October 2008 Archives

I've written two posts (I write posts in Emacs and paste them here, in Movable Type), meaning to post them, but I've never felt like posting them. So, sorry for the silence.

Some things of interest (perhaps to no one but me):

October 28, 2008

"Army defense task force targeting hackers". Mentions The Defense Industrial Base Cyber-Security Task Force and a recent report by The Defense Science Board.

Kramnik and Anand continue to scrap in the World Chess Championship. (Update: Anand won 10/30/08)
Eddie Campbell on the British small press comics scene of the '80s: Part 1 and Part 2.

Someone at the A.V. Club watches all 5 Saw films, in a row, in a theater, with teenagers, for the first time ever, which reminds me of my favorite scene in Cabin Fever:



The Cure, "To the Sky"
one perfect morning i was all alone
listening to the blaze of summer
drifting
i was falling
i was floating in a golden haze
breathing in the sky blue sounds
of memories of other days

and in my dreams i was a child
flowers in my mouth and in my eyes
and i was floating through the colours of a sky
up to the stars and angels

up up up to heaven
up up up forever
up up up to heaven
up up up forever

turning in my climb
i looked down on a lake
and traced upon the water there
i saw your face
and sang in recollection
of the times we shared...
then pushed on ever upward to the sky

up up up to heaven
up up up forever
up up up to heaven
up up up forever

and in my dreams i was a child
flowers in my mouth and in my eyes
and i was floating through the colours of a sky
up to the stars and angels

up up up to heaven
up up up forever
up up up to heaven
up up up forever

October 22, 2008
It's dark and cold and on the way in there were people welding on a new building, and all I could see was the sparks.

Wikimedia Ubuntu migration FAQ. Q: "Why Ubuntu in particular?" A: "It's got the things we like about Fedora [...] with a longer security update schedule, plus the things we like about Debian [...]."

Carl Sagan's Cosmos.



Henry Rollins and the Emergence of Hardcore.
 
From Mark Cuban and the people who brought you sharesleuth.com: bailoutsleuth.com. The goal: "Its job is simple, keep an eye on our taxpayer dollars and call Bullshit when necessary."

"You know that foreign correspondent's ruse; in the days when you had your profession on the passport, you put writer; and then when you were in some trouble spot, in order to conceal your identity you simply changed the r in writer to an a and became a waiter. I always thought there was a great truth there. Writing is waiting, for me certainly. It wouldn't bother me a bit if I didn't write one word in the morning. I'd just think, you know, not yet. The job seems to be one of making yourself receptive to whatever's on the rise that day. I was quite surprised to read how much dread Father felt as he approached the typewriter in the morning." Martin Amis on writing. (via The Elegant Variation)

13 hours of Lisp (Clojure is the language of the future?) and your Free Will Astrology.

"Beloveds are universal standards." - Laura Carter

I woke and stayed in my bathrobe, and I haven't read Interview with a Vampire (it was given to me by a student). We're all Derrida now. Paul Virilio discusses the current financial crisis. Hannah Arendt: "progress and tragedy are the two faces of the same coin."
Enough theory. Bruce Schneier breaks airport security. Now we can all have our own Esther Dyson! Her public profile is here. (You don't know how long I've waited.) (via No Fear the Future)

Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Wired Keyboards. Nice.
Video and slides from 2008 OWASP AppSec Conference.

Separating poetry and lyrics in Saul Williams, which reminds me of an interview, read a while ago, in which Lucinda Williams (no relation), whose father is an English teacher, asked the question: "Dylan, great poet or great lyricist?" I'm not sure whether to reject the distinction, the binary, or to simply argue lyricist. It depends on when you catch me.

The creamer we currently have in the office:

A general anatomy of non-dairy creamer.

Interviews from the Dalkey Archives. Authors include Angela Carter (whose book Burning Your Boats is a favorite), William T. Vollman, and Gilbert Sorrentino. (via http://stevenhartsite.wordpress.com/)

From this week's New Yorker

"The world of Gilbert & George, now on gaudy, overwhelming display at the Brooklyn Museum, revolves around the artists themselves, a pair of Brits dressed in conservative suits--or in nothing at all. On the evidence of some hundred photographs and drawings made between 1970 and 2006, the couple's work, which has expanded from postcard to billboard scale, has remained almost defiantly autobiographical and queer in every important sense of the word. Installed on two floors with no regard for chronology, their signature photographic grids feel especially dark and dense here; the best of them are as monumental, mannered, and arresting as history paintings. Gilbert & George use their own working-class East End London neighborhood as a microcosm in which to explore urban vitality, anxiety, bigotry, and decay, along with the bigger issues of sex, death, faith, and the redemptive power of beauty. Their companions on these explorations are handsome young men--women are utterly absent--who loom like demigods in landscapes that veer between Heaven and Hell. For the reliably provocative, even maddening Gilbert & George, there is little middle ground."

Andrei Codrescu:
"make yourselves at home
you won't be bailed in or out again
you're safe in Second Life"
More here.

17 years ago this week Linus announces "a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers."

"Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! = Shadow of the Colossus"



Your Free Will Astrology for the week.

"Judge Orders 17 Detainees at Guantánamo Freed"



"The Ambition of the Short Story" (via Kottke)

"The exhibition of this fundamentalist version of femininity and maternity in the American presidential election concerns all of us," wrote Julia Kristeva in Libération. "Whether she represents the banality of evil or tragic caricature, can this strangling of women's emancipation... be reversed?"

Dada Magazine (1917-1918)

Gilbert and George in the NYTimes. I had a chance, when in London years ago, to see a number of their works. I was impressed.

Rollins is on tour:


How to Crochet an Amigurumi Toy

Prepping for the next change notes of John Cage's 639-year organ composition. The link has video of the last change. The halfway mark for the piece is 2319. John Cage is the shit.

Take a tour of Turkish hacker Cha0's house (via Dancho Danchev)


"Mainstream magazines have no poetry, they just want to sell you something or be hip and cool," he told the Japanese zine Hitspaper. "I prefer the vulnerability of trying to do something honest." Momus seeks answer to the question "How will the current financial crisis impact what we do?"

"An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform." Don't worry, though, Skype's "extremely concerned."

John Lydon's butter commercial.

The 50th anniversary of my favorite cartoon character, Huckleberry Hound. More on Metafilter

Sinfest:


The NYTimes on Shepard Fairey.

Build a treehouse.

xtracycle is making some amazing bikes, and they're posting the designs:


A new post from Rigorous Intuition.

The SANS Internet Security Storm Center is running a series on incident handling.

Brian Aker on Amazon v. Google. He links to Jesse Vincent's presentation "Digital Sharecropping", which is of interest as well. Related: Stallman's right.

"What stimulating times to be cursed with thinking like a science fiction writer." Chris Nakashima-Brown on the current financial crisis. Related: Charles Stross says you can't write near-future science fiction anymore. (It's like the singularity all over again.)

People continue to die:


Douglas Rushkoff, "No Money Down"

Post Dérive is, like Anarchaia and Versus CluClu Land, a blog I wait for posts from.



Snow falling on Mars:


Experimental Philosophy in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Malware Challenge!