Ramblings & ephemera
I don’t use Radio Userland any longer, but I found these instructions incredibly helpful, so here they are:
go to system.verbs.builtins.radio.data.systemUrls
add a name: kitNews
value: /system/kit/news
now go to system.verbs.builtins.radio.macros.adminMenu
scroll down to addCommand list
add the following: addCommand (”Kit News”,radio.data.systemUrls.kitNews)
save
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Posted on May 31st, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: tech help | Comments Off
I’ve been gathering materials for a possible class about the inter-relations of technology and the humanities. Here are some potential sources of information.
Essays on the Philosophy of Technology I
Google Search: Portrayal of Technology in Literature and Film
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Posted on May 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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When a magician dies (a real, entertainment magician, not one who practices white or black magic, which I don’t believe in anyway), there is a traditional broken-wand ceremony, in which members of the Society of American Magicians break the dead person’s wand, symbolizing that it has lost its magic. The broken-wand ceremony was first held [...]
Posted on May 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off
Now this is interesting - it definitely says something about our ability to work around restrictions, provided we remain unaware that the restrictions exist in the first place.
One day in 1939, George Bernard Dantzig, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a graduate-level statistics class and found two problems written [...]
Posted on May 25th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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Brian Eno composed the famous sound that plays when you start up Windows 95 (Don’t remember it? You can download it here.). Here’s what he had to say about composing it:
The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and [...]
Posted on May 24th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, on writing, technology | Comments Off
"larboard": the left side of a boat; AKA "port"
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The importance of booze to the Pilgrims
Recognizing futility
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How it feels to drown, get decapitated, get electrocuted, and more
Zombie ships adrift off the shore of Africa
Posted on May 22nd, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: word of the day | Comments Off
"Continuing to Calais, Edward [III] began a lengthy siege. … Calais Surrendered in August, 1347. Edward was particularly lenient in not killing the garrison and population for resisting him. Six of the towns Burgesses were ordered to appear before him with ropes around their necks and the town’s keys, and to submit to his will, [...]
Posted on May 22nd, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off
In 1698, Peter the Great worked as a common laborer while in England so that he could learn the art of shipbuilding.
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The importance of booze to the Pilgrims
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Posted on May 21st, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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From “Celebrities face the ‘piñata syndrome’” in The L. A. Times:
As a result, every story has an abbreviated life span, accelerating the demand for more news. Ultimately, this adds up to exaggerated expectations of celebrities. If they can’t maintain their public persona, they’re devoured for our entertainment instead.
“I call it the piñata syndrome,” says publicist [...]
Posted on May 20th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off
So Jans & I are talking at the Broadway Oyster Bar last night, and all of a sudden Jans says, “Have you ever noticed how many diseases and other medical terms would make great band names? Like The Multiple Lacerations. Or The Compound Fractures.”
“You’re right!” I replied. “How about The Bleeding Ulcers? And The GI [...]
Posted on May 18th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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From a review of Sinatra: The Life, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, in today’s New York Times:
When it snowed, one writer observed, “girls fought over his footprints, which some took home and stored in refrigerators.”
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Posted on May 17th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: cool stuff, fiction | Comments Off
This is one of the coolest freakin’ things I’ve read about in a long, long time: “In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema“:
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they [...]
Posted on May 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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So we’re sitting at the CWELUG meeting, talking, and someone talks about fathoms, which leads to cubits, which leads to hands, which leads to stone. Someone says, “What’s your weight in stone?” I say, “I measure my weight in boulders.”
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Posted on May 15th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
"New research shows why it doesn’t take much for a new problem or an unfamiliar task to tax our thinking. According to University of Queensland cognitive science researchers …, the number of individual variables we can mentally handle while trying to solve a problem (like baking a lemon meringue pie) is relatively small: [...]
Posted on May 15th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off
Warning: this will mean nothing unless you know the two parties involved.
David H. was drunk and for some reason we asked him if he found Jans attractive. His reply:
No! He’s Scottish! And brutish! I feel like he’d take over my country and invade my netherlands!
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Jans clarifies it for us
Why so many Google [...]
Posted on May 15th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
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Bruce Schneier: "Why are people so lousy at estimating, evaluating and accepting risk? That’s a complicated question, and I spend most of Chapter 2 of Beyond Fear trying to answer it. Evaluating risk is one of the most basic functions of a brain and something hard-wired into every species possessing one. Our own notions of [...]
Posted on May 14th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security | Comments Off
Annie Dillard on writing:
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?”
“Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?”
The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like [...]
Posted on May 14th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: on writing | Comments Off
I was walking around on Wash U’s campus a while back - I don’t remember where, exactly - when I looked down and noticed that I was walking over bricks that had been “donated” by folks who had given money to WU. This is standard practice a lot of places: donate $$$, get a brick [...]
Posted on May 14th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: musings, writing ideas | Comments Off
The first line of a mystery novel, suggested by a public defender who heard a woman say it:
“I said, ‘Mama,’ I said, ‘Death was on that boy.’”
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Posted on May 14th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: fiction, writing ideas | Comments Off