Month: October 2005

• From Invisbile City, Semapedia:
  

  Using Semacode Nodes, real-world objects such as a museum, a statue or anything that exists in the real-world and which happens to have a Wikipedia.org article written will be tagged with their according Wikipedia article URL.

  In theory, I think it’s a pretty interesting idea. In practice…well, I’m sure results will vary, but right now it looks mostly like pieces of printer paper taped to buildings and statues, where they probably won’t survive a light rain or heavy wind, if they aren’t taken down almost immediately by the people who own those buildings and statues.

• From Backwards City, a new law in Indiana that would require marriage as a legal condition of motherhood and the Bible as the well kinda-sorta-maybe true word of God
• From Gawker, the frightening prospect of Amy Sedaris as the voice of a talking penis and proof there are worse places to live
• From Boing Boing, guided urban and rural tours run by role-playing game designers, roleplaying games as socializing tools, some rather anti-social honeybees, smart spacecraft skinpublic domain books read aloud, and the possibility that a world of robot pirates may not be too far off.
• From Waxy Links, a couple of music links with Van Morrison’s Contractual Obligation Album and the party party, where you’ll find mp3 mashups of George W. Bush singing hits like “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2.¹
• From Maximum Verbosity, an unfinished time machine for sale
• From Bookslut, the ten stupidest utopias, books based on video games (which I think I was hitherto unaware existed), some great questions and answers with Bill Watterson, and the national poetry map
• From Warren Ellis, brothers fined for keeping ‘pet ghost’² and dolphins taught to sing the Batman theme. On the off chance that these are the same ones thought to have been let loose by Hurrican Katrina³, maybe they tried to burn down stately Wayne Manor.
• From William Gibson a 1946 film on despotism. See how many parallels you can find to today’s America! Or let someone else do it for you. (Note, I couldn’t get that second clip to play, but then again, Real Player does suck.)
• From Bruce Sterling, news of a virus that disrupts visits to pornographic websites by displaying messages from the Koran
• From the Mumpsimus, free new books
• From Mark Evanier, some of Tom Lehrer’s earliest works
• From Reuters Oddly Enough, Bruce Lee as symbol of unity in Bosnian town and psychopaths as the best finanacial traders
• And from I really don’t remember where, Is Gwyneth Paltrow a Genius?, exploring the mathematics of the new movie Proof, and Islam in Sci-fi Literature

“Welcome Back” by John Sebastian
“Not Your Girl” by Bree Sharp
“Alleluia” by Dar Williams
“With God on Our Side” by Bob Dylan
“Driving South” by the Stone Roses
“Arco Arena” by Cake
“I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones
“Real Love” by the Beatles
“I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” by the Soggy Bottom Boys
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra

The link, that I found through Hacking Netflix.

Also found through HN, Sarah Polley’s fascinating look back at the childhood trauma of filming The Adventures of Baron Munchausen:

I do know in retrospect that many things that terrified me were not as terrifying as they seemed then…and I’m pretty sure I know which shots were the double (specifically an overhead shot where little Kiran [stunt double Kiran Shah] is running like the graceless 35-year-old midget he was. I was pretty bitter about this loping run being attributed to me in my girly teens). However — it does raise a question of what I remember vs. what happened. It’s like this with photographs. Whole memories get built around them, which is sometimes a reflection of a general sense of things as they felt at the time, as opposed to what actually occurred.

So I’m willing to accept that my impressions may have been unlike what an adult might have. I think that’s sort of the point. It wasn’t a good environment for a kid because there were things that could easily be interpreted as dangerous without actually being dangerous. I think it’s harder to make those distinctions as a child, and I didn’t have a lot of support in trying to make them. The really traumatic things that happened are distinct memories that gave me nightmares well before the film came out, so confusion between what the stunt double was doing as opposed to me didn’t really play into my bad memories, I don’t think.

“Batman” house escapes damage in Pasadena fire

Or does it? Riddle me this, Batman:

Fire Guts ‘Batman’ Mansion

Links courtesy of fellow capper PrezGAR. I’m assuming the first one was simply incorrect, but, for articles only an hour or so apart, that’s quite a discrepancy.

I’m no fire marshall or anything, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest there’s probably a recognizable difference between a house gutted by flames and a house completely untouched by them.