“ The norte chico is also home to La Silla, one of the most important observatories in the world, because the air there is so clear that no star—either dead or yet to be born—escapes the eye of its gigantic telescope. Apropos of the observatory, someone who has worked there for three decades told me that the most renowned astronomers in the world wait years for their turn to scour the universe. I commented that it must be stupendous to work with scientists whose eyes are always on infinity and who live detached from earthly miseries, but he informed me that it is just the opposite: astronomers are as petty as poets. He says they fight over jam at breakfast. The human condition never fails to amaze. ”
Isabel Allende, My Invented Country (via Sondy)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
snooz3r:
Hey You Guys
Circlesquare
this is it.
this is us.
here we go.
(it’s a good song; i love their album, apparently the circlesquare guy is from vancouver? of course he lives in — wait for it — berlin, now, like everyone else who has ever been cool. i think berlin is where cool people go when they die. it’s a conspiracy.)
“Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets, official results show.”
NEWS FLASH: Tolerant, liberal northern Europe potentially even more terribly racist, xenophobic than us. Again.
“
PART I. ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT
TITLE XIV. PUBLIC WAYS AND WORKS CHAPTER
89. LAW OF THE ROAD
Chapter 89: Section 3. Sleigh or sled; bells
Section 3. No person shall travel on a way with a sleigh or sled drawn by a horse, unless there are at least three bells attached to some part of the harness.
”
M.G.L. - Chapter 89, Section 3
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Au Revoir Simone - Anywhere You Looked
I love so many things about this song. Where do I even begin? Maybe it’s the lush synthesizers. Maybe it’s the retro drum kicks. Maybe it’s the contrast between the frenzied percussion and the song’s relatively languid bassline. Maybe it’s the sweetly validating lyrics — especially how they change up the chorus between verses (for which, for the record, I am a huge sucker).
It’s about half as long as I wish it was, though. Easily one of my faves from their album.
“College students and single noncollege adults defined the term date, differentiated dates from going out with a friend, and described their reasons for going on their most recent first date. Responses indicate that single adults vary more in their orientation toward dating (e.g., an emphasis on a lifelong relationship) than do college students. Sex differences in first date goals appeared only in the college sample. College men were more likely to report sexual goals, whereas college women were more likely to report goals reflecting friendship, date-to-date, and having fun. Results highlight the importance of several forms of uncertainty reduction, shed light on an application of predicted outcome value theory, and suggest that the nature of commitment may differ across age groups.”
“ Online petitions, used by good online organizers, are great. Example: At MoveOn, 10 local citizens often show up at a member of Congress’s office to do a media event holding them accountable on some issue. 10 citizens alone are not usually newsworthy. 10 local citizens delivering petitions on behalf of 3000 local citizens — newsworthy. It works over and over. And media stories are a great form of pressure. ”
Open Left:: Profiles in Bad Online Organizing: Part 1 (DSCC)
DejaMenu - multiple menubars for multiple monitors
“DejaMenu will display the current application’s main menu as a context menu when a key combination is pressed. This is particularly useful for people using multiple monitors. Since the Menubar only appears on a single monitor, it is awkward to use applications on a different monitor. DejaMenu solves this - just press the configured key combo, and a copy of the Menubar is right there for your to use.”
This is a stupid hack and I resent having to use it, though I’m glad that it exists. Why can’t Apple let me just render the menubar on more than one monitor?
“ Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it again forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. ”
Henry James via Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals”
“ anyway, i’m making a record, as previously blathered about, and this means that my horrible, useless website is getting redone by my friend sonya. i mean, it sucks, which was my choice. i was like “can this look more horrible?” i wish i was kidding, but i happen to like crap. i just do. but she’s promised to work with me to make sure it’s still unwieldy and awkward, which is good preparation for everything else lcdish, and i promise to be less grumpy about things actually being “useful”. it’s just that things that are too “useful”… well, i don’t entirely trust them. i kind of like useless things. for instance—and this is a pretty facile and simplified metaphor here—art is useless, and nazis made lots of useful things. i like dumb meandering things that make me happy and confused, and don’t particularly like “effective marketing tools designed for maximum accurate data capture” blah blah blah. it all sounds so sad and functional. i don’t like the idea of people sitting in a room talking about the best way to word things to get the right reaction from a base of “users” etc. i don’t like thinking that those people used to love to do something, or wanted to be something, and would up measuring the best way to manipulate other people. i honestly don’t judge them, but i feel weird, and sort of sad—not FOR them, in a pitying way, as i have no idea how they fell, for fuck’s sake, and i’m a ridiculous person by the measure of a pretty deep cut of the population—but ABOUT them. ”
the internet - lcd soundsystem’s MySpace Blog |
it’s a good thing you don’t have to be able to get along with someone to enjoy their music.
