Stolen Boing Boing links     Friday, August 3, 2001
I've been meaning to post something about Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow for a month and a half, and now I'm going on vacation to Ontario for two weeks, still without having done that post. In fact, there's less reason to write anything now, because the gist of it was that he'd accomplished so many cool things, which depressed me in the way that the success of other people always does, when you're the same age as you. Then Cory turned thirty, becoming older than me and undermining my point. If I keep proscratinating until December, I could bring the point back in its glory, but then I'd be thirty and will probably be piloting my flying car on Mars.
    In the meantime, here are some stolen Boing Boing links: a great introduction to the Sklyarov arrest in the States and a collection of wise and amusing e-mail fragments from the O'Reilly editor-in-chief who passed away. And here's a McSweeney's article about rhetorical pop song questions that wasn't on Boing Boing, but which they might have linked had they seen it. And liked it.
     See you after August 14.

Note to Sixth-Grade Self     Wednesday, July 25, 2001
"At three-thirty stand outside with the others and take the number seven bus uptown. Get off when they all get off. Be sure to do this. Do not stare out the window and lose yourself. You will end up riding out to the edge of town past the rusted gas-storage tanks and you will never find the right bus home."
        Whoosh, memory! I ended up in North York one time, near the very end of the York Mills 95B line. I was so unhappy. It was the day Joanne Huber returned from one of her long illnesses, her trips to the underworld. Possibly Grade 6 too, now that I think about it. Note to my own grade six self: "You can always get home, and no one cares if you're late. Some kids even miss school for days and weeks. They survive." (Thanks to metascene, who appears to be in love.)

Wonder Company Saves the World     Wednesday, July 25, 2001
Oh for crying out loud. Cringely appears to have eaten a press release. He recommends ISP level filtering for e-mail, which is fine, but then goes on to recommend a specific product which he thinks is unique because it has a heuristic approach, not just a signature-based one. (In other words, if an attachment containing the instruction to erase your drive, it's probably a virus, even if it's not a known one.)
     But what amazes me is that he repeats this claim: "MessageLabs even has an intelligent scanner that can look at an image and recognize the difference between baby pictures and Debbie doing Dallas." My scientific rebuttal: bullshit. No goddamn way.
     I do like his conclusion, though: "So it is likely to be a long fall and winter for the Internet. My advice is to get a dog." I think Cringely is going insane.

The Dough     Tuesday, July 24, 2001
A Flash movie about a Canadian trying to get his bank to accept a cheque from an American movie studio. Feel free to guess at the identity of the bank as you watch. Won't be hard. What's the most evil and incompetent bank we have? Hmm, maybe that is a tough call.

Medical publishers to give free access to poor countries     Thursday, July 19, 2001
Fantastic. Six major medical publishers are going to offer free online access to their journals to one hundred of the world's poorest countries. A subscription to a single paper journal can now cost CDN$4500, which caused university libraries to shrivel in the developing world. One thousand journals are affected by the announcement, including the British Medical Journal. Other publishers are expected to follow suit. I am so pleased.

BC's biggest commodity     Sunday, July 8, 2001
Bigger than logging, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture -- it's marijuana. $6 billion dollars a year. The premier's looking for money; find it here. (Oh, I was going to post this to metafilter, my first story ever, but those clever kids are ahead of me as always. As one of them points out, the $6B industry would be worth much less if marijuana could be sold in roadside stands with the carrots and strawberries.)

Free baby margazine!     Friday, July 6, 2001
Google's technique of separating query terms with ellipses makes for some strange sentences. Someone searched for "free baby margazine" and got this Google summary of my site: "Gathering changed from a free-love geek enclave to... a sweeter than sugar. Here, baby." Smooooth. I would also like to point out that I'm the only site on the web to use the word "margazine." The searcher meant magazine, while I meant margarine. Unfortunately, a truly entertaining journal made out of edible oil still eludes science.

Guided missile trivia     Thursday, July 5, 2001
Fascinating, surprising and darkly funny. Number 41: "Canada found out about US plans to base this missile on Canadian territory only when the Pentagon publically released a map showing its planned base locations." From Memepool.

Espresso is the answer     Thursday, July 5, 2001
If you're are going to be an afficiando about anything, you must show no mercy. My favourite part is after he recommends the US$200 grinder, he gives a recipe for espresso that includes "1/2 part monsooned cherry aa robusta." A Slashdot post, so when they archive, the link dies and you're on your own.

An Open Letter to Superintendent Grimmel     Wednesday, July 4, 2001
"I have received your letter asking why my daughter Greta is not attending your school system. I want to try and answer that." I'm not sure why this was selected as Cruel Site of the Day. I thought it was eloquent.

Canada's Burning!     Wednesday, June 20, 2001
American media's fearmongering about Canada's universal health coverage. Something I didn't know: "Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in l998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of [its] citizens."

New Disney Fellowship rules     Tuesday, June 19, 2001
Wow. By the current rules of the Disney Fellowship, I couldn't even apply! (I was once a finalist.) You need to be already eligible to work in the States and they can't sponsor you. Then again, I'm not sure I'd *want* to apply now, because this FAQ also notes that Disney would own anything you wrote while there! Two screenplays and a year of your life for U.S. $34,000. Ouch.

Have my numbers ever won?     Sunday, June 17, 2001
A free service that checks to see if your favourite Canadian lottery numbers have ever come up. For an extra dollar, a pack of statisticians will come to your home and explain why this information is not significant. It costs $300 to get them to go away. The database goes back at least twenty years.

Everchanging Book of Names     Tuesday, June 12, 2001
A Windows program which generates fantasy names based on various libraries of name-elements. The book comes with Arthurian, Tolkein, Finnish, Viking and similar libraries. The design is elegant and makes it easy to pick names from the randomly generated ones to save or copy. My friends Svol, Borgny, Hennbild and Tholgerd would approve. (And they're all twentieth level fighters, so if you find this geeky, keep quiet or they'll get Middle English on your ass.)

Textism     Friday, June 8, 2001
Quiet and facinating, full of interesting corners, like a museum you have to yourself. If the links don't appeal to you, try the self-rated tidbits of writing.
     The address of his publishing concern is 1030 Denman Street, Vancouver, Salish Territory.

Degrassi: TNG     Friday, June 8, 2001
Sweet zombie broomhead, there's going to be a new Degrassi series. And one of the characters is Spike's grown-up daughter, now twelve years old. Kevin Smith, director of Clerks, will have a cameo on the premiere.
    I think whoever has my brain in a vat is adding fizzy water just for fun. (Thanks to Fresh Hell for the alert.)

Fuller projection map     Wednesday, June 6, 2001
Buckminster Fuller's flat map of the world, achieved by unfolding a polyhedron globe. It shows all the continents as a single island chain. Poor Greenland doesn't come off much better on this map either though.

A workshop that works?     Tuesday, June 5, 2001
My old creative writing grad program is featured in the National Post in an article that is both fawning and catty, as only the Post can be. There's a great bit about Lynn Coady hissing in the distance. Now that the program has a reputation as a star-maker, I wonder how the students will change. We were anything but professional. I wouldn't want to be starting this year.

NYT Lesson Plans     Tuesday, June 5, 2001
Lesson plans for classes based on New York Times articles. Thought-provoking topics, based on very recent news stories, including the Kaycee Nicole hoax.

NORC: Florida Ballots Project     Tuesday, June 5, 2001
I was wondering what had happened to the recount done by the coalition of major news outlets (NYT, CNN, Washington Post and so on). Apparently, it still hasn't been released. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago is coordinating the project, which will describe the marks on the ballots but not take a position on whether or not they should count as votes. The last NORC update was April 18, 2001. It says they're in a mopping up phase, but have no estimate for a finish date. I'm puzzled. The site includes some good (small) photos of normal and spoiled ballots. Here's a broad set of links about this ongoing muddle.

Do not calculate pi in binary!     Friday, June 1, 2001
"If you compute it, you will be guilty of copyright infringement (of all books, all short stories, all newspapers, all magazines, all web sites, all music, all movies, and all software, including the complete Windows source code)."

Conan O'Brien's Commencement Speech at Harvard     Friday, June 1, 2001
Reading this speech at work, I had to limit myself to few paragraphs at a time, keeping the humour in separate brain containers as though they were parts of a nuclear bomb. Didn't work. I ended up with tears in my eyes. People will think I am unhappy over lack of work.

Top Tens at the Guardian     Wednesday, May 30, 2001
A diverse and sophisticated collection of book lists: ten books for a more moral society, ten books for would-be advertisers, ten science books. I've only sampled a few so far, but I've been so tempted by all the suggestions that I should just feed this page directly into my library account. (Feature scheduled for Internet 2008.) By the way, "diverse and sophisticated" was cribbed from my revised job description which is sitting here in my bin. It's not an in-bin or an out-bin. It's a go-nowhere bin. There are also sock hooks in it.

European drug policies     Monday, May 28, 2001
A Radio Free Europe report on European drug policies which contrasts the permissive approach of the Netherlands with the strict approach of Sweden. One argument that was new to me is that having cannibis in coffee shops reduces exposure to hard drugs because those harder options aren't available, as they might be from a park where both cannibis and heroin are sold.

Shop Talk about hobby games     Thursday, May 24, 2001
What starts and ends as a discussion about the business side of hobby games (with James Ernest of Cheapass Games) winds its way into an international comparison of playing styles. "Suppose two groups play the same game of Settlers of Catan. One group is American, and one is German. The Germans will finish in about a quarter of the time. The Americans will deliberate over the most mundane of decisions ... but by and large, the Europeans will come to the balanced decision and say "what the hell," and just play the game." The rest of the site is worth exploring too, including Cheapass's free game section and this article about efficient game design.

The First Patent     Thursday, May 24, 2001
Cheapass Games is planning a time travel game called US Patent #1. This made me wonder what the real first patent was. Turns out it was the same thing in both the States and Canada -- a method for making better potash by burning the ashes twice. Makes me dizzy to think of the technological changes in just two hundred odd years.

Chapters' reign of terror     Monday, May 14, 2001
A deliciously appalling account of how Chapters savaged the Canadian publishing world and tore itself to bits. "There is so much blood everywhere, this industry looks like an abattoir," said the president of Raincoast Books. Raincoast was one of the few able to resist the giant's pressures, thanks to a young wizard whose name I'm sure you know. (No, not Steve Galloway.) If you're a Canadian book lover, do not miss this article.

Gleevec wins approval in US     Saturday, May 12, 2001
"This is a drug that controls cancer with almost no side effects," said Dr. Harmon Eyre of the American Cancer Society. It's being used on a type of leukemia.

Fair Voting BC     Friday, May 11, 2001
After the BC Liberals massive majority sweeps into government, attention will turn to proportional representation (PR), as it always does (and should) after sweeps. One group lobbying for PR in this province is Fair Voting BC. Their web site is lame, but they're gaining mention in the press.
        The Liberals have promised a "citizen's assembly" on electoral reform that could lead to a referendum on the subject. Hopefully, Fair Voting will keep the pressure on.
        Here's the federal Fair Vote site and a Green Party PR site.

Shameful     Thursday, May 10, 2001
Scarborough MP Tom Wappel snubbed a constituent who asked for assistance, saying "How is it that you are writing me for help if you did not think enough of my abilities to justify voting for me?" It shakes me to think that this is the quality of person we elect in Canada. I wrote Wappel and the Prime Minister, but it seems like such a slight gesture in the face of the needed change. The PM is standing by him. This is my government.

Feathering the nest     Thursday, May 10, 2001
Conservative groups in the States become green, worried about the environmental damage of windmill farms (birds hit them). The Sierra Club disagrees about the seriousness of the problem, but I think we should stick to power sources that have no impact on the environment, like coal and oil.

Thirteen tips for prospective writers     Thursday, May 10, 2001
From the National Post: "13. Do not write in public. Do not bring your laptop to Starbucks. Do not scribble in restaurants. Other people are eating. Unless your home has burned down -- unless you are, in fact, homeless -- writing should be done in the privacy of your own dank, personal hell." (I changed their punctuation because I'm that sort of person.)

Researchers find the Self     Wednesday, May 9, 2001
Neurologists have identified a part of the brain they say controls personality, beliefs and taste. I don't know if I'd be as quick as CNN to call those characteristics "the self," in the philosophical sense of the world. I think memory, intution and self-perception all fall within the self too. But it's an intriguing discovery. Note that the brain damage causes one woman to like Taco Bell. Let's hope this information never falls into PepsiCo's hands.

Journalists win case about standing up to Monsanto     Wednesday, May 9, 2001
Media says: (Sound of crickets.) The journalists who were fired from a Fox station for not suppressing a story that made Monsanto look bad won their case in August 2000. One of them notes how fiercely the media stayed away from the story. Mike Wallace rejected it as being "too inside baseball," which the author claims means "no criticizing the media, yours or theirs." My own check: CNN stories from summer 2000 that mention the station or the biotech company: zero.

Mars needs glowing mustard!     Monday, May 7, 2001
Blue glowing mustard plants are going to be planted on robot landers on Mars. Everyone who didn't just say "coooool!" should probably leave right now.

Small monsters     Monday, May 7, 2001
Spider mites crawl over Sandia's micromachines. I am not usually squeamish, but these made me want to call out the microscopic National Guard. When I first saw electron microscope pictures like these in grade school, they didn't bother me. They seemed like something from a different dimension. But the gears and manufactured lines in these photos make all the difference. Humans made these things, and the monsters found them.

Village Babes (not at work!)     Monday, May 7, 2001
While reading rumours of a Wonder Woman movie, I came across an actress name I didn't recognize. Searched for it on Google and was led to this PG-13 babe site. I mention it because of the site's unlikely-to-be-followed warning: "Some of the content on this site might not be suitable for minors under the age of 18. If you're a minor, please get a parent to supervise your visit."
        Seventeen-year-old: "Mom! Could you come here for a minute? I need to look at some bikinis."

Micropayments     Friday, May 4, 2001
Micropayments have been a dead idea to me for a while, but this article does a great job of explaining the common real world alternatives -- aggregation, subscription, and subsidy. (Mooselessness will soon be switching to a macropayment system where only millionaires will be allowed to read, and then only if they sign over half of their fortunes to me. I'll have fewer readers, but exclusivity sells.)

Placing the sun     Friday, May 4, 2001
A god's hand nestles the sun into place.

Crush.nu     Friday, May 4, 2001
People write short notes about their crushes. Illustrated by the wonderful Claire of Loobylu.

There is no energy crisis     Thursday, May 3, 2001
Remember the opening movie of Fallout where the United States invades Canada for its resources and a soldier in power armour executes a kneeling Canadian in the street? Reminder to Americans: there is no energy crisis. (I drive a wee little Echo and bike to work. We heat the house by having the cat run quickly from room to room. Stay there! Quit looking at my tar sands.)

Losing features over the net     Thursday, May 3, 2001
Ask Tog comments on what he fears will be the first of many downgrades in net savvy products, where useful features are removed and marketing features are added in their place. In this case, the culprit is ReplayTV, who later recanted. I'd ICQ him about this issue, but I keep hitting that damn SMS button they added.

Will Wright on his successes     Thursday, May 3, 2001
Thought-provoking interview with the creator of the Sims about why the game is as popular as it is. He brings up epidemiology. I think his point is that during pandemics people like to play with dolls. Oh wait, that's not it at all. The Sims' approach to needs and fulfillment is also looked at.

How to Save Canadian Publishing     Wednesday, May 2, 2001
More cynical about the scene than I'd be, but a good idea is a good idea. What's the secret? Money laundering for the mob!

MIT course in game design     Wednesday, May 2, 2001
Haven't had my breath taken away by the material, but I just thought the very idea of an MIT game design course was cool. My one walking tour of MIT came about when the Empire Earth gamers flew me to Boston, so MIT and gaming are already already entwined in my head. Along with mist, that big dome, and Matt Damon saying "How d'you like these apples."

Previously on Mooselessness     Wednesday, May 2, 2001
The last story about about Verizon threatening GunsForKids because of "unfair competition." You can also visit the full archive.