Free TiVo if you can write well. Geek.com
Daily Archives: 18 Sep 00
If there anyone who hasn’t yet seen this awe-inspiring photograph from the Montana wildfires, be there now. [via Robot Wisdom]
Another one of those Amazing Journey stories.
Jenny Diski in The Observer: “Now I understand what Kierkegaard was on about. The
leap of faith is not
towards God, but
love and housing.”
The Sunday Times of London reviews J.G. Ballard’s new one, Super Cannes.
The
Ballardian law of the universe runs
thus: every idealistic attempt by human
society to organise itself into
progressive or “higher” forms will,
inevitably, precipitate catastrophe.
Interesting catastrophe, of course.The high-rise block degenerates into a jungle; the motorway
system (as in Crash) becomes a 70mph, high-tech killing
ground; the leisure city of the future (as in Cocaine Nights)
decays into Sodom by the Med. Plan a housing estate such as
Paulsgrove in Portsmouth and you are writing a programme for
lynch law….
An engaging feature in Ballard’s fiction is his cavalier
indifference to the laws that hobble lesser writers (who else
would introduce Elizabeth Taylor into a novel in which the hero
is called J G Ballard?).
And the Guardian-Observer’s reviewer says: “…vintage Ballard, a gripping blend of
stylised thriller and fantastic imaginings rendered in deceptively
bland, unruffled prose. One of its virtues lies simply in its
compulsive readability; as the story unfolds, the reader is
engaged at the level of pure plot…”
Lingua Franca: Celebrating Ten Years. In honor of its tenth anniversary, the “Review of Academic Life” collects ten of its “all-time favorite articles, as well as special thematic archives — labor
and tenure, post Cold-War politics, gender and sexuality, theory
and its discontents, and academic computing.
More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first
affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.
Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information
can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information
as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates
program.” Geek.com
More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first
affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.
Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information
can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information
as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates
program.” Geek.com
More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first
affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.
Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information
can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information
as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates
program.” Geek.com
Just saw Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog. Has anyone ever run across a downloadable version of the Hagekure: the way of the samurai?
Nationalgeographic.com is getting dispatches from a group of archaeologists who report they’ve discovered evidence of the Biblical flood, when the rising Mediterranean broke through to what is now the Black Sea.
Jorg Heider and his Austrian Freedom party are not the only ultra-nationalist proto-fascist force in European politics. Support is growing in Belgium for Filip Dewinter and his far Right Vlaams Blok party, “Our People First” teeshirts and all. The Times of London
A Litmus Test for Romantics. If you can’t figure out if a relationship is right, give your partner — or potential partner — a book. Do they care enough to read it? What does their reaction indicate about whether their sensibilities are on track? But be careful — they might be vetting you based on what book it is you’ve chosen for your examination… New York Times
