appearances. John Stewart has it right when he says Arnold will be up to “Kiss my grits” soon. Still, I don't hear a lot about what he's going to do, or how he's going to fix things in Cally. It takes more than a sound bite.

This is going to be a long post. It's actually two or three days' posts combined into one...

Hello, Blogger...??!!
Looks like the boys at Pyra had their hands full yesterday morning. Blogger kept rejecting my login all morning, so I couldn't post. I checked status.blogger.com, and didn't see anything about login problems. I kept trying. When I was finally able to login, I clicked on my blog link, and got a very detailed error listing (a small fragment is shown above), and no joy. A short while later, I checked status.blogger.com again, to find a brand new message about login problems posted. I supposed I'd get to post this message some time; just not right then.

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I was at the Apple Store in SoHo yesterday. They've got two G5s on display now. I played around with Photoshop, and tried to find some effects that would make the processor work. I couldn't find anything that would bog it down. That's sweet. It's one thing to read how quiet it is, it's another to experience it. Several people came by and said “Wow! I can do hard disk recording without trying to EQ out the fan noise!” They also put a firewire port and a USB port right on the front. That's a very good idea. The one thing that surprised me, is how big the case is.

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New York City...

Overheard on the street today: A girl is explaining the large grates you see in the sidewalks near subway lines this way – “...They're rat cages, so you can see the giant rats that live under the sidewalks...”

Browsing the bookstore yesterday, I heard a really nice blues groove, and a woman singing “New York City – such a beautiful disease...” it was, well, infectious. I googled the lyric, and found out it was Norah Jones.

The song is part of an E.P. released in June. They'll probably fix the press release some time, so I took a screen shot: Look at the date; what, are they thinking ahead?

New Yorkers always ask the hard questions

Uh,what? If you look up valence in the dictionary, you'll find it relates to chemistry, psychology, and linguistics.

This definition from the American Heritage dictionary seems to be most relevant:

The capacity of something to unite, react, or interact with something else: “I do not claim to know much more about novels than the writing of them, but I cannot imagine one set in the breathing world which lacks any moral valence” (Robert Stone).

But, what about this fare reference? Does Franken talk about subways in his book? Then they have to go and drag Jesus into the thing...

Tell me the picture below doesn't remind you of the enclosure for a tower PC.

Next time you're in midtown, don't forget to look up

Bank branch openings always have been a bit of a circus

Watch your step

Hard times require good shoes

Even cheap bikes have it rough here, sometimes

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As girls go
It's that same afternoon that I heard the Norah Jones tune, and I'm at a poetry reading at the Ear Inn. An attractive woman with gorgeous breasts, clad in an attention-getting red blouse and blue jeans walks right up to the men's room, and enters without a pause. A friend of mine and I exchange quizzical glances, and go back to listening. A few moments later, a man emerges. His eyebrows flutter reflexively as he realizes that people know he had to be in there when the woman entered. Several minutes later, the lady comes out.

The men's room has a urinal and a single toilet stall with ill-fitting louvered shutters. I imagine the man facing the urinal, member in hand as the woman enters. I wonder about her willingness to squeeze past him to use the stall. Then, I wonder if she's a woman at all; certainly many would say she's no lady...

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“The American Effect” at the Whitney
is a fascinating show. We spent about 2-1/2 hours taking it in, and that really wasn't enough. The show demonstrates the power of art to communicate in ways that other forms simply cannot. While the theme of the artwork is the effects of American politics and globalism from the perspective of the rest of the world, the show is hardly shrill or a one-trick pony.

Two of the most striking exhibits showed photographs of a little-known test bombing range in South Korea, and piles of computer junk shipped to China. Another highlighted an old Chrysler ad explaining why “it's time for Imperial.” You feel close-up and experience the dramatic tension of the battle of Little Big Horn among over-sized statues that you can walk among in one final exhibit. The faces seem alive, and very much frightened. The bodies are contorted, and seem to be suspended in air.

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Unbelievable

“Wanting to command a rising and contentious debate, President Bush will address the nation Sunday on the war on terrorism and efforts to stabilize Iraq. ...

A Washington Post poll out Saturday said 69 percent of Americans believe it likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by the al-Qaida. The belief in the connection persists even though there has been no proof of a link between the two.”
- A.P. report

That's what I'd call success in marketing. Magicians have a technique they call misdirection. They do something to draw your attention to what they're doing with one hand, so you can't see what the other is doing. They also cover a lot of things with curtains.

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Not quite a “where were you” moment
I had zero interest in watching the MTV music awards this year. All those pictures of music stars with giant papier maché heads did nothing for me, though I did enjoy some of the graffiti that adorned those posters. So, I was a bit surprised to find out today that a small firestorm had erupted over Madonna swapping spit with Britney Spears on stage.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a postage stamp sized picture of the kiss on the front cover and got hate mail. One letter went so far as to connect what some would call a lesbian kiss on TV to “...[the] high teen pregnancy rate, low SAT scores, children out of wedlock and the rising cases of AIDS...” and suggested that the paper takes no responsibility for their role in encouraging such behavior. (Imagine what the writer has to say about shows like Will & Grace and Boy Meets Boy!!!) The Managing Editor apologized:

We have a high standard of presentation that is in line with community sensibilities, and we have filters that work to maintain those standards. The difficulty comes when news turns ugly, horrid, profane or provocative in some other way that might offend community sensibilities.

During the war in Iraq, it happened a lot, and in the name of presenting a truthful, full account of the war, our filter got tested and stretched a lot. We ran images we otherwise might not have run. But that was war, and war was news.

The photo we ran Friday was neither, and I wish I had limited its display to the inside of the Living section.

We want the paper to be appropriate to the widest possible readership at the same time that we want it to deliver a straightforward accounting of the big news, the talk of the town, from the day before. That is sometimes a tricky balance, and we spend a lot of time seeking that balance while not being afraid of the news.

Usually, I think, we do this well. With this photo, we did not.

HANK KLIBANOFF
Managing Editor for News
hklibanoff@ajc.com

What the heck is this letter saying? What does “neither” refer to – “ugly, horrid, profane or provocative?” Or, is it a reference to war vs. news? – Except, he says war is news. Then he goes on to make it clear that he would have run the photo no matter what... Why? Because it is provocative and sells papers!

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But sometime in Bush's middle years, his id was captured, shackled and manacled, and locked away...

Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to "legitimate" targets, often ones nominated by their parents' prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious...

Read more on how the American President became a reckless rebel with a death wish, by Oliver James, psychologist and author of “They F*** You Up; How to Survive Family Life”

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Make your pet really happy. Get 'em their own SUV!

The SUV is perfect for strolling down a country lane, around town on a city sidewalk, up a marked hiking trail, or a breezy jaunt along the shoreline providing a safe and airy method of transportation.

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Chris has been a big fan of RSS and news aggregators for a while now. Bet he's drooling over FeedDemon. Too bad it's only for 'Doze.

Meanwhile, the makers of Movable Type have launched TypePad, a hosted blogging platform.

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Click to enlarge

Wow. A dream come true. Dewey must have satisfied customers all over the world. What's with the gibberish, though? Gotta love spam when it's entertaining. OK, maybe not.

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