Last week Peter Gabriel released Up, his first studio album in 10 years. I am a big fan and was not disappointed when the CD finally arrived and I had a chance to listen to it. NPR has a nice interview with Peter Gabriel that talks about the new album and what he's been up to for all this time. Now I'm anxiously waiting to hear whether he'll go on tour again...

Not even on my wildest night in college, could I have accomplished this!

Follow up: I was so hoping that Randy Moss would actually be disciplined for his recent run-in with the law (literally), but I knew I was asking for too much. Not only are charges being reduced to almost nothing, but the Vikings are barely slapping him on the wrist. It's unconscionable that a player with his history of insubordination and misplaced, inflated ego should get away scot-free.

I present to you: the World's Ugliest Jeep.

Listen to an episode of Mullet Talk , an actual radio show in Pittsburgh.

KFC is selling "extra spicy" recipe again!

Engineers in France have developed an air-powered car. Running on compressed air, the car has a top speed of 110 km/hr and a range of around 200 km, so it's not the most practical. Still, it produces zero pollutants and a tank of air is estimated to cost only $1.50, so the implications for the technology are great, especially if it can be refined. Let's see how long it takes Big Oil to get a whiff of this and squash it like a bug.

Because I know you use these things every day, The Collective Noun Page lists the correct collective nouns for just about everything imaginable, like a "cavalcade of eagles" and a "shrewdness of apes." The page collects documented terms as well as humorous suggestions, like a "brace of orthodontists." How droll.

F*cking punk.

OK, Blogger is going nuts and is corrupting posts today. Be prepared for some weirdness until I sort this out. It looks like it combined a new post with an old post in some unholy combination that I can't fix, so I'm not having much luck here. I'm going to have to repost things with today's date and hope things sort themselves out in the archive. Unfortunately, I lost some of the (rare) comments posted. This is really annoying...
Update: I've contained the problem, but it's not totally gone. If you look below, the post about a new Ikea ad is the one that started this whole thing. Every now and then Blogger messes up hyperlinks and corrupts a single post, but it's never escalated to the point where it messed up other posts as well. Some creative redating and reformatting of posts seems to have brought things back to somewhat normal, but I'm pretty pissed off at having to figure all of this out.

Take a look at this Lego Harpsichord. But wait, it's not just a model, it is an actual functioning harpsichord! Now that's impressive, although the coolness factor of this Lego Star Destroyer is up there as well ;-).

Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments, presented by Physics World, encompass some of the most important, yet elegantly simple scientific discoveries.
Update: For those of you adamantly against registering with the New York Times (unfortunately required to view online articles), use "Metafilter0" as the login and "Metafilter" as the password.

Keanu Reeves is supposed to play Superman in the upcoming Superman: Last Son Of Krypton. I think the "Reeves" thing must have confused somewhat dim movie producers, since as we know both George Reeves and Christopher Reeve played the Man of Steel on TV and in the movies. Hmmm, who doesn't fit in here? Somehow, I can't picture Superman saying, "Whoa."

This is the most unreal and amazing story I have read in a long time. "Man rescued after months at sea"

Having lived in Orange County, CA I can tell you that Catalina is about 35 miles from Long Beach. On a smog free day you can see the island from the mainland. That makes this story even more amazing to me. Gilligan never had it so tough.

Google News is pretty damn cool. The page is apparently automatically generated from "4,000 continuously updated news sources" and does a pretty good job IMHO. I remember a couple of years ago when I "discovered" how great their search engine was. And look at them now, they're all grown up...

With rumors of a Nirvana boxed set and/or Greatest Hits CD surfacing, there are questions as to who "owns" the music of Kurt Cobain. The Rolling Stone article tells of master tapes found in Krist Novoselic's basement, one of which includes a pretty cool 1994 unreleased recording, "You Know You're Right."  However, the dispute between Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Courtney Love continues, so grab the MP3 while you can.
Update: As I feared, the link to the MP3 is now broken. You'll just have to wait for the CD, visit your favorite p2p application (*cough*Kazaa Lite*cough*), or beg me to e-mail it to you ;-).

ESPN's consistently great Page2 section presents "What were they thinking?" This particular one is about Madonna, but the others in the sidebar are pretty amusing too.

Note: The post below appears to be really f*cking things up after Blogger corrupted it today. Hopefully things will sort themselves out in the archives, but in the meantime I have no idea how to fix posts below
Update: Aha, fixed it! Since the <i> tag was nested in the corrupted post and I couldn't edit it, I cleverly inserted a corresponding </i> tag into the post afterwards to clean things up. What a pain...

test

The new Ikea ad by Spike Jonze (director of 0 comments 

According to the Drudge Report, "a Rupert Murdoch TV game show that may choose the outcome of the next White House race" is in the works for the FX network. Once again, unimaginative, smarmy television executives are trying to take a formula that worked and apply it to something else in the hopes of cashing in. However, this is a new low, and that is really saying something! I almost didn't post this for fear that it was a prank, but I couldn't pass up this opportunity to rail against such a travesty even if this turns out to be a bad joke. First of all, trying to reduce a presidential election to a popularity contest is just plain wrong. I'm not trying to be naive; I know that for all intensive purposes it often ends up that way. However, using the formula of American Idol and Survivor to choose a candidate for Leader Of The Free World just strikes me as particularly offensive, totally undemocratic, and probably unconstitutional to boot. Second of all, if you think that the Florida voting scandal was bad in the previous presidential election, imagine how bad it will be if there is a repeat of the recent phone-in voting controversy for American Idol.

I really hope that this is just a joke, but then again I really wouldn't be surprised to see executives put something this asinine on the air. I just hope the viewing audience refuses to watch and demonstrates itself to be smarter than it is assumed to be, although I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath on that count either. Pity.

Rolling Stone's article "Don't blame CD sales woes on the Internet" succinctly points out what I've been saying for a while now. Yeah, people are downloading music from the Internet. And maybe they are still buying CDs, maybe not. The fact that the industry is so shortsighted about all of this and is trying to stop file-sharing at all costs shows that they are unwilling to use technology to their advantage. Many people (myself included) would pay a small, fair fee to get quality downloads from the Internet. However, none of the attempts that I've seen has come up with a way to do this that allows me to manage the resulting download in an equitable way. Until record executives work with the Internet community rather than against it, the mere fact that "we're fighting the Man" will be enough rebellious incentive to continue thumbing our noses at their authoritarian actions and lame attempts of conciliation.

Science fiction author David Brin wrote an interesting review of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace and has recently followed that up with one on The Attack Of The Clones. Both are incisive, although perhaps dwelling a little too long in critiquing the pseudo-Campbellian mythology inherent in Lucas' vision. Many of the annoying plot disparities and outright illogicalities are cited, although he does admit that the special effects and music were dazzling. Still, he echoes my thoughts about Episode 3:

Despite every flaw, there IS a way that Lucas could weave all the threads together and pull a miracle of cinematic legerdemain, causing it all to make magnificent sense.

I'd wager my house that he won't do it.

Last night I decided to watch FOX's new undercover cop drama "Fastlane". I am willing to give any show with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen a chance ;-). I want that hour back FOX! Almost everything about this show was bad. FOX must have started with "Miami Vice"as a model for the show. Instead of drugs these trendy cops (one black and one white) are hot on the trail of something much less interesting... Exotic Car Fencing! Apparently the writers thought the dialog wasn't bad enough, so they jammed some racially astereotypical scenes in there. (ie. black guy country line dancing and white guy gambling and talking smack in jail with the black inmates). The special effects weren't even believable. (e.g. bullet holes in a windshield minutes before the shots were fired). To finish the Miami Vice rip-off, the song "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins was used during the show. The producer chose to use it awkwardly and out of place. It was forced into a beach scene in bright California sunlight with no dialog. I wanted to cry. Anyway, I really felt like panning this show because... well, it just sucked. I am certain that the 12-16 year old crowd might feel differently (lots of fast cars and action), but I think that FOX should rename this show "Trainwreck" and dump it quickly. BRING BACK "FAMILY GUY" in it's place!
-Matt

Join the Cusack For President campaign! I saw this a long time ago, well before I started blogging, but I spotted it on another page today and thought it was worth spreading the word, for whatever good it will do.

Pulp Simpsons is a collection of Simpsons sketches of Pulp Fiction scenes allegedly done by real Simpsons animators. The sketches look authentic enough, but remember that this is Pulp Fiction, so it could be NSFW.

The emoticon turns 20 today! The first :-) is attributed to a Scott Fahlman, but I have a feeling that some irate netizen will surface to claim prior art. :-p

Congress yet again showed its ignorance in passing the Children's Internet Protection Act, which went into effect last year. While ostensibly a measure to protect children from pornographic and offensive content, the technology to "filter" inappropriate sites is far from mature, causing many unrelated and totally innocuous sites to be blocked. Although many teachers and administrators are aware of this reality, schools can lose millions of dollars in federal money if they do not comply with this act by installing filters. Apparently the extension of this law to public libraries is pending an appeal, but it has never been challenged as it pertains to schools. As an example mentioned in the article, I think it's a crying shame that a student looking up information on Red Hat Software would need to get the site approved by a "community-based review committee" because it was mistakenly blocked. I do applaud one school district in Oregon for refusing the money rather than submitting to these constraints, but not many schools can afford to turn down these kinds of grants.

Don't drop the soap!

For only $199, you can now buy Roomba, a small horseshoe crab-like robot that can vacuum a room automatically. The company building this is called irobot and is led by a former head of M.I.T.'s AI lab and two former graduate students, so there is actually sound technology behind this endeavour. I'm still waiting for Rosie The Robot, myself.

In yet another preposterously idiotic step in the ongoing clash of music companies with "music pirates," new CDs by Tori Amos and Pearl Jam are being distributed to reviewers inside Sony WalkMans that are glued shut and with headphones glued on (NY Times link - free registration required). So according to the letter of the DMCA, "humans are now circumvention devices" if they figure out how to get the players open ;-). How asinine is this?

The Tenacious D video of "Tribute" is pretty damn cool. For those of you who aren't familiar with Tenacious D, it's a rock band with Jack Black and Kyle Gass. Jack Black's somewhat hyperkinetic acting style is pretty well reflected in his music, and the video is hilarious. I also found a Flash animation video they did called "F*ck Her Gently." This one is also pretty funny, although definitely NSFW.

Follow-up: CNN has picked up the story about Buzz Aldrin that I reported on yesterday and has added some details.

You might remember the horrible TV show that purported that all of the moon landings were elaborately-staged hoaxes. Well, at least one astronaut has taken umbrage with this recently. Earlier this week 72 year-old Buzz Aldrin allegedly "struck a man in the face...after the man asked Aldrin to swear on a Bible that he had been to the moon." The story is skimpy on details, but I for one will go out on a limb and say the man deserved it. I'd also like to know more about the man so that I can make fun of him for getting beat up by a 72-year old.

Labatt's has perfected the technology of pouring a perfect draft beer every time with their new "tower" and specially shaped glasses. I think this is pretty damn cool, especially as it comes from the makers of one of my favorite beers. I wonder when (if?) we'll see this in the States...

Out Of This World is a beautifully done page that chronicles the development of celestial atlases from 1482 to 1851. I've always been fascinated with maps, but the lavish illustrations of constellations found here are on another level.

Never forget.

Play this addictive game to test your reflexes and mouse accuracy.

This ASCII "music video" of The Offspring's "Come Out And Play" may be crudely drawn, but you have to admit it's pretty creative.

McSweeney's presents: Internet Tendency: Vocabulary Words We Learned by Playing Dungeons & Dragons. I will admit that I played D&D back in the '80s while in elementary school, although I wasn't too serious about it (I was too busy playing on my Commodore 64 :-). However, I do remember encountering a lot of the words in this list for the first time as I played. It's kind of cool to think back and realize that...

With the one-year anniversary of the horrible tragedy of 9/11/01 coming up, there is obviously going to be a barrage of media coverage, mostly with the intent of putting the events into perspective and ensuring that the lives of the people lost are never forgotten. I figured that rather than link to one of those myriad stories, which aren't necessarily bad, just too glaringly omnipresent, I'd link to something different. Salon.com's "Forbidden thoughts about 9/11," is an article that records people's unspoken thoughts on the event. With the prevalence of knee-jerk sentimentalism and PC lip service, it's interesting to see what some people really thought but didn't necessarily ever say out loud. Some of the things are definitely inappropriate, but some are brutally honest in a way that most media outlets will not have the guts to air.

The New Times L.A. article "Enough, Already" also explores the tragedy in a different way, vilifying those who are unjustly profiting and highlighting other global tragedies that have happened since 9/11.

An interesting articles by the New York Times called "The Height Of Ambition" explores the historical background of the World Trade Center Towers themselves.

Did you know that there is such a thing as "competitive Cup Stacking?" I sure didn't, but not only is there such thing, but there is also a video teaching you how to get better at it. Take a look at this page that loads a QuickTime video clip; the little girl is stacking those cups at actual speed!

The TV set celebrated its 75th anniversary last Saturday, September 7th. Let's take a moment to thank the genius of Philo T. Farnsworth...

I know I rant about the dumbing-down of America every now and then, but I truly feel that subjecting your child to hours and hours of rote spelling memorization for upcoming spelling bees is a little too much. I believe that expanding a child's vocabulary by reading to and with them is extremely important, but when they're learning nothing but words like "aition, campanile, kittel, [and] giaour" then I debate the usefulness of the endeavour. And when you convince them to continue by calling it "playing" and invoking guilt-inducing mantras like "Remember the family" it borders on unconscionable, in my opinion.

Go 'topes!

It's Friday! Time for a fun Flash game: Golden Arrow.

It's all but official: Napster is gone. Of course, it's been gone in spirit for some time now, but the recent blocking of the sale of Napster to Bertelsmann pretty much ends any chance of resurrection. As most people know, only a couple of years ago, Napster revolutionized the way that music was experienced, discovered, and shared. Although this technology can be (and was) abused, that cannot be totally avoided no matter what the situation might be. I personally downloaded my share of music files, but I can honestly say that I was introduced to many artists I would have never have heard of otherwise and did in fact by more CDs as a result. I'm not convinced that Napster could ever return in a form that appealed as widely as the original did, but I really hope that the industry will eventually get smart enough to embrace technology rather than hinder it.

Read this great excerpt of "The Simpsons Generation" that explores the cultural significance of The Simpsons in the '90s. The author is obviously a great fan of the TV show and manages to not only recall favorite plotlines but demonstrate how they affected the cultural and social fabric of the day. Finally, someone really gets The Simpsons! I'm tempted to go out and buy the magazine (Shift) and read the entire article, because the excerpt stops short of expanding this train of thought into how things like Nirvana, the dotcom industry and other events and phenomena of the decade relate.

Let's get this straight right off the bat: the word "niggardly" means stingy. Anyone bothering to open a dictionary would know that it has no relation to a racial or ethnic slur, as its etymology dates back to Middle English. None of these facts helped a fourth-grade teacher in North Carolina who received a formal reprimand for using the word. Apparently "parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur." I can't tell you how much this irks me. It is patently obvious to the least intelligent person that this teacher was not using the word as a racial slur but was only trying to expand her students' vocabulary. The article recalls a similar incident in Washington, D.C., when an aide to the mayor was fired (and later rehired) for using the term. Read the friggin' dictionary and give me a break.

In this picture it actually looks like people are playing hockey on unicycles. How droll...

Roald Dahl is one of my favorite authors, not only for the many childrens' books he wrote but also for his short stories that never failed to enrapture me. This MetaFilter discussion has several links of interest and a discussion about this great (and unfortunately, late) author. His official site in particular is a lot of fun.

No reasonable person can argue that Saddam Hussein does not pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies. However, it seems that Vice President Cheney is a unique position of hypocrisy when it comes to Iraq. As head of Halliburton, he not only helped Iraq to rebuild its oil fields after the Persian Gulf War, but also "dealt with several brutal dictatorships, including the despicable government of Burma (Myanmar)...[and] played questionable roles in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Somalia and Indonesia." Halliburton was also "fined $3.8 million for re-exporting goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions." To be fair, as the article points out, the only reason that Democrats didn't jump all over this is because several prominent Democrats were involved in similar deals. The fact that corporate politics has prevented these dealings from coming to light really angers me. To me, the most egregious thing is the present administration's blatantly two-faced attempt to restore ethics to the corporate world, when in fact both W and Cheney epitomized corporate greed and lack of ethics when they were in the private sector.

Rarely does a government program come along that is truly innovative and highly successful. That is how I would describe the Amber Alert System for the safe recovery of abducted children. Even though the rate of child abductions is on the decline nationwide, this program (now in 26 states) has been credited with the safe return of 27 children. Quick to bet on a sure thing, congress is stepping in to help the effort.

Ultimate Flash Face lets you make your own interactive mug shot/police sketch of a face. You'd be surprised with how much you can play around with it...

Wow! Check out this collection of RealVideo TV commercials of home video gaming systems from the '70s and '80s. My old ColecoVision is still at my parents; maybe I should rescue it next time I'm there...

Yeehaa! Take The Hazzard County Driver's Test!

ESPN has a great feature on the 20 best sports movies of all time. It's a pretty good list, with a lot of fun '80s flicks making the cut, by the way. There are a lot of different critics' opinions as well, along with the 10 best actresses, 10 best actors, and 10 best moments in a sports film. And to finish it off, there is a list of top 10 worst sports movies.

However, I have to agree with Bill Simmons that the exclusion of the Karate Kid trilogy is quite a travesty. He makes a very thorough argument that I can't do justice, so put on "You're The Best" and read his commentary.

"Bye Bye Bye!" (sorry, couldn't resist) It's apparently official: Lance Bass is not becoming the world's third "space tourist" because he couldn't come up with the money for the flight. I've thought all along that these "space tourists" were totally inappropriate considering how long fully-qualified astronauts train to get into space to actually make a contribution. Obviously, these "space tourists" are the equivalent of excess baggage; the Russians have already said that a cargo container with extra equipment is being taken in Lance's place. Yes, I know that they are providing much-needed money to the space program, but I don't think that justifies them jeopardizing the mission by floating around in the way the entire time when someone else could actually be doing some good up there.

And of course, my big sticking point is this: it's a freakin' Boy Band member we're talking about here! What was that about?! Why not just send up ALF so that we all are convinced to switch to 1-800-COLLECT or whatever he's pawning these days. Which bothers me to no end, obviously. The song "Ramble On" has quite ironically popped up into my head...

Mark Knoller, a CBS News radio correspondent, is known as the "leading collector of modern presidential arcana," and "collects data about presidential activities as if it were baseball trivia." He has tallied some very interesting statistics about W: he's "spent 42 percent of his term so far at one of his three leisure destinations (Camp David, Kennebunkport, and his Texas ranch)" and has "devoted far more time to golf (15 rounds) than to solo news conferences (six)." Go figure. Ha, get it? Go figure? Never mind...

ZDNet (among many other news sources) reports that Google is inaccessible in China, as the Communist Party expands its control over web content in the country. And it's no coincidence that a Communist Party congress is upcoming in November, "sparking speculation of a crackdown on Internet content viewed as subversive." Great. I think it's a damn shame that no other country has had the balls to make more of an issue of things like this happening in China, to say nothing of the more egregious human rights violations. For a discussion of the Google issue, Slashdot (as always) is a good source.

Take a look at some cool high speed photography pictures. I think the first one, a balloon just after it popped, is the most impressive.

I was beginning to worry about imposters taking over the Italian capital until I saw "Rome to issue gladiator licenses" on CNN. Now I can be sure that my photo will be taken with a certified fake gladiator when I visit.

Today is a very important day! 30 years ago on this date Andrew (Driko) entered the world. Please join with me in wishing him well on this momentous birthday! Add your comments to this special 30th Birthday guest book using the links below.
-Shaft
[Sign Driko's Birthday Guestbook]

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