Month: April 2003
“Barcelona Plates” by Alexei Sayle from Barcelona
;Barnaby’s girlfriend wanted to tape a play off the radio—which was a two-hour monologue concerning the travails of a girl who was a sexually abused sickle cell anaemia sufferer—to discuss with her class at a later date. So she’d dragged out their old Sony portable stereo, plugged it in, tuned the radio to Radio 4,…
This is how we were warned it would be.
Let’s see. You elect a Republican businessman because you feel like he’d be good to have around when the economy is suffering. Then, when he acts like a Republican businessman, you complain. Reminder: If you want people to keep their jobs even when the city can’t afford it, then you should be voting for a…
Skeptical About the Technical Feasibility of TIA
The federal government’s Total Information Awareness project has been talked about for months by cross-discipline geniuses with appropriate amounts of fear, skepticism and disgust. It is a project with loose goals, an infinite capacity for abuse, and little public oversight, all directed by a five-time federal felon. It’s designed to collect random bits of information,…
By the way, Uday’s underwear, check it out
The oddest thing just now. I’m half-watching, half-listening to the France 2 18h hour-long news broadcast. They’re following American soldiers as they explore some of the buildings in Baghdad they now control. In the basement of Baghdad’s city hall, there are a large number of vintage automobiles, including a Cadillac and a Rolls Royce. A…
“PowerPoint: Just Don’t Unimpress Us” by Andrew Anker from
;The job of your PowerPoint slides is to not unimpress us. I’ll give it to you in engineer-speak: if there is a chart where the X-axis is time spent on your PowerPoint and the Y-axis is amount we will be impressed by your PowerPoint, then the curve asymptotes at adequate. You can never impress us…
“Planned Hopelessness” by Dru Blood from
;I’m hearing my client—a person who I care for and respect a great deal—tell me that “my side” has no hope of winning, and although he feels that I have the moral upper hand, he would much rather be fighting on the “winning team.” My response to this, internally, is a deepened sense of respect…
A Few Notes on New York City’s MetroCard Pricing
A curious arrangement of facts came to my attention recently. The Straphanger’s Campaign reports that “only 2% of frequent riders earning $15,000-$25,000 a year buy 30-day, $63 unlimited-ride MetroCards. That’s compared to 9% of frequent riders earning $75,000-$100,000.” Why not buy the unlimited cards? They’re clearly a better value for riders of the Metropolitan Transit…
“The How-To Section” by Janet Benton from B
;Jeff and I had a mutual parting of the ways. Nothing dramatic or exciting. We decided we were better friends than lovers. Our relationship was based more on the right side of the brain than anywhere. Foreplay consisted of reading the paper and then discussing one of the articles, bringing it to a rather heated…