Monday, April 24, 2006
Wow. I (finally) just finished reading Krakatoa — The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, by Simon Winchester. Crazy stuff. I liked it. It’s a smidge on the textbook-side, but he’s an entertaining enough writer — and the topic is so incredible — that you don’t ever get bored during its 380-ish pages. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 was pretty much the first “world-wide” event. It was the first real “news item” that happened after the advent of global communications (the telegraph).
Winchester examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C. went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island’s destruction were heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all — in view of today’s new political climate — the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Let’s see … What can I do for Easter this year? I know! I’ll hop on a G4 and jet on over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I’ll attend Sunday’s service at the National Cathedral and then hang out with GW for the Easter Egg Roll on Monday.
My girlfriend manages Aly & AJ; they’ll be singing the National Anthem and performing two concerts on the South Lawn. They’re going to stay on the East coast to tape Good Morning America later in the week. (I’ll be returning to good ol’ LA on Monday night.)
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Check it out: The guys at Answerbag are having an Answer Hunt! You can win up to $2000 for answering the questions asked by the elusive “answer rabbit”.
(Note: This would be an excellent place to post the classic “TheBrad with Bugs Bunny on Head” photo, but the damn fool has gone and lost all his archives and links again.)
Gadzooks! Here it is: TheBrad with Bugs Bunny on his head!
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
How’s this for retarded? I recently moved. Yesterday I went to Washington Mutual’s website to change my address for my checking account. Today I realized that I am out of checks. That’s okay. I can order checks on-line and they get delivered in like three days. But when I went to the website to order a new set of checks, I got this message:
We’re sorry. Our records indicate that you have changed your address within the last 30 days. For your security, we do not allow web- or phone-based check orders within 30 days of an address change. Please visit a financial center or wait 30 days to submit this order.
Gaah! How in the world is this making my life more secure??
Monday, April 10, 2006
For Christmas ‘04 I got my girlfriend a shiny new HP Photosmart 7960. She loves it. It prints fabulous, high-quality images and it comes with some great photo-printing software. Sure you have to mortgage your house to keep the ink flowing, but you knew that was going to be the case when you bought the thing, right?
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Wednesday, April 5, 2006
There’s a very well-written article at danah.com comparing and contrasting Friendster and MySpace. This should be required reading for any corporate execs looking to make money in the social blogging universe.
What’s at stake here is what is called “subcultural capital” by academics. It is the kind of capital that anyone can get, if you are cool enough to know that it exists and cool enough to participate. It is a counterpart to “cultural capital” which is more like hegemonic capital. That was probably a bit too obscure. Let me give an example. Opera attendance is a form of cultural capital - you are seen as having money and class and even if you think that elongated singing in foreign languages is boring, you attend because that’s what cultured people do. You need the expensive clothes, the language, the body postures, the social connects and the manners to belong. Limitations are economic and social. Rave attendance is the opposite. Anyone can get in, in theory… There are certainly hodgepodged clothes, street language and dance moves, but most folks can blend in with just a little effort. Yet, the major limitation is knowing that the rave exists. “Being in the know” is more powerful than money. You can’t buy your way into knowledge of a rave.
