Mitch Wagner's Tumblblog

Gorgeous steampunk time machine in Second Life. Click through to...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:56:00 -0700

Gorgeous steampunk time machine in Second Life. Click through to see all the terrific details. Find it at Synergy Mystique. (Via New World Notes.)

Watch the video of our interview with political blogger Avedon Carol

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:58:44 -0700

Watch the video of our interview with political blogger Avedon Carol:

Avedon is a fire-breathing progressive who blogs at The Sideshow, we talked about healthcare reform, politics, her career as a dancer in Second Life, and more.

As usual, this is the raw, unedited…

Avedon is a fire-breathing progressive who blogs at The Sideshow, we talked about healthcare reform,...

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:22:21 -0700

Avedon is a fire-breathing progressive who blogs at The Sideshow, we talked about healthcare reform, politics, her career as a dancer in Second Life, and more.

As usual, this is the raw, unedited video, so it’ll have a couple of hiccups in it. I’ll be working on fixing up the audio-only podcast this week.

Enjoy!

Embed code:



The US Government's bizarre obsession with Janet Jackson's nipple
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:04:00 -0700
The US Government's bizarre obsession with Janet Jackson's nipple: 
“This, in all sincerity, is what I expect in return for my taxes: a five-year-long absurdist theater performance about a magically, awesomely, mesmerizingly powerful nipple that was revealed for less than one second to millions of half-drunk spectators on a Sunday afternoon in 2004. The budget: Millions of dollars and rising.”

The Republican Party thinks the government should only spend money on important matters like this, and not trivia like your health.


Why my eyeglasses are annoying
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:27:04 -0700
They’re annoying because I only need to use them some of the time, and I don’t know what the heck to do with them when I don’t need them.
Ithink my condition is that I’m nearsighted. I’m not sure what you call it. I need my glasses to work at the computer, or to drive. They improve my vision pretty much anytime I’m outdoors.
However, the glasses make it hard fro me to read a book or magazine or food label or restaurant menu. Or use my iPhone. And, as well all know, I’m on the iPhone a lot.
When I’m just walking around the house or sitting in a restaurant eating, it doesn’t seem to make much difference whether I wear the glasses or not.
This is the part that’s annoying: I end up putting on and taking off my glasses a lot. It’s really annoying when I’m using my iPhone, where I need my to take off my glasses for a minute at  a time. When I’m making heavy use of the iPhone—as I was at the InformationWeek 500 conference earlier this week—I take off my glasses and put them back on again dozens of times a day. That’s really annoying.
Yesterday evening, I attached one of those cords to my glasses so I can hang them around my neck when I don’t want to wear them. I tried that a few months ago but gave it up because it wasn’t entirely comfortable. It seems more comfortable today.
What I really need to do is have a conversation with my eye doctor about the best style of eyeglasses, and the best combination of prescriptions, that I should be using. And, as we all know from the news on healthcare reform, the American healthcare system is not set up for patients and doctors to have conversations.
It is set up for patients and doctors to not have conversations, for the patient to be a piece of meat that the doctor is probing and testing and performing procedures on at maximum speed to get the piece of meat in and out the door as fast as possible and get the next wallet-bearing piece of meat in.
The eye-doctor’s offices that I’ve been in since I started wearing glasses 14 years ago seem to be set up like restaurants at the dinner rush. The patients are both the customers and the ingredients in that metaphor, and the doctors are the chefs, and the chefs at restaurants don’t really get into long conversations with the food, you know?


The laws of Internet political discussion
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:52:00 -0700
1) Angry nutters who share your political beliefs define your belief system.

2) Angry nutters who share my belief system are regrettable, but incidental and unimportant. Even the best cause attracts its share of lunatics. It’s cheap of you to even mention them.

3) When angry nutters who agree with me disrupt the discussion, it’s regrettable. But it demonstrates how wrong you are, and how angry your wrongheaded policies have made the people.

4) When angry nutters who agree with you disrupt the discussion, it demonstrates that your belief system is bankrupt of ideas.

5) The mainstream media (MSM) is a cheerleader for your belief system. It ignores stories that demonstrate the reality of how awful your political beliefs and leaders are, and it goes out of its way to distort my political beliefs and make the people who agree with me look bad.

6) You know that terrible thing I said your leader did, which turned out not to be true? It’s too bad I was wrong, but the fact that it was possible to believe it simply serves as further error of how wrong your beliefs are, and how terrible your leader is.

7) Nazis.


Coming up: Healthcare reform with political blogger Avedon Carol
Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:04:35 -0700
Coming up: Healthcare reform with political blogger Avedon Carol: I’m back from several weeks at a spa for copper robots. I got a new coat of polish, WD-40 for the joints, and rejuvenating treatments to restore the antennae to their youthful springiness. I’m…


Why the police came to our house just now
Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:01:34 -0700
I got in the car in the driveway yesterday evening, on the way to pick up our take-out dinner order. I looked around, and got out my iPhone, and called Julie.
“Julie,” I said, “did you go into the car today and empty the glove compartment onto the front seat?”
The glove compartment was emptied onto the front passenger seat, as was the storage compartment between the seats. My sunglasses, a multi-tool, and a lot of paperwork were dumped on the seat. The compartments had been left open. Even the little sunglass compartment above the rearview mirror was open.
Somebody tried to break into our car, seemed to have gotten spooked, and ran off. They got in without breaking in—I must have forgotten to lock up the car the last time I used it. They left the driver-side door ajar by a couple of inches.
Weird part: Nothing was taken. We don’t keep anything valuable in the car, but we do have one or two things that look like they might be valuable: A charger and cassette adapter for my iPhone. Those things are, in fact, cheap, but they might look valuable to your average tweaker.
Julie thinks that the thieves were looking for cash or credit cards—not something that you’d need a fence to sell. A charger and cassette adapter might get a couple of bucks for  a thief, but you have to sell them, whereas you can use cash or credit cards right away.
Do they even call them “fences,” or is that just on TV?
The cop came out and was very pleasant and professional. He didn’t obviously take a report, but he took some notes, and said there had been some similar car break-ins on Baltimore Drive, which is not very far away. He said they’d increase patrols.
He also said they’d SET THE LASERS ON THE ORBITING SATELLITES TO VAPORIZE ALL BURGLARS PAINFULLY!!!!
Preceding graf for the benefit of any potential burglars who might be reading this. Also: Our Dobermanns have acquired a taste for human flesh, and they’re hungry. 




We went to see "Spamalot"
Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:00:00 -0700
I liked it but didn’t love it. It seemed to be a bunch of strung-together gags from the movie, with some middlin’-good song-and-dance numbers thrown in.
We saw the movie about a million times when I was a kid, and my friends Michael, Marc, John, Vincent and I quoted great swathes of the dialogue back and forth. I can still do it.
Julie saw the movie once or twice when she was an adult—past 30.
It was a weird experience seeing this weird-ass cut movie I loved as a boy turned into a big-budget Broadway play. I said to Julie, “What next—Spinal Tap as a Broadway musical?”
And then I said, “Whey the hell not?”
Animal House, the musical?
I’d go to see either of those.
The actress who plays the Lady of the Lake, Merle Dandridge, is gorgeous. She has vast tracts of land.



The Fast Food Industry's 7 Most Heinous Concoctions
Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:00:00 -0700
The Fast Food Industry's 7 Most Heinous Concoctions: 

No. 7 — The Krispy Kreme Doughnut Sundae

Two years ago, the brain trust at Krispy Kreme decided to answer the age-old question of how to make ice cream sundaes even less healthy. The solution, it turns out, is to remove bananas, strawberries or anything that looks remotely like it might contain nutrients, and replace it with a doughnut.

Also: “The KFC Double Down … was seemingly designed for the sole purpose of pissing off nutrition advocates.”
(Via @TroyMalone)
P.S. This one’s been hanging fire in my “drafts” queue for three weeks. I don’t know why.



We just got word that a friend of a friend died
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:35:15 -0700
It was apparently some kind of fast-moving cancer.

We saw her a few times a year, at our friend’s Thanksgiving and parties. I didn’t know her well at all beyond that—she was a friend of a friend—but she was caustic and loud and funny and I liked her. She’ll leave a hole in our Thanksgiving celebration.


A 9/11 memory
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:22:08 -0700
For years, I kept my calendar page for 9/11/01. Of course, you fill out a calendar page before the day, so that page is a record of what I’d planned that day—not what actually happened.
The Networld + Interop conference was in Atlanta that day, I was not attending but I had a note on the calendar reminding me that two colleagues would be there. I also had two or three telephone interviews scheduled with people from that show.
We actually did one of the interviews. I’m pretty sure it was with Novell, and I think thy were announcing Netware 6. What else could we do but sit hypnotized and impotent in front of the TV? We did the interview because we were running on autopilot.
I kept that calendar page as a souvenir from a happier alternate universe.
I was fortunate enough to have nobody I know lost directly in the 9/11 attacks, which is freakish because I’m from New York and you’d think I’d’ve known somebody there. However, I know many people who knew someone lost in the attack, and many people with personal connections with the WTC. One couple I’m friends with used to live one or two subway stops from the towers. There was a thriving shopping center underneath the buildings, and my friend used to go there to get his hair cut. For him, whatever else 9/11 was, it was also an attack on the neighborhood mall. And Penelope Trunk was standing just outside one of the towers as it fell.


When to Replace Walking Shoes
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:03:53 -0700
When to Replace Walking Shoes: Every three to six months, it says here. It’s been 18 months for me. I wasn’t a math major but I’m thinking that 18 is more than 3-6. Explains why my feet were hurting after my morning constitutional today.


Tor.com looks at George R.R. Martin's vampires-on-the-Mississippi novel, "Fevre Dream"
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:03:21 -0700
I would never want to pick a favorite novel out of all the thousands of novels I’d read. That would be silly. But if I had to pick just one, it might well be Fevre Dream, about a vampire on the 1850s Mississippi River who teams up with a hapless riverboat captain to end vampires’ preying on human beings.
The funny thing is I don’t really like vampire stories as a genre, but I love this book, as well as the TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first couple of seasons of its spinoff Angel, and True Blood. 
Paranormal fantasy that isn’t: George R. R. Martin’s Fevre Dream

The novel also entertains with exciting stories of life on the river. Some of the very things that make Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so great are resident in this narrative as well. There are steamboat races, night time chases, and hand-to-hand combat to be found here as well. So even as deep thinking is engendered in your mind, the reader is also thoroughly entertained by mystery and adventure.

The Tor.com blogger says that Fevre Dream shows a glimmering of the brilliance that Martin shows in his current medieval-fantasy series. I disagree strongly. I think Fevre Dream is brilliant, and I find Martin’s current series to be unreadable; I worked through about two and a half volumes of it and I just gave up, defeated.


Why the “Old Jews Telling Jokes” site is awesome

I...
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:29:12 -0700


Why the “Old Jews Telling Jokes” site is awesome

I think, when you watch Alma tell a story, you see that she characterizes many of the things that I have come to cherish in the joke tellers of this generation: a magnificent poise, a proud delight in laughter and the ability to bestow it, and a knowing gleam of mischievous spirit.

Also, so many of the people telling these jokes are successful businessmen, doctors, and other professionals who seem to be indulging a moment of frivolity different from their typical sober and responsible manner.


Another guy I went to college with who went on to do something really interesting
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:14:00 -0700
Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Boing Boing
I went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and was on the college paper, Statesman, with this book’s author, Mitch Horowitz.
This sounds like a fantastic book, it’s moving to the top of my to-be-read pile. Well, as soon as I have the book in my hands to add to the pile that is.
It appears the book takes a respectful view of the history of American mysticism, and views movements like Freemasonry, Transcendentalism, and Spiritualism as the source of much that we value in America and in the West today: Feminism, for example.
Freemasonry in particular is the source of the American ideal of religious freedom, which we take for granted today but which was a breathtaking new idea at the founding of our nation 250 years ago. Mitch gives Freemasonry credit for the principle that minority religious views should not just be tolerated but an equal part of the national culture. (Or, that appears to be what he’s saying, if I’m reading it right.) This was a new and dangerous idea when America was founded, and it’s still something that some Christian fundis don’t agree with.
I also went to college with econo-blogger Barry Ritholtz, whom I interviewed on Copper Robot.
I’m befuddled that so much awesomeness came out of the little circle of people I knew at college. I suppose if you graduated from Harvard or Yale you’re used to your college pals growing up to do amazing things. But I went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the only time I expect to see one of us get nationally famous is America’s Stupidest Home Videos. (“Here, hold mah beer an’ watch me do this.”)


Why we overeat
Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:40:56 -0700
Why we overeat: But it’s not any one substance. Nicotine itself is only a moderate reinforcer. But add the smoke, throat scratch, crinkling of the cellophane pack, color of the pack, imagery that was created 40 years ago that it was cool to smoke, emotional gloss of advertising, and what did we end up with? We ended up with a deadly addictive product.

So I give you a package of sugar and say, “Go have a good time,” you’re going to look at me and say, “What are you talking about?” But I add fat, I add texture, I add temperature, I add color and I add flavor. I put it on every corner and say, “It’s socially acceptable to eat any time.” I say, “You can do it with your friends. You can do it at the end of this day. You can relieve any tension.” We’re eating in a disorganized and chaotic fashion. And we’re being bombarded with the cues.

We make food into entertainment. We make it into a food carnival. Go into a modern American restaurant: the colors, the TVs, the monitors, the music. You do it with your friends. We’ve taken sugar and added all these multiple levels of stimuli. What do we end up with? Probably one of the great public health crises of our day.


What it was like to attend my 30th high school reunion
Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:32:00 -0700
I keep in touch with three or four people from high school. And of course after 30 years I’m a very different person from who I was then (fatter and with more hair in my ears). But I still think about high school now and then, and when I do it seems less and less like it actually happened to me, and more like it was a favorite book or TV show that I’d come to know so well that I imagined it was real.
And so it was extremely strange to spend the weekend surrounded by so many imaginary people, all these fictional characters that I knew so well, and to see that after the show that was my high school experience went off the air, they’d continued to live their lives and age and change and have children and learn to use Facebook.
It was a strange experience—but wonderful too, like going to a Star Trek convention and having the characters hang out with you at the bar, not William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy but the actual Captain Kirk and Mister Spock.
I was pretty lucky in high school. It was a place where a supremely nerdy kid like myself, overweight and with a science fiction paperback perpetually tucked under one arm, could be well-liked (if not actually popular), get a good education, and build fond memories for a lifetime.


Skype Sale Nears: Why eBay Shareholders Should Be Mad
Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:11:10 -0700
Skype Sale Nears: Why eBay Shareholders Should Be Mad: 
So back in 2005, eBay paid billions for Skype but didn’t get the crown jewels, aka the technology. I reported this oversight back in 2005. How then-CEO Meg Whitman signed off on the deal, I still can’t understand. I mean, even a lemonade stand owner who can’t tie his shoelaces wouldn’t overlook something as simple as that.

This is a major reason why I am lukewarm at the prospect of Meg Whitman for governor of California. Seems to me that she did a so-so job during her tenure at eBay.


Things I said over and over at my high school reunion
Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:06:51 -0700
“San Diego.”
“Yes, almost 16 years.”
“No, we don’t have any.”
“I write for a computer magazine. It’s called InformationWeek.”

Mitch Wagner's Tumblblog

Gorgeous steampunk time machine in Second Life. Click through to...

Watch the video of our interview with political blogger Avedon Carol

Avedon is a fire-breathing progressive who blogs at The Sideshow, we talked about healthcare reform,...

The US Government's bizarre obsession with Janet Jackson's nipple

Why my eyeglasses are annoying

The laws of Internet political discussion

Coming up: Healthcare reform with political blogger Avedon Carol

Why the police came to our house just now

We went to see "Spamalot"

The Fast Food Industry's 7 Most Heinous Concoctions

We just got word that a friend of a friend died

A 9/11 memory

When to Replace Walking Shoes

Tor.com looks at George R.R. Martin's vampires-on-the-Mississippi novel, "Fevre Dream"

Why the “Old Jews Telling Jokes” site is awesome I...

Another guy I went to college with who went on to do something really interesting

Why we overeat

What it was like to attend my 30th high school reunion

Skype Sale Nears: Why eBay Shareholders Should Be Mad

Things I said over and over at my high school reunion