Next week’s trip to Bangkok is taking shape. ’Pong has booked a fine-looking hotel at a mere THB2000 a night (about AUD66). I’ve been chatting with some Thai lads online — and been amused at the assumption that I’m a farang looking for, um more carnal pleasures. [sigh] Such assumptions! They seem to stop when I mention my boyfriend. So, 6 nights in Bangkok and then off to Chiang Mai. Any suggestions for things to do? And no, you can skip Patpong.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2007.
Richard Nixon’s White House tapes continue to amuse. Here’s an exchange between him and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
President Nixon: What’s your evaluation of Reagan after meeting him several times now.
Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a… actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.
President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains
Kissinger: Well, his brains, are negligible. I…
President Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.
Kissinger: He’s shallow. He’s got no… he’s an actor. He… When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, “Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can’t you find a few good lines?” [Chuckles.] That’s really an actor’s approach to foreign policy.
Hat tip to Marc Andreessen. I’ve cleaned up the punctuation a bit.
I was going to write a serious piece comparing the George W Bush and Ronald Reagan presidencies, and discuss the links John Howard’s time as PM. But I’ve been distracted. Instead, I’ve been looking at the questions which led people to this website.
This isn’t original. Meg Tsiamis was there first. As she observed, people find one’s website through some astounding searches.
I’ve mentioned before that the most common search bringing people here is “steve irwin jokes” — something I find quite depressing. The Top 10 includes such gems as “gerbil sex”, “royal gay sex”, “glory hole” and “bestiality”. Classy eh?
But scroll down the list’s long tail, through 580 different keyphrases so far this month alone, and you’ll find actual questions. Here, then, are some of the answers. If you can expand upon them, please do!
Since I wrote about that social networking site iYomu and then predicted it wouldn’t go anywhere, I’ve never been back. The only “friends” who’ve tried to link to me there are two complete strangers trying to win the million dollar challenge. I stand by my prediction.
Spotted in Sydney the other day: an advertising poster bearing the slogan “new innovation”. As opposed to the other kind, I assume.
We’ve suffered the longest pre-election campaign in Australia’s history, and then an abnormally long 6-week “official” campaign instead of the usual 5. Finally, it’s the last week before polling day. Are you over the whole thing yet?
Or are you only now deciding to get interested? Or perhaps you’re looking forward to one final orgy of campaigning. Which is it? Go to the website to vote!
Last week’s results: From the choices offered, most voters thought John Howard was the most disconnected from voters. Yes, Prime Minister, you are the problem, it seems. However a few people recognised that the Australian Democrats have had their day.
[Yes, I know the weekly poll hasn't been weekly lately. It was a non-core promise. Deal with it.]
Ah, this story has it all, but where to start? Money, drugs, underage sex, venture capital, Hollywood stars, Interpol and dodgy TV programs!
The chap in the picture is Marc Collins-Rector, and the rather unflattering photo is from the Florida sex offenders register. Back in the dot-com boom, he founded a company called DEN (or >en) for “digital entertainment network”.
“TV is dead,” he proclaimed, because we’d all be streaming video off DEN. Somehow he got millions in venture capital funding, even though most people were still on dial-up and video streaming just wasn’t happening. Most of the money, it seems, went on drugs and parties where… ahem! young men were invited when they were perhaps not of appropriate age.
Some $12 million was spent on a TV series called Chad’s World. Yet the pilot episode is “low-rent porn” quality rather than “network TV”.
For a highly amusing and somewhat smutty summary, check out this parody video of DEN’s business model.
Needless to say, it all imploded — but this investigative report makes for compelling reading. If only because it’s like watching a slow-motion car crash. And because the key characters are still out there, and involved in new business ventures which on the surface sound less than salubrious too.
Thanks to Boing Boing for the pointer. I think.
Trevor Paglen has created some beautiful photos of remote military installations using a process he called limit telephotography.
Limit-telephotography involves photographing landscapes that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The technique employs high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent.
The image at right shows the US Army’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground at Dugway, Utah, from a distance of 22 miles.
Paglen was also involved in the project Terminal Air, which explores the interconnections between government agencies and private contractors involved with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.
Hat tip to 3 Quarks Daily.
Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital computer that Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park used to crack the German Enigma code in WWII, is being rebuilt.
And what’s even more cool, it’s going to be used in a race against a modern PC to crack codes!
Tony Sale and his team of British vintage computer enthusiasts have a job a head of them, as the original Colossus machines were destroyed at the end of WWII. However the surviving Colossus engineers have been found, and they’re on the case.
Hat tip to Boing Boing.
Criminal profiling is easy, apparently. According to this fascinating article in New Yorker, it uses the same tricks as stage psychics and other cons. Hat-tip to denialism blog.
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