Tuesday, January 7, 2003 03:27 p.m. Price-Fixing and Money-Grabbing, The Music Industry is Your Bitch Wow:
Suppose someone was handing out $20 bills and almost nobody wanted one? That's roughly what's happening with a massive price-fixing settlement involving states and compact disc companies.
The deal calls for payments of as much as $20 for customers who bought CDs between 1995 and 2000. But so far, only a few people have signed up, and officials fear the money will go begging.
In September, the five top U.S. distributors of compact discs and three large music retailers agreed to pay $143 million in cash and CDs to settle allegations they cheated consumers by fixing prices.
Tuesday, January 7, 2003 03:16 p.m.
Hot Fiction
Granta's announced the writers included in its "Best of Young British Novelists" April issue. Zadie Smith is the only name most people will recognize, but that may soon change. The list, first published in 1983 (and then in 1993) included the likes of Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and Pat Barker before they wrote best-sellers.
Monday, January 6, 2003 03:37 p.m.
Cut a Calorie, Lose a Brain Cell
I really have to get down to 100 because my 10-year high school reunion is next summer, and I refuse to be fat. I'm trying to cut down on the binging and purging in favor of minimal food intake, but I gave in on Friday and purged not once, but twice. If my husband found out, he would be terribly disappointed in me, which is worse than being just really pissed. It doesn't help that I am 26 and everyone here at work is 22 or younger and they are all size zero ... Being a perfectionist is exhausting. I got one B last semester and screwed up my perfect 4.0 GPA and I keep kicking myself. If my husband knew half how crazy I was, he would pack up and leave. I don't think the prozac is working
Thus writes "Toofat26" on her Diaryland page. There are millions of other women out there with their minds in the same gutter. Anorexia isn't a disease, but an annoyance created by Western women with lives so comfortable they must invent problems to satisfy their cravings for sympathy.
Last year National Review commented "a culture that accepts all lifestyles as equally worthwhile has few arguments against even practices that kill or permanently disable those who choose them" in response to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders requests that search-engines remove listings for websites encoraging anorexia. The efforts made quite a difference. While a couple years ago, googling for a fruit salad recipe would lead you to some fanatical pink geocities homepage instructing you how to survive on a diet of grape skins, now all those places with names like "Dying to Be Thin" and "Anorexic with Pride" lead you to 404 messages.
The concept of "Pro-anorexia" is first and foremost silly. Their argument is that they'd rather look good than feel good, like, ok? But one doesn't need to be out of the proverbial closet to maintain similar dietary restrictions. A lot of women vomit up their lunch, and most of them come from upper-middle class backgrounds, top colleges, and happy homes. These are perfectionists who have perfection already and have purposfully fucked up their lives for the thrill of drama.
If the overwhelming erotic appeal of pleasantly-plump Britney Spears is any indication, one doesn't need to be feather-weight to be hot. But so what if some guy says he'd rather hump Ally McBeal than Cameron Manheim? Is he an instigator? Just as stupid as the anorexics themselves is the P.C. police that is feeding those poor starving babies all the sympathy and attention they are ultimatly striving for.
Censoring the "pro-ana" sites put the issue back in the closet. Pink geocities cites may have recrited some, but it also helped to illustrate the intellectually-feable and irrational minds that believe every cut calorie is a step nearer to heaven.
These fools do not deserve pity, but scorn. Let's identify anorexia for what it is: a childish and narcissistic character flaw.
Jon-Benet's Got Nothing On Me
Semi-interesting political site, Capitol Hill Blue has a creepy article on young girls "modeling" on the internet, unwittingly, being for the benefit of dirty old men. The girls think getting on the internet will help them get "discovered," and have no idea that perverts masturbate to their jpegs. Part of the reason they are "sexualized" in the pictures is that's what's trendy these days. Go to any shopping mall and watch the seven-year-olds tripping in platform heels and revealing their middrifts. It's sick. It's sad. It's child abuse
Friday, January 3, 2003 01:46 p.m.
One More Robot Wants to Be Something More Than a Machine Wired has more on the development of sensitive robots.
Researchers envision the emotion-sensing robot serving military personnel on the battlefield.
"The human commander may get into trouble but be unable to ask for help," said Nilanjan Sarkar, team member and assistant professor of Vanderbilt University's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
"In cases like these his robot assistant will be able to detect his stress and either communicate the need for assistance or assist in some way itself."
The robot's sensors consist of an electrocardiogram to record heartbeat, a skin sensor that can detect tiny changes in sweat production, an electromyography sensor that detects minute muscle activity in the jaw and brow, a blood-volume pressure sensor that measures the constriction on the arteries and a temperature sensor.
That sounds like the mind-reading research NASA's developing for airport security
Explain THis One to Me Why does the Texas Department of Criminal Justice maintain a log of death row prisoners' last meals? And what is compelling me to browse through it?
Wednesday, January 1, 2003 08:54 p.m. Prostition Legalized on Broadway
The appeal of musical theater (pardon me, theatre) has always baffled me. It's low-brow by definition, but with high-brow pretenses (and ticket prices.) Their world is a creepy lobotomized parallel to reality; the only place where Chita Rivera and Nathan Lane could ever be exalted as "geniuses." So of course, I was almost as excited to see Chicago, as I was to visit my gynocologist that afternoon.
But let's start on the bright side with the good stuff. Catherine Zeta Jones is hot, has cute hair, and a good voice. Now on to the bad... ugh. I spent half of the film wondering What the hell? and the other half wondering, Why? Why? It's not simply stupid, it's immoral. Maybe I'm just way too sensitive, but the entire premise of the film offends me.
Here's the synopsis: Roxy wants to be a "star." She has sex with some guy cause he tells her he'll get her on stage. When he's walking out the door, he says he was lying, and has no connections but that doesn't matter, she'd never make it with those skinny legs. So Roxy shoots him dead. She gets her name in all the papers and becomes a media darling. Then she's aquitted. In the end she teams up with another actress/murderess, and they get a stage show at Radio City Music Hall.
Do I need to break it down any further? That's disgusting! I waited and waited for Velma and Roxy to get sniped or stabbed or something -- the karma ending -- but they finnish the film satiated with their cheap aspiration for fame. They didn't learn a lesson. The film didn't teach little tap-dancing superstars in the audience to aspire to be something more substantial than a puppet. It only encorages everyone to be insecure and wont of your name in lights and "all that jazz, yeah!"
Wednesday, January 1, 2003 07:27 p.m.
Even Android Teens Get College Rejection Notices The Post has another essay on how tough it is to get into top-rated colleges. This one is on the "Steven Spielberg Effect," as the director had been rejected admission into UCLA and USC's film schools and made due at Long Beach State.
I don't regret for a minute never making it to any Ivy (or Ivy-class) school. If I spent my high school years playing bassoon, on the student body, and running track, I might have hanged myself before graduating. Whenever someone steps on the hampster wheel it's unfortunate, but to be a Willy Loman before voting age is especially depressing. You can insert the well-worn quote by Kerouac about the people who burn like Roman candles. Leisure time matters.
Wednesday, January 1, 2003 10:31 a.m. Date With IKEA Everyone's favorite Swedish low-cost lifestyle retailer has conducted a poll concluding that "slobs make better lovers." speaking of comfy chairs...
Wednesday, January 1, 2003 10:06 a.m. "Is it a Crisis or a Boring Change?"
Few things make me happier right now than Pavement's rerelease of Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe and Reduxe. They are a band like a cosy chair that sometimes collects laundry but once in awhile you push the pile under your bed and enjoy sinking into it like it's the first time. This review in the Boston Phoenix explains what I like best about them, "How do Malkmus’s lyrics, which often sound like someone speaking in code about an experience he didn’t know how to describe in the first place, manage to carry any emotional resonance at all?"
Their best album is Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, as it has the most immediatly pixilating tracks, "Gold Soundz" and "Silence Kid" (plus, the undeniably likeable single "Cut Your Hair,") but this one has good songs in surplus too. "Zurich is Stained" in one minute and thirty seconds packs more feeling than a typical band could manage from their oeuvre. "Perfume-V" and "Here" are great too. It's all great. You can kind of test people's coolness-meter by how they react to Pavement. If it's really not their thing, well, fine. But if they 'hate because it's too popular, they're snobs. If it's not rocking enough, they're dumb. Also, if they're obsessively fanatical about them, they're probably kind of cheesy and like the band for all the wrong reasons.
Monday, December 30, 2002 11:12 p.m.
Hell Freezes Over and Alina resolves to quit smoking [insert emoticon smiley face here.] We share this one in common: "Read less and live more." Yes, I've resolved to stop living like a hermit and start going to the parties and that sort of thing. One's only young once. So if I give you some lame excuse why I can't make it to x event at y date -- call me on it. I'm too comfortable. I need to take risks, get hurt, and live to tell. But the resolution I make yearly is to stick to the golden rule. It can be hard to be a genuinely nice person, but it is the most rewarding state of being.
Monday, December 30, 2002 11:10 p.m.
Bermuda Triangle on Her Sleeve National Georgraphic explains the mystery and the myth of the Bermua Triangle.
The Bermuda Triangle region has some unusual features. It's one of only two places on Earth—the other being an area nicknamed the Devil's Sea off the east coast of Japan, which has a similar mysterious reputation—where true north and magnetic north line up, which could make compass readings dicey [sidebar].
It is also home to some of the deepest underwater trenches in the world; wreckage could settle in a watery grave miles below the surface of the ocean. Most of the sea floor in the Bermuda Triangle is about 19,000 feet (5,791 meters) down; near its southern tip, the Puerto Rico Trench dips at one point to 27,500 (8,229 meters) feet below sea level.
Monday, December 30, 2002 10:20 p.m.
Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
Creationists -- in their delusionary self-absorbtion -- refer to their "scientific" alternative to evolution as "intelligent design theory." Yeah, sure
Then there's a this story about a Polish preist who had sex with a teenage rape victim as a form of "counseling."
As he touched her, Kramek told police, he would ask her if it felt better now than when she was raped. Kramek said the girl answered "now" each time. Afterward, Kramek said, she hugged him and told him she "thinks of him as her dad."
Horrible.
Monday, December 30, 2002 10:15 p.m. One Thing the Left Does Right... is graphic design. VOX NYC is one of the cooler looking sites I've seen in a while (though the content is a little thin.)
Monday, December 30, 2002 05:45 p.m.
Smart Fungi Counterpunch has an interesting story on the the US's plan to deploy biological weapons in Colombia. Rep. Bob Mica is psyched to eradicate "crops" with a killer fungus the Department of Agriculture has created especially for the mission, but it can and will do more damage than that. The lives of civilians and the rainforest will be collateral damage to this trifling strategy to rid the planet of a harmless (albeit, potetially addictive) stimulant. But who needs cocaine anyway, when you can get Starbucks Doubleshots at any gas station?
Sunday, December 29, 2002 08:41 p.m.
Mis-shapes, Mistakes, Misfits...
"I used to go to this club in Sheffield, and all the men
wore eyeliner and I thought they looked interesting,
but they weren't. After that, I always thought anybody
that looked interesting - but who actually bored the pants off
you should be prosecuted under the 'Trade Descriptions
Act'" - Jarvis Cocker
Sunday, December 29, 2002 08:10 p.m.
You are Brain-Damaged? Cool, Let's Make Out
Random unsettling anecdote from my aunt who works with special needs students: a teenager in her class is a gorgeous six foot girl with the mental capacity of a three year old (her father shook her violently in infancy.) Of course she gets hit on constantly, but her drooling and requests play with crayons fail to discorage suitors -- rather it further entices many of them. You know, "ironic" American women use Hello Kitty paraphernalia for a similar effect...
Saturday, December 28, 2002 10:20 a.m.
Complex and Complexability
This line in a book review of Why Orwell Matters bothers me
Hitchens does well to reveal Orwell as a complex man, and the complex man is never entirely an honest one, almost by definition.
Why must these two qualities have an inverse relationship, if the self is not a constant? Reading complexity as a term for diverse interests and a wide range of emotions; refusing to resist these changes only adds to the one's complexity. An honest man is hard to find -- and maintain. The qualities that would lead someone to a life of honesty are undoubtably layered. We might initially infer that smoke and mirrors are "complex" -- but they only add complexity to the surface level. All the dishonest people I know are basically the same personality type inside.
Friday, December 27, 2002 11:35 p.m.
All Your Base Are Belong to Astro-Men
Man or Astro-man's A Spectrum of Infinite Scale is off tha hook! Released two years ago, it's a grand departure from their cultish surf rock prior (they're the guys who did the Space Ghost theme song.) This is crafty space instramentals spliced with the sounds of a dot matrix printer going about its business or a 2400 baud modem connecting. If that sounds sexy, than you -- like me -- are a dork, and you should give it a whirl. You can download the track, "Curious Constructs of Stem-like Devices Which Now Prepare Themselves to be Thought of as Fingers" (yeah) from Epitonic, but the best one is, "Song of the Two-Mile Linear Particle Accelerator, Stanford University, Stanford, California."
The modem ring especially brings me several years back to my autistic high school years: stamping my feet impatiently for the printer to putt-out my history homework or tapping my fingers to the dial-up beat. We were the last generation of teenagers without high-speed internet access. The last of the loved ones
archive >>12/27 smart dolls, rat-brained robots, clinton in exile
