Tue, 10 October 2006 10:16 pm Comments (0)

Ninjitsu in the round, bard style

I’ve long been intrigued by adaptations of Shakespeare and other classics that take a non-traditional route to costume and design, from the minimalist, semifuturistic A&E production of Antigone we watched in high school to Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet. (Part of me wants to cringe to admit the latter, but despite the disastrous possibilities of Claire Danes and Leonardo diCaprio circa 1996 it actually turns out to be a very clever, well-done production).

But this has got to top them all. Gapers Block says it best:

ThisBe Madness, Yet There is Method In’t
Dov Weinstein performs the Bard’s most famous play at breakneck speed with the help of a hundred plastic ninjas, a robot, and other assorted dime-store figurines. Weinstein’s ingenious staging is hilarious, if not exactly enlightening. Catch Tiny Ninja Hamlet through October 18th at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

C’mon. Hamlet. With tiny ninjas!  And a robot!   Okay, maybe it’s not Hamlet backwards in 60 seconds, but I still gotta see this troupe sometime.

(And maybe another Greek tragedy with sock puppets too.)

Categories: culture, humor, theater
Thu, 4 May 2006 8:01 pm Comments (0)

Not necessarily new or notable, but so what?

It’s about time I came out of my moving-induced hiatus. My too-long list of starred items on Google Reader, along with more Delicious bookmarks, attest that I wasn’t offline but simply not struck by the muse. I’ll start with something easy, poring over those items to see which of the more eclectic ones still strike me as notable (a clip-show entry, if you will)…

Categories: Chicago, culture, technology, humor, society, observations
Sat, 18 February 2006 2:46 pm Comments (0)

Links aplenty

For the masses who probably don’t check my del.icio.us links with regularity…

  • Giant Telescope Will Peek at Past
    I happen to know from seeing things in grad school that DARPA and individual military branches fund research all the time with essentially no strings attached. I suppose some trepidation over the source of funding isn’t completely unjustified, but might it come from a more general public misunderstanding of the value of pure research–investigations that aren’t targeted at any particular goal other than knowledge? Yes, I firmly believe that even the DoD sometimes acts without ulterior motives.
  • How to fold a fitted sheet
    This has been an issue in Bartonia for years. And people say the Web is useless!
  • ‘Sleeping on it’ best for complex decisions
  • Little-known feline ailments
    Surprising that these are considered ‘little-known’, since any cat owner will have seen several of them after only a short while.
  • Chicago Restaurants, Chicago Menus, Ratings, Reviews, IL Restaurants Guide
  • Restaurant Place: The Restaurant Menu Directory (Chicago)
    Really, unless your restaurant (1) doesn’t a website (nowadays??) and/or (2) is always changing the menu, I think there’s no excuse for not having the menu available in a format like this. Ooh, how about RSS feeds for those spots with frequently changing menus? Knowing that restaurant X just got a fresh shipment of Y for tonight’s specials would help drive business from people like us who often find themselves indecisive on a Saturday night.
  • The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005
  • Illinoize
    Especially being an election year, this site provides some interesting reading for Illinoisans who are either political junkies or who just want a view of what’s going on that’s less parochial than the local news outlets. Posts come from all corners of the political-cultural map, which can be a bit jarring or head-scratching but is probably a good thing overall.
Categories: Chicago, dining, Illinois, politics, science, humor, society, observations
Sun, 8 January 2006 12:24 pm Comments (0)

Apropos of little but themselves

The prospect of moving in the next few months has made apparent just how much five years’ worth of life in one apartment has led to overflows in our closets and storage spaces. My list of links has gotten the same way. In both cases, rather than categorizing and sorting into the major areas, the easiest place to start is to examine the little trinkets that have little connections other than my own sense of Hmm or Ooh or Heh…

Actually, I suppose those last few are related. What advocates of intelligent design, pseudosciences, and fundamentalist religious views seem to lack is the sense of wonder and excitement of ‘gaps’–it seems they are terrified by the prospect of not having a definite answer for everything right now. Real scientists and thinkers know better: the root of understanding is not knowledge but questions and analysis.

Categories: astronomy, Chicago, physics, politics, science, technology, web, wine, humor, society
Fri, 11 November 2005 5:41 pm Comments (1)

Ramblings from a mental-health day

Official records will indicate that I took a ‘vacation day’ today, but the term seems inappropriate. Unless I actually go somewhere, it seems I spend most of these doing chores, running errands, and working on little projects that simply reduce the number of things I’ll need to do over the weekend. Overall that’s fine–having an extra day to sleep late and tackle the same number of tasks does help with mental decompression–but one of these days I think I need to really strive to do more nothing.

Time to clear out some links I thought might be worthy of commentary…

  • Blue Ball Machine Stupid and pointless, but oddly mesmerizing. Just like much of the world wide web.
  • Tinfoil hats attract mind-control signals, boffins learn Uh…the title is quite enough.
  • Screwcap Savvy. On one level I’m perfectly aware that good screwcaps are no longer an indicator of cheap wine, but I do remember being momentarily suprised during our Sydney vacation when waiters in a couple of restaurants opened our bottles with a twist of the wrist rather than a corkscrew. However, the reason I posted this link was that it’s the first time I’ve seen wine and light sabers discussed in the same story.
  • History’s Worst Software Bugs; Some Technologies Will Annoy. Evidence against the movement towards all-wired, all-in-one, always-connected technology. As if incessant cellphones and inexplicable ‘check engine’ lihts weren’t enough of a reminder.
  • Gravity-Powered Asteroid Tractor Proposed to Thwart Impact. The realities of astronautical physics and technology aren’t nearly as slick as the movies, but it’s still impressive that we’ve got a plausible method for redirecting an asteroid. Too bad that promising glitz and glam, rather than the slower plod of reality, is the better way to get decent science funding.
  • NASA Axes Space Station Research. Yep, to be effective ISS needs to be safe. (And, well, completing the damn thing wouldn’t hurt either.) Yet it seemed obvious to me back in the late ’80s that, despite the promises, ISS would be so expensive to build and maintain that it wouldn’t be cost-effective as a platform for cutting-edge science and technology. And now here we are.
  • Repairing Journalism. Sydney H. Schanberg suggests that journalists should consider promises of anonymity null and void upon discovery that the source was disingenous. Good idea. We need to go further into a wider examination–for journalism, law, and politics–regarding the proper conditions for putting names and statements out of public view.
  • Pump Some Seriousness Into Energy Policy Wow, I never thought I’d read such a staunch conservative advocating higher taxes on anything, let alone the gasoline. His arguments for ANWR drilling don’t persuade me, but some of the others aren’t half bad.
Categories: science, technology, wine, humor, society, commentary
Tue, 25 October 2005 11:44 pm Comments (2)

Telemarketers, crackpots, political sensibility, Saturn satellites

  • From Eric’s links comes this gem of ananti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript. Almost tempting to drop off the Do-Not Call List to try it out. Almost…but not really.
  • Here’s a nice crackpot index to help weed the good physics from the bad. Maybe we should generalize and start applying the same analysis to the nonsense spewing from the mouths of politicians, CEOs, etc.
  • Senate Rule XIV Procedures for Placing Measures Directly on the Senate Calendar
    Septemter 19, 2005:
    Mr. FRIST. Now I ask for its second reading and in order to place the bill on the calendar under rule XIV, I object to my own request.
    Okay, legislative bodies are often where common sense goes to die but…wow.
  • Kansas Law on Gay Sex by Teenagers Is Overturned
    Kansas has been in the crosshairs of ridicule for recent intelligent design silliness, but the state’s Supreme Court showed some wisdom in a ruling against a horribly discriminatory gay-sex law. From the unanimous (!) opinion:
    The moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest.
    That statement needs to be engraved on the desk of every legislator, prosecutor, and judge in every jurisdiction in this country.
  • Via Kos came this set of excerpts of Brent Scrowcroft critiquing Dubya and the neocons. In reading I came to the intriguing, if somewhat disturbing, realization that the neocon ethos espoused by Paul Wolfowitz and others is less an imperialist, modern-day manifest-destiny idea than it is simply an extreme form of a mentality that most U.S. politicians–and many citizens–posess. Two of its essential concepts are that everyone loves freedom and democracy. What American could possibly argue with those points, huh? Except…well, to many people, including right here at home, the most important freedom they desire is the freedom to ensure that no one else–at least no one else they’ll ever have the need or opportunity to deal with–thinks and acts in ways of which they disapprove. Moreover, democracy isn’t necessariliy the ideal form of government, perhaps just the least bad. Arguably public affairs could be better handled philosopher-kings of proper temperment and training than by those chosen by the whims of the public at large, but in a stable, balanced society democracy has the advantage that extreme views tend to be voted out of office before they have a chance to do permanent damage. However, it works out this way because our society has long had the sense of balance and desire for consensus, not the other way around. In a society with a strong bent towards allocation of authority based on pure power or the absoute moral superiority of one group over another, democracy by itself has no mechanism to prevent tyranny of the majority. Where one group claims divine mandate to subjugate another, or multiple ethnic-religious factions have enmity dating back centuries, the introduction of a formally democractic system and the belief that the vast majority are just yearning for the freedom to live in an open, laissez-faire society are hardly guaranteed to suddenly result in well-behaved, friendly nations. We really could use less Pollyanna and more realpolitick in our foreign policy.
  • More Saturnian visual goodness, courtesy Cassini-Huygens:

Categories: astronomy, physics, politics, humor, society
Mon, 11 July 2005 9:43 pm Comments (0)

Amish tech, weasel words, Dubyanomics, locking windows

  • Look Who’s Talking
    Wired article describing how–and why–the Amish view, adopt, and reject technology. Enlightening. To me their views seem a bit extreme yet many of the underlying principles and goals seem quite valid.
  • Corporate Weasel Words
    Sad thing is that I’ve heard some of these with regularity. Worse is that I’ve actually used some too (but at least I felt dirty doing so).
  • Un-Spin the Budget
    Oh, my…
    To understand where the budget deficit came from, you can’t do better than the Jan. 18, 2001, issue of the satirical newspaper The Onion, which predicted the future with eerie precision. “We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent,” the magazine’s spoof had the president-elect declare. “And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”
    When an economist cites The Onion as an accurate predictor of presidential policy, is that one of the signs of the apocalypse? It’s still very, very sad and wrong.
  • Dubya’s socioeconomic myopia regarding global warming
    What, me worry? Taking responsibility? Nah, not if it affects next quarter’s results.
  • Longhorn following Unix on security?
    About frickin’ time they learned the basic least-privilege security lessons that Unix learned a generation ago. The sad thing is that Windows user and file permissions have probably been granular enough–in some cases, even more so than Unix–to make most PCs vastly more secure than they are currently, but the allocation of those permissions has been so stupid–and vendors so reluctant to push changes lest they break logo compatibility–that securing a Windows box has been such a lingering issue. How many internet outages and lost dollars could have been prevented over the last 15 years had Microsoft had just a little more vision about publishing software that was properly designed rather than in accordance with marketing schedules?
Categories: politics, technology, USA, humor, society, commentary, business
Tue, 21 June 2005 9:39 pm Comments (0)

Rhymes and expirations

Categories: politics, USA, humor
Thu, 5 May 2005 6:27 pm Comments (0)

Cinco di Mayo cerebral cacaphony

  • Watching the election play out in the United Kingdom has illuminated for me an interesting element of our political system: the ability to vote a split ticket for legislative and executive positions. Since the prime minister in a British-style parliamentary system isn’t chosen directly, a Briton who likes his local MP has done yet wishes for leadership from another party faces a difficult decision an American never has to face. However, maybe it’s really not a big deal, as the British system may not allow an opposition MP to bring the goods back to his district in the same way that a veteran member of Congress can do regardless of party.
  • That the judge in the case against PFC Lynndie England ruled a mistrial after another witness gave testimony that contradicted some items in England’s plea agreement was surprising, but in some ways it shouldn’t have been when viewed in light of law and fact. It seems that civilian courts routinely accept plea agreements of similar nature, winks and nods among lawyers that preserve some degree of culpability yet are mostly designed to make the case go away (hmm, am I too cynical or do I watch too much Law & Order?), so maybe it seems odd that a military court would be so upstanding with respect to truth. Too bad that restarting this case will still likely do nothing to bring more culpability to the uniformed and civilian heirarchy whose poor planning and cavalier oversight led to the problems at Abu Ghraib for which the grunts are taking the blame (and punishment).
  • With Kerry Wood going on the shelf (again) and the Cubs’ former trainer making accusations in his suit for improper dismissal, the papers have been pushing the idea that the Cubs have been covering up their players’ injuries. Probably true, but methinks it’s less a con job than the nature of the business. Sports in general, and the Cubs in particular, get a lot of traction out of hope, so putting forth optimistic estimates helps keep up fan interest and ticket sails. Moreover, the ballplayers themselves are by temperment and training conditioned to push themselves in ways often unhelpful to the prevention of or recovery from injury. Combine the two, and why would anyone expect an accurate portrayal of a star player’s diagnosis and return date?
  • How lightsabers work . Hilarious. I want one!
  • Nice article the other day on the pseudoscience of intelligent design helping illuminate the two huge flaws in ID. One is that it tries to support itself by showing flaws in evolutionary theory without first proving that they are the only two choices. The other is that the fundamental concept to be proved is completely beyond what can be objectively confirmed; evolution is at least theoretically possible to observe given enough time.
Categories: baseball, Chicago, Cubs, international, politics, science, technology, humor, law
Tue, 8 February 2005 8:24 pm Comments (0)

Those astounding advertisers

Database mining, focus groups, product placement…American marketroids sureknow how to figure out what makes every consumer tick, how to personalize those campaigns to zero in on each individual’s wants and needs when it comes to spending money we’re all just dying to spend. As a shining example, check out the amazing slip of paper in my mailbox today addressed to

Head of Household
Pre-Selected Residence
Major US Market Area
Wow!! With such amazing personalization, how could I possibly refuse the offer inside? Clearly they know me very well and have tailored this offer just for my needs!

Categories: USA, humor, rants, business
Fri, 3 December 2004 5:35 pm Comments (0)

Passing the blame

Okay, the sentiment behind this site isn’t particularly helpful, but it’s amusing nonetheless. I mean, c’mon, a thong? :)

Categories: politics, USA, humor
Mon, 15 November 2004 11:37 pm Comments (0)

How to make wedding cake last six months

  1. Remember not to leave the cake top in the bridal suite. Or at least contact housekeeping and go back to the hotel after realizing you did.
  2. Wrap in wax paper.
  3. Repeat.
  4. Wrap in plastic wrap.
  5. Repeat.
  6. Wrap in aluminum foil.
  7. Repeat.
  8. Stick in freezer and keep there for six months.

The cake might be a little dry about the edges, but should be very edible and not taste like cardboard or plastic wrap. Just remember that a little bit of butter-cream frosting and fondant goes a long way.

Can this be extended out for a full year? Check back in May…

Categories: culture, humor, society
6:24 pm Comments (0)

BSOD writ large

Thanks to Eric for bringing this little amusement to our attention (you must click on the hyperlink for this to make any sense).

What struck me about this wasn’t, surprisingly, seeing a crashed Windows box. No, I’m wondering, why are they running a garden-variety, general-purpose OS there in the first place? For one thing, a video display is a fairly single-purpose device, no need for the full-blown capabilities of Windows. For another, given that a major reason to have such video boards is to generate advertising revenue–which doesn’t flow if there are no ads playing!–wouldn’t it make sense to have an OS that is optimized for fault-tolerance, such as something used in military or space applications?

Categories: technology, humor, imagery
Mon, 12 July 2004 10:45 pm Comments (0)

Simple things amuse simple minds

Dry ice seems like a bit of overkill for a grocery delivery from Peapod, but it sure leads to hours–well, okay, minutes–of cheap entertainment with a vapor-filled kitchen sink. I hope this indicates that we still can enjoy the simple things rather than indicating that our lives have gotten really boring!

Categories: science, humor