Entries for September 2004
It’s only Wednesday, but we’re gonna have some Friday-grade fun anyway. I found this iPod guilty pleasures article wherein folks confess the most embarrassing songs on their iPods. Britney, the Carpenters, New Kids on the Block, and Air Supply are all mentioned. I don’t have it in front of me, but my iPod contains the likes of White Town (Your Woman), some post-Thriller Michael Jackson, White Zombie, Guns and Roses, and a bunch of trance that’s probably pretty cheesy and non-credible. After reading the article, I’m gonna have to put some Ace of Base on there at some point as well. How about you? Any dirty little secrets on your smooth white machine?
Ridiculous semi truck SUV. This should be illegal.
Stanley Milgram’s subway experiment, thirty years on. Asking people to give up their seats on the subway turned out to be more of an inconvenience for the person asking the question than for the person having to give up their seat.
In his article about personality tests for this week’s New Yorker (sadly, not online), Malcolm Gladwell offers a less-serious alternative to Myers-Briggs:
Once, for fun, a friend and I devised our own personality test. Like the M.B.T.I., it had four dimensions. The first is Canine/Feline. In romantic relationships, are you the pursuer, who runs happily to the door, tail wagging? Or are you the pursued? The second is More/Different. Is it your intellectual style to gather and master as much information as you can or make imaginative use of a discrete amount of information? The third is Insider/Outsider. Do you get along with your parents or do you define yourself outside your relationship with your mother and father? And finally, there is Nibbler/Gobbler. Do you work steadily, in small increments, or do everything at once, in a big gulp?
I think I’m pretty much a FDIN although I have definite M & G tendencies, along with a little bit of O. How about you? Also, crude poll time. It’s well known that there are really only two personality types: those who know their Myers-Briggs personality type by heart and those that do not. Which are you? (I only know the ‘I’ for sure because that’s a no brainer…dunno the rest.)
A few months ago, a blogger at Everything Hurts (everythinghurts.com) posted a quick and very useful Windows security checklist. The site and the checklist have since disappeared, but I managed to find a copy of the original list which I have reproduced below in the hopes that it will help you out as it has several friends and coworkers. If your machine is being hosed by spyware, virii, and malicious popups, this list is a good place to start.
8 steps to better Windows security
1. Run Windows Update regularly.
2. Install ZoneAlarm (Firewall)
3. Buy and install NOD32 (Anti-Virus)
4. Install WinPatrol (Anti-Hijack)
5. Buy and install AdMuncher (Ad and Popup Blocker)
6. Install and run AdAware (Anti-Spyware)
7. Replace Internet Explorer and Outlook Express with Firefox & Thunderbird
8. Disable Autorun.
Thanks and apologies to the original author of this list.
Map of where spam is coming from. Info from Postini service indicates the most activity in the US, west-central Europe, Brazil, Korea, China, and Japan.
Gael samples the stick-oriented bounty of the Minnesota State Fair. Including deep-fried candy bars, deep-fried Twinkies, deep-fried macaroni and cheese — sensing a trend here? — pork chops, and a deep-fried reuben sandwich.
Meet the US cricket team. Although US interest in cricket is small, the team competed in the Champions Trophy tournament, albeit at 1000-1 odds.
An absolutely beautiful film by the director of Raise the Red Lantern; I felt as though I were watching a lavishly produced ballet instead of a movie. If you’re heading to the theatre to see this film, do your fellow patrons a favor: if you’re just there to see Jet Li kick ass and chat on your cell phone for half an hour, don’t bother. Just stay home and watch the Matrix on cable again, ok?
I’ve gotten lots of email about the Texas National Guard memos and their possible forgery. At this point, I don’t know what to believe and I don’t really care. Were they typed with an expensive IBM typewriter that was a pain in the ass to use? Or were they done three weeks ago in Microsoft Word? Or maybe they were retyped from the originals by a bored secretary in 1993. The most plausible explanation seems to be that after Bush wins the election in November, a disgruntled someone whips up these documents in Word, travels back in time, gets Jerry Killian to sign them, repeatedly photocopies them, sticks them in an envelope, and leaves it with the post office with instructions to deliver it to Dan Rather in September of 2004.
And if they are forged, what an amateur effort. Fer crying out loud, bloggers figured it out. If a Kerry supporter did this, may I suggest you sit the rest of this one out…I don’t think he needs this kind of help. And if a Bush supporter did this to distract everyone from the real issue (more about that in a bit), well, that’s just brilliant ‘cause it’s working like a charm.
But like I said, I don’t care. All this National Guard Swift Boat Purple Heart Vietnam crap is a red herring. Daddy got Bush out of going to Vietnam and he goofed off at his National Guard job. So what? A lot of people did that…some people fled to Canada. And Kerry could have done the same thing, but didn’t. Good for him. And now they and their supporters are trying to outdo each other by telling tall tales and discrediting the other side. Bush said he did this but really he did this. Kerry said this but these other people say the opposite. Shut up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!
We’ve got an election to think about. Yeah, the election…remember that? We need to choose the leader of our country in just under two months from now. That sounds pretty important. How about we look past election political tactics and judge the candidates based upon their records, their promises, Bush’s actions over the past 4 years as President, Kerry’s plans for the future, the respective platforms of the two parties and what they’ve done to advance them, etc. etc. Let’s look at the men, not the marketing. By all means, factor in their Vietnam military service or lack thereof, but I think it’s safe to say that neither Bush’s National Guard service or Kerry’s Swift Boat adventures were their defining moments as potential leaders of the United States. Let’s stop acting like they were.
Nobody can find their heart during 9/11 moment of silence. The girl in the pink sweater looks dead with her arms crossed like that, the guy behind her is reaching inside his coat for his wallet, and Bush can’t decide between his heart and his crotch. Or maybe he’s just hungry?
The IBM Composer typewriter. As used to type the Bush National Guard documents.
What the heck? US assault weapons ban to lapse?. Never mind the assault weapons, here’s the Swift Boat Veterans and forged National Guards records!
Roster of the Dead. Photos of each of the 1000 soldiers who have died in Iraq.
Citizen reportage and Flickr. Flickr is becoming a good place to find photos of notable events.
Analog is hip among the digital generation. I’ve wanted a rotary dial on my cell phone for the longest time.
The documents produced by 60 Minutes about Bush’s National Guard service might be fake. The main issue is with the font; the document may be too modern-looking to have been produced on a circa-1972 typewriter.
Warning: spoilers. Well, since it’s all over the news today (there’s an AP story that was picked up by just about everyone — USA Today, SF Gate, Miami Herald, Washington Post — but no love to kottke.org for breaking the story…TV Week is getting all the credit), there’s no further harm in revealing that Ken Jennings does in fact lose on Jeopardy at some point in the near future.
But there’s more. Super-tipster Phillip has graciously provided us with the Final Jeopardy answer and question from Ken’s final show. If you’d like to know what it is, highlight the redacted text below:
Subject: Companies and Corporations. The Answer: This company has a workforce of 17000 people, whose average working year is only 4 months long.
Hard to believe Ken couldn’t guess that one. I’ll have the correct question for you tomorrow. [I’ve been asked to hold off posting the question for now…sorry! I’m not trying to be a tease, honest.]
Update: Still more information about Ken’s final show from our man Phillip, who will pretty much be the first one in line if kottke.org ever starts handing out knighthoods. Sayeth Phillip:
“As well, you can also post that Ken Jennings got the two Daily Doubles in Double Jeopardy during his losing game. In both, he bet $4000 and lost both. Had he not bet so high or had he won at least 1 (I hear he has a propensity to lose a lot at the Daily Doubles) then he would still be champion today.”
“The champ who beat him is named Sharon and she is from Ventura, CA. As far as I remember she won $14,401. which was $1 more than Ken had before he revealed his losing answer to Final Jeopardy. Ken ended up having less than $10000 after losing.”
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, TVWeek!
Update: Posted some information about the airdate of Ken’s loss.
Holiday e-commerce ideas from the gang at 37signals. “Dozens of ideas for improving the holiday customer experience at your site”.
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