The Longest Now

Sorry, that would be Julieanne Klein, singer and now apparently a budding musicologist. Don’t get that wrong, or you’ll have a heck of a time tracking her down. I did, at least. Turns out she has been stowed away in Montreal, finishing research into the development of Modern . That’s not really my bag, but I figure any diva worth her vibrato can do as she pleases. Don’t take my word on the perfection of her voice; thanks to the miracles of modern technology, you can hear for yourself.

Through her site, I also discovered
the Alignment project, which introduces musical notation PDQ Bach would be proud of. Fleur’s fave Project for New Music around here is doubtless green with envy.

I love this instantaneous upload business so much, I just can’t help myself! Here’s a better view from the patio, now that the sun is coming up:

And this one’s for Mikey, a find from yesterday afternoon. Sometimes a long chute and a long fence just aren’t enough.

• WP:UR Ur… excuse me?
• World population temporarily increases by 20% during the once-in-an-eon Time Traveller’s convention
• Quantazelle back in action. Now if only Tassou produced items for public consumption… (felt-tip to walcott and spot)

I’ve long maintained that a group of non-smokers should start up a non-profit advocacy group promoting the sexiness of smoking, before even the idea of it has been censured from polite company. Friends have chalked it up to recurring insanity, but I maintain that this is the only sensible point of view.

Happily, I am not alone:

At least they didn’t use an article on it.  Not much juice in this article beyond the cute title.  A prof says accepting WP citations from undergrads is ok, but not from grads.  The author intones,

I’m still waiting for someone other than a brilliant librarian to address the inverse of that statement.

Wayne State scorns Wikipepedia, spelling …

When exposed to goodness, feeling good about themselves, or thinking about the world at large, people are fundamentally good. This can change, when surrounded by others who are passionately struggling for personal and local success; who view getting a leg up at the expense of others as a minor victory. But most people remember what it is like to feel, to be fundamentally good, what it feels like to do well by others. Even the joyfully cruel may notice with a tiny corner of themselves, in the middle of relishing someone else’s suffering or downfall, each time they avoid doing something to help another person in need; and acknowledge with that remote corner that whatever their conscious moral beliefs, they are being unjust. (I am reminded, somehow, of JACK, the Pumpkin King.)

And there is a thrill in the air, a sense of inevitability, an unmistakable look on someone’s face, when he has been hoping for and secretly betting on, even assisting, the failure of another, and profiting thereby (if only through ego and amusement)… and then that weakness disappears, success is relentlessly extracted from failure, judgements and justice prepare to be served. In the throes of this vulnerable mood, stubborn criminals will meekly accept prison and even confessions, bullies quail and retreat, the most deeply hidden truths give themselves up. (I am thinking now of the German widow scolding the muddy, belligerent Nazis who came to take her property, demanding that they remove their boots and recall their manners, and never being bothered again.)

I saw that look on his face today, felt the air of fear and certainty and guilt; though I could not be sure of the victim or the secret hope and profit. The vulnerability was more palpable than its source; I could have pushed him gently and he would have fallen down, confessed — heaven only knows what. It seemed that by steadily going about my business I was somehow realizing his fears; he tried, quietly, without enthusiasm, to divert my attention; then left. Though we have long been friends, I could no more bring myself to ask him what was going on than he could manage to ask me to stop.

My logical self, superimposed on my intuition by decades of training and pilpul, notes that I may be wrong about all of this. You will be the first to know if I am; I will write you straightaway. But the rest of me wonders what repercussions of my work he has foreseen and how they will affect him; and I marvel at the strength of that unspoken mood, the universality of that fleeting look, the immediacy and insistence of its impression on me; the smile that touched my lips as half-hearted diversions convinced me that I was somehow unwittingly righting distant wrongs. It occurs to me that he may one day overcome his guilt, discover my awareness of it, and berate me for not reaching out to him (however much he may expect or deserve the result). On that day, there might be a thrill of tension in the air, a sense of inevitability, the briefest flicker of an unmistakable expression on my face…

As SCO prepares to be delisted, the rest of the world (at least those of them who give a damn) wonder idly what will happen to their IP.

SCO prepares for delisting from NASDAQ …

Our sitting President gets frisky with his media support before an interview, and clearly the person behind the camera can’t stand to see such glorious footage brushed away on the cutting room floor.  So, instead of being incinerated, the clipped vulgarity ends up afloat in everyone’s favorite cesspool, Al Gore’s InterNet. 

Bush shoots the birdie like a no-nonsense expert, but giggles afterwards like an amateur…  this short has been posted all over the place, but I like the simple humanity of the clip.  Fwiw, I like the Bush in this clip a lot better than the Edwards foppery making the rounds.

President Bush to audience : “[Fuck you]” …

Or a protagonist that looks surprisingly like him. An old housemate left me a copy of Daikatana, in its original box… the orange color perfectly matches my title, and a certain banner-message I can think of. I haven’t opened it yet, but just having the ION STORM logo on my desk makes it seem heavier, somehow.

That’s the kind of ranting I like to hear. University professors beware, we’re watching how you spend your minutes… and ours. Now if only that would extend to other teachers, and other seminal professions (such as filmmakers).

Christina rants about using time efficiently …

So, there are hours and days and weeks and months where nothing happens. Or where things endeavour to happen but never in any sharply time-delimited fashion. And there are weekends when fifteen different crucial things happen, all magically fitting together, and 90-hour stretches when there isn’t enough time to catch a breath or sleep. And sometimes there are four-hour periods during which five or six different unreschedulable nonrefundable irreplaceable events take place — in the middle of a week in which no others do. Is this a natural property of life? A quality of certain environments? A taste of karmic circumstance? I can’t be the only one to whom this happens; fess up.

“no space available.”

BC calc alums fight ‘55 alums in Ultimate tourney. News on the 11th.

Pretty hilarious. ~ ~ killer app || postal job ||
the cult (1, 2) ||
too late… ||
eternal elementary school ||
masculinity ||
truth (in advertising) ||
sad (1, 2, 3, 4!…) ||
vegans ||
linux ||
end guy
right ||
timeless

I love Brother Blue and was sorry to miss this event.  If you hear about other events of his around town, especially ones including his wife, please let me know.

Brother Blue! …

I like the fact that a totally open informational site, with an active community of thousands, and hundreds of introductory pages, can continue to surprise me two weeks after I became an active community member myself and started reading whatever I could about the site.

For instance, Wikipedia supports TeX fontification.  Hello?  What?  My copy of Office XP can’t manage that, but you’re giving me ~real-time equation rendering as I preview updates to any old wikipedia article? 

Yep. 

TeX’ed fontification: my (re)new(ed) love …

Glorious list of questions. Hosted just down the river, too… A good place to find the right person to chat with about any really important ideas you might have.

The World Question Center …

Howard Dean’s Million-Penpal Jan. and Feb.

Primary Correspondence …