Listics

Bowling, it’s the new bowling… who knew they do this in SoCal? Milwaukee, yeah, but Anaheim?

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One out of four isn’t bad, is it?

Half of youngsters aged nine to 11 were unable to identify a daddy-long-legs, oak tree, blue tit or bluebell, in the poll by BBC Wildlife Magazine.

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Everything you wanted to know about snickerdoodles except the recipe.

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Scientist lone anthrax attacker… leave it to the beeb. Had some whitewash left after the David Kelley thing.

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Take the Pew news quiz. (I missed the Dow Jones question.)

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…and in closing, some dismalness:

It’s not just cheap oil we’re addicted to: it’s cheap everything. And the world we’re entering isn’t really of Peak Oil as it is one of Peak Consumption.

But consumption wasn’t the only choice we could have made. We could have chosen, instead, to invest. In what? In anything: anything would have been a more sensible choice than naïve consumption – education, energy, healthcare, transportation, even a more sensible and rational kind of finance.

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Frank Wilczek’s new “baby”… The Lightness of Being

I almost begged for a review copy, but then I saw that blurbs were all by other Nobel Prize winners and crack physicists and such. That took me down a peg. I intend to read it though. And I certainly WOULDN’T TURN DOWN a review copy. The sample chapter looks accessible enough for a layman like me. For example:

To begin, we build our world-models from strange raw materials: signal-processing tools “designed” by evolution to filter a universe swarming with information into a very few streams of incoming data.

Data streams? Their more familiar names are vision, hearing, smell, and so forth. From a modern point of view, vision is what samples the electromagnetic radiation that passes through a tiny hole in our eyes, picking up only a narrow rainbow of colors inside a much broader spectrum. Our hearing monitors air pressure at our eardrums, and smell provides a quirky chemical analysis of the air impinging on our nasal membranes. Other sensory systems give some rough information about the overall acceleration of our body (kinesthetic sense), temperatures and pressures over its surface (touch), a handful of crude measures of the chemical composition of matter on our tongue (taste), and a few other odds and ends.

Those sensory systems allowed our ancestors — just as they allow us — to construct a rich, dynamic model of the world, enabling them to respond effectively. The most important components of that world-model are more-or-less stable objects (such as other people, animals, plants, rocks, . . . the Sun, stars, clouds, . . .) some of them moving around, some dangerous, some good to eat, and others — a select and especially interesting few — desirable mates.

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Jeneane Sessum has re-purposed her eponymous site, jeneane.net. She’s putting the “So?” in social media. This morning she has an interesting post about Techmeme and Duncan Riley. The way I read it, Riley used to work at TechCrunch (Michael Arrington’s property). Then he left. Now his scoops aren’t hitting Techmeme with the frequency that they did when he had Arrington’s backing. And, “So what?”

Sort of an interesting meta-commentary on silly valley stuff for those who might not read the inbred navel gazing blogs of the South Bay.

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Dave Winer puts his money on Tim Kaine for Obama’s running mate. (That is, if the announcement happens today or tonight).

This should put an end to the endless Hillary discussion on Steve Gillmor’s News Gang.

Okay. I’m jealous. There’s nothing like the California coast at sunset when the fog’s burned away. Picture is by Elliot Ng at the Fortune Brainstorm tech conference at the Ritz in Half Moon Bay. How many of these tweeties do you recognize? (Click on picture to enlarge).

Technorati Tags: twitterati, tweetup, tweethrup, in for a penny in for a shilling

Social Media Hat, originally uploaded by LenEdgerly.

May be treading on thin ice posting this. But who knows? It may show up on Encyclopaedia Dramatica!

Obviously Barack Obama is the only hope for changing the course that the Reaganites and neo-Reaganites have set for this country since 1981. Barack’s primary campaign was grounded on the vast majority of US citizens’ hope for change, our need for change.

Now we are engaged in politics. The stadium crowd demagoguery of inspiring speeches and shared intentions must give way to critical thinking. The candidates must state their intentions regarding specific issues, and for many of us those intentions will fall far short of the ideal.

I was disappointed that Barack did not draw a line in the sand with the telecommunications immunity provision of the new FISA law. (Try to fit that feeling on a bumper sticker!) I was disappointed to hear that Barack doesn’t intend to step up to the issues of church and state, that he intends to continue funneling public money through private religious organizations to address social concerns. I was troubled when Barack moved away from my impression that he had a hardline withdrawal-with-a-timetable position on Iraq and temporized that he would “consult with his military commanders on the ground.”

Yet for all the disappointment I experienced from Barack’s pragmatic pursuit of a mandate, when I vote for him this fall it will be no compromise of my own idealism. I believe he is a fine Democratic candidate to take the reins at a moment in American history as critical as that in 1932 when FDR won his first term. We need a Democrat to restore needed economic regulatory policies. We need a Democrat to organize the project for a transition away from fossil fuel energy. We need a Democrat because Democrats believe there is a place in our society for the government, while modern Republicans seem intent on tearing it down.

When I hear that the two candidates aren’t all that far apart on issues that matter to me, I take it with a grain of salt. Stem cell research and nuclear non-proliferation are Democratic commitments. For McCain, the Republican intellectual heir to the Bush dynasty, they are talking points.

Americans are offering a mandate for change. In the fall we will elect a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President. These government leaders will be tasked with revitalizing the economy, addressing the energy crisis without taking food out of the mouths of the world’s children, restoring our reputation in the world, ending the Iraq War and stabilizing Afghanistan, shifting the judiciary back to an arm of government that we can respect, and perhaps bringing many of today’s white collar Washington miscreants to justice.

Barack Obama can lead these changes. John McCain would be just another buffoon, a toothless tool of the corporate elite, unable to effectuate change.

So let’s stuff away all those depressed feelings we’ve had about Barack’s compromises, and let’s run the last man standing of the Keating Five out of town….

Technorati Tags: no city for old men, toothless tool

Erik Truffaz 2/6 - L'un dans l'Autre
Uploaded by kidamprod

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Who knew that there was this big thing going on last year, that nastiness with “Sir” Paul and Prince Charles’ divorce lawyer doing battle in court against Lady McCartney and Princess Diana’s counsel? It all must have sucked up a lot of bandwidth that otherwise would have been wasted on war, the environment, and social justice issues. Heather Mills went after the British beef interests, and she paid the price.

Looking over the bits I missed, it seems that people had strong opinions about Ms. Mills, and since everyone loves Paul, it made great good sense that the media should fuel the hatred of Heather. Two sides to every story, people say, but that’s wrong, innit?

Whatever happened to Eastman, the department store heiress, I asked myself. She was a bit of a tart too, wasn’t she? Didn’t I feel like a shit when I found out she suffered with breast cancer and died ten years ago.

What about Jane Asher then? Who left whom, and why, and does it — did it matter to anyone but the people involved?

Answers to all these questions and more will be found in Germaine Greer’s beautiful essay, “Pop Bitch.”

Ever since Paul McCartney announced that he and Heather Mills were an item the media have been out to get her. Linda McCartney, about whom they had been every bit as vicious, was canonised in retrospect. Nobody remembered the jibes - “What d’you call a cow with wings?” “Linda McCartney”. Lady Heather Mills McCartney now has to face, probably for years, the same misogynistic cacophony, not just from the Neanderthal tabloids, but from the grandes dames of once-upon-a-broadsheet press, even the ones who call themselves feminist.

Now I’m off to dig up all the dirt I can on Patty Boyd….

Something in the way she knows
All I have to do is think of her
Something in the things she shows me

I dont want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

Layla, you’ve got me on my knees.
Layla, I’m begging, darling please.
Layla, darling won’t you ease my worried mind.

Technorati Tags: a cow with wings, lolomgbbq