When doodling, graffiti and video converge, I am hypnotized

Living in Brooklyn Heights, I often walk down to DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) for weekend studying, chocolate and art. Among our favorite art pieces at SmackMellon are the barnstormer videos. I've been jonesing for DVD for home, but this is almost as good.

Some more thoughts on Toilets

So I am thinking, "what if I help people learn about toilets here at 917 Press?"

I'd want them to know about what can happen to the decommissioned. They should know about how they factor into event planning. Or special artsy toilets.

For a time, I would take visitors of NYC to some of my favorites toilets.... the unisex at Bar 89 in SoHo, where the stall doors are transparent, but turn opaque when locked; Palicinka, also in SoHo where they have that awsome gritty handsoap.

There's also listing of notable and public toilets for the city. BlueManGroup's Tubes show muses on the wonderful system that links our homes to our cities... plumbing. In conclusion, toilets are interesting objects and places, why aren't more interested since we visit one at least once a day...

they didn't think these legs could walk

Ever since (in 1999?) my friend Annie Murdock made me my pointy fur (fake) hat with curtain tassels, I've been known as Squid Boy among certain friends.

I've cultivated a certain interest in squid and octopi, so this article and video of an octopus walking on the sea floor caught my attention.

Bipedal locomotion was thought to require muscle pulling against hard skeleton. But the octopuses walk using opposing muscle movements, a technique the researchers think requires little brain control.

An incapacitated pope versus a dead pope

Italy is revisiting the attempted murder of the Pope in 1981. While other news sources indicate that Pope is now being fed by a nasal tube. Given the Vatican's stance on the Schiavo ordeal, we can safely bet that the pope will not be issuing a DNR order.

Which begs the question? Which is best for the Catholic church? A dead Pope is replaced, but an indefinately incapacited pope lingers, and does nothing to respond to worldwide abuse by clergy or the popularity of the Da Vinci Code.

If my kid got this word during a spelling bee...

Whitney and Meeta didn't believe me when I told them of this chemical that has over 64,000 letters in it.

A chemical name for enaptin begins with "methionylalanylthreonyl...", ends in "...leucine", and is a total of 64,060 letters long. See the full chemical name of enaptin.

People over Systems

A frequent topic of conversation for my friends involve how well things are designed, and what kind of struggles we've had in the world of commerce. Lately I've found Seth Goldin's blog interesting reading on design and interface, particularly this musing on System's vs. People.

Unspoken, but implied in this piece that great people, who often make good systems, probably undervalue themselves and their judgement. Instead they credit the systems they've implemented.

Forget Friendster, Social networking through Blogs

In notifying my great friend and super host Steve (ah, Seoul seems so long ago), I've learned of these nifty blogs of college friends.

Steve has two blogs: The Shameless Antagonist, of the folly of government and their lackeys; and the Poutine Diaries, about settling in Goderich, Canada as his perapetic life is put on hold. It was after visiting Steve and Laurie in Korea that I decided to set up this blog.


Tbrough Steve I found Amalia Vagt's The Journal of Genki where I learned that after many years at Planned Parenhood, she's taken the calling for nursing. Steve also led me Brian Juchems's Kick. Ball. Action.


Through Brian, I found Clint Schnecloth's Lutheran Confessions, which appears to have the same wonderful insights on faith and practice that his long ago emails had. Then I found Dan Stout(beaucoup fun) and then Jose Nazario

Using grafedia to host images

This is my mom. This is my dad. This and us:dad and I. This is whitney in 1981, this is sam.

Tostenson Motorsports

My cousin Jason Tostenson races in the summer and just sent a solicitation for donations. Last year he was the IMCA Sprint Car National Point Champion (2004). So with my benefits of support, perhaps I'll post racing stats here. Here's the IMCA Champion's page. Go team!

You can send your donation to
Tostenson Motorsports
PO Box 809
Gaylord, MN 55334

Norm's First Blog

Though the second blog, the iBlog got zapped, the first still persists. Perhaps Norm will return to that one. In any case, we all miss Norm's blogging.

Looking at the wrong costs

I'll admit that I like my Mac a lot. I read about it online, I got one for my folks, and I'm going to bring one into our office. A while ago there was this musing in techworld about corporate IT opening up to Macs. Among the cited barriers to adoption are needs for serial ports, scsi,tape drives and floppys, also known as legacy features that maintains compatiblity with older equipment.

It seems to me 1) that Corp. IT is looking at the wrong costs, the sunk costs; and 2)that they haven't learned all the lessons there were to be learned regarding necessary reduncancy and diversity. In age of spyware, viruses and trojans, it seems clear that having a mixed shop of Wintel & Macs are a good defense, especially if Macs have far fewer known issues.

Furthermore, when I entered the job market I used my dual profieciency as a strength, IT should do the same. If Macs 10 years out face more problems, and linux is more stable, then an IT shop should be able to respond, that seems like good business to me.

Lee H. Hamilton's take on Iraq

My daddy-o forwarded this article to me yesterday from the Woodrow Wilson International It's pretty good overall, but I think he shorts the following

• Finding Bin Ladin/shoring up homeland security
• Finishing in Afganistan
• missinformation/deceit regarding WMD

In conclusion he muses

"Only time and events will tell whether the Iraq war has been worth the costs, and whether our decision to go to war will make us safer from – or more susceptible to –terrorist attack. "

One can make distinctions between military targets and civilian targets, but 1500 dead and 11,300 wounded doesn't seem so different from 9/11 casualties, nor the methodology seem so different from conventional terrorism. In short, terrorists didn't have to strike here, we sent them our kids instead.

Include those points, and I think it's fair to say, that yes, some positive gains were made, but look at the opportunity cost interms of diplomacy, fiscal health, homeland security, energy policy that were lost. No, it wasn't worth these costs.

The New York Post calls for .... restraint?

I couldn't believe it when I spotted it this morning on the train... "Enough" The New York Post's editorial took the front page today. Notably:

Congress, to its discredit, added endgame drama to the debate. So did President Bush; it was not his finest hour.

It was always the courts — state and federal — that should have had the final word in this dramatic tragedy.

How ironic that the people fighting on the extremes of both sides brought about a consensus in the middle.

The macabre circus that has put Pinellas County, Fla., on the global map is no longer about Terry Schiavo. It is about a revolution in the medical arts that has eroded all the old certainties about life, and about death.

Tomorrow Fox News will lead the way towards real news, and real reporting...

A Post by E-Mail; and yes, it's about a toilet

At the risk of being coming potty central, engaget has this nifty toilet piece. Not as a pretty as the Kohler, but so many features…. Though no vibrator?

The Final Sigh

I finished The Moor's Last Sigh last night after months of picking up, and picking up again. Much of the novel was superb, but the last 50 pages or so, well, I lost patience. It made me think back to Italo Calvino's and Umberto Eco's Norton Lecture Series lectures about enjoying the path, the process, the lingering of reading. But in this case, the story was over when the story left India.

My homework from randomhouse is to consider:

How does Rushdie use the Benengeli section of the novel to explore the theme of parasitism, and do you think that he intends Benengeli to represent the parasitism of the modern world? Rushdie equates Vasco Miranda with Bram Stoker's Dracula; with Helsing, the Larios sisters, and the Benengeli Parasites he makes other references to the Dracula tale. What does he achieve by making this comparison? What does the presence of Aoi U‘ within Vasco's nightmarish castle signify?

Come back later, and maybe I'll have another answer. Otherwise I'll say that the Moor's Last Sigh was cheesecake novel: very rich, and perhaps a bite one too many. Though school is full swing, I am looking forward to another book...

Connecting Dots

Thank goodness for folks who put together dots. That is often known as drawing lines, which can help us determine the hypocrites among us. From torture to the right to live, the name Bill Tierney wouldn't have stuck out in my mind otherwise. Thank you Whiskey Bar.

What kind of handle should a grafedia artist have?

Where urban and techo collide: be on the lookout for Grafedia. It looks like vandalism, but it's art, and was featured in Wired not too long ago.

Grafedia is hyperlinked text, written by hand onto physical surfaces and linking to rich media content - images, video, sound files, and so forth. It can be written anywhere - on walls, in the streets, or on sidewalks. Grafedia can also be written in letters or postcards, on the body as tattoos, or anywhere you feel like putting it. Viewers "click" on these grafedia hyperlinks with their cell phones by sending a message addressed to the word + "@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link.

Whitney's got a hawkeye, and I a treo, perhaps we'll spend a day hunting grafedia.


***update*** As I thought about this more, it reminded me much of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, where the cybestrians are on the prowl to find, view, and discuss "footage." I'm interested what, if any kind of narrative comes out of this medium.

As of today, many words aren't used, "tax", "sugar", "starbucks", which reminds me of when domain names were vast and available.

A New Throne

Yesterday I broke the soap dish in my shower, bringing a bathroom renovation into higher priority. But I've often been dreaming of sweeter throne. Enter "The Purist Hatbox" by Kohler. Is it natural to lust after a toilet?

Jihad in Florida

Among the sordid elements of covering the protests at Woodside Hospice House, are the signs that many of the protesters brandish. Some of the glumier protestors seem to curse this callous goverment of godless people, and threaten that God may show His fury at said country. It's as if our country wasn't already attacked by people who thought ours is a callous government of godless people. Please don't encourage any more attacks.

Whom can I link

This is where I work I'm just playing since I'm new, I promise to get better

I forgot, but Whitney reminded me

So..... I admit I read too much online. So Whitney suggested that I start blogging to vent a bit of what I digest. Little did she know that I set this up oh so many months ago.

So what have I been reading about? Politics, music, random happenings and more, some of which I can try to share here.