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The Washington Post confirms that Mark Felt is Deep Throat. Woodward, Bernstein, and Ben Bradlee confirmed the story as well. Woodward is writing an article about the experience to be run on Thursday.
Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock has a book out about fast food.
1992 Atlantic Monthly article that made a case for Mark Felt as Deep Throat.
“A sampling of what prominent film critics wrote in their reviews of the earlier ‘Star Wars’ films”.
Improv Everywhere played a fake U2 concert near Madison Square Garden last week. The Edge was played by an Asian guy and the “band” got arrested during their final song.
Identity of Deep Throat finally revealed. Mark Felt, who was second in command at the FBI at the time, helped Woodward and Bernstein with their research into Watergate.
20 things gamers want from the next generation of game consoles. “Seriously, get rid of the crates” and “don’t bullshit me about your graphics”.
A first look at Google Earth, the replacement for the Keyhole mapping software. “View Railroads, Subway lines and Bus routes along with all their stops. Or select multiple locations and have Google give you directions.”
Race car driver Robby Gordon says he won’t compete against Danica Patrick because her small stature gives her an unfair advantage. “I guess driving around in circles must have made Gordon a bit dizzy because his reasoning sucks.”
You think you know what’s going on in this (very**) indie film, you’ve caught yourself up, and then Primer just throws another curve ball at you. Even without the time twisting stuff, the complete lack of flashing arrows (Steven Johnson’s term for the plot clues embedded in movies and TV shows that scream “pay attention, this will be important later!”) left me scratching my head at exactly what happened. Luckily, the Internet to the rescue: a Primer timeline, another timeline, and an extensive visual timeline. Oy, I still don’t get it.
But that’s ok because the science fictiony stuff was actually not as interesting for me as what happened to the characters in the film. I’ve been thinking a lot about choice lately…too much of it, not enough of it, the sudden increase in the ability to determine one’s destiny by controlling choice, and the “normal” state of things where people have very little choice about anything. In Primer, the main characters find themselves in a situation where they can (almost) literally do anything they want with their lives. But instead of opening their lives up to an infinite range of possibilities, they find themselves constrained by their circumstances.
There’s a fractal aspect to human existance in this way…the particular details of any one person’s life may differ from those of another (older, smarter, richer, more powerful, etc. etc.), but the experience from the perspective of each individual is largely the same. Robert Frank touches on this in his essay on How Not to Buy Happiness. Having more power/money/control/experience/etc just may limit your choices as sure as being broke, stupid, powerless, or naive would.
Anyway, if you’re even a little bit of a geek, I’d urge you to check Primer out (it was recently released on DVD). It’s challenging in the way that Memento and Donnie Darko are, pays off in a human way like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does, and it gets my highest recommendation.
** Ebert correctly notes that although the film cost ~$7000 to make and that most of the principle photography took place in a garage, “the movie never looks cheap, because every shot looks as it must look.” One of my favorite aspects of the film was the cinematography…reminded me of what a Kubrick film might have looked like on a similarly tight budget.
Profile of the fortune writer for Wonton Food, Inc..
Pickup Lines Used by Mario [of Mario Bros. fame]. “Are you a magic flower? Because you are burning me up.”
And here is that New Yorker article about the Golden Gate Bridge suicides.
The blog for Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July’s acclaimed new movie. The most recent entries are about the film’s win at Cannes.
Sparklines of landscapes of a few American states. The one for Missouri has a little arch while the Iowa sparkline is almost flat.
New collection of nonfiction by David Foster Wallace due out in December.
I’m back from a week and a half of vacationing in Ireland. Aside from the frequent rain, Ireland is a beautiful country…and even the rain isn’t that bad. I’ll have some photos up soon (three quick photos on Flickr for now). I didn’t take my computer along or check email while I was there, only thought about the web once or twice**, and didn’t miss it at all. But it wasn’t exactly the revelatory recharging experience that I’ve heard about from other people who are tethered to the web all day long and then take an extended break from it. Not exactly sure why…maybe I’ve honed my gear switching ability to a fine point so that whatever situation I’m in, I’m in the appropriate mental state. Or perhaps I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Anyway, I’m back and ready to get back to work (or whatever it is that I do here).
Thanks to David and Anil for posting remaindered links while I was gone. It’s fun (if a little strange) coming back to a bunch of unfamiliar content on my own site…looking forward to rolling through all their links. However if you’re considering hiring either of these two fellows to help you with your blog business, I would direct your attention to the graph of my traffic over the past week at right. When those guys took over — which day will henceforth be known here at kottke.org as “Black Monday” — well, you can see what their reign of terror did to the number of daily visitors around here. On the other hand, they were probably too busy with their proper (i.e. paying) jobs to worry too much about posting, so they are to be commended for their attention to their duties. In either case, it’s been a pleasure…come back anytime.
** Apart from an extended conversation about RSS while hiking through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen. You can take the boy out of the web and put him in a sheep pasture, but you can’t take the web out of the boy. Or something.
The Shifted Librarian addresses the role of video games in libraries. “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a roomful of librarians competing against each other in Mario Kart and DDR!” (I’ve seen this, and it’s good)
Cut your own vinyl with the VRX-2000. There was a time when I would have given up a toe for this machine.
Subway Cinema has announced the lineup for the 2005 New York Asian Film Festival.
“My Brother… Nikhil” is one of the first major Bollywood films to address HIV.
Profile of competitive eating champion Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas.
Steven B. Johnson is still reviewing the reviewers. When authors and filmmakers ask for web site advice, I always say “early and often,” don’t play whack-a-mole with your audience by only blogging when you have something you want to sell. Johnson’s consistent conversation is an example of how it should be done.
Evan Martin’s mustache bestness sorter. Besides featuring awesome mustaches, it’s a slick bit of javascript wizardry.
Jib Jab’s Founder comments on the internet and viral marketing. “Everyday people are more comfortable with technology. I can’t tell you how many times we heard ‘my grandmother sent it to me’. Grandmas were not emailing in 2000.”
The citywide Wi-Fi reality check. The free wifi effort in Philly is beginning to hit some speed bumps.
Students blog after high school shuts down school paper for being “negative”. School of Blog (featuring Jack Black) will be out next year.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. A close reading of the non-linear Prince of Persia storyline “enables an exploration of how the game’s story relates to the interactive elements of its gameplay.”
Block by Blog. A Guardian UK reporter walks through Manhattan with only a BlackBerry, a Nokia 6681, and RSS as his guide.
Some friends and I recently went and checked out the Little Boy exhibit at the Japan Society.
Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture explores the culture of postwar Japan through its arts and popular visual media, from the perspective of one of Japan’s most celebrated artists. Focusing on the phenomenally influential subcultures of otaku (roughly translated as “pop cult fanaticism”) and its relationships to Japan’s artistic vanguard, Takashi Murakami explores the historical influences that shape Japanese contemporary art and its distinct graphic idioms.
It’s a good exhibit, but I’m not sure it’s worth the $12 entry fee. My favorite pieces were the paintings of Hideaki Kawashima, particularly Fire (depicted at left) and Smile.
The exhibition is open through July 24 at the Japan Society at 333 East 47th Street in Manhattan.
The guy who made the Mac startup sound. “I wanted to avoid a sound that would be associated with the crash. I wanted it to sound more like a ‘palette cleanser’.”
First Annual Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival. An all-day outdoor event on Saturday, June 18th
Jeffrey Veen on The Usability of Subscribing to Feeds.
David Pogue: Ground Rules for the Windows-Macintosh War.
8 years ago: Top 10 secrets of a successful web site. Before there was kottke.org, there was 0sil8.
Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless. Interpact’s group blog documenting their switch to Apple in followup to Winn Schwartau’s now infamous “Mad as Hell” article. (I bet they’re all running Linux in a three months, most of Winn’s beef with Sony is true for Apple as well)
Heather Champ is now “Community Manager” for Flickr. It’s a role she filled on or off the payroll. Congratulations all around.
The Crazy Frog sound? That’s my fault.. The BBC says “The frog is irritating to the point of distraction and back again. And yet at the same time, it’s strangely compelling.” The dance remix of the Crazy Frog ringtone also happens to be the #1 single in the UK. #1 single, not #1 ringtone.
Phishing Archive records forged email attempts. Update your account info now!
How to abuse Amazon’s image processing system. Many wacky things can be done by customizing the URLs of images loaded from Amazon.
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