kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

View subatomic particle tracks from the comfort of your own home. Link found on Denormalize.

Some Want Eggnog; Others, Lye-Cured Cod

This article (submitted by my kind wife) has so many quotes about Lutefisk that I can't even pick one for the blurb.

Economist.com | LOST HORIZONS IN RUSSIA

"Soon after his re-election in 1995, Mr Ilyumzhinov told a Russian journalist, Igor Rotar of Izvestia: 'Irrespective of what I tell people, I give them instructions on a subconscious level, a code. I do the same thing when I communicate with Russian citizens from other regions. I am creating around the republic a kind of extra-sensory field, and it helps us a lot in our projects.'"

Willamette Week Online | Cover Story | RUBBISH!

"Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs."

New Yorker: Changing Role of Special Forces

This is a fascinating article about the debate over the role of special forces in the age of asymmetrical warfare.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Salon.com News | Bush receives smallpox vaccination

"President Bush received a smallpox vaccination Saturday, fulfilling a promise he made when he ordered inoculations for about a half-million U.S. troops."

New Picture of Dinosaurs Is Emerging

"It's more than possible that Tyrannosaurus rex, whose rep as a top-of-the-food chain vicious predator has made him an icon in the kingdom of Dinosauria, had feathers—at least as a chick. "

Polyhedra and Art

"Through history, polyhedra have been closely associated with the world of art. The peak of this relationship was certainly in the Renaissance. For some Renaissance artists, polyhedra simply provided challenging models to demonstrate their mastery of perspective. For others, polyhedra were symbolic of deep religious or philosophical truths. For example, Plato's association in the Timaeus between the Platonic solids and the elements of fire, earth, air, and water (and the universe) was of great import in the Renaissance."

Chronosynclastic Infundibulum

In an effort to chase off the effects of tedium, I've been wallpapering my cube with discarded CD-ROMs. This guy, however, has me beat ten ways from Sunday.

Moby Tour Diary

"for the first time in my life i have a king sized bed.
not to be hyperbolic, but it is terriffic. if you're in any way able to have a king sized bed, you should. i woke up sideways this morning.
sideways on the bed. it's like a big square.
with flannel sheets. and i'm not even going to joke about trying to preserve street cred by interjecting something like 'flannel sheets with pictures of crack pipes on them.' cos they don't have pictures of crack pipes on them. they have pictures of me. i sleep in sheets that are covered in pictures of me. my narcissism knows no bounds. actually they are white. no pictures. i don't even know if they make flannel sheets with pictures on them."

John Switched to Canada

BBC NEWS | Americas | Mass arrests of Muslims in LA

"US immigration officials in Southern California have detained hundreds of Iranians and other Muslim men who turned up to register under residence laws brought in as part of the anti-terror drive."

Neat Flash

News

"When the first fossils of Hallucigenia were discovered a century ago in the famous Burgess Shale deposits of Canada, its appearance astonished scientists who could find no modern equivalent in the animal kingdom."

The Gamers

At last, an enterprising independent film-maker has created an accurate, thoughtful portrait of the gaming sub-culture that... oh, wait, scratch that.

daily news, uk weather, business news - online newspaper - The Telegraph - Court refuses trial by combat

"Leon Humphreys remained adamant yesterday that his right to fight a champion nominated by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) was still valid under European human rights legislation. He said it would have been a "reasonable" way to settle the matter."

Link courtesy of Philos.

LEG*DEATH: A Museum of Horrors

For your Monday morning.

Amazon.com Listmania Results: A Game Master's Guide to the Weird

Amazon.com Listmania Results: GURPS Time Travel Resource

Amazon.com Listmania Results: Kenneth Hite's Top Ten Books of Weirdness

Don Quixote voted best book ever - theage.com.au

Lycos News | Techno Artist Moby Attacked in Boston

"According to police and witnesses, Moby, whose real name is Richard M. Melville, was approached by the men about 1 a.m. Thursday outside the Paradise Rock Club. One of the men punched Moby in the back of the head and on the right side of his face, breaking the singer's glasses and cutting and bruising his face."

$9 million theft from Microsoft paid for lavish life, prosecutors say

"Before I made the decision to make computer stuff my profession, I was sure that I will become a Rock Star and/or motorcycle mechanic. Maybe I'll do this later."

Gamegrene.com / Game Material / Conquer the Galaxy from Home

"It started out simply enough. One of our gaming crew had a roommate, Bob, who was thinking of getting involved in role-playing games. He had all the hallmarks of a potential RPG-er: he loved Lord of the Rings and was a fan of William Gibson, but most of all, he loved Star Wars. We were all interested in starting up a new game, so we sat down with Bob to find out just what kind of game he might be interested in."

An article I wrote for Gamegrene.com has just been published. Woot! I'm famous!

Added links in the left-hand frame today to tony.dowler.com at the Blog Twinning Project and BlogTree.

blogs overview

A subway map of NYC bloggers.

For the People, By the People...

"The objective of the research was to create a large (~1,000,000 data points), statistically significant, low error data set of the 802.11b Access Points in NYC. More specifically, the coordinates (GPS long/lat), Signal to Noise Ratio, and Network Name (SSID) of as many 802.11b wireless access points as identifiable from the street level were recorded. To achieve this goal it was necessary to drive every street in the borough of Manhattan (approx. 98%) with the exception of areas that were closed to vehicle traffic due to police or construction (WTC and Wall Street)."

Shop for Dowler at Froogle

An Intense Attack by Justice Thomas on Cross-Burning

"A burning cross is indeed highly symbolic, Justice Thomas said, but only of something that deserves no constitutional protection: the 'reign of terror' visited on black communities by the Ku Klux Klan for nearly 100 years before Virginia passed the law, which the Virginia Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a year ago. A burning cross is 'unlike any symbol in our society,' Justice Thomas said. 'There's no other purpose to the cross, no communication, no particular message,' he continued. 'It was intended to cause fear and to terrorize a population.'"

The most gorgeous guitars you've ever seen

The Excitement Machine: JCPenney Catalog Fall/Winter 1980

Stereolab member dies in road accident - NME.COM

"Mary, vocalist and guitar player with Stereolab since 1992, died in a cycling accident in London on December 9, 2002. The suddenness of her death has shocked the band. Mary was a special person. Our thoughts are with her family and friends who will miss her greatly."

Salon.com People | The Salon Interview: Bill Maher

"Nope. I'm not a big champion of voting. I think too many people vote. I'm starting to think what we need to shake up the system is to have really low turnout. I don't think it's low enough. "

A dowler.com Exclusive!

A while back I blogged a story about TextArc, an information design technology for veiwing a text and its concordance concurrently. Brad Paley of textarc.org dropped me a line thanking me for linking him, and letting me know about their latest project, the TextArc Alice in Wonderland Poster available from TextArc.com (more technical info here. He also said that anyone who mentions "dowler.com" as their referrer can get $10.00 off the cost of the poster. I wonder what Edward Tufte would think?

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Off to see the Izzard

"In the end, we ended up making him a bisexual transvestite, and I thought, OK, because he was supposed to be something of an action transvestite who had been in the military and then kicked out when they found him wearing his wife's clothing."

The Austin Chronicle Screens: In Which We Remove Foot From Mouth, Mind From Gutter

You do read Sarah Hepola, don't you?

The Wave

"In the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk was all that is man. He’d tear his shirt off and fight a lizard monster from a space couch covered in green alien sluts. In Turkish Star Trek, reverse all of that. The movie starts with Kaptan Kirk practically prancing over to his chair to sit down cross-legged and daintily lisp out orders."

TPM Online Article Access

"Can someone suffer posthumous harm? On the one hand, common sense declares the dead may be harmed in a variety of ways. Aristotle observes..."

.:: project dole ::.

"Our first quest was to find enough cartons to construct the furniture we designed, so we took the car and visited all grocery stores in Gothenburg in hope of finding Dole banana cartons."

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Jupiter moon 'full of holes'

"The spaces between chunks of rock and ice appear to take up more of the moon's total volume than the solid pieces."

A little fame for the boys at 570bars.com

The Seattle Times: For sake of research, the Fizz bellies up with bar-hopping duo

"In case you're wondering, Amancio and Vanhee aren't boisterous, loud-mouth partying frat boys. Quite the opposite. Amancio's a little more reserved than the wise-cracking Vanhee, and when they're Questing, they're more likely to share a quiet drink at a bar than have a rowdy time with friends."

Sci Fi Wire -- The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel

"Tomorrow, described as 'retro sci-fi,' takes place at the turn of the 20th century and follows a reporter (Paltrow) and pilot (Law) who team up on an adventure, the trade paper reported."

Underground History - Disused Stations on London's Underground

"One of the things I find most interesting is the changing history of the railway, of which there is still much hidden evidence. For example, look through the window as you travel between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn on the Central Line and you'll see a station - where no passengers have alighted since 1932. This used to be British Museum station. Or perhaps you may notice the the tunnel wall change from cast iron tubing to bricks as you travel on the Piccadilly Line between Green Park and Hyde Park Corner. This also used to be a station. Down Street, closed in the same year as British Museum. These stations are often referred to as ghost stations. "

404 Not Found?

Unexplained Acoustics

"There are other "undocumented" acoustical properties of the ruins. When I was there several years ago the guide showed me a stack of what looked like stone artillery shells. He said that to this day no one has been able to determine what they were for. Then with a wink he picked up two sticks and proceeded to play a tune on the "shells". Each one was precisely tuned. Perhaps the 'ancients' knew more about acoustics than we give them credit for."

This reminds me of an episode of Fraggle Rock, the one where Moki wants to become a minstrel, but fails the test.

NEWS.com.au | UFOs in 15th century paintings (December 04, 2002)

"Perhaps the most striking example is The Madonna and St John, attributed to Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) and kept at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. In it a man and a dog are clearly gazing up at a UFO-type object behind the Virgin Mary's shoulder. No less baffling is a painting by Masolino da Panicale (1383-1447), The Miracle of the Snow, painted in 1429 and kept at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. 'The painting shows a real event in Rome in the second half of the fourth century AD,' Volterri said. 'But what are these strange, dark, elongated clouds in the shape of UFOs?' "
And here are some of the pictures!

Independent News

"It is Britain's most celebrated UFO encounter: the sighting in 1980 of 'alien' craft in a Suffolk forest. Now, it has been revealed that the Government tried to hush up the affair. So what, asks Mark Lucas, really happened in the strange case of the Rendlesham Incident?"

Internet Week > E-Commerce > Amazon.com Admits Concocting Some Recommendations > December 5, 2002

"On Wednesday Amazon.com made the shocking admission that it doctors some of its product recommendations, which are supposedly compiled by objective software that compares each customer's purchasing history with the histories of others who've made similar purchases.

Specifically, Amazon.com salts its recommendations to steer customers to buy items at the company's new apparel stores, which launched in October. The company couldn't make recommendations at its apparel store because it hadn't been in business long enough to compile a database of customer preferences, so it simply made up recommendations, giving the suggestions a humorous edge so customers would know they weren't real. "

Idol Conversation

Game studies. Issue 1, 2001.

"Welcome to the first issue of the first academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to computer game studies. This is a noteworthy occasion, and perhaps the most remarkable aspect is that such a journal has not been started before. As we know, there have been computer games for almost as long as there have been computers: SpaceWar, arguably the first modern game, turns forty this year, and commercially the genre has existed for three decades. So why not something like this before?"

Earth As Art - Yellowknife Wetlands

Ah... home sweet home.

Slashdot | William Shatner Replies

"Hey Bill,
Are we cool, or what? I mean, I always thought you didn't like me, but I had a good time with you at Weakest Link watching the World Series.
So are we cool, or was that just pre-game strategy?
Wil"

The Planetary Society: SETI@home Update, 12/4/2002

"Once these obvious "false alarms" are eliminated, however, SETI@home scientists are still left with several billion signals. Each must therefore be assigned a score, representing the likelihood that it is, in fact, an alien transmission. The top 100 scorers will have their day at Arecibo, where they will earn a repeat visit to their location by the giant radio telescope."

I am the master evil genius

dog heaven

hey look, a big rock

I hate technology

the buddhist game

the atheist game

formandcontent: worldview desktop v0.9

Another link gleaned from Mr. feng.

The inestimable feng was kind enough to make a teaser poster for season 2 of my Pulp Heroes RPG. Click the pic for a full-size image.

Article: Who Killed Farscape?, by Clare Sainsbury

"The show's producer, Sue Milliken, delicately referred in one interview to 'a change of direction at the network.' Many people had already noted that, since its purchase by tottering media giant Vivendi, SCI FI's programming had dramatically swerved away from science fiction per se towards 'paranormal' shows like Crossing Over With John Edward (in which an alleged medium claims to speak to the dead loved ones of audience members)."

Let me just add that 'Crossing Over' is the worst kind of drivel. Thanks to Philos for the link.

Pravda.RU Atlantis Under Antarctica?

"Twenty years later, the director of the Istanbul National Museum, Khalil Edkhem, was sorting out a library of the Byzantine emperors in an old palace. He found an ancient map made on gazelle skin. On the map, there were the shores of western and southern Africa, as well as the northern shores of Antarctica. Khalil could not believe hiseyes: the shores of the Queen Mod Land, to the south of the 70th parallel, was free of ice. An ancient cartographer marked a mountain chain there. The name of the cartographer was known: an admiral of the Ottoman Empire fleet, Piri Reis, who lived in the first half of 16th century. "

Warning: Pravda!

Bjorn3d.com

"Showing your four year old child how to rocket jump just doesn't go over well with the spouse"

true, true.

CRN : Breaking News : IDC: Windows 2000 Offers Better Total Cost Of Ownership Than Linux : 4:55 PM EST Mon., Dec. 02, 2002

"Microsoft's Windows 2000 offers a better total cost of ownership (TCO) than Linux for most traditional server workloads over a five-year time span, according to an IDC study."

A highly virulent study, with some very passionate comments...

Battleships - General Quarters

A really nice looking flash version of the classic game.

The sun sets on Midnight Oil - theage.com.au

"At last there was an Australian band with something on its mind. Well, with a mind at all, for that matter. It was almost too much to believe that rock music could be about anything but itself. You know: life on the road and the inconvenience of VD. Dicks and chicks. Faux Americana.
Finally someone was playing stuff that was musically idiosyncratic, fresh and strong. And authentic. Particular. Peculiar. True to a time and a place and pretty damn defiant about it. They kissed no bum and tugged no forelock."

Sound Transit unearths a cash can

"Sound Transit, the regional transportation agency whose funding is constantly threatened by citizen initiatives and the fickle will of federal bureaucrats, may be as much as $10,000 richer with the discovery of a trash can full of coins and bills."

TextArc.org Home

"A TextArc is a visual represention of a text—the entire text (twice!) on a single page. Some funny combination of an index, concordance, and summary, it uses the viewer's eye to help uncover meaning."