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September 30, 2007

'Rendering in Real-Time'

Robin says,

This might be the best metaphor I have heard about a person's brain, ever. Jon Stewart on Stephen Colbert:

"[The whole show] depends on Stephen's ability to process information as this other person," says Stewart. "I've seen talk-show hosts who can't do that for real. ... And then you watch Colbert and it's like the first time you use broadband: 'How the fuck did that happen?' He's rendering in real time."

From the Vanity Fair piece, which is good.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:38 PM

Density

Robin says,

I've mentioned Radio Lab before, but Tim just posted about an episode I hadn't heard and I downloaded it and IT BLEW MY MIND.

You've got to give it a listen if you haven't already. Immediately, you'll hear a huge difference from the boring march of words that characterizes every other radio show, ever. On Radio Lab, the words and sonic interjections are fragmented, tiled, cross-cut, layered. There's just so much more to absorb; it lights your brain up. Radio Lab is DENSE.

This is how all explanatory media should feel. We're ready for it.

P.S. I don't want to focus entirely on the meta-method stuff, though, 'cause the ideas and the reporting are also sublime. This is a must-listen.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:45 PM

Proof of Purchase

Matt says,

A diary/blog written on scanned receipts. (Gadgetopian.)

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:38 PM

Shaun Tan

Matt says,

Blog of a Bookslut has been posting links to the work of Shaun Tan. Pure gorgeous. Check out the wordless panels (courtesy of New York Magazine) from Tan's The Arrival.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:27 PM

September 29, 2007

American Stakeholders, Part II

Matt says,

Remember this spring, when I was gushing about the American Stakeholder Act ($6,000 given to every child at birth for capital investments)? Apparently, no less bright a light than Hillary Clinton is all over the idea. Awesome. I wonder if the New America Foundation is working some kind of Manchurian Candidate-fu?

Comments (5) | Permasnark | Posted: 4:58 PM

September 27, 2007

High and Low

Robin says,

Awesome riff on music over at n+1:

If you could write perfectly, you would write the way Charles Mingus composed music: uncompromising intelligence and seriousness married to shit-kicking raunch.

Frustratingly sans permalink -- it's just the site front page -- so get it while it lasts.

P.S. n+1 seemingly in parody of itself: "Against Email."

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:27 AM

September 26, 2007

Genre

Robin says,

LoadingReadyRun.com gives Halo 3 the EPIC treatment. Funny how the visual language is so recognizable -- and actually quite a bit slicker in this execution! I'm impressed. (Though the voice has got nothing on Matt, and the music's no Minus Kelvin.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:22 PM

Reading Roundup

Matt says,

Today at work, I convened a tiny confab of colleagues for an inaugural, bimonthly, lunchtime essay-reading series. We kicked it off with the National Magazine Award-winning essay Russell and Mary, by Michael Donohue, a work he apparently spent five years putting together.

Blog_Little_Rock_Nine.jpgKevin Drum linked this Vanity Fair piece tracing the last 50 years of the life of the two women depicted in this sad photograph, taken at the integration of a school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I've been enjoying the blog Nonfiction Readers Anonymous for its choice snippets of random tomes.

All Aunt Hagar's Children is finally out in paperback.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:32 PM

September 25, 2007

Democratization of Manipulation, Part 4

Robin says,

Somehow this relates to the theme, but I'm not sure quite what to make of it yet. (Previously.) (Via.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:13 PM

September 24, 2007

Maximum Mumbai

Robin says,

Enjoyed this NYT slideshow about Mumbai. Want to visit. Bad.

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 12:14 AM

September 22, 2007

Snarkmatrix Aligned

Robin says,

It doesn't happen often!

Comments (6) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:55 AM

September 21, 2007

And Timbaland Hasn't Changed His Clothes in Three Days

Robin says,

Remixing Stronger. Actually really illuminating to see these super-famous guys sitting around like schlubs, just banging on keyboards. Everybody's normal.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:03 AM

Where Writers Write

Robin says,

I absolutely love this sort of thing: images of the rooms where writers do their writing.

Totally approve of the attic, envious of the wall of books, and digging the pleasant insanity... but clearly this is the move. I'm there.

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:36 AM

September 20, 2007

There Be Pirates

Matt says,

I realize this is 24 hours too late, but on any day of the year, the International Chamber of Commerce's Weekly Piracy Report is the best reminder that for all our iPhones and gizmos, the world is still much the same as it was 300 years ago. An excerpt from this week's report:

Five robbers, in two motor boats, armed with guns and knives boarded an anchored chemical tanker from the bow using ropes and hooks. Duty crew spotted the robbers and raised the alarm. The robbers broke the padlock on the forward store and stole ship's stores and escaped. Bonny signal station was called many times but did not respond. Master requested for additional guards from agents.
Note: Armed theft is a serious crime and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, or whatever. But that somehow doesn't mitigate the vision of a crew of peg-legged, one-eyed, 'do-ragged blaggards scaling the side of a sailboat with knives in their teeth, threatening to make some scurvy sea dogs walk a plank. (Clearly I saw this on Read/Write Web.)
Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 8:02 AM

September 19, 2007

The Acts of King Arthur

Robin says,

Um, okay, who knew John Steinbeck wrote an adaptation of the King Arthur legend? Not me! But it sounds sorta mythically awesome in its own right, doesn't it? The lost Excalibur of YA fiction! Bring it on!

Joshua Glenn in the Boston Globe says:

Still, like everything Steinbeck wrote, the book teaches us about regional economic development, gender roles, class structure, and man's inhumanity to man... while remaining a gripping read.

Ha ha -- Steinbeck, the poet laureate of regional economic development. Awesome.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:45 PM

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty

Matt says,

If you weren't paying attention, Kottke's begun excavating the archival treats freed by the demise of TimesSelect.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:13 PM

September 18, 2007

The Sign of the Bat

Robin says,

Via Kottke, a look at the Batman logo and typography over the years in five parts: one, two, three, four, five. Honestly I think this is interesting even if you're not a nerd. And a really wonderful example of a careful, long-form blog-vestigation -- the very opposite of most blog doodlings (mine included) and, therefore, very much an object of my admiration.

"Blog-vestigation?" I don't know, it just seemed right.

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:41 PM

An Old Google Easter Egg

Robin says,

Pleasingly dorky. It makes me happy (and optimistic for Google) that it is still online.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:18 PM

And the Emmy for Best Powerpoint Presentation Goes to...

Robin says,

Ha!

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:55 PM

Game Roundup

Matt says,

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:17 PM

September 17, 2007

Times on Times

Robin says,

The NYT announces its new, more open site policies in hilarious fashion. I love NYT meta-reporting!

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:41 PM

Book Club Challenge

Matt says,

All right, Snarketeers, the gauntlet is thrown: Help me come up with a theme and some nominations for readings for my book club.

Every month, one of my fellow book-clubbers is assigned to nominate three or four books. When we meet to discuss the past month's reading, we choose one of the nominees for the next month. Being something of an oddball, I like to organize my nominations around themes. The last time, for example, my theme was "Masters of Humankind." The books I proposed were No god but God (God), The Year of Magical Thinking (Death), The Time-Traveler's Wife (Time), and Moneyball (Money). (The club picked The Time-Traveler's Wife. The actual selection doesn't make much of a difference to me, because I plan to read all the books I propose, and I did.)

The theme can be oblique, clever, or straightforward. (In the straightforward camp, for example, I've been considering the four elements -- Cloud Atlas (Air), Snow (Water), American Prometheus or Dante (Fire), Coal: A Human History or Salt: A World History (Earth).) They can be either a prominent theme of the book or just a play on its title. We prefer books that have been out in paperback, and a nomination almost always goes unpicked if one of us has already read it. I aim for variety in the selection -- memoir, biography, journalistic non-fiction, literary fiction, magical realism, social history.

So, whaddya say? Help me out?

Comments (10) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:28 PM

Non-Programming

Robin says,

Over at Steven Talcott Smith's blog, tales of non-programmers writing software. Some really fun stories in there, all of which I am entirely sympathetic to, as someone who a) admittedly does not have The Knack for programming but b) really enjoys it anyway.

And besides, knack or not, I think it's on its way to becoming a new required literacy. Sure sure, computers will get easier to program, and the gap between our intent and their instructions will close as they scootch our way -- but you'll still have to learn to think procedurally, to think in terms of objects or messages or other computer-y things.

And you'll have to learn what && means. You always end up having to learn what && means.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:39 PM

September 16, 2007

Bling and Beta

Robin says,

BAM!

7:03 p.m.: "Heroes" hero Masi Oka presents the first ever Emmy Award for creative achievement in interactive television to former Vice President Al Gore's "Current: An Interactive TV Network." He also earned a standing ovation and offered this shout-out: "More to come, Current.com, next month."

I have to say: awards = pseudo-metallic dross, don't rely on external validation, who can even remember who won what last year, etc., etc., but even so it's pretty cool.

Sign up for the beta why doncha!

Update: the video!

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:24 PM

The Memory Police

Matt says,

Whenever I think about our reflexive distrust of emerging technology, I remember Plato's Phaedrus, in which Socrates argues that writing is inferior to rhetoric. Socrates recounts a legend in which the Egyptian king Thamus refuses the gift of writing from the god Theuth, saying that writing will be deleterious to true wisdom. We will read, but never know, Thamus says. Writing may remind us, but it can't educate us, the way a speaker can. The irony in this passage, of course, is that Phaedrus is itself a written work.

There's a lot to be said about the curious intersection between technology and memory -- how technology seems to allow us to both retain more and forget more -- but Jenny Lyn Bader managed to leave out all the interesting parts in her NYT Week in Review essay ("Britney Spears? That's All She Rote") on how people can't remember anything anymore. And along the way, she manages to fit Britney's lip-synching, organ transplant recipients, and "The Vagina Monologues" into this tortured half-argument. it's kind of a train wreck. I really have nothing especially profound to say about this essay, it just seemed a blogworthy exemplar of the awful our-culture's-going-to-hell/wasn't-it-better-when form. And she cites Phaedrus too, with no nod to the irony therein.

Comments (4) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:28 PM

September 15, 2007

Grow Games

Robin says,

You need to try this right now: Grow Island. It's a sort of oblique, cutesy, super-simple SimCity. Sort of. And actually, that comparison doesn't do it justice, because SimCity, unlike this game, never really had any soul.

This earlier iteration is fun, too (there's a whole site full of them), but less systems interacting and more absurdist choose-your-own-adventure. In one go-round I got a smiling cabbage; in another I ended up with an underground kingdom of tiny cyclopean goblins.

In any case, the Japanese designer who made them is a genius. Actually, the whole thing feels kinda like a Japanese Orisinal to me -- less arcade-y, more puzzle-y, but with the same underlying sweetness.

(Via the new and excellent Rock Paper Shotgun, which tags this game, correctly, "cute as a basket full of ducklings.")

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:01 PM

Bookinist

Matt says,

charibarrow.jpgIt doesn't exactly look comfortable, and it's not exactly pretty. But it's a chair-barrow with a lamp attached to it. It's even apparently got little shelves hidden beneath the armrests. I want one! Alas, all the text is in German, and I don't see anything that resembles an "add-to-cart" button.

(Via my bookstore. See also: Bibliochaise.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 8:27 AM

September 14, 2007

Facebook's New Ads

Robin says,

Not the sort of thing I usually post here, but I don't know, this just feels like the future to me somehow. I mean, the "keywords" field? Nuts.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:06 PM

Prepare for Massive Amazon Wishlist Expansion

Robin says,

What single book is the best introduction to your field? AskMeFi-ers respond. So awesome.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:30 AM

Pretty Little Mistakes

Matt says,

Firing an employee is a messy business. No small business likes to do it. There are the headaches