Stuff I like

_______________________
I've never understood mens' obsession with expensive timepieces, but this one really blew me away.  For the movement, the watch hand moves up and down the scale to indicate the minute, while the wheel next to the watchhand spins and the blocks on the wheel turn perpindicular to the wheel's movement so that the block next to the watchhand displays the hour, e.g. the picture shows 8:31 pm. 

Only problem is this son-of-a-bitch costs 100K.  Which means its worth more than me.  I'm hoping Swatch comes out with a duplicate version soon.

For more porn shots of this watch click here.

Mitch Hedberg 1968-2005

RIP

Here are some of my favorite bits of his (all are mp3):
On Letterman
Ritz Crackers
Koala Bears

I find him almost more funny to read:

"I was walking by a dry cleaner at 3 a.m. and there was a sign that said 'Sorry, we're closed.' You don't have to be sorry. It's 3 a.m. and you're a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I'm not gonna come by at 10 and say, 'hey I was here at  3 a.m and you guys were closed. Someone owes me an apology.' "

"I opened a yogurt and underneath the lid it said "please try again."  They were having  a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I had opened the yogurt wrong.  Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me. 'Come on Mitch, don't give up! An inspirational  message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.' "   
   
"I bought a donut the other day and the guy gives me a receipt for the donut. I don't need a receipt for the donut, I give you the money, you give me the donut, end of transaction. We do not need to bring ink and paper into this. I can not imagine the scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a donut. Perhaps some skeptical friend.  'Don't even act like I didn't buy that donut. I got the documentation right here.' "   
   
"When you go to a resturant on the weekend and it's busy, they start a waiting list. They call 'Dufrane, party of two, table ready for Dufrane, party of two,' and if no one answers the'll say the name again, 'Dufrane, party of two.' But then if no one answers, they'll move on to the next name. 'Bush party of three.'  Yeah, but what happened to the Dufranes?! No one seems to care, who can eat at a time like this? People are missing. You people are selfish. The Dufranes are in someone's trunk right now ,with duct tape over their mouths and they're hungry.  That's a double whammy! We need help! 'Bush search aparty of three. You can eat once you find the Dufranes.' "
   
"I played golf....I did not get a hole in one, but I did hit a guy and that's way more satisfying. Your supposed to yell FORE, but I was too busy mumbling that ain't no way that's gonna hit him."   
   
"I wrote a letter to my dad- I wrote, I really enjoy being here. But I accidently wrote rarely, instead of really. But I still wanted to use it, so I crossed it out and wrote I rarely drive steamboats, Dad. There's a lot you don't know about me. Quit trying to act like I'm a steamboat operator. This letter took a harsh turn right away."   
   
"And then at the end of the letter i like to write P.S.- This is what part of the  alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated."   
   
"The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much I play, I'll never be as good a a wall. I played a wall once. They're relentless."   
   
"When someone hands you a flier, it's like they're saying here you throw this away."   
   
"I like rice. Rice is great if your hungry and want 2000 of something."
   
"I got my hair highlighted, because I felt some strands were more important that others."
   
"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."   
   
"I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad a turkeys. There's turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastromi,.Some one needs to tell the turkey, man, just be yourself."   
   
"I lke refried beans. I wanna try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good and we're just wasting time."   
   
"I got into and argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That's a bad place for an argument, because I tried to walk out and slam the flap. How are you supposed to express your anger in this situation? Zipper it up real quick?"   
   
"This product that was on TV was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one complicated payment. We can't tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is going to be hard."
   
"I was going to get  my teeth whitened, but I said screw that, I'll just get a tan instead."   
   
"I was at this casino minding my own business and this guy came up to me and said your gonna have to move you're blocking a fire exit. As if there were a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you are flamable and have legs you are never blocking a fire exit."
   
"I don't own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time. If someone wants to get a hold of me they just say "Mitch," and I say "What?" and turn my head slightly."
   
"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later."
   
"My friend said to me "You know what I like? Mashed poatoes," I was like, Dude, you gotta give me time to guess. If your ging to quiz me, you must put a pause in there."   
   
"An escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. You would never seen an Escalator temporarily out of order sign, just Escaloaor temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
   
"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said "I hear music" As though there's another way you can take it in. Your not special. That's how I recieve it too. I tried to taste it, but it did not work."   
   
"I went to the park and saw a kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don't know why, that's what they're supposed to do. Now if he had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed."   
   
"I was at the airport and this guy came up to be and said I saw you on tv last night. He didn't say if  I was any  good. He just told me where I was. So turned away for a minute and said Hey I saw you at the airport a minute ago. You were good."
       
I can't get into flossing, I can't. People who smoke say you don't know how hard it is to stop smoking. Yes I do. It's as hard as it is to start flossing. You seem jittery. Yeah, I'm about to floss.
       
"One time a guy handed me a picture of himself and he said. "Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture of you is of when you were younger. Here's a picture of me when I'm older. How'd you pull that off? Let me see that camera."
   
"Alocholism, is a disease, but it's the only disease that you can get yelled at for having. Dammit Otto, your an alcoholic. Dammit Otto, you have Lupis. One of those two doesn't sound right."       

"I get the Reese's candy bar, If you read it, there's an apostrophe. The candy bar is his. I didn't know that. Next time your eating a Reese's and some guy named Reese comes up to you and says let me have that. You better give it to him. I'm sorry Reese, I didn't  think I would ever run into you."   
   
"I've been working the colleges and I always buy the shirts from the college, because they're quality shirts. But people always get the wrong idea. I'm walking around wearing a Washington U shirt and someone says "Hey, Washington U, Did you go there?" Yeah! It was a Wednesday."   
   
"Y'know I order a club sandwhich all the time. And I'm not even a member. I don't know how I get away with it. I like my sanwhiches witth three peices of bread. So do I. Lets form a club. Okay, but we're gonna need more stickulation. Yes we do. Instead of cutting it once, lets cut it again. Yeah, four triangles. And we shall dump chips in the middle. Let me ask you something, how do you feel about frilly toothpicks? I'm for them."      

Poetry

Great review from the Times on a new book from poet critic, Camile Pagila.  I whole-heartedly agree with Pagila’s perspective on poetry as summarized thusly by the reporter:

She flies as high as you can go, in fact, without getting into the airless space of literary theory and cultural studies. Not that she has ever regarded those activities as elevated. She has always regarded them, with good reason, as examples of humanism's perverse gift for attacking itself, and for providing the academic world with a haven for tenured mediocrity.

That encapsulates the major reasons why I chose not to attempt to convert my love of poetry—or any literature for that matter--into any type of full-time work.  I’ll never forget the English professor who told me he could not respect the work of Faulkner as the novel was intended as the medium of the voiceless and thus any author who did not use it for that purpose was a per se failure.  How could I ever enjoy working with an ideologue like that for a colleague? 

Though I haven’t read the book yet, Pagila’s excerpt on Wordsworth captures the essence of his work nicely.  As a disclaimer, Wordsworth is above and beyond my favorite poet as the ink on my left shoulder evinces.  But I would describe his shutting down of expanded perception as more of a shuttering of his imagination.  Expanded perception tiptoes a bit too closely to Blake and The Doors connotations for my taste. Then again I did once challenge one of my good friend’s to a fight after he suggested Coleridge’s work was merely a by-product of opium, so I’m probably over-sensitive. 

Pagila’s comments on my second-favorite poet, Wallace Stevens, are also interesting.  I’ve never taken formal courses on Stevens and my comprehension of him is more limited as a result; I’ve definitely never felt as intimate with him as I am with Wordsworth. Pagila’s comments on his combined sensory descriptions does seem right on though and I’ll look to that next time I read my favorites of his on my iPod. 

I doubt anyone has actually read this far, but if you made it, do check out Wordsworth’s shorter works (“Expostulation and Reply” is the starting point in my mind) and Steven’s “Man with a Blue Guitar.”  These poems affect life changes in readers who let them.

Execution

Don't do this

Check out this one lawyer's oral argument on why cops should have less power on search & seizures.

Here's a text description.  And here's the audio.

I'm still laughing.

Inspiration for Tool videos

Check out a gallery of one of the artists that inspired Adam Jones, the creator of most of the Tool videos.  Most of it makes me want to run to my room and huddle in the fetal position, but its also excellent for beginning the seed of that insanity defense you always thought you might need in the future.  Or maybe that was only me.

Trans-Texas Corridor

This massive project certainly has a large share of legitimate detractors--I find the eminent domain arguments interesting-- and seems as if it won't ever be completed, but it still hacks me off when some North-eastern urbanite derides it without even a modicum of research.  I posted my thoughts on his post and I'm expecting an interesting reply.

Watch an episode

In case you haven't seen the show yet, I'd thought make available an episode for your viewing pleasure.  It took me awhile to find the perfect episode for n00bies, but I decided to go with Kidney Car.  I think its a great intro to all of the characters.  This link is only up for 7 days so get it quick.  Enjoy.

My favorite part is the Escape from New York reference.  Classic.

Just remembered you'll need a DIVX codec for windows media player to view this file.  Just click the link below to download the codec.  Once it downloads, double click and it inst alls itself.  Its not a program so don't worry about it junking up your shit.  Besides, you need DIVX, most video files you download on the Net will be DIVX.

Download Nimo50Build9Beta1.exe

Best of the Hubble

Check out this gallery showing the best of the shots from the Hubble. 

More Aqua Teen

I promise illegal bootleg audio clips and that is what I provide.  Today's offering, some of the best Carl clips.

Download carls_greatest_hits.mp3

"Whats that around your little straw thing there?  Dangling, like its yours?"
"Oh, you like it?  Its new."
"Yeah, I do like it.  I liked it when I bought it."

Is art overrated?

There was a post on Marginal Revolution that has been troubling me over the past few months.  I'm going to post most of it as I'm sure the idea of a blog on markets scares most away:

Of course there are great novels that have brought me a lot of pleasure...But the opportunity cost of reading a great novel is reading some other great novel, so if either of these had gone unwritten, I'd probably have some other wonderful book to recommend.

There's an important economic point here: The vast rewards that go to successful novelists can grossly overstate the social value of their work. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has sold over 6 million copies and almost surely earned its author over $20 million. But if The Da Vinci Code hadn't been written, some other now-unnoticed book might have taken its place as the blockbuster of the year, and readers would have been almost as happy.

Writing a book is not like growing an orange. If you grow the best orange in the world, the second best orange still gets eaten. But if you write the best book in the world, the second best book loses a lot of readers. So the market price of an orange is an excellent reflection of its true social value, whereas the bulk of Dan Brown's $20 million is only an excellent reflection of what he was able to divert from some
other author to himself.

I think there is a lot of truth to this and it worries me.  I've been questioning the true value of art  lately--mostly in the context of limiting government-subsidized tutition loans only for those who pursue degrees that are of the utmost value to our current society, i.e. those that pay the most--and this hits especially hard to the one medium of art that I truly love.  I haven't figured out exactly what's wrong with this idea or if there is anything at all, but its definitely something to chew on.

UPDATE:  I found a trackback on the above post that helped me figure out what was troubling me with it.  Here's the answer:

This is not true at all. The best book in the world, even if everyone agreed on what it was, affects only the last, marginal book chosen by each and every reader. Even if readers only read twelve books per year, the affected original twelfth choice would vary widely over different readers, having a very dilute specific effect on any one book.

Chalk it up to faulty analysis at the margin.  But its still kind of depressing to think that the opportunity cost of reading a great book is just the reading of another book.  One would hope it wouldn't be the watching of that same Law & Order episode for the sixth time only to realize twenty minutes in that you've already seen it and going ahead and watching it until the end despite. One would hope at least.

Law & Order Sucks

Its over.  Law & Order is garbage.  I just watched the recent episode where they have to overturn gay marriages in order to allow a witness to testify.  Once its overturned the witness refuses to testify in some civil disobedience act and declares he's being treated as a "second-class citizen."  Normally when they do some crap insertion of recent hot-button issues turned into a court case, fair viewing is given to both sides of the issue.  Not so in this case.  The only person who was opposed to gay marriage was some hick judge who referred to gays as "those people."  Every other character couldn't believe some people might be against it.  The DA who was merely wanting the testimony and could care less about the issue was accused of "selling out to the religious right." 

Its that kind of shit that keeps liberals marginalized in American politics.  Who could possibly be against it?  I mean, come on, we're talking fundamental rights here!  Could a thinking and caring individual possibly not be for it? Well how about the citizens of these states who overwhelmingly passed state bans on gay marriages in the last election: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah.  Some of those are gimmees, but Oregon too?  What's the excuse there?  Is Michigan not enlightened enough either? 

This is why I absolutely loath liberals.  I'm no fan of conservatives either, but at least they don't demean your opinion as idiotic when they disagree with you.  Bill Clinton was a philanderer and Bush is a dunce, right?  Now which one of those groups actually considers their criticism an insult?  I'll take moral self-righteousness over intellectual  self-righteousness any day of the week.  And are religion and moral codes really that weak of justifications for policy beliefs?  Is one group's conception of equality so true that there cannot exist a point of disagreement? 

Equality isn't some fixed standard either.  Its as relative as those claim morality to be.  My friends who are married pay less taxes than me.  Government is subsidizing my friends having sex under a socially acceptable banner.  How is that fair?  Where's my equality?  You ever see the way people treat single persons over the age of 50?  All the questions behind their back.  Is she divorced?  No.  Gay?  Nope.  Gerbils?  Has to be.  Government maintains a legal division by which others are judged and derided.  Isn't that the whole argument for legalizing gay marriage?  You're telling me thats not a stigma?  Now, hippies go forth and whine about the supposed need of government recognition of marriage at all and maybe you'll get me to put down my beer.  Maybe if the one-handers out there pushed  sappy examples of discrimination through media outlets and started guilt-tripping America they might actually get somewhere. 

I told myself I'd never post about politics and now thats out the window.  My hatred for anything political consumes me too easily.  We're all just a bunch of over-developed monkeys who invent concepts of justice and morality to feed our own sense of self-importance and then we're shocked when these fictions don't fit as tight as a jigsaw puzzle.  Stunner.  So since everybody is wrong I think its time for plan B.  I'll just become the second coming of Caesar.  First edict:  Bagel Bites Mondays.  Now thats social progress we all can get behind.

Make your handwriting a font

Lifehacker posted a cool site that allows you to write your handwriting on paper, send it to the site and they turn it into a computer font.  I think this is pretty freaking cool.

UPDATE:  After a few days of deep reflection I've realized this ain't so cool.  My handwriting blows. Why would I want to type emails in it?   

I've decided I already have the ability to recreate the sensation for a recipient reading an email in the font of my own handwriting:

To: SFsdfhj,ms
From:Akjld($$#@

RE:  *(#$jksvzx ksfde

H@(8,

(*&safdh.  Adam is the coolest. SKDlafs&845 sdkjfhs*b 897sdog.

laterags

END

Do note that my own coolness never requires translation.

Found

I've been reading one blog for awhile now that simply posts a different picture every day of some piece of trash that this person finds on the ground.  I don't really know why I like it.  I think its the black background or that all the trash is from the Netherlands and so has some alien artifact quality to it.

Best of Shake

People don't watch enough Aqua Teen, so I thought I'd upload a clip I found on the Net of some of the best Shake quotes.  More clips to follow. Enjoy.

Download best_of_shake.mp3

"There's no girls here at all.  I don't understand it.  We should have gone to the dry cleaners.  Chicks love to clean."

Also, I know the blog is loading slow.  The site I use to publish RSS feeds is acting up.

How common are you?

Came across a cool new site that tracks the baby names over the past century and presents it in a graph.  You type in letters and it whittles the displyed names that match.   Click the image below to see better how the reults look.

I tried "Ad" and found that in the 1930s Adolph was at least 4 times more popular than Adam.  That makes for 4 times more babies who had a really shitty time once they got to high school. 

Precious Pt. 2

In my all-consuming offroad lust over the new FJ, I completely neglected mention of my last crush, the upcoming Jeep Rescuer.  I'm such a slut. 

My precious

I was a huge fan of the old one and now the new FJ-Cruiser is due out right about when I graduate.  Surely, that's a message from God.  Burning bushes are so B.C.

Maps finally done right

I've always found trying to find road maps a pain in the ass.  Mapquest is good for directions, but lacks the feel of a map.  Leave it to Google to get it done right.  Check it out.

To really see its full pontential, type "free wifi" along with your zip code into the top search bar.  Pretty sweet.

Why no watermelon?

For every 10 crazy commie posts on Boing Boing, they find something really cool.  Take this Flickr gallery where someone took pics of things exploding when he shot them with a .22.  I'm thinking of getting an American Eagle .50, a six pack and a litter of puppies to do my own shots. 

Get it, shots?  Oy.

Tyrants, Markets and why Bush doesn't get it

Great op-ed from the Times.  A few telling excerpts:

Mr. Bush has too little hope, and too little faith.

Mr. Bush doesn't see how capitalism helps drive history toward freedom via an algorithm that for all we know is divinely designed and is in any event awesomely elegant. Namely: Capitalism's pre-eminence as a wealth generator means that every tyrant has to either embrace free markets or fall slowly into economic oblivion; but for markets to work, citizens need access to information technology and the freedom to use it - and that means having political power.

Right-wing hawks thrive on depicting tyranny as a force of nature, when in fact nature is working toward its demise.

Economic exclusion is especially perverse in cases where inclusion could work as a carrot.

Mr. Bush doesn't grasp the liberating power of capitalism, the lethal effect of luring authoritarian regimes into the modern world of free markets and free minds.

On the rocks

A gallery of pictures of Geneva covered in ice.

Oil shortage?

Don't believe the hype. 

I totally need one of these

Some guy has designed an alarm clock that hangs over your bed and flashes when the alarm goes off.  The best part is that to hit the snooze you just smack the ball and every time you hit snooze the ball takes up some slack in its cord and thus forces you to reach higher and higher to hit snooze.  Brilliant.

Post v. Times

I had a huge backlog of a week of headlines (700+)in my Bloglines subscriptions to the Washington Post and the NY Times this week (damn law school with so much homework in the first week).  I ususally just peruse the listings and click on the articles that interest me and read them a bit later (I have my tabbrowser preferences set to open all external links in background tabs so it works well).  After going over the Post and Times this morning I ended up with 8 Times stories and 13 from the Post.  Fairly significant in my mind.  At least this week, the Post just has better non-news wire stories with everything from buried Roman treasure in Italy to drug trafficking and its impact on border towns in Mexico.  Good stuff.  But then again I've always enjoyed the Post more.