just say no to online dating (nyt)
The Times finds four or five disgruntled singles who say they're no longer looking for a mate online. Of course, a couple of these singles' Friendster profiles say that they're interested in dating and serious relationships, so I wonder which side is really true.

One person compares online dating to dieting. "You hear about a new system or a new approach or a new site, and it seems to offer a lot of what you're after. You go through a period of being very high in the initial experience, then it doesn't quite pan out, there's a low, it leads to discouragement, you think, 'Why am I doing this, I can be happy without it.'"

Of course, with anything you can find people who say they're swearing off it -- because it just isn't working for them. Coffee, the Atkins diet, Dr. Phil, cocaine, Friendster, est, Catholicism, the Republican Party, etcetera.
(Sunday, November 30, 2003)

sox get schilling (espn)
Oh yeah, baby. A starting rotation of Pedro, Schilling, and Derek Lowe. Now if the Sox can just convince the Rangers to take Manny for A-Rod, and then trade Nomah (sad face here) for a left fielder and amiddle reliever. It's the end of November, but I can't wait for next April. Go Sox!
(Friday, November 28, 2003)

what kind of social software are you?

huh? game neverending? huh?
(Wednesday, November 26, 2003)

Design Observer
A well-written 'blog' about design issues, by Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand, and Rick Poynor. Can you get much better than that?
(Wednesday, November 26, 2003)

jumpers (new yorker)
Tad Friend's moving article about the Golden Gate Bridge, and those who jump from it.
(Wednesday, November 26, 2003)

newsom in full panic mode,apparently (sfgate)
First Gavin "Getty-Lite" Newsom makes some sort of private deal with Susan Leal, then makes a public deal with Angela Alioto (what will the Guardian say about that, since they endorsed her?), and now he's gotten Willie Brown to play the race card. Which is never a sign of a confident candidate (see GHW Bush, 1988).

Please, if you live in San Francisco, vote for Matt on December 9. Or before that, at City Hall.
(Wednesday, November 26, 2003)

a modest spam-fighting proposal
Over 50% of email is now spam (see BrightMail's Spam Stats). Here's one idea of how to stop it.
(Wednesday, November 26, 2003)

A&M's traditions (espn page 2)
"Bear Bryant once said, 'Ten Aggies can yell louder than a hundred of anybody else.' He's still right. The 11-line verse that rocked Kyle Field to its foundation? The repeated bellowing of "Saw Varsity's Horns Off," a knock on the Longhorns. During the verse, all the Aggies squeeze together, put their arms around one another and swing back and forth. The stadium follows their lead."
...
"Incoming freshman go to Fish Camp, a three-day session 100 miles north of campus to learn the Aggie Way. They're taught the yells. They're taught the traditions. And they're taught the stories behind them."

Tugboat's stepdad went to A&M, so I've gotten a glimpse of the devotion and loyalty Aggies have. But I also remember the funniest t-shirts at Rice had the A&M logo changed to read "eat me".
(Wednesday, November 26, 2003)

golden tee's world championships (espn)
This is just wild. Golden Tee has tournaments, with the world champ taking home $15 grand. One player estimates that he's won over a quarter million over the past four years or so. Amazing.
(Tuesday, November 25, 2003)

can christo save kilimanjaro's ice? (iht)
The IHT proposes having Christo wrap the top of Kilimanjaro, to stem the melting of its summit ice. They also propose having snow machines resurface the ice to help it reflect more sunlight (and thus melt less). So this environmental project would result in the longest-lasting Christo project ever, as well as lawnmower-sized Zambonis. Do it!
(Wednesday, November 19, 2003)

taunting do's and dont's (espn page2)
"'It's important to really read up on the opposing team and follow the game very closely, so that you're conversant with the psychological weaknesses of the other team,' advises Robin Ficker, the Bethesda-based attorney who was once the NBA's preeminent heckler.

"Ficker speaks from experience. He once irked then-Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson by reading out loud from Jackson's basketball memoir, 'Maverick.' During a game. While sitting behind the Chicago bench.

"'Jackson said he was going to have the referees come over if I kept reading,' Ficker said. 'What got him so upset, I don't know. If he didn't want to hear passages from the book, he shouldn't have written it.'"
(Wednesday, November 19, 2003)

another reason to root against wal-mart (nyt op-ed)
The Southern California grocery store strike is a result of Wal-Mart's foray into the area. Grocery store management needs to cut costs to compete. "Wal-Mart's prices are about 14 percent lower than other groceries' because the company is aggressive about squeezing costs, including labor costs. Its workers earn a third less than unionized grocery workers, and pay for much of their health insurance. Wal-Mart uses hardball tactics to ward off unions. Since 1995, the government has issued at least 60 complaints alleging illegal anti-union activities."

But cutting costs like Wal-Mart would mean putting workers below the poverty line. "Wal-Mart sales clerks make about $14,000 a year, below the $15,060 poverty line for a family of three." This compared to the grocery store clerks' $18,000 a year.

"Wal-Mart likes to wrap itself in American values. It should be reminded that one of those is paying workers enough to give their families a decent life."

Oh, the standard hypocrisies of capitalism. Cheap goods are always the result of someone, somewhere, getting the shaft. It's either a sweatshop worker in Asia or someone trying to stay out of poverty in America.
(Saturday, November 15, 2003)

fidel wins on capitol hill (nyt op-ed)
The whole piece:

In the debate over how to export American values to Cuba, Congressional leaders have managed to import some of Fidel Castro's values. That old tyrant in Havana is the prime beneficiary of the decision this week to drop a measure that would have effectively lifted the ban on travel to Cuba. He can now go on railing against Yankee imperialism, trying to pin the blame for all of his regime's shortcomings and brutality on American sanctions.

The measure to lift the travel ban was dropped as House and Senate conferees met to reconcile their spending bills for the Transportation and Treasury Departments. On Cuba, however, there was nothing to reconcile: both chambers' provisions were identical. A Congressional staff member explained the maneuver as a way to spare the White House an embarrassment. President Bush did not want to have to veto the legislation in order to woo Cuban-American voters in Florida, subverting foreign policy principles applied to much of the rest of the world.

Perhaps Congressman Jeff Flake, a conservative Republican from Arizona who has been a leader in the fight to lift the travel ban, best explained the lamentable politics behind the week's antics: "For the same reason we will never have a rational farm policy as long as presidential campaigns begin in Iowa, we will never have a rational Cuba policy as long as presidential campaigns are perceived to end in Florida."
(Saturday, November 15, 2003)

"the simple life" is "worth the wait" (ny daily news)
David Bianculli reviews the other Paris Hilton footage appearing nationally soon. "I don't know what her sex tape makes her look like, but 'The Simple Life' makes her look like an idiot. [So does the sex tape.] It's a show that invites you to ridicule the rich and famous, about the only group that can be attacked on TV without fear of repercussion."
(Wednesday, November 12, 2003)

crownfarmer
I like the hope zip-up. Anyone want to buy it for my birthday gift?
(Tuesday, November 11, 2003)

msft offers bounty on virus writers (nyt)
"Why don't they pay people to fix the vulnerability, rather than pay for people to go to jail for exploiting them?" asked Mark Rasch, chief security counsel at Solutionary Inc., a security company based in Omaha, Neb. "Doesn't that sound desperate?"

"It will probably be easier to get a $250,000 reward than to break into some company's network," collect credit card numbers and commit identity theft, said Mr. Gray of Internet Security Systems. "It's much less work."

A bounty is one way to deal with it. Certainly easier than writing software without so many vulnerabilities. That snarky comment aside, I'd love to wring the neck of whoever wrote the virus that showed up on my laptop recently.
(Thursday, November 6, 2003)

new tech makes action figures better (nyt)
Interesting look at how rapid prototyping, laser scanning, and CAD files help make action figures much more specific in their resemblance to the characters they represent.
(Wednesday, November 5, 2003)

ford and de sole leave gucci (nyt)
"Both Mr. De Sole and Mr. Ford, who have earned millions in recent years from salary and other compensation, are free to start their own companies once they leave Gucci. Yet analysts and retailing executives were skeptical whether the two men would do that, pointing out that Mr. De Sole has said he wants to retire. As for Mr. Ford, he has played such a broad role in his nearly 10 years as the designer at Gucci — from shaping its sexy advertising image to building a stable of young subsidiary brands like Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney — that having his own label at this stage may not be enough to satisfy him."
(Wednesday, November 5, 2003)

37 signals express
Wow, what a great idea. $2500 for a one-page redesign, delivered in a PDF. Smart for everyone involved, especially companies that need one thing fixed right now, and have the people inhouse to do the development work.
(Tuesday, November 4, 2003)

george eastman and the invention of film (american heritage)
"He was soon a major player in the aborning business of photographic materials. But that was nevertheless a very small market. The average person still regarded photography as a miracle, and many of the professionals clung to the old glass plates. So Eastman decided to create a whole new market. 'When we started out with our scheme of film photography, we expected that everybody who used glass plates would take up film,' he wrote much later. 'But we found that the number which did so was relatively small. In order to make a large business we would have to reach the general public and create a new class of patron.'"
(Tuesday, November 4, 2003)

kids play yesterday's video games, today (egm)
too funny. somewhere in my parents' house is an old four-game console, all variations on pong. i used to play it with just the sound, then turn on the tv and see the score. sometimes i won.
(Tuesday, November 4, 2003)

a manhattan project for energy production? (nyt)
"If global warming occurs as predicted, there will be no easy way to turn the Earth's thermostat back down. The best that most scientists would hope for would be to slow and then halt the warming, and that would require a top-to-bottom revamping of the world's energy systems, shifting from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to alternatives that in large part do not yet exist."

Computer models forecast a global rise in temperatures of three to ten degrees by 2100. Which is a huge range, but a ten degree increase would wreak some serious havoc. How many thousands of people died in this summer's European heat wave?

"Each American, on average, generates about 45,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. That is about twice as much as the average person living in Japan or Europe and many times more than someone living in a developing country like Zimbabwe, China or Panama."

There are no easy fixes, just incremental steps. Like reducing power usage, reducing consumption in addition to recycling, planting trees and greening urban roofs, reducing air conditioner use, and on and on.
(Tuesday, November 4, 2003)