Mitch Wagner's Other Blog

"Now go buy a cold can of Dr. Pepper and jam it up your butt."

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:00:35 -0700

“Now go buy a cold can of Dr. Pepper and jam it up your butt.”

- Quit Complaining About Mayor Bloomberg’s Soda Ban, Fatsos (via gina)

thedailywhat: Case For Sunscreen of the Day: This man is 69...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:58:34 -0700

thedailywhat:

Case For Sunscreen of the Day: This man is 69 years old.

He drove a truck for 28 years.

The premature aging from sun damage to the left side of his face is extensive enough to warrant a feature in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Trucker or not, don’t forget your sunscreen.

[gizmodo]

Making the Case for WAN Optimization

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 03:10:56 -0700

Making the Case for WAN Optimization:

Throwing bandwidth at problems to make them go away is no longer the answer. - me on Intelligent WAN: Mitch Wagner

Don't Make Social Media the 'Creepy Treehouse'

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 03:02:04 -0700

Don't Make Social Media the 'Creepy Treehouse':

Students often view social media as social space. This creates problems for educators who want to use the services in the classroom. - me on Educational IT: Mitch Wagner

We watched the pilot of "The West Wing"

Thu, 31 May 2012 11:00:00 -0700

What an excellent show. Hard to believe it was 13 years ago.

A major storyline revolved around two characters who mistakenly exchanged pagers (which I recall being a common gimmick in 90s comedies). The pagers were the size of sunglass cases.

Lisa Edelstein plays a call girl. She looks classy. As a hospital administrator she looked trashier. NOT THAT THAT’S A BAD THING.

thezenzone: WELCOME TO THE 23rd CENTURYThe perfect world of...

Thu, 31 May 2012 08:59:40 -0700

thezenzone:

WELCOME TO THE 23rd CENTURY
The perfect world of total pleasure.
…there’s just one catch.

merlin: Excellent News. Still. I miss Bam-Bam. I love that...

Wed, 30 May 2012 21:50:10 -0700

merlin:

Excellent News.

Still. I miss Bam-Bam.

I love that they put nutrition labels on Cocoa Pebbles. The nutrition label should say, “WTF do you care about nutrition? Dude, you’re eating Cocoa Pebbles!”

Apparently, free pizza is something people complain about...

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:56:46 -0700

Apparently, free pizza is something people complain about now

Reading this article, I’m not sure what the problem is. Some people seem to think the campaign feeds into stereotypes about lazy Mexicans. The English-first crowd has its knickers in a twist about Americans being asked to say a three-word sentence in Spanish — and one of the words isn’t even Spanish.

Me, I’m offended by the idea of Mexican pizza. That’s nothing against Mexican culture; I’m just a New York pizza snob.

Man Conquers Space: 7-minute mini-documentary on the early...

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:56:19 -0700

Man Conquers Space: 7-minute mini-documentary on the early history of American manned spaceflight.

Photo

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:00:40 -0700

Awake creator Kyle Killen explains the series finale, sort of,...

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:52:14 -0700

Awake creator Kyle Killen explains the series finale, sort of, and where they would have taken the show in Season 2

The final scenes were not something tacked on to the show when the cancellation notice came down. They were written while the show’s fate was still uncertain, although the ratings were low, so presumably the writers were doing something that could work as either a series or season finale.

The hero of Awake, Det. Mike Britten, created the universes to process his grief at one member of his family having been killed. But even after reading this interview, we still don’t know which universe was real. I don’t think even Killen and the writers knew.

Also, each universe was a place where Britten could trick himself into picking up clues he’d noticed subconsciously in real life. But what was “real life?” We don’t know.

The third universe, where both wife and son survived the accident, was no more real than the other two. Had the show continued, Universe 3 would likely have been the place where really weird shit happened, Killen says.

The second season would likely have been about Britten’s lives fragmenting further. In the red universe, the one where his wife survived, he’d be a disgraced, imprisoned cop, alienated from his wife. In the green universe, the one where his son survived, he’d be a respectable widower, moving past his wife’s death, and connecting with Tara the tennis coach.

I’m not entirely sorry the show was canceled. I like it as a self-contained story.

I’m getting spam about how you can lose weight with...

Tue, 29 May 2012 14:55:13 -0700

I’m getting spam about how you can lose weight with coffee.

Here’s how it works — and I won’t even charge you.

Get a 50-pound bag of coffee beans. Doesn’t matter where they were grown. Doesn’t matter if they’re green or roasted.

Carry the 50-pound bag up and down a few flights of stairs.

You’re welcome!

Image from bitzcelt on Flickr

What WAS the phone call?

Tue, 29 May 2012 12:57:07 -0700

What WAS the phone call?:

As fewer people make voice calls, and the calls get shorter, writer Tom Vanderbilt looks back how people use and used this once revolutionary medium:

When it is introduced, a new technology typically sets in motion a now familiar script. At first, the technology is deemed to have little import or to fulfill only very specific, limited uses. Consider, for example, this casual dismissal by The New York Times in 1939: “The problem with television is that people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it.”

Next, as the technology’s true uses come into view, but before it is widely adopted, come the grandiose pronouncements, both pro and con, on how it will reshape society. In The Last Lone Inventor (2002), Evan Schwartz noted that television inventor Philo T. Farnsworth thought television would engender world peace: “If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings? War would be a thing of the past.”

And then, as prices come down and the technology continues to improve, people simply buy the thing (which, it turns out, has fulfilled neither the utopian nor apocalyptic scenarios ascribed to it), and like a persistent rainfall refilling a dry desert lakebed, over time it so thoroughly permeates everyday life that we no longer pause to think about its presence, or indeed what might have once lain beneath the shimmering surface.

The telephone fits comfortably into this schema. It arrived on the historical stage in 1876 without invitation or clear mass desire. Yet there it was, a device harboring a radical change: For the first time, people could converse in real time at a distance. But what to do with it? As sociologist Claude Fischer observed in America Calling (1992), businessmen, who relied on letters and the telegraph to transmit important and often complex information, were initially skeptical of the telephone. “For them,” Fischer wrote, “voice transmission, scratchy and often indistinct, could be an adjunct at best.” (Inventor Elisha Gray gave up pursuing the telephone, which he called the “talking telegraph,” to focus on improving telegraphy.) Economics also played a role. William Preece, chief engineer of the British postal service, said America—not Britain—had use for the telephone. “Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys, and things of that kind.”

Then, as Fischer described, the uses took hold, cycling through new audiences and wider purposes, thanks in large part to a vigorous marketing push by the Bell System. (The company boasted in a 1909 ad that it had “from the start created the need of the telephone and then supplied it.”) First the phone was used for commercial business, then for household business, then, gradually, for social purposes: visiting with relatives, “fond intimate talks,” getting “in touch.” “Friendship’s path,” a 1937 AT&T ad declared, “often follows the trail of the telephone wire.”

While this progression seems obvious in retrospect, the brief period when the function of the phone was in play should not be overlooked. There was, for example, the “Telephone Herald” (which was launched in Budapest but eventually came to the United States in various forms), described in a 1903 article in Chambers’s Journal as a “telephone-receiver” installed in the home that would alert the subscriber to the “sending of news” by an alarm (“a sort of trumpet”). An editor would read bulletins to the service’s subscribers. “The apparatus is so arranged,” explained the Journal, “that the subscriber can lie down or follow some other occupation while he hears the news. Should the information not prove delectable to the auditor, he simply places the trumpet upon the hooks fitted to the receiver.”

I use the phone for open-ended conversations: Catching up with family, brainstorming ideas at work. I prefer texting or IM for short, bursty communications where both sides know what they have to say and can say it fast.

wilwheaton: arcaneimages: Space Cadet ZZZZzzzzap.

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:00:03 -0700

wilwheaton:

arcaneimages:

Space Cadet

ZZZZzzzzap.

I hate it when that happens.

Tue, 29 May 2012 08:57:47 -0700

I hate it when that happens.

A sweet story about a life put on track by something that almost didn't happen

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:58:42 -0700

A sweet story about a life put on track by something that almost didn't happen:

Randy Murray:

Life is anything but inevitable. But it continually amazes me how when I stop pursuing something that isn’t really right for me that I discover something perfect.

“Life and love on the New York City Subway,” 1946...

Mon, 28 May 2012 12:58:42 -0700

“Life and love on the New York City Subway,” 1946 photos by Stanley Kubrick.

Retronaut has more photos

Photos from Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, a children’s TV...

Mon, 28 May 2012 10:59:10 -0700

Photos from Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, a children’s TV show that aired 1970-72. It was a James Bond parody that featured chimps in costumes, making mouth movements in approximate time to cheesy voice-over dialogue. Even at 9 years old I thought it was hokey, and yet it exerted a depraved fascination over my developing mind.

Retronaut has more photos

Photos from the UC Berkley campus, 1970: See shocking true...

Mon, 28 May 2012 08:54:40 -0700

Photos from the UC Berkley campus, 1970: See shocking true photos of “people influenced by the Hippy Movement both in their style of dress and in their actions”!

More photos at Retronaut

Hey! I reblogged your gary johnson post and just wanted to know what positions you didn't think he was spot on for?

Sun, 27 May 2012 20:40:39 -0700

Balancing the federal budget as a short-term priority. The Fair Tax sounds like a federal sales tax, which is disproportionately borne by the poor and middle class. Abolishing the corporate income tax. Return to commodity-based currency.

America’s biggest economic problem is concentration of wealth: libertarian economic policies (like Johnson’s) would only exacerbate that problem.