The Early Years (2002-2005)

I really, really wish I were in New York to see “The Gates”, by Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude. Not that I consider Christo among the upper echelon of modern or postmodern artists (hey, the Artfacts rankings back me up here), but his works are always fun to see and experience. And they do make you reconsider the environment. Central Park in February has probably never been this crowded.

Coconut and Mummy say hi!

The New York Times has a pretty good summary of the efforts to stop spam, boiling it down to a simple analogy with the British postal system c. 1840: the sender should pay. That’s the basis of the Penny Black Project anyway - making the sender “pay”, either in micropayments or, more likely, through taking up a few seconds of the sender’s time.

I really like studying etymology and the origins of words, and I’m interested in the fairly omnivorous nature of English, which has a huge “borrowed” vocabulary. (Random fact: “bugger” is related to “Bulgaria”.) So I thought every now and then I’d put up random lists of words English borrows from various languages - well, besides French, German, and Spanish, or I’ll exhaust myself from typing.

Happy Valentine’s Day one and all! Remember, as Osama Bin Laden says, “The teddy bear that holds the ‘I love you’ heart does not love you at all. It is an unliving, unholy thing filled only with stuffing.” (The Onion - how I love it.)

I’ve just discovered Puptastic, another dog blog, and learnt the following disturbing facts: The dog most likely to eat you when you’re dead is the Dachshund. Beware the hot dog!

The Hitchhiker’s Guide “trilogy” are the funniest books I’ve ever read, hands down. Even with my hands in the usual position, they’re the funniest things I’ve ever read - between me and my brother, the books have been dog-eared to the point where my dog would probably disclaim any sort of resemblance.

This is a fantastic story: a huge mountain of works of Roman literature, thought to have been lost to an eruption of Vesuvius, might turn out to be readable. It includes half of Epicurus’ entire opus and works of Philodemus. Apparently the eruption also caused the freak circumstance of papyrus being preserved, and modern technology has made it possible to read the carbonised books. As the article notes:

Oh - looking at my referral logs I’ve learnt that for some reason this site is the #1 hit in Google for “Internet Timewasters”, at least as of 12 Feb 2005. Woohoo! Slackness abounds. Welcome all lollygagging timewasters!

RIP, Arthur Miller. The modern tragedy wouldn’t be what it is without you.

Wow. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but this is pretty scary. (Warning: not for the squeamish.) I can’t believe they put up her picture - not sure any guy will dare go near her after that…

Hey, I’ve noticed that Blogger quietly changed its comments function so that you can see previous comments and respond to them - yay. And no, you don’t have to be a Blogger user to comment on my blog. Still on my wishlist: trackback and categories.

The Guardian has a good interview with Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesiser that bears his name, and now subject of a documentary. He talks about the early reaction to the synth:

Now it’s not just Singapore where couples who have babies get paid (here, we call it a “baby bonus”) - it’s happening in Italy too, according to the LA Times. Indeed, this quote from the article could have fit very well into the Straits Times last year, when there was the national debate over how to make conditions better for parenthood:

The New York Times has an article on how big the World of Warcraft has become. It’s interesting how the virtual world has become somewhat self-policing, and how much the lines between the virtual and real worlds have intersected:

One thing about taking the subway to work - you get a lot of reading done on the way there and back. Lately, I’ve finished two very different books, each stunning in its own right. The first was Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (click on link for a full review), which starts off with a missing cat and turns into a tour de force of a novel, spanning philosophy, Japanese history, and mysticism. Highly recommended.

Used to be, Day 2 was Day 1 redux: the family would gather at one of the relatives’ houses. I have a big family - 40 cousins or so when you add up both sides - and so day 2 normally lets you meet some of those you missed on day 1. These days, though, we just putz around at home. Inertia has won.

According to the BBC, Uri Geller, the man who claims to be able to bend spoons and the like, will address the Oxford Union in March. Funny how the article makes it sound like only political leaders and great people address the Union, when really even Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson have done so. I thought this line was also funny:

I have eaten the iPod Shuffle that was on the counter and which you were probably saving for later Forgive me it was delicious so thin and so cold

Happy Lunar New Year to all readers of this blog! Two days off work to go see all the relatives. And in the spirit of weird holiday TV programming, look at Einstein the parrot go!