"Security by Microsoft" -- Hole in MS Media DRM allows rogue media files to trigger the download of popups, installation of adware, etc.
something for backyard birdwatching, doctor?
Mr. Wilson, your skills might be needed in the war on terror:
German authorities thought they heard a bird chirping in one of Bin Laden's audiotapes this year, and brought in ornithologists to identify the species — and its habitat — according to reports in the German media."And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling ornithologists!"
CA to dmt: Happy Holidays
u.s. to world : fuck you
I saw the 12th Oceans film. (What happened to 1-10?) Anyway, not crisp at all like 11. Nice to see the T-mobile lady land an acting job. I wonder if the "can you hear me now" guy will get a big break.
"The right stuff," "radical chic," and "the Me Decade" (sometimes altered to "the Me Generation") all became popular phrases, but Wolfe seems proudest of "good ol' boy," which he introduced to the written language in a 1964 article in Esquire about Junior Johnson, the North Carolina stock car racing driver, which was called "The Last American Hero."
SOME stories are simply too improbable to be made up. Here's one: In 1770, the French secretly sent a one-armed amateur botanist named Pierre Poivre -- yes, Peter Pepper -- to the Moluccas, hoping to alter the balance of power by breaking the Dutch stranglehold on a strategic commodity, nutmeg. (Well, two commodities, technically, since mace is made from the membrane that surrounds the flesh inside the fruit of the nutmeg tree.) The plan was almost foiled when some rebellious islanders thought the French might be a Dutch raiding party, but in the end Poivre managed to bring 20,000 nutmeg plants, along with a few hundred clove seedlings, back to Paris to be planted in the Jardin du Roi.
media matters
in case you missed it over at tmn: My friend, on the payment of a further sum, obtained a curious little box which contained some small black lozenges, consisting of the resin of hemp, henbane, crushed datura seeds, butter, and honey, and known in India as Majoon, amongst the Moors as El Mogen.
buy blue
The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.
BitTorrent Gives Hollywood a Headache
Dec. 12, 2004 | LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bram Cohen didn't set out to upset Hollywood movie studios. But his innovative online file-sharing software, BitTorrent, has grown into a piracy problem the film industry is struggling to handle.
Dec. 12, 2004 | LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bram Cohen didn't set out to upset Hollywood movie studios. But his innovative online file-sharing software, BitTorrent, has grown into a piracy problem the film industry is struggling to handle.
One sequence has members of the team watching the 1960 movie Incubus, the made-in-Big Sur all-Esperanto horror movie starring William Shatner and a live billy goat playing Satan. While I'm glad to see this obscurer-than-obscure movie get a little plug, here's a criminal example of the law that you should never cut to a movie that's better than the one you've made. (Blade Part the Third)
lugers is bunk (skinny)
1906 aerial photographs, taken from a kite, of the aftermath of the San Fransisco earthquake.
Pamela M. Lee on Robert Smithson in the new (Dec/Jan) Bookforum:
In its rigor and heft, its scope and illustrations, the new Robert Smithson exhibition catalogue is as compelling as a codex. Published on the occasion of a major traveling retrospective originating at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA), itconveys the gravity of its subject through an encyclopedic array of entries: an exacting survey of Smithson's career by the exhibition's curator, Eugenie Tsai; a scholarly essay by an internationally esteemed art historian (Thomas Crow); an unpublished interview (conducted by Moira Roth) rescued from the dustbin of history; and shorter, more specific takes on diverse aspects of Smithson's practice—the logic of salt in his work; his enantiomorphic chambers; his architectural ambitions; his formative impact on contemporary art. These texts make an unequivocal case for the singularity of Smithson's contribution, detailing a much more complex picture of the artist than that of the cowboy architect behind Spiral Jetty.
"There is no historic preservation district or landmarks commission for hawks' nests. But if there were, the red-tailed hawk's nest at 927 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 74th Street, would surely have qualified. Until Tuesday, the nest stood on a 12th-floor cornice with a sublime aerial view of the urban forest in our midst. Since 1993, 23 young hawks have been raised there, sired by a bird called Pale Male. Thousands and thousands of bird-watchers over the years have followed the lives of the hawks in that nest. But this is not an homage to bird-watching - it's an homage to birds.
On Tuesday, workers took down the nest and, apparently, the metal anti-pigeon spikes that had helped hold it in place. So far, no one from 927 Fifth Avenue has spoken up to defend the co-op board's decision to remove the nest. Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the sky to settle on its nest.
It's always tempting to think that a city like New York has utterly effaced the natural ground on which it was built. Most of the creatures that lived on Manhattan Island several centuries ago would stand no chance of doing so now - not in these new canyons of steel and glass. But the presence of a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks, sequestered on the edge of an apartment building, feels like a memory from a past this city has long since forgotten.
The hawks have gone out of their way to learn to live with us. The least the wealthy residents of 927 Fifth Avenue could have done was learn to live with the hawks."
-nyt op-ed pg 12/9/04
On Tuesday, workers took down the nest and, apparently, the metal anti-pigeon spikes that had helped hold it in place. So far, no one from 927 Fifth Avenue has spoken up to defend the co-op board's decision to remove the nest. Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the sky to settle on its nest.
It's always tempting to think that a city like New York has utterly effaced the natural ground on which it was built. Most of the creatures that lived on Manhattan Island several centuries ago would stand no chance of doing so now - not in these new canyons of steel and glass. But the presence of a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks, sequestered on the edge of an apartment building, feels like a memory from a past this city has long since forgotten.
The hawks have gone out of their way to learn to live with us. The least the wealthy residents of 927 Fifth Avenue could have done was learn to live with the hawks."
-nyt op-ed pg 12/9/04
design your own superhero.
Typical ideological confusion in today’s Post regarding the baseball steroids issue. They feature this op-ed from a right-wing think-tanker taking a libertarian position: “so what’s the problem?” At the same time they have yet another editorial condemning the scourge, following up their “throw the bum out” rants about Giambi. Personal freedom and non-regulation are always good, except when they’re not. Does this represent a diversity of opinion, or just the ever useful ability to hold contradictory positions at the same time, which serves politicians and moralists so well?
