Philonoist.net

Alright, Mr. David Hasselhoff, you’re making a comeback. The only problem is, you’re really not coming back from anything. Knight Rider? Sorry, I was always more of a KITT fan. Baywatch? Nobody watched Baywatch for you. “Du”, your peaking-at-43-in-Germany album? It gaves laughter and tears. Mostly tears.

But needless to say, I’ve seen too much of David Hasselhoff in the past few weeks to really be comfortable with the state of affairs in the world. First, there was NBC’s America’s Got Talent, a meidocre variety show at best and a painful eye-gouging experience at worst. Here are the highlights of the show:

• The British has-been or never-was leans across the table and hits the other judges “X Buttons” because an act is truly terrible.
• David Hasselhoff clapping with a slow-child-like mirth. There’s nothing really as unintentionally hilarious as seeing a grown man clap wildly when another grown man juggles.
• Moesha Brandy’s fake “I care about you, but not really” voice when she has to be the deciding third vote.

Of course, if you’re going to make a comeback, and you have a voice, you have to release a new single. The Hoff’s new venture is “Jump in my car”, a song that makes me remember that Billy Ocean (Get out of my dreams, Get into my car) fame is also due for a comeback in late 2008 or early 2009.

But, for the love of all that is holy: Don’t defile KITT in your music video. Don’t show yourself dancing in front of Ayers Rock and the American Flag while you pick up a seventeen year old and go crusing. And, lesson 01, given to everyone gratis: Don’t ever, EVER put yourself in a situation where screenshots of your video could be your downfall.

Like most things, it must be seen to be believed.

Technorati Tags: David Hasselhoff, The Hoff, music

Oh Puzzle Pirates, why do you tempt me so? You know the last time we dated, I got exceedingly violent at your insolent ways, your stupid ‘bilging’ game and your frustrating ‘sailing’ game. But, alas, there’s really nothing like playing drinking games with your mates with a case of frothy(?) grog.

Oh, wait, I know why we broke up. You wanted to charge me $74.95 a year. I spend less on shoes (and they even light up!)

You’re trying to come back into my life, with your e-mailing me three years later, like the girl that drunk-dialed me last week. But I won’t have any of it. I’ve moved on to better things. I guess you could say you booched it.

No, no, I’m impressed, really. I like what you’ve done with yourself. You’ve got a new couple of jobs, like shipbuilding and alchemy. That’s great. I still have feelings for you, like Nicole and Tom. Maybe if we had settled down in the past, had a couple of kids, we’d have that kind of loving-but-despising relationship. But I’m a Leo, you’re a computer game. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Hey, while you’re here, I think I’ve still got some stuff in a closet for you. Let’s see here — aha, right here in a box marked “Plundercats”. Remember those days, those Plundercats? Reckless abandon. The good times. No, they’re not tears. The box was just dusty.

I’m not one to immediately jump on the cool-web-demo bandwagon, but the folks over at the DGP of UToronto have come up with a pretty interesting (cough Apple-like cough) design for interacting with a desktop.

It’s eye-candy with a purpose for the most part. The most meaningful interactions would be the size-increase and tack-up for important documents. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scanned through the desktop icons looking for a scan of my tax-form or my application pdf and been frustrated when I group deleted it. But, uh, you might want to rename “Drag’N'Cross”. It sounds like a bad Powerball Z move or something.

Finally, how about a trash/recycle bin widget? Crumple something up and throw it into the bin. If you want to look for something in the bin, either go grab the top item, or dump out the bin and scatter-sort. Now that would be sweet.

And don’t miss the hilarious “hip-hop” video. Wacky.

Technorati Tags: design, web, 3D

Hey Brian, is there something we should know about?

(Screen grab of top search phrases to philonoist.net for June so far)

No. I can’t explain Rachel Weisz measurements either.

Can somebody enlighten me on the “fiction” tag on LibraryThing? Is there any point at all? Animal Farm is fiction? Really? Talking pigs and you have to tag it as fiction?

For all it’s coolness, LibraryThing is filled with these worthless tags: DaVinci Code is a “Mystery” or “Thriller”, something I could have gotten from the jacket cover or the amazon.com description. I guess for a book I’ve never heard of, like Forsyth’s Avenger, it’s nice to have some meaningful tags. But then again, 3 people have rated Avenger. I’m not likely to read a book that only three people have read.

I suppose I’m missing the point of LibraryThing. Where’s the incentive for me to add books? So I can remember them later? Actually, I’ve got a nice physical space for that: my bookshelf. Do I add books so that I may measure my intellectual prowess compared to other book-readers? Sorry, I’m not really into that. I like books based on the ideas inside them, not the number on my shelf, and I’ve never been big on name-dropping for giggles. (After all, I’m not a philosophy major, so I don’t have to name-drop.)

I certainly understand rating books, a la Netflix, for recommendations. But for the life of me, I can’t understand tagging them with anything more than if (and when) I finished it, if I enjoyed it (unnecessary because of the rating system), and if I recommend it (meaningful since I may like a book, but wouldn’t always recommend it. Maybe recommended-for-genre-fans or the like.)

In short, stupid, worthless tags does not a good web2.0 make.

Technorati Tags: worthless, tagging, librarything, web2.0

Well, snap. Time has finally forced me into talking about al-Zarqawi, another “welcome-back-from-your-coma” name. Let’s see this for what it really is: the most publicized killing of an individual since Kennedy. Every newspaper ran the gory image of Zarqawi’s head late last week, with direct-quote titles of “Eliminated” and “The Military Swiftly Hit its Target“

Of course, the attack occured on a Friday, when newsweeklies such as Time and Newsweek are already in the mailboxes and on the newsstands. So the magazines had to wait a week. Here’s Time’s cover:

Pretty sensationalistic, if you ask me. But of course, old-school history buffs, Time readers, and people in the know remember this cover from May 1945:

Now I’m pissed. Time magazine has no right to compare this present to that past: Zarqawi was a menace, a killer, a thug. But he was no Hitler. Millions died at the hands of the Nazis (unless you’re the president of Iran….), and on, and on. I’m pissed because this is another attempt at a mountain-making from ant-piles.

But I’m not the only one who should be pissed: Germany should be livid, another painful reminder of its past brought up while it welcomes in the world in the name of sport. (See Munich, circa 1972 if you’re lost). I’m sure I won’t be the only one making this comparison. How many times will Hitler’s face be thrown up this week to the cable news watchers of the world? 10? A hundred?

We have descended into madness, into a world that celebrates the swift execution of an individual. We justify that through these comparisons to the villians of history.

Just remember Jon Stewart Here. “When you compare people to Hitler, ehh, you lose credibility….Please stop calling people Hitler when you disagree with them. It demeans you, it demeans your opponent, and to be honest, it demeans Hitler.”

Technorati Tags: jon stewart, time magazine, al-zarqawi

Engadget‘s got the details on the first e-reader to go on sale in Europe this month.

…[iRex]‘s threatened to come in first (and cheaper). Well, cheaper may no longer be the case, but it looks like the iRex is set to ship this month in Europe for a princely €649 ($820 US)…

As part of a business plan competition (wish I had the final plan, but it’s unavailable at the moment), a small group of us priced out what it would take to implement these in schools. We came up with a final price of approx. $150 (I believe) for the parts, warranty, etc. This included on the order of 20 actual pages you could flip, so that the look-and-feel was as close to a book as possible. Again, the market was not technophiles, but rather secondary and elementary school students, so durability was foremost. Even dealing with content licenses (provided by current publishing houses such as Houghton Mifflin and McGraw-Hill), this Digital Book would have still saved schools money. We like saving people money.

It’s important to note that this was a theoretical model, but it (in my opinion) was pretty thought out. We focused pretty extensively on having a lobbyist staff member capable of selling school districts on this, as well as the internal technology (battery life, digital paper, etc.) Even if we got the money needed (oh, it was only a few million dollars…) it’d take a good 3 years of hard-core development to come up with a prototype.

But hey, maybe if some people want to give us some capital, we’ll get to making a few.

Technorati Tags: e-reader, e-ink, technology, ebook

Ah, Snakes on a Plane. If you haven’t heard of it, welcome back from your coma. Otherwise, I’m just counting down the days and mediocre movie releases to August 18th.

I’m putting up $10 that says this movie beats the opening-weekend record set by Spider-Man. (I’m also countering that with $10 on it having a dropoff of at least 50% from weekend one to weekend two, though it won’t break that record.) Anyone think otherwise?

Samuel L. Jackson at the MTV Movie Awards (VanWEric delievers!) snakes on a plane, samuel l. jackson

Technorati Tags: snakes on a plane, samuel l. jackson

Memo to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC:

Stop. You’re killing people.

I know you love the big story. I know you can’t resist the urge to talk for hours on end to anyone with a few lines of color on their chest or a political affiliation about a “major” current event. I know that you get a rush to your collective heads when you can use phrases like “worst case scenario” and “disasterous”. I advise you to seek counseling for this. In the long term, you may be able to fight the effects of this psychological condition of calamitism. But in the short term, think long and hard about what you lead in with on your primetime shows, about the kinds of silly questions you ask. Here’s a passage – verbatim – that I had a tough time with from The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer’s late-afternoon early-evening CNN show (emphasis mine):

BLITZER: Before we get to New Orleans and levees, how ready you are, maybe you are, maybe you’re not, what about Florida and this first topical storm — named storm, Alberto, which could become a hurricane? Are you worried about any Corps of Engineer projects right now in Florida?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: No, I wouldn’t say any of our projects. There are really not up in the area where we expect to have landfall. There is some concern about Lake Okeechobee on the part of the some of the locals down there because it’s an older dike that was built in the ’30s. But we’re very confident that Okeechobee can handle any rainfall that might arise from this storm.

Huh? This is Florida you’re talking about: land of the perpetual hurricane. This may be a valid question if the storm is hitting New Orleans or Biloxi (and think of that media field day!) or if the storm were 60% more powerful. But the factor in a tropical storm is never the wind damage, but the large amount of rain that comes with these storms.

The response isn’t much better: why even mention Lake Okeechobee? For those unfamiliar with the geography of the Sunshine State, it’s on par with asking how Philadelphia is holding up when there’s rain in DC. Governor Jeb Bush and the correspondents at FoxNews also talked extensively about the Okeechobee dams and levees. Bush also gets the quote of the day award: “Good God. You know. Who would have thunk it?” said Jeb.

And yet, this storm passed. A plane accident, resulting in one fatality, was attributed to bad weather from the storm. 20,000 (a far cry from the million plus of Katrina) evacuated to shelters, to higher ground. The hell of brush-fires has been extinguished by the high waters of another tropical storm. Do I personally count my blessings? Yes, of course. I, my parents, most Floridians (especially Tampans) know this wasn’t the storm, the next in the list after Andrew, Katrina, Hugo, Camille that we talk about, that we fear, when there’s a disturbance in the Atlantic or the Gulf. My pool needs an extra chlorine tablet this month, the branches in the front yard probably need picking up. And when an event the magnitude of Katrina occurs, where millions are displaced and homeless, we saw the effect, the power, the media can have. Without extensive, 24-hour coverage, Michael Brown would still be director of FEMA.

But this very same power is overused with events like Alberto. This is a story, but not the top story. Because in a week, or a few days, when the media reports on “cleaning up from Alberto”, people will look and say “it’s not that bad”. Of course, it’s not that bad because this storm wasn’t that bad. But the next one could be. Or the one after that.

The point here is the classic one: Don’t cry wolf, especially when it’s just a poodle. Don’t pretend this is the end of days. Don’t suffer from your egregious calamitism. Because we, the residents of the Gulf, fall asleep, lulled into disregarding your false warnings, your overpuffery. And when Katrina v2.0 comes around, we might not realize it until it’s too late.

I grant you: you do not, cannot decide for us when it is our time to go, when to stay. But you control the flow of information, the path that gets what we need to hear to us. So, when you trump up what we need to hear (evacuation orders, bridge closings) with what you think sells (Levee bursting, Price gouging, Murderous mayhem over the last bag of ice) that confuses us. That puts us in danger. Not to mention it disrespects our intelligence. So stop. You’re killing us. Both literally, and figuratively.

Technorati Tags: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Alberto, media, hurricane, wolf blitzer

I’ve been in DC for about a two and a half weeks now, and have shamefully not written anything about it. Part of this is I have a huge backlog of photos that I’ve been too lazy to put up in the forthcoming gallery, and the other part of the problem is my laptop hard drive has died, causing withdrawl-like symptoms as the best damn IT department in the world gets me a new one Big ups to Al Gore, and his movie An Inconvenient Truth, hands down the best documentary since Bowling for Columbine. (And yes, I saw Fahrenheit…) The premise is simple: take the most popular vice president in history, his passion for a global issue that doesn’t involve terrorism, Iraq, or gay marriage, and his Apple Keynote presentation on aforementioned global issue (by the way, the presentation is the second-star of the show. Tufte would be proud, I think.) An Inconvenient Truth should be required viewing for anyone who has ever heard the words “global warming”.

For those who’d like to know a little more about me, I’m working at StreamSage, a subsidary of Comcast on javascript-enabled webcrawling. It’s a pretty-lax place to work, but still dealing with cubicles and the like. I have to say, it’s a pretty jarring transition from free-formed projects at Olin to the rigidity of here, and from what i’ve heard here is pretty far from more button-down places. Oy. I fear we Oliners have been corrupted.