I remember the years before Paris fell     Monday, November 4, 2002
A nightmare article about dismal concrete suburbs in France, where outsider youths are so anti-establishment they throw Molotov cocktails at fire fighters and the police refuse to accept reports of crimes in order to keep crime rates low. Weblogger Jonathan Davis adds this finishing tidbit from September 2000: Monkeys the new weapon of Paris gangs.

Labyrinthine     Wednesday, October 30, 2002
An eccentric millionaire constructed an underground maze of tunnels, dead ends, chambers and loops beneath Liverpool in the 19th century. And now the British Museum of Tourism and Prisons is raising money to fill these tunnels with kobolds and gelatinous cubes. Goes without saying, really. Found on BoingBoing.

How to do intelligence     Wednesday, October 23, 2002
A Reagan-era CIA official says the U.S. intelligence field needs brains, but what interests me about this article is the method he proposes for intelligence work. Come up with a hypothesis, such as “the Soviet economy is shrinking” or “al-Qaeda could use planes as weapons,” and then list what you would expect to see if your hypothesis were true. Finally, look into the world and see if anything resembles your model.

Magnetic paint     Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Cooool. An undercoat of paint that lets you stick fridge magnets to your wall. If you put magnets in your shoes, you can walk up the wall. The manufacturer doesn't make that claim, but it seems, you know, obvious. Found on Girlhacker.

Is the world any better for Myriad?     Monday, October 21, 2002
As you may have heard, B.C. has stopped performing a breast cancer test after being threatened by Myriad, a company with a patent on the gene being detected (the sequence of the naturally mutated gene, mind you, not the test itself). An argument skittering around the web is that Myriad should be able to charge all the gold and first-born-daughters it wants for any test that detects this gene, because without such incentives, the gene would have remained unknown. The catch is, Myriad used public research from a European consortium looking for the same gene, BCRA1. Myriad beat this consortium to the discovery and claimed the spoils by patenting the gene sequence. How can you conclude from this race that the gene would have gone undiscovered without Myriad? (BCRA2 was found by a UK charity group after the original corsortium started hiding its research from Myriad. The group was awarded UK and Australian patents, while Myriad got the US one.) Is the slightly faster discovery worth the cost in money and inhibited research that Myriad now inflicts on the world? I wish B.C. had the courage of Ontario, which so far has told Myriad to get bent.

Brass corners     Friday, October 18, 2002
Funky old decor feature, used to foil dust bunnies. Found on Slashdot, I swear to God.

Interview with B.R. Myers     Friday, October 11, 2002
B.R. Meyer doesn't like modern literary novels or the reviewers who celebrate them. He thinks readers need reviewers like the movies have, someone who will tell you if the story's any good.
        Part of the fun in knowing so many local authors is seeing who they roped into blurbing their book. An old prof? A housemate? A lover? Zsuzsi Gartner? {Oh pif, he's just envious.} {Perish the thought.}

Wandering     Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Sometimes I get the sinking feeling that the web is a stack of magazines. A giant stack, true -- one of the ones they engineer to curve around the moon. Some pages are sharp, witty, heart-wrenching. But most are frothy and transient, like magazines, and if you spend eight hours a week reading magazines, perhaps you have time in your life for all those things you swear you have no time for.

     So, Mooselessness slows, but hasn't the sense to stop, because I want to let you know:

• The wonderful Girlhero is alive again.
• The novel Three Men in a Boat is dry, amusing and in the public domain, so you can read the entire book at work.
• Ryan Dancy has written about why branding is important to game companies and why designers don't like what their customers do.
• WordSpy wants to introduce you to a new word each day -- new in the sense that it's warm from the oven, hardly read by eyes before yours.

A jury for electoral reform     Wednesday, September 25, 2002
The B.C. Liberals are considering having a random assortment of British Columbians consider possible electoral reforms, such as proportional representation. This assembly's recommendations would be put to referendum at the general election in May 2005.

New Israel     Thursday, September 12, 2002
Nick Denton looks at dream Israels, Jewish homelands that never were, in less spiteful regions than the deserts of the Middle East. He includes one place new to me, Michael (Kavalier and Klay) Chabon's Yisroel in Alaska, from a novel yet to be released. For me, the classic piece on moving Israel remains Ken Layne’s column about the Baja California Sur.

Nine one one     Thursday, September 12, 2002
The winning New York lottery numbers on September 11th, 2002, were 9-1-1. Every once in a while, the supernatural powers at play behind the world like to tweak the skeptics.

Hallowed     Wednesday, September 11, 2002
It's still Flight 93 that hits me the hardest.

Warsinger     Friday, September 6, 2002
Friends and rivals of an online gamer gather in-game to remember him. He died at 32. A lovely nighttime screenshot from the Dark Age of Camelot. Found on Slashdot.

Don't Spend All My Love     Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Matthew Baldwin rids the world of a song you have never heard of.
     Matthew's site, Defective Yeti, is where he writes whatever the hell he feels like writing. It's what all personal sites should be, and what Mooselessness would be if I had drive, energy, and a clone. Well, more than one clone, because the first one would probably get stuck at the office a lot. Make it five clones, like in Paranoia. And yes, yes, I know a clone would be a completely distinct person, no more subject to my will than a twin. But if I had a twin, I'd make him work on my web site too, the shirking bum.

Puerto Rico, the board game     Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Defective Yeti also led me to this new board game, the first that's caught my eye in some time.
     Matthew used to run the Aces Up game site, which guided me to many game treasures, including Lost Cities, but as far as I can tell he's erased that site from the web with a Stalinist attention to detail. Oh wait, here's a copy. So maybe more like some less effective tyrant, say Chiang Kai-shek or Skeletor.
        Update: Oh, right on! After seeing my interest in the game, Matthew added a full write-up of his impressions of Puerto Rico, complete with gameplay summary. Thanks! (He also points out that the Aces Up reviews live on in hiding at Defective Yeti.)

0wnz0red, by Cory Doctorow     Wednesday, August 28, 2002
The tireless Cory Doctorow sparkles out a new sf story while waiting for his novels and short story collections to hit the streets. "0wnz0red" clearly wants to be a novel, but Cory knows you're tired of waiting for Doctorow fiction, so he finishes this story off with no more mercy than you'd give a baby seal. (Hey, we're all Canadians here.) Think of it as a pitch.

Canada and the drug lords     Wednesday, August 28, 2002
You may have heard the argument that Canadians parasitize U.S. pharmaceutical research by paying lower prices for drugs, ignoring the costs sunk into R&D. David Olive of the Toronto Star explains why this claim is simple quackery.

Recipe for the Shamrock Shake     Friday, August 2, 2002
My wife reminded me of our tilting-at-windmills quest to find the discontinued Shamrock Shake in Vancouver, a journey I mentioned 18 months ago on Mooselessness but which surely remains as vivid in your mind as in mine. This time, while craving the shake, it occurred to me that a recipe for the shake must reside on the web somewhere. And so it does. There are many recipes, in fact, although the first and simplest is my favourite. The Internet has made it a strange world, you know, where the biggest obstacle to finding information is thinking to look for it. Shannon also made me think of Zhang He's magnificent treasure ships, so I'll link to them too, in case anyone's looking. He never had Shamrock Shakes either.

Double Eagle     Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Stolen, slipped to Egypt, vanished, returned and finally kept in the World Trade Center for safety, the last known Double Eagle sells for $7.6 million dollars plus its face value: twenty smackers.

Clumsy Lad     Friday, July 26, 2002
I recently read Alan Moore’s Top Ten, a comic book about a city where every citizen and many of the cats wear costumes and have superpowers. The unhappy oaf in this story would fit right in, because no one could have social luck this bad without a long soak in gamma rays. Joey deVilla tells the tale.

Here there be dragons     Thursday, July 25, 2002
A mischief-maker has been adding challenges to the London Tube maps. No dragons yet, but lots of other encounters to enliven the commute. Found on Null Device.

It wasn't so great     Friday, July 19, 2002
Matthew Baldwin has gathered a list of Amazon one-star reviews for ten classic novels, such as the Great Gatsby and Beloved. Can you identify this one? "The fall of Communism has erased nearly every trace of relevance this book may once have had." That's right. Charlotte's Web.

Tim Mitchell is...     Friday, June 28, 2002
Kim at Fresh Hell introduces an irresistible Google vanity game. Tim Mitchell is...

• Tim Mitchell is convinced that the growth could have been even better if the company had been able to recruit more resellers.
• The cathartic crooning of Tim Mitchell is honest and heartfelt as he allows himself to bleed into his songs like nobody was looking.
• Tim Mitchell is the official school chaplain at Sunshine Beach High.
• Tim Mitchell is the premier T-shirt painter of Panama City Beach, Florida.
• Tim Mitchell is supported by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council in conjunction with the UK Meteorological Office, but the views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors.
• Tim Mitchell is left with an astonished look on his face as he looks back to the camera.

Salt of the earth     Thursday, June 27, 2002
Nick Denton runs the numbers from a Wall Street Journal article. He shows how 25,000 wealthy American farmers are getting $3.4 billion dollars of government money so they can put 2 million Mali farmers out of work. Canada has just stepped up to the plate with its own farming subsidies. To my surprise, I miss free trade.

Chris Woods     Sunday, June 23, 2002
The Diane Farris Gallery has all of Chris Woods' paintings online. You've probably seen his McDonalds Nation painting from Adbusters (link has sound, Woods' commentary). If you prefer one without sound, try the Church of Krispy Kreme.

The great and powerful Oz     Sunday, June 23, 2002
It's embarassing to see people who haven't been raised by the media try to manipulate it. An al Qaeda spokesman insists that bin Laden and his top lieutenant are alive. Americans should therefore "fasten the seatbelts" to prepare for the coming terror. For god's sake, man, do you not get this society at all? We feed our children cereal shaped like television characters. We might not know whether Afganistan is east or west of the equator, but we do know about precious life-giving television. If you had bin Laden behind the curtain there, he'd be the one on CNN pitching the coming blockbuster. ("In a world where righteousness stands alone against evil....")
     This same spokesman insists that 98 percent of al Qaeda leadership is safe. In March 2002, the Washington Post noted that the war in Afganistan has netted 12 al Qaeda leaders. The Pentagon was looking for 15 others, so this was a disappointing figure. Even so, if those dead and captured 12 represent only 2% of the leadership, as the spokesman claims, then al Qaeda has 600 leaders. The U.S. Congress only has 435 members. The terrorists need to take a close look at their org chart. Too much management will ruin you every time.
     There are two depressing aspects to this story. One, CNN is treating it straight, taking the scary threats at face value. Two, media amateurs can still kill people.
     After all this ranting, I see that the chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence says that U.S. intelligence thinks bin Laden's alive too. I find it difficult to believe after this long silence, but I don't have microphones in crazy people's teeth, so the spies may be one up on me.

Shannon remembers Timothy Findley     Friday, June 21, 2002
Canadian author Timothy Findley died in his sleep yesterday. He was 71. Shannon, my wife, has written a lovely remembrance of Findley, who has long been her favourite author. I found the man himself as fascinating as his writing, and my favourite Findley book is probably Inside Memory, his nonfiction memoir of his days in the theatre. I read it in Timmins, leading classes in the winter where no one showed up but me.

Heartache burns Colorado     Sunday, June 16, 2002
God, the Colorado fire that forced thousands to evacuate was accidentally started by a Forest Service worker burning a letter from her estranged husband. That's a short story right there. She could theoretically spend ten years in jail, but I hope she doesn't. My heart always goes out to people who make foolish mistakes. (Update: prosectors say the story sounds like fiction in more ways than one.)

Ryan Dancy Tells You What to Think     Friday, June 14, 2002
The news that has all the half-orcs in a flutter is that Wizards of the Coast, the owners of Dungeons and Dragons, are offering $120,000 for a new D&D campaign setting. The first stage of the contest requires only a summary page.
        Ryan Dancy, who used to be a vice-president at Wizards, gives his tips on the contest above. What I like about Dancy's columns is his no-nonsense business angle. In an earlier column he points out that while long-time players are tired of dungeon crawls, putting the actual words "Dungeon Crawl" on a module increased its sales by 30 percent.

Taking the bridge to the Mainland? $800 please.     Thursday, June 6, 2002
The big time, babies! Columnist Les Leyne extensively quotes a letter I wrote for the B.C. government about the impossible dream of a bridge from Vancouver Island to the mainland. I loved that letter. I condensed a 30 page report into a two-page letter and every line was a little bomb. Leyne gets the best line of the piece though, after seeing the $12 billion price tag for the bridge: "B.C. will be launching its own space program before any government buys into a project with numbers in that range." But then, they probably wouldn't let me put that in a letter.
        The government laid me off on Monday, so having these fixed-link facts go public is a lovely going away present, even if its entirely anonymous. (For now, I'm not actually going away. I'm fired, but I still work here. Don't dwell on it.)

Dessert     Sunday, May 26, 2002
After six years, Jan Wong is ending her Lunch With column, in part because most people hide under the couch when she phones now. In this column, she remembers a few favourite lunch victims.

An Association Named Sue     Saturday, May 25, 2002
In response to the RIAA's latest music-sharing suit, a Slashdotter called Yo Grark posts lyrics to a song about the recording thugs, based on Johnny Cash's song "Boy Named Sue." Four and a half hours later, another Slashdotter, Joshua Csehak, replies with his MP3 version of the parody! Who says corporate ogres stifle creativity?

The Amazing Story of Kudzu     Friday, May 24, 2002
I used to see kudzu mentioned in the U.S. media all the time and I never quite understood why it was such a pest. I finally got curious enough to look it up. Apparently, in the American South it grows a foot a day. Also, the vine mimeographs underground zines that are rude to municipal officials. Here on Vancouver Island, kudzu appears to confined to smaller venues.

Crazy Browser     Wednesday, May 22, 2002
I haven't been this happy about a piece of software in ages. Crazy Browser is an IE-derived browser for Windows. It has so many wonderful UI tweaks that I stopped counting: tabbed windows that open in the background; pop-up filter; groups of favorites to open multiple windows at once (my morning comics); Google searches from the address bar; quick-save as HTML. It's freeware with no preservatives or lurking villainous add-ons. It took me ten minutes to get all the settings how I like them, but I'm fussy.

Accordion Guy, Episode 9: "Bordering on Disaster"     Wednesday, May 15, 2002
The American government demands you play your accordion for them. What song do you play? When they make a movie of Joey's life, this scene is going in. Found on Boing Boing.

Unsurprising Headlines     Tuesday, May 14, 2002
It's been a while since I visited the Brunching Shuttlecocks, fool that I am, so here's their compilation of the twelve least surprising AP headlines. Free sample: "Teens May Be Lured by Sweet Booze." Ahh, sweet sweet liquour.

Bomb-squad bees     Monday, May 13, 2002
The U.S. government is training bees to hunt explosives. "For many years, biologists have been training bees to prefer different scents, using sugar as a reward. After one bee learns the new cue, it somehow transfers that knowledge to others. Within hours, an entire hive, and sometimes adjacent hives, switch to searching for the new scent.
     "Scientists have found that it takes less than two hours to use sugar-water rewards to condition a hive of honeybees to eschew flowers and instead hunt ... TNT and other explosives." From Boing Boing.

The 80% Company     Thursday, May 9, 2002
Nick Denton mulls over the possibility of a part-time company. He writes: "At Moreover Technologies, we employed a marketing writer called Eric who did not really want the job. He was, and is, a novelist, but reluctantly supplements his income with part-time commercial work. Open about his lack of commitment, Eric would achieve more in three days than others in a week, and with much less fuss."
     For a while now, I've been a 60% employee at the provincial government, although they've recently suggested that my senior union brothers might value me more as a 0% employee. Denton's column is bang-on true and I hope he found the courage to proceed with his modest proposal. For others who are considering part time work though, think carefully. Like heroin or freedom or the west coast of Canada, it can't just be sampled. You will never willingly go back.

We try harder     Friday, May 3, 2002
Whoo! I'm the 6,145,764th most visited site on the web! That's right, babies. Only 6,145,763 sites get more traffic than me, according to Alexa. And we here at Mooselessness are not stopping there. That's right, site 6,145,763 -- I'm coming for you!
        This is an immensely cool feature, but they really should give you the option to search by traffic rank. Who are my traffic neighbours? Which site needs an unfortunate accident in order to make way for me? Hey, there's a movie plot. A deranged weblogger decides to kill his way to popularity, by arranging the blackly humourous demises of the six million, one-hundred and forty-five thousand people who stand in his way.
    And to all you wise guys who are going to suggest updating the site as a way to attract more traffic, well, that's just crazy talk.

Happyface Spiders     Friday, April 12, 2002
Pranksters often leave little clues in their schemes to let you know the whole thing is a whimsical scam. So what conclusion can we draw about this world and its creator when we learn that happyface spiders really exist? From Honeyguide.

Lebanon - Land for Peace     Thursday, April 11, 2002
Want to see what the Saudi peace plan would look like? Look at Lebanon. A column from the Washington Post.
     Footnote. When I was eighteen, my dorm room had a crinkled gallery of clippings taped to the wall. Most were passages from Toronto Star stories or quotes I typed out from my frosh readings. They were either ideas I admired or right-wing bites that I put up for their obvious and outrageous wrong-headedness.
     The Gulf War was starting, and I knew little about it, but the Americans were for the war, so a smart progressive like myself was against it. One of the outrageously wrong quotes on the war was from columnist Charles Krauthammer. I have no memory of the quote, but I remember the name, because it was so Action Boy 1941! "Krauthammer versus the Nazi Moon Robots!"
     Well, I'm thirty now and I'm linking to Krauthammer because I agree with him. Take that, eighteen-year old self! A humanities student who moves from uncritical liberalism to grouchy conservatism as he grows older. I am surely the first person in the world ever to experience this. Holy cow, I just realized that I still ride the same bike.
     Well, way to derail this post.

They Have Blogs     Thursday, April 11, 2002
If you read weblogs all the time, you'll already have seen this one. If you don't read weblogs, then it won't make any sense. This link therefore is for my old college friend Goldilocks, who reads just enough weblogs to be amused. Also, here's a dancing baby.

Can't Miss     Thursday, April 11, 2002
I don't normally post about wacky Mooselessness search engine referrals, but this one I couldn't resist: "buffy the vampire slayer naked pitch." Now, pretty much every celebrity or fictional character gets paired with "naked" at some point ("toad of toad hall +naked"), but it's the "pitch" part that makes this one precious to me. I see this bright Burbank office, miniature bottles of water on the table, and the fervent development exec: "It's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer... but naked!" The show writes itself!
    Update: Christ. Not ten minutes after I wrote this post, someone hit Mooselessness looking for nude pictures of Miss Piggy. I was joking, you Internet weirdos!

Informed American Optimism     Thursday, April 11, 2002
The best Ken Layne piece in recent memory and that's saying something. I was going to quote the funny bit about France and stalled cars, but it's not about France, it's about America. Convincing love notes to that country are where Layne shines.

Previously on Mooselessness     Thursday, April 11, 2002
In old movies, getting married meant that the bachelor would have to tolerate having this sweet young thing telling him to pick up his socks and straighten the basement. In the movie of my life, my wife's been telling me to archive Mooselessness. So you can click the link overhead to read about book clubs, the exercise pill, and driving around in the moon. Or you can visit the full archives for years and years of mostly broken links.