cuthbert killed osmium

Jul 4

*—fireworks—*

Jul 3

slateV on the nyc law requiring chain restaurants to post calories. so far, it has taught me two things: don’t eat the stuff in the case at starbucks, and never never ever get a muffin at dunkin donuts. get an ice cream instead, because that is way healthier.

machines will eat you

i shouldn’t have written about elevators yesterday, because right after that i waved my arm in the elevator door to make it open back up, and it closed on me. instead of then immediately re-opening, it put its back into it.

for half an hour i was convinced my arm was broken. it still hurts 16 hours later. fucking elevator.

Jul 2

christopher hitchens is waterboarded for his article in vanity fair, believe me, it’s torture. link to the video is here. (photo by gasper tringale.)

CLOSE DOOR

the door close buttons in my building’s elevators work. their deployment is helpful in some frustrating instances: often someone will get on the elevator, push 7, and get out on 4; or, they get on, push both 4 and 7, and then get out on 4. why people do this, you’re not sure. however, you know a useless stop is coming up—you’re going to stop on 7, the person who wanted 7 is already gone, and then you’ll continue up to where ever you’re going. as the scene opens on 7, you push DOOR CLOSE, and the doors will close again with no pause. those five seconds you’ve just reclaimed from the world, they make you feel good.

it has become folk wisdom that the door close button is connected to nothing. “it’s to make you feel better.” the wisdom gets passed around like there’s a conspiracy, and a scientific study of electromagnetic pulses from elevators has concluded: you are being duped.

this folk wisdom is appealing because it’s cynical, and there’s a bias to assume that a cynical anecdote is correct. however, while cynicism is often revelatory, it is no substitute for empiricism.

the next building over from me—it is true, their brand of elevators seems to have non-functioning DOOR CLOSE buttons. i’ve tried them, and i get nothing. are they connected to nothing, bare wires hanging into space, or is there a control system that has inappropriate calibration parameters plugged into it? or is the elevator possessed by satan? one of the three.

if you want to get an idea going, a meme as they say, make it cynical and it’s got ten times the chance as before.

you can also win an argument by drilling straight for cynicism. tired of talking about iraq? the next time it comes up, just say, you know what they say, the rich always dominate the poor and it’s never going to be any different. it might have nothing so much to do with iraq, but people will hear the cynical diamond at the center of it and say, you’re right.

i was trying to think of a name for this rhetorical strategy—sort of akin to an ad hominem argument. i came up with ad captium, but i don’t remember exactly what my justification was.

listen for it. your homework is to spot 3 ad captium arguments in the wild. good luck.

kfan just posted the 2008 dancing video by matt harding, where he dances with groups of people all over the world. of all the people who did something really good with the internet, wherethehellismatt is tops. watching this always makes me feel good, and the song is cool. (from mattharding2718.)

“Maybe instead of refighting the Vietnam War while we’re still fighting the Iraq war, the candidates can figure out how to feed the world, find enough fuel for everyone and oh, yeah, catch that bin Laden fiend who’s running around free.”

and maureen dowd, in the new york times, reminds her readers that the 60s are in fact over.

i have an obsessive need to resist the culture of the baby boomers, so i am maybe oversensitive; but every other news story i see about iraq makes me think vietnam, vietnam, vietnam, they’re talking about vietnam, not iraq. you’d get the impression from thousands of conversations happening every day that soldiers are returning from iraq to be yelled at by war protesters, which, i believe, never happens. that only happened in the 60s, with the baby boomers.

and every time i see college students gathering for a “protest,” with their smiling teacher looking on proudly, i think “you bunch of traitors to your generation. acting like boomers, as if that ever got anyone anything.”

“Life, the Army man might have been thinking, just isn’t fair.” fred kaplan in slate, on the reason for wesley clark’s dismissive remarks about john mccain’s qualifications to be president. he posits the reason is rivalry between the military branches, which at the time of vietnam were much greater than they are today. the seasoned army infantry commander could very well believe the navy pilot didn’t face any hard decisions in that war.

Jul 1

mac should make a laptop that looks different and is sold under a different name, like “EL COMPUTER” or something. that way i could get a mac, but not have to feel like i was in the same club as those people who have macs. (cartoon from penny arcade.)

update: some of my best friends swear by their macs. but you know how that one enthusiastic mac booster who doesn’t blink when he talks ruins the whole thing? take that guy down, mac users. take him down!