Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Aw, box doodles!
I love them! (Via MF Distilled.) Nice idea, great contributions, cool horizontal scrolling. Reminded me a bit of this.
The beauty of advertising.
Here's a nice Metafilter discussion that starts off about the beauty of this Lance Armstrong-oriented ad. Be sure to click on the link at "At then there's this peaceful piece."
UPDATE: Chris astutely points out that the last link there ("peaceful piece") uses the same trick used in this old "What's Wrong With This Picture?" thing that everyone got a kick out of a few years ago.
UPDATE: Chris astutely points out that the last link there ("peaceful piece") uses the same trick used in this old "What's Wrong With This Picture?" thing that everyone got a kick out of a few years ago.
Jenna's adorable!
Nina is calling attention to the picture of Jenna Bush sticking her tongue out at the reporters. (As Drudge puts it: "CHEEKY JENNA TONGUES PRESS." Hey, Drudge, get a dictionary: she didn't lick them.) I'd just like to say, that picture of Jenna is incredibly cute. She's clearly smiling and good-natured in that picture--just completely charming. I approve!
Off to a slow start.
I'm doing a presentation to the faculty today about two Supreme Court cases (Newdow and Locke--the Pledge of Allegiance case and the case about denying a student a scholarship because he was majoring in theology.) The talk is at noon, and I'd like to pull my notes together in my office. But as I was sitting at the dining table this morning reading the NYT, it started to get quite dark. A storm was threatening, so I figured I'd wait it out. Well, it's been threatening for over an hour. Where the hell is it? Should I just dart out and get to my office? As noted two days ago, it only takes me ten minutes to get to my office. This waiting-out-the-storm thing is getting a little annoying. In the time I am taking to write this, I could be halfway to my office. And see: still no storm. A little rumbling in the distance. I'm probably timing this to insure that I will get soaked crossing the street to the Beloved Donor Law Building, but I think I've got to at along last take the big risk. I will report back on the extent of my drenching. If I don't, you may assume I've been struck by lightning.
UPDATE: Lightning bolts successfully dodged. I live to blog again, only slightly dampened.
UPDATE: Lightning bolts successfully dodged. I live to blog again, only slightly dampened.
Is KenJen boring?
I see Slate finally has come up with the Ken Jennings drinking game. It's nowhere near funny enough though, especially considering the help of tons of emailers. The only interesting one is:
The game is padded with generic rules that could be used when there is any strong champion, and the article is padded with material about great drinking games of the past. "Hi, Bob" was great because it was based on a neat observation about the show. Drink when KenJen gets one wrong is an embarrassing failure to be specific. Come on! I want some standards in my drinking games! Here's my drinking game: drink when someone announces a drinking game rule that isn't funny!
Maybe the problem is that Ken Jennings really isn't very interesting. And the show is less interesting than normal when Final Jeopardy presents no risk and no occasion for strategic betting. The only surprise is how much KenJen wins by. (An obvious missed opportunity in the Slate drinking game: there should have been a rule to drink when Ken bets just enough on Final Jeopardy to equal but not exceed the one-day record.)
On Final Jeopardy with KenJen, the people out of contention just seem like mere shells of a man/woman. What about that guy yesterday--you know, the guy that looked like Al Gore--just writing "What is ....?" when the question required the name of a country in Africa? At least name some country in Africa! The only possible thing you could lose there is your last shred of dignity if you were somehow to fail to name a country in Africa! But you did fail to ... ah ... enough already. That man was boring. And the woman was scarcely alive!
Conclusion: KenJen is making the show boring, but way more people are tuning in because of him than would watch on an ordinary day, where the contest would be more exciting. Viewers are dully observing the dollar total advance and sticking around because they want to be watching when some day KenJen falls. The percentage of viewers hoping to see him defeated probably increases each day.
Everybody drinks once whenever ... KenJen's answer ends with a stylistic flourish, like last night's, "What are the munchies, man?" in response to a clue about an 8-letter word for "hunger pangs."
The game is padded with generic rules that could be used when there is any strong champion, and the article is padded with material about great drinking games of the past. "Hi, Bob" was great because it was based on a neat observation about the show. Drink when KenJen gets one wrong is an embarrassing failure to be specific. Come on! I want some standards in my drinking games! Here's my drinking game: drink when someone announces a drinking game rule that isn't funny!
Maybe the problem is that Ken Jennings really isn't very interesting. And the show is less interesting than normal when Final Jeopardy presents no risk and no occasion for strategic betting. The only surprise is how much KenJen wins by. (An obvious missed opportunity in the Slate drinking game: there should have been a rule to drink when Ken bets just enough on Final Jeopardy to equal but not exceed the one-day record.)
On Final Jeopardy with KenJen, the people out of contention just seem like mere shells of a man/woman. What about that guy yesterday--you know, the guy that looked like Al Gore--just writing "What is ....?" when the question required the name of a country in Africa? At least name some country in Africa! The only possible thing you could lose there is your last shred of dignity if you were somehow to fail to name a country in Africa! But you did fail to ... ah ... enough already. That man was boring. And the woman was scarcely alive!
Conclusion: KenJen is making the show boring, but way more people are tuning in because of him than would watch on an ordinary day, where the contest would be more exciting. Viewers are dully observing the dollar total advance and sticking around because they want to be watching when some day KenJen falls. The percentage of viewers hoping to see him defeated probably increases each day.
The ant and me.
Unless it's cold, I usually go out in my bare feet to pick up the newspaper from my front walkway. This morning, I pick up the blue New York Times bag and then see a second blue bag under the hedge. The newspaper man must have thought I'd have trouble finding the one under the hedge and threw a second one. I step over to retrieve the second one and a horrible little red ant crawls up between my toes and bites me! Ah well, there are many, many good people who have been bitten by creatures. Look at Bethany Hamilton.
That Nelson Mandela remark.
Everyone seems to be ridiculing Martha Stewart for referring to Nelson Mandela after Barbara Walters asked her how she would deal with going to prison.
You can find that quote at the beginning of this article in the Wisconsin State Journal. This article, which outlines and compares on a point-by-point basis the life of Stewart and the life of Mandela, decently concedes that Stewart did not literally compare herself to Mandela, but says "it took real guts and guile (or gall) for Stewart to invoke Mandela. A lesser human would never have been able to do [it] with a straight face." That observation strikes a chord: when Larry King gave her an opportunity to deal with the remark now that people had taken it the wrong way, she said: "I wasn't comparing myself to Nelson Mandela. I am not a Nobel Prize winner." I laughed out loud at that. It's widely open to the inference that she's his equal except for the fact that she has not been awarded the Nobel Prize.
On the other hand, isn't it perfectly ordinary, when faced with a difficult task or an unfair burden, to think of an admirable person who got through an even more difficult task or carried a more monstrously unfair burden? Does anyone think that the people who say "What would Jesus do?" are claiming to be the equal of Jesus or the perfectionists affected by the New Testament verse "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" are claiming to be the equal of God? So leave our poor sentenced perfectionist alone about the Mandela remark.
Here is a woman profoundly dedicated to thinking in terms of how to do things well. Millions of people look to her for ideas about how to live, to the point where that caller was hoping she could extract some ideas for living out of the prison experience. In that light, one ought to be interested in her ideas about how to go to prison. We were given a chance to see that one of the things she did was contemplate Nelson Mandela. That's useful!
"I'm a really good camper. I can sleep on the ground. There are many, many good people who have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela."
You can find that quote at the beginning of this article in the Wisconsin State Journal. This article, which outlines and compares on a point-by-point basis the life of Stewart and the life of Mandela, decently concedes that Stewart did not literally compare herself to Mandela, but says "it took real guts and guile (or gall) for Stewart to invoke Mandela. A lesser human would never have been able to do [it] with a straight face." That observation strikes a chord: when Larry King gave her an opportunity to deal with the remark now that people had taken it the wrong way, she said: "I wasn't comparing myself to Nelson Mandela. I am not a Nobel Prize winner." I laughed out loud at that. It's widely open to the inference that she's his equal except for the fact that she has not been awarded the Nobel Prize.
On the other hand, isn't it perfectly ordinary, when faced with a difficult task or an unfair burden, to think of an admirable person who got through an even more difficult task or carried a more monstrously unfair burden? Does anyone think that the people who say "What would Jesus do?" are claiming to be the equal of Jesus or the perfectionists affected by the New Testament verse "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" are claiming to be the equal of God? So leave our poor sentenced perfectionist alone about the Mandela remark.
[Larry King show caller:] Martha, I would like to ask you if you do have to do jail time and you come out do you -- will you bring some of your ideas from jail to your show?
STEWART: Wouldn't it really be better if I could take my ideas from my show to jail, I think that that might be a better thing.
Here is a woman profoundly dedicated to thinking in terms of how to do things well. Millions of people look to her for ideas about how to live, to the point where that caller was hoping she could extract some ideas for living out of the prison experience. In that light, one ought to be interested in her ideas about how to go to prison. We were given a chance to see that one of the things she did was contemplate Nelson Mandela. That's useful!
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