Posts

Newsweek breaks the news: Jeff Bezos is funding a space venture. Some dot-com CEOs buy basketball teams; some buy spaceships. Carl’s comment: “I guess he took to heart the analysts who pointed out that Amazon’s valuation required selling to other solar systems.” Oh, and Neal Stephenson is working for the Bezos venture. That’s funky. I was all set to feel smart about pointing out that Elon Musk, who founded PayPal, is also doing a private space company but Newsweek got there first. Alas. Still, it’s kind of a cool way to spend all that money. ...

In honor of the kickoff of the 2004 political season, today’s mashup will be based on the Iowa caucuses, which are exceedingly rich soil in which to plant a campaign seed. You’ve got the obvious basic storyline of selecting a leader in the middle of political intrigue. You’ve got the way the caucuses work; they’re not actually an election. You’ve got the current sitaution, in which the political outsider (Dean) surged against the consummate veteran (Gephardt) until at the very last minute the other veteran (Kerry) takes the unexpected lead — and the other young guy (Edwards) is surging as well. You’ve got Iowa, a state most people ignore except every four years. Fun stuff. Mashers, start your ethanol-fuelled engines!

Horked from Metafilter, but high on the cool factor: MagicGallery.com (original), a collection of vintage magician posters from 1890 to 1930. Those who enjoyed a certain novel should make sure to view this poster (original).

A while back I said I thought it would be cool to set up a Harvard Square wireless weblog. It still would be cool — come to think of it, I should talk to the guys over at NewburyOpen.net (original). They have a little wireless bubble down at South Station, which doesn’t connect to the open Internet but which does have a little isolated bulletin board; they might be interested in the blog idea. ...

Oh yeah — posts will be seldom for the rest of this week, as I am off traveling on business. Parenthetically, there’s nothing quite so amusing as introducing a tech geek to Fry’s for the first time. Sure, I’m jaded by years of bad Fry’s customer service, but newbies don’t know the horrors that lurk beneath the tech megastore surface.

Today we’re gonna mashup Robin Hood. Yeah, there’s a thematic link to last week’s mashup there; it must be the long winter nights getting to me. The core of it all is the old steal from the rich, give to the poor thing — and from there on in it’s all about the variations. Merry Men, Maid Marian, kings away at the wars: what’s not to like? A tip of the hat to GURPS Robin Hood seems in order as well. Oh, and a reminder: there’s a mailing list for the weekly announcement of this writing meme and Game WISH. It’s free, and who doesn’t like free? Now, on to the mashup.

Hey, look over there. The Population: Too proofreading team has done 729 pages, which is like two and a half books or something insane like that. 186 pages on January 15th alone. And when I say proofreading team, I mean Diony and Liralen, who are on fire. Thank you guys for helping to increase the amount of free information on the Internet. You rock.

Hey, new stuff on the blogroll! Well, semi-new stuff, but I felt like noting it. DonkeyRising is demographer’s Ruy Teixeira’s blog about Democratic strategy. It’s a little rah-rah but insightful and informative. The Decembrist is Mark Schmitt’s blog; he was formerly one of Bill Bradley’s senior aides. Solid stuff from a political insider. The American Street is a new group blog with David Neiwert as a contributor. They need to fix their layout but I’ll read Neiwert’s stuff anywhere. ...

The rules of The Apprentice got a little clearer this week; the project manager has to choose two people each week to go into the final stage with him, and one of the three gets fired. So, OK, Troy didn’t totally blow it last week. On the other hand, now the team is saddled with a total malcontent in Sam for at least a little while longer; I still think you gotta do a better job of balancing the strategy of picking the bad performers and the management difficulty of staying on everyone’s good side. ...

Bob Mould blogs. All hail Bob Mould. Hello, better late than never, or maybe not - you decide. A lot of my friends have been blogging for a while, and I figured it might be about time for me to join the party.