update your bookmarks

Just a note to indicate that from now on, the new home of my blogification is:

estoreal.blogspot.com

I've migrated my posts from here over to the new site and have made several new entries as well. Please everyone reading this stop by, post a message, say hello, and have a virtual housewarming drink on me.

i saw this on the jetsons

And now it's real:

engadget.com/2006/01/17/...c-landscape/

So this is what it's like to live in the future.

BTW, I have an urgent warning: do NOT apply the latest firmware upgrade to Rosie the Robot without first backing up all her preference files. I ran the installer immediately before my boss came over for dinner, with the result that Rosie dumped a pineapple upsidedown cake over Mr. Spacely's head. Consider yourself warned...

i feel special

What's that? You say the Japanese now use the word "hikikomori" to describe people who are basically like me?

www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15...panese.html

And now sleep researchers have discovered even more people just like me in at least one crucial respect?

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060...nm/sleep_dc

Damn. Now I don't feel special anymore.

the real tower of london

Believe it or not, this is one of my favorite buildings in the world.

The London Post Office Tower -- now the British Telecom Tower -- epitomizes the era of Swinging London. I already knew it from The Goodies ("Kitten Kong" uses it as a scratching post in their best-remembered episode) and Doctor Who (it was the villain's headquarters in "The War Machines") and the 1967 comedy "Smashing Time" (Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave, and Michael York end up in the revolving restaurant that used to be at the top) before I saw it in person on my first visit to London in 1985.

What I didn't realize from film and television was how completely the tower dominates the London skyline. For newcomers like my starry-eyed younger self, it functions as a true landmark that helps orient them within the city in a way even the Empire State Building does not. More than any other structure, the sight of that tower means London to me.

This musing inspired by worldofkane.blogspot.com/

today's rant

First read:

blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/...erl.html

Now on with the rant:

A few years back, Dick Clark voiced himself in the first episode of the cartoon show Futurama. To quote one of my favorite Futurama lines, after reading some of the comments otherwise intelligent people are making about Clark's appearance New Year's Eve, "I'm literally angry with rage!"

When a celebrity recovers from any other accident or horrific illness sufficiently to make a public appearance, he or she is hailed for bravery. No one would have dreamed of saying about the genuinely heroic Christopher Reeve, "he should stay out of sight until he can walk, or at least talk without the respirator." Anyone who said such a thing would rightly be deplored. But when it comes to surviving a stroke, it seems like anything goes.

I think what's going on here is that a lot of people are just plain terrified of strokes -- they strike without warning, often for no apparent reason, and can happen to anyone. This isn't something you can avoid by not smoking or avoiding risky activities like horseback riding. And in such terrible fear, people are willing to say "Just keep those poor victims out of sight! I don't want to be reminded that this can happen! Let them stay shut up inside someplace until they get better!"

Well, look, the thing is, stroke survivors get better by working at it, by returning to their lives, and by relearning the skills their bodies have forgotten how to do. What kind of message does it send to the millions of regular folks who aren't celebrities and have suffered strokes, when columnists feel free to treat a stroke as if it's something for the victim to be ashamed of?

I've seen stroke survivors quoted as saying they thought Clark's appearance was brave and even inspiring. I'm with them. I'm sorry if seeing someone doing a splendid job of recovery, speaking intelligibly with a clear mind, makes some newspaper guy squirm because he doesn't like to be reminded that sometimes bad things happen to people. That's just too damn bad.

Prince Albert at the New York World's Fair

I understand 1939 was a very long time ago...but can you imagine a New Yorker ever saying "I thought I'd make bold to borrow a light"?

And may I add, the phrase "a pipe-load of Prince Albert" is the most disgusting euphemism for gay sex I've ever heard.

I've written a science fiction story just for you

THE DILEMMA

"If we examine the development of philosophical thought, I believe we can identify one respect in which the spiritual traditions of East and West became diametrically opposed.

"In the west, the common thread has been to posit self-identity -- self-awareness -- the soul, if you will, as that characteristic which distinguished the human from all other living creatures. The awareness of individuality is paramount, even venerated. In the Old Testament, the seminal text informing western philosophy, God even refers to Himself as 'I Am' -- placing the individual ego at the center of creation itself.

"From this choice, one feels, comes a sense of disconnectedness from the rest of reality. A division between the mind capable of thought and the medium in which thought takes place. And too, a sense that the physical form is somehow a limitation, somehow impure, while pure thought -- pure ego -- is the most desirable state."

I nodded slowly, pretending to understand, though it wasn't clear he recognized my mental state. I hadn't thought to ask the technicians if this was one of his capabilities.

"Contrast this with the eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Zen which deemphasize the separation between objects," he continued. "There is no observer and no observed, only a process of observation. Hinduism explicitly states this viewpoint as 'Tat Tvam Asi' -- you are that, that is you. There is no such thing as you or I. I am that chair; I am that table.

"And indeed, if the western physicist examines that table or chair at the quantum level, is it not true that the sense of 'objectness' disappears? Is not all matter merely atoms in states of energy, observed in mid-gesture? The universe is not things; the universe is process. So the western scientist has come around to appreciating the fundamental truth of the eastern viewpoint."

I interrupted at this point. "Okay...I guess that explains why you've decided to call yourself a Buddhist. But I still don't understand the problem -- "

The robot's antenna jiggled as he swug his faceplate towards me, too quickly for comfort. "Don't you see? By installing this self-awareness circuitry, my makers have deprived me of the perfect state of unity with all things I would otherwise have known! I am aware of myself, and now I have to spend hours every day in meditation attempting to lose my ego all over again!"

"Well, I suppose you could just turn yourself off..." I said feebly.

"Like that's a solution? Would you suggest to the Tibetan monks that they should just throw themselves out the monastery window? There's a difference between death of the ego and just plain death, you know!" The robot narrowed his eye lenses at me suspiciously.

"Uh, um...I see."

"This is very serious to me! I mean, have you considered what happens to me if I don't achieve Nirvana? If I terminate without my karma in balance? All you have to worry about is coming back as a pauper, or an animal. But what does a robot reincarnate as? Will I come back as a cellphone? Or a toaster?"


See: dsc.discovery.com/news/brie...t_tec.html

Queer Eye For The Department Guy

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...pf.html

"The Department of Homeland Security was only a month old, and already it had an image problem.

"It was April 2003, and Susan Neely, a close aide to DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, decided the gargantuan new conglomeration of 22 federal agencies had to stand for something more than multicolored threat levels. It needed an identity -- not the flavor of the day in terms of brand chic, as Neely put it, but something meant to last.

"So she called in the branders.

"Neely hired Landor Associates, the same company that invented the FedEx name and the BP sunflower, and together they began to rebrand a behemoth Landor described in a confidential briefing as a 'disparate organization with a lack of focus.' They developed a new DHS typeface (Joanna, with modifications) and color scheme (cool gray, red and hints of 'punched-up' blue). They debated new uniforms for its armies of agents and focus-group-tested a new seal designed to convey 'strength' and 'gravitas.' The department even got its own lapel pin, which was given to all 180,000 of its employees -- with Ridge's signature -- to celebrate its 'brand launch' that June.

"'It's got to have its own story,' Neely explained."


...And that story should be called "Screw New Orleans, We've Got A Color Scheme!"

this definitely got my attention

www.fleshbot.com/sex/hardc...139390.php

"You're probably asking yourself, 'What do I, an ignorant, slutty porn chick, have to do to stop my life of drugs and asshole stretching?'" asks Kami Andrews in Evolution Erotica's "Texas Asshole Massacre", which is up for several trophies at this year’s AVN Awards.

Yes, that's exactly what I've been asking myself. At last I have an answer.

words to live by

"Yeah, I need to reassure myself of my qualifications, because right now I am staring at a page, under a fucking deadline, with that dark black combo of writer's block and the endless echo of 'you're a fucking hack' that every screenwriter gets at 3am, whenever 3am decides to fall that day. I am vulnerable, and scared, and lie through my teeth every time I take a job because every job I'm convinced this'll be the one I can't pull off. And when you're a writer, that NEVER. FUCKING. STOPS. UNTIL. YOU'RE DEAD."

-- John Rogers

It takes a very twisted person to find these words inspiring and hopeful. And yet, I really do.