The Marmot reports that there are still POWs in North Korea, but he doesn't believe it.#

In recent years, a group of Westerners, believed to be U.S. and British prisoners captured during the Korean War, were held in a notorious North Korean prison, a North Korean army defector has told reporters at a press conference in Washington.

Wire services reported that Kim Yong, 53, who was once a lieutenant colonel of the North's national security and defense agency, defected in 1998 after five years in detention in the North's political prison No. 18. Mr. Kim escaped the country and fled to South Korea by way of China and Mongolia.

I wonder if this is like the lie that there were still POWs in Vietnam so that we "had" to keep going back? Maybe this is the prelude to the next war, jolly!

Someone reported on the Prom, but they have since taken down the following excerpt from their site. [Updated on 2003/10/29]#

This is way off topic and inappropriate, but I've read a lot of blogs lately and heard a lot of people talking about how angry they are about the partial-birth abortion bill. Some of these people read my blog, so I'm posting this as a way to encourage more than just griping. If it upsets you, take action!

Besides, one of my cool coworkers is organizing this event.

He encourages people to dress disco or in retro formal wear--people will be wearing all sorts of 70s outfits to the event.

I like hearing about the stuff that j does at work.#

Ed Cone points out the humanizing nature of the blog.#

John Edwards: "I may talk about my own children too much in these blogs but I think of them all the time when I'm on the road."

We're so used to seeing the TV versions of the candidates, hair perfect and sleeves carefully rolled, that it's easy to forget the personal toll that campaigning takes on them, and on their families.

A funny thing about weblogs is that despite their essential immediacy, they gain heft from repeated use, the accretion of detail and the emergence of themes over time. As the posts roll by, the Edwards blog is breaking new ground in humanizing the candidate and his family.

Ed Cone writes about journalist/blogger responsibilities.#

At BloggerCon we talked about journalists who work within a corporate structure. I said that if ZD doesn't own a piece of my soul, they certainly rent it. I feel that having them link to my blog puts some responsibility on me, too, or at least underscores the responsibilities I've felt all along.

Bryan Strawser points out something we should all know.#

Massachusetts State Motto

"Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem"

"With the sword, she seeks peace under liberty"

Geek Girl returns to the point.#

my original point (that GIRLS, not people in general, are affected adversely by the media's portrayal of the "ideal woman") has been lost, which is fine.. i really like the way this discussion has gone. the reason that the "ideal" for women has become skinnier and skinnier is because the "ideal" is whatever is most difficult for the population to attain. as renee said in comments on my blog, back in the middle ages, being fat was ideal.. because only rich people could be fat. now it's pretty much the case that we can be as fat as we want (with our diets and lifestyles, it's relatively easy for most people) but being skinny is the difficult task.

that said...

my question was this: where does it come from? stats prove that something like 50% of 10 year old girls are on a diet. so why is that, if not because of media influence?

Real Live Preacher has a little fun.#

In this day and age, when corporate greed seems to have driven every decent human impulse out of the free market, it's good to see that at least one large company still has a heart.

I'm talking about the good people at AOL. God bless them. In spite of the fact that their company faces unthinkable financial challenges because of the increasing popularity of broad band connections, they still take the time to send me a free CD case every couple of months.

Jessa Crispin points to an interview with Chuck Palahniuk.#

Jessa:

Chuck Palahniuk's new goal is to get 30 people to faint during his reading tour. He's already up to 27. If you ask a question at one of his readings, you'll get an autographed fake vomit. He does research for his books by calling phone sex lines. Palahniuk interviews are so much more lively than most.

Interview:

Palahniuk says he "started doing really terrible Stephen King rip-offs. I just thought, like so many people, that if I could write like somebody who was published, I would be published. It was terrible. I couldn't do it. You wouldn't want to read it. It was just sort of boring, and plodding. In the workshop where I was starting to write, the man who led the workshop told me, while we were out drinking, 'You can tell a story really well, but you can't write a story for shit.'"

Michael Feldman reports on Monopoly suing to "protect its Monopoly."#

The makers of Monopoly are suing the man behind a satirical version called Ghettopoly in which 'playas' compete to build crack houses.

"The Ghettopoly knockoff has generated a firestorm of controversy for its highly offensive, racist content," said the lawsuit.

Dan Sugalski writes about "Language hacking for fun 'n profit."#

You may or may not know, but Parrot's got a simple but functional Forth implementation as part of it. Nothing fancy, just the base line scanner and math functions, but the compiler works so you can do things like 10 20 + . and get 30 as you'd expect, or : GIMME_30 10 20 + . ; if you wanted to package it up as a new word.

Anyway, I need a Parrot language a bit higher-level than plain assembly for work, and if anything counts as "a bit higher level than assembly" it's Forth. Heck, the standard doesn't even require floating point numbers. Or integers larger than 16 bits as base for that matter. (Though 32 bit integers are required to work so you have to fake 'em if they aren't there) So, since I've been fond of Forth forever I figured it's time to go extend the thing and add in the missing bits.

Christopher Lydon posted his new interview with Diana Der Hovanessian about Robert Lowell. Very interesting.#

Diana Der Hovanessian is a preeminent translator and advocate of Armenian poetry and herself a peculiarly affecting poet who brings a forgiving touch to unspeakable memory. "I write poetry because I can't sing," she says with a husky laugh. Like Elizabeth Bishop, she is a child of Worcester, Massachusetts. "A slight woman with flowing hair and penetrating amber-brown eyes, Der Hovanessian carries her complicated heritage lightly but seriously," Sally Cragin wrote insightfully. "For Armenians, all aspects of the culture are to be examined as well as embraced -- even the unspeakable pain of genocide and subsequent massacres."

Christopher Lydon has a new interview up!#

Doug Miller of Erehwon Notebook has a new weblog named Doing Something Different. In a recent post he says something curious about where he'd like to work.#

I envy people who work in a university environment. I used to, and while the pay was lousy it was one of the happiest times of my life. Alas, I fell from grace, in the clutches of the demon money.

Carly writes about a Guster Show she just went to.#

Meanwhile, if Guster thinks they don't have groupies, they're crazy. Maybe it's not Ludacris quality hos hanging around, but good god. So the opener? (Kathleen Edwards, who was really good live. I bought her CD, not as good. I fully recommend a performance of hers if you can get to one, though.) Bribed the crowd to be nice to her by offering passes to the after party. Could we talk about the insane girls around me who immediately leaped up and started going crazy for this girl they probably wouldn't even listen to normally? Yeah. Or the ones who, after not winning them from Kathleen, whored themselves to the tech guys? Yeah.

Kaye Trammel wants you to leave your blogging comfort zone and branch out.#

[[John Palfrey]] & I were talking about the Harvard weblog project. He expressed a strong desire to get people out of their comfort zone [discipline] & start reading other types of blogs. He talked about some non-blawgs he enjoyed & how it added to his own betterment as a thinker.

John [& Ed] have it right. We can't just stay in our own block of blogs -- where we all link to one another & say the same things over & over. We aren't adding anything if we do that. We have to explore the great frontier -- the ever-changing blogosphere -- & get exposed to different topics & ideas.

She mentions me as a good way to branch out. Blush.

Get to know your new master soon.#

Jessica Baumgart writes about librarians...#

according to today's Career Journal in the Wall Street Journal. This article, which may be restricted to subscribers, indicates that there are more upper- and mid-level corporate librarians right now.

"Recruiters say the hiring spurt also is due to the increased need for professionals who can help locate and organize competitive information. 'Smart organizations realize that a librarian or information specialist is critical to the business-development process, which is where most senior executives are spending their time right now,' says Samantha Whitney-Ulane, director of research and a managing director of Whitney Group, a New York-based search firm."

(Read that again: smart organizations realize that librarians are critical. The Wall Street Journal printed it, so it must be true.)

In The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks writes that everyone software development team should have a "code librarian" - oh ya.

So Elliott Smith committed suicide.#

Tim Jarrett names his post, "Taking the easy way out."

Radley Balko writes "Awful."

He meant a lot to Andrew Sinclair.

geek girl sighs at the loss.

Arianna says he'll be missed.

Fimoculous remembers.

That summer was easily the lowest point in my life. I didn't want to do anything that first year after graduating from college. So I didn't. I was pawning everything to pay for beer, and living in a crawl space above the paper's photolab. Moon had lost his job because he could never make it to work on time (noon). We were drunk every night, sleeping with each other's girlfriends, and landing in the hospital on more occasions than I care to tell you about. That summer, Elliott Smith was our little secret, and maybe the only thing that kept us hoping.

Six months later, our surprise find was everyone else's surprise find, as Elliott got famous and eventually landed on Spielberg's label. (Wow, remember how weird that was?) When we finally got to see Elliott perform, we hung out with him a bit after the show. Elliott was in a very good mood that night -- chipper, sober, talkative. Moon, however, was so wasted that Elliott said, "I think your friend has an alcohol problem." How do you know you've hit rock bottom? When Elliott Smith informs you of your substance abuse problem.

Charles Miller has thoughts about in as well.

Joey deVilla reminds us of his 1998 Oscars appearance.

What I'll remember most about Mr. Smith was his appearance at the 1998 Oscars. His song from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, Miss Misery, received a surprise nomination for Best Original Song. In what has been called of of the "notably surreal musical moments in recent memory", he performed Miss Misery live, using only his voice and acoustic guitar as if he were performing in a coffeehouse to a few dozen listeners, only to be followed by Celine Dion's saccharine warbling of her trite necrophiliac anthem, My Heart Will Go On, complete with full orchestral backing, a giant backdrop featuring the Titanic and an extremely jewelled neckpiece. In Hollywood, fakery always trumps The Genuine Article.

---

I'm an asshole. I think that people you commit suicide are cowards and should note be honored at all. If you want to give up on the world then the world should give up on you.

AKMA lets us in the the world of disagreeing bishops.#

My respect for Tom Wright, even on topics about which we disagree, is profound; the church is better off with thoughtful bishops with whom people like me disagree than it would be with shallow head-nodding fellow-travellers.

So I'm all the more irritated when Tom ascribes his (correct) disagreement with Karen Armstrong to her proclivity to "ignore what the texts actually say and to attempt, in classic postmodern fashion, a synthesis of widely disparate traditions in support of that contemporary western phenomenon, 'the religious quest' " (my emphasis). Wright' positive case rings true to me: "resurrection" figures much more prominently in the pertinent texts than does the wan category of "life after death." But his negative case effects just as grievous a misrepresentation as the one Armstrong foists on him.

Grant Henninger should run it.#

Why don't MMORPGs give away the software and just charge the monthly fee to play? That is how AOL use to get all of its subscribers. I really don't want to go out and spend $50 on Star Wars: Galaxies and then have to pay a monthly subscription.

Warren Ellis posts some weirdness.#

Sitar Doje, a fifth-grader from Qamdo prefecture, had his dream two years ago and can now recite "The Life of King Gesar" for up to six hours on end, the Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday.

The agency says Tibet has a long tradition of people waking from sleep inexplicably able to recite the poem from memory. Most of these "God-taught Masters", however, are much older than Sitar Doje and are usually illiterate, the agency said. The lengthy 1,000-year old epic is also cherished by Mongolians and has given rise to a whole field of study referred to as "Gesarology", Xinhua said.

Real Live Preacher posts an amazing story from Seminary.#

Evan Kirchhof informs us of a new copyright protection measures by the MPAA.#

While watching Quentin Tarantino's Real Ultimate Ninja Power, you may have noticed braille-like patterns of orange dots briefly flickering on and off every ten minutes or so, near (as I remember it) the top right corner of the screen. Whether or not you saw this probably depends on whether or not you ordinarily see the flashing reel-change indicators in movies, which seem to persist in theatrical prints despite the ubiquity of the giant platter transport system in unskilled-teen-staffed modern theatres.

In context, you would naturally assume that the orange dots were yet another ultra-clever insider reference or formal joke of some kind (recall that this is a movie where a periodic unexplained blooping noise masks the main character's name) -- or maybe a nod to the subliminal jokes in Fight Club (more here).

Interestingly, the dots are none of the above, but rather a new and annoying anti-piracy measure. The idea, apparently, is that each print is marked with a different dot pattern, and then when digital copies shot in theatres with camcorders inevitably hit the internet, the studios will be able to trace which theatre leaked them.

I love that he calls "Kill Bill" by it's more formal name, "Real Ultimate Ninja Power."

Antipixel links to Ian Garrick about the fallings and destruction of the English language.#

The article...

Consider this: On the field of the Battle of Gettysburg, the orator Edward Everett spoke eloquently for two hours to an audience of attentive townspeople, and Abraham Lincoln delivered his subsequent and vastly more famous speech, which concluded, "That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Today, that high English has decayed to the fragmented, colloquial style of President George W. Bush: "We have our marching orders, my fellow Americans. Let's roll."

Matthew Aaron in the comments.

I disagree. I think the English language is continuing to evolve. It always has and always will reflect the society that utilizes it.

I agree that language has taken a turn for the worse in some regards, and that to hear the sort of language that graced the Gettysberg Address on a regular basis would be tremendous, but not all Americans spoke so eloquently in years past. Slang is no new invention.

Björn Lindström in the comments.

This is nothing other than the infamous golden age theory about language. The truth is that all natural languages are equally expressive. Any comparison of value between different usages, be it in different times or different classes, is completely subjective.

Richard links to Susanne Hiller writing about her "backup boyfriend."#

According to the book Emotional Infidelity by Miami Beach psychologist M. Gary Neuman, I am being unfaithful. Neuman says that going out for drinks, doing coffee, sharing secrets or even reviewing weekend plans with an opposite-sex co-worker or friend constitutes a form of adultery; that a close but chaste friendship can fritter away valuable time and energy from your marriage. His theory is that the more male friends a woman has, the worse her marriage will fare. This, even if you think your marriage is solid, healthy and flourishing, and even if you feel that kissing your backup would be like kissing your brother.

That's awesome. And yet girls with boyfriends still wonder why I hold back emotionally when being friends with them. I'm worried what he thinks too. I'm not always comfortable being the backup boyfriend.

Richard interprets Anastasia's Dating Rules.#

Anastasia's Dating Rules, which are: 1) no more than 4 dates before a long-term relationship, 2) call if you get a number, 3) pay for the date if you're the one asking out, and 4) be honest.

Let's see, the first one is not an issue for me, never having gone on two dates with a girl (much less four), and never having been in a long-term relationship. (There is no need to tell me the reasons for this: I know them quite well.) The second—asking for a number—is hard enough to do on its own, and actually calling feels like interrupting. There's much to be said for specifying a general time that's good to call, but I usually give up after two calls, and rarely leave a message (I prefer talking to, y'know, actual people and not a machine), assuming, of course, that I get a phone number, much less get the urge to call. The third, paying for the date has never been an issue: that's what traditional guys do. And number four, being honest about yourself is actually easy, and has come a lot easier lately. But as if being honest about yourself and "dating" are compatible, for dating is based on deception.

In the comments of Anastasia's post, The Yeti writes...

People who make rules from dating often find themselves trapped by the Rules they made.

Remember the ever so popular Wait until the third date rule for sex?

Amazing to this day how many women will have sex on the third date when neither partner is truly ready.

The use of should, ought, and forbidden suggest that the real problem with Dating is men don't do what you want them to do.

Don't date those kinds of men and you you should be fine.

Richard writes about silly things that girls do to get guys.#

t's gotten increasingly difficult for women to do this and maintain dignity because they have constantly lowered the standard, while men just sit back and enjoy it. "As anyone knows," writes TheYeti, "ignoring women is absolutely the best way to get them to follow you around like puppy dogs - especially at a young age. The need for attention, coupled with a newfound, "women embracing their sexual needs" meme led to guys getting laid with little or no effort. So now, guys were more than fed up with all of these antics. They started not only ignoring women, but actively trying to stop them from coming around, unless it was for drunken, dirty sex." After women realized this, they had to take drastic measures: "Lipstick lesbianism. Few guys can ignore the sight of two girls dancing close, kissing, or touching each other suggestively without at least spending a good ten minutes staring." The lesbian kiss between Madonna and Britney was an colossal error in judgement for heterosexual women's sake: it further lowered the standard to which women must drop to attract the attention of men. First it was skin, then it was sex, and now it's faux-lesbian sex. Instead of being themselves to get a man, women now have to think about which women they need to fuck to get that man.

Note that I didn't say long-term attention in the above, because sex is a perfectly valid way to do that, so long as the trade-off becomes a female having sex with a man in exchange for long-term commitment. Think about it: what do men really want? Free sex for life, and one partner usually will do just fine. What do women want? Attention and love. (Well, don't you?) That is the crux of this article and this book. Advertising and superstar models and actresses are just part of the feedback loop: women want to be skinnier, so they idolize skinny models, who then project the (false) image of a healthy woman, making women want to be skinnier, and so forth. The ultimate goal, however, is not to be skinny, but to grab men's short-term attention. If short-term attention is what you want, then, short-term attention is what you'll get. But's a damned silly thing to want and women are doing it in a damned silly way.

Richard writes about Sue Johanson, "who totally rocks."#

I suspect that most viewers, when they watched The Sunday Night Sex Show for the first time, at first giggled at a septuagenarian (that's 70+ years old, folks) talking about sex. But when people got over the initial novelty of it, she had was sounded like good tips, and while she clearly prefers sex with partners over solo sex she doesn't stigmatize the later either (no word on what advice she has regarding a casual encounter with your clone). Another quote from the Slate article illustrates this:

She has a clear, if inexplicit, sexual ethic rooted in mutuality, reciprocity, and equity. It boils down to these variations on the Golden Rule: Don't make others do unto you what you would not want to do unto them, and don't make others let you do unto them what you would not want done unto you. So while masturbation gets a big thumbs-up from Johanson, once sex moves from a solo piece to an accompanied number, for Sue it's about more than individual gratification. It's about old-fangled intimacy. Andrea of Winnipeg, Manitoba, isn't satisfied by her boyfriend, but she worries that she'll get addicted to the vibrator that Sue has prescribed for her. "Oh, no," Sue reassures her. " 'Cause with the vibrator you don't get the hugging and the cuddling and the snuggling and the nibbling and the sweet nothings whispered into your ear."

She doesn't teach people on how to get laid (inverse relationship...), but she does teach people on, once you've both agreed on moving well past second base, how best to enjoy it.

Bacchus links to Cat Nastey who writes in reference to The Yeti's post on why girls like assholes.#

Start over. Cat Nastey writes in reference to this post that she doesn't date assholes, that she only dates nice guys, and that she has a good one who brings her cookies, thank-you-very-much. And that's good to hear. I didn't mean to suggest (and I don't think TheYeti or his pie suppliers were suggesting) that the female preference for assholes is universal, even if it's common enough to be worth thinking about.

However, I do want to point out that I've heard Cat's song before. Happy girls in good relationships often say this. Usually to your face. "Gee, you're such a nice guy, if I wasn't taken I'd snatch you up in a heartbeat." It's intended as, and is, a supportive gesture. But I've found it's not a reliable indicator of what single girls actually do. Face it, a lot of asshole-seekers say they want a nice guy. Too often, they say it to their nice male friends while complaining about the misdeeds of their latest asshole.

MacSlash (and others) write about the new iBook G4. I just bought an iBook G3 two weeks ago. I'm an idiot.#

Michael Feldman links to an Undead Conference.#

The American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Their Web Site features an informative "Call for Papers" section in which we came across the following actual call:

Abstracts are sought for a collection of philosophical essays on the theme of the undead. Contributors are welcome to submit abstracts on any topic of philosophical interest that pertains to the theme of the undead. We define "the undead" as that class of corporeal beings who at some point were living creatures, have died, and have come back such that they are not presently "at rest." This would include supernatural beings such as zombies, vampires, mummies, and other reanimated corpses.

Brad DeLong on why the Onion is a national treasure.#

Limbaugh Says Drug Addiction A Remnant Of Clinton Administration: WEST PALM BEACH, FL--Frankly discussing his addiction to painkillers, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience Monday that his abuse of OxyContin was a "remnant of the anything-goes ideology of the Clinton Administration." "Friends, all I can say is 'I told you so,'" said Limbaugh, from an undisclosed drug-treatment facility. "Were it not for Bill Clinton's loose policies on drug offenders and his rampant immorality, I would not have found myself in this predicament." Limbaugh added that he's staying at a rehab center created by the tax-and-spend liberals.

Leak Scapegoat Still At Large: WASHINGTON, DC—A White House administration official who can be blamed for leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the press remains at large, White House officials announced Monday.

Lance Arthur is so much cool.#

So, here I am naked at the gay man's clothing-optional resort in Palm Springs. I could not be any more clichéd unless I suddenly started singing a Barbra Streisand medley while browsing shoes and applying moisturizer. And yet, I never felt uncomfortable. I felt gay-comfortable.

Literally, this had never happened before. I am always aware that I AM GAY. I think about it when I am walking through the Castro, or watching a movie featuring a man and a woman kissing or listening to the TV tell me that my President wants to protect marriage from me. I AM GAY. But here, I was... nothing special or unusual at all. I was just another guy among a bunch of other guys. Naked guys, sure, but just guys. I really enjoyed that feeling.

Alexander Payne writes about dorky Magic: The Gathering jokes.#

You're playing Magic: The Gathering, preferably in a group, and with your significant other. You wait until your SO takes his/her turn and plays a reasonably good card, the sort of thing one might counterspell. You say: "In response, I will tap [beat] that ass!" Options to sell the gag include actually slapping the posterior of your SO, simply letting the line stand, or breaking into a sprint to avoid the inevitable beating you'll receive from said SO. The lattermost is advisable. Do not attempt if relationship with SO is tentative or you're trying to teach them Magic (these two conditions are likely correlated).

Alexander also has a new naming scheme for computers.#

You may have noticed the moblog photo of Abby, my new cheap-as-fsck-on-eBay workhorse server purchase. She's one of an array of machines that llama-san and I have been collecting for a home network lab of sorts. As a show of faith when combining our various machines and bits of network kit we agreed to drop our respective naming conventions in favor of a distinct and mutually agreeable pool: girl's names.

Apropos for a couple of lovelorn geeks. One can say, "hey, is Vanessa working for you?" And the other can reply, "oh you know how Vanessa works for me!" or some similar double-entendre. And we both laugh, and then sigh, and then die a little inside. It works great.

Matthew Dennis says that the future is a weird place.#

Concept cars have always interested me. These cars are usually way over the top. In the fifties and sixties, concepts showed that everyone would soon drive some form of grounded rocket ship. In forty-years, the designs have evolved into small, boxy, plastic vehicles with large windows and a toy-like demeanor. Of course, this is the hyper-reality that is Japan, and such designs are expected. But increasingly odd cars have actually made it to market recently, such as the Honda Element. This makes me think that there is an underworld battle about who will design the future.

Moxie writes about the meaning behind the blog.#

Most of the people I've been friends with forever don't have blogs and I tell them how cool it is that people come here everyday to see what's been posted. Sometimes I wake up and think it's incredible that ANYONE at all cares what I think or finds my scribblings remotely interesting.

And sometimes the posts aren't interesting, like this one. And some people don't care and that's fine by me. I'm not for everyone.

My liberal metrosexual friend looked at my blog the other day and said, "this web log stuff is weird."

And I suppose he's right. The thing is, the more you get involved in real life, the less the blog seems to matter. There are tons and tons of people out there who have never even looked at a blog. And on some level I envy them.

Because afterall, I don't have anything to say that 3,000 other bloggers haven't already written. I guess I'm having an existential blog crisis.

Kim, I'm glad I can connect you!#

Via John Wiseman, Google has a paid advertisement at the top of the search for Guy Steele. Awesome.#

Lambda the Ultimate links to a presentation by Dan Friedman that was presented at ILC2003 that was awesome.#

j points out that it's raining. Yep. So weird!#