Early in my writing career, I had an assignment to follow around a mohel–the guy who does ritual circumcisions in the Jewish tradition. My subject learned the trade by watching his dad, a renowned figure in the field. One day, father told son he was ready to handle the tools himself. Why now, the son …
Author Archives: brownstudy7975
Round Playing Cards of Master PW
Queen of Columbines Five of Columbines Ten of Columbines Valet of Parrots Nine of Parrots King of Parrots King of Hares Knave of Hares Valet of Hares King of Roses Queen of Roses Ace of Roses Three of Carnations Valet of Carnations Ace of Carnations This…Round Playing Cards of Master PW
Martin Luther King – American Irony
In a nation that is preoccupied with God-talk, in which the separation of church and state is being eroded and denied, a nation in which our “conservative” politicians constantly invoke the Judaeo-Christian tradition, you’d think that a holiday in honor of a preacher-activist-humanitarian would merit a national holiday, i.e., a holiday that is universally observed …
Rambo Inflation
Number of people killed per minute in the Rambo series. Rambo: First Blood (1982): 0.01 Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985): 0.72 Rambo III (1988): 1.30 Rambo IV (2008): 2.59 Hat tip to Peter Gordon. Rambo Inflation
“No Links Please” drains HREFs, discourages web fiddling
James Clarke – No Links Please! Here’s a fun one. Our old pal (and the coiner of “life hacks”), Danny O’Brien, passes along an extreme attention aid that might be regarded as the heir apparent to his wonderful “Webolodeon” script for GreaseMonkey. No Links Please will do its part to keep you from mindlessly surfing …
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Emails as a Game of Life?
Academic Productivity has another great post, this time on the work of Carolin Horn at the Dynamic Media Institute at the Massachusetts College of Art (a visual designer, BTW, not an information visualization specialist) and her coder Florian Jenett. Using her Apple inbox as her petrie dish, her web page contains wonderful animations of species …
Consumer Industrobotics
All drawings 1965-2077 © Anton van Dalen. Anton van Dalen was the secret assistant to Saul Steinberg (The New Yorker magazine illustrator: i, ii, iii). Thanks Mooooooooon! Previously. Test: Book!!? What Book? Consumer Industrobotics
Real Screen Comics #117
Real Screen Comics #117Real Screen Comics #117
Building models (info or economic) in your spare time
I enjoyed reading Hal Varian’s paper How to Build an Economic Model in Your Spare Time. It succinctly describes how to build a theoretical model for how a system may work, from getting the idea, to testing it out, to improving it. It requires you to have a little ambition and a little less ego. …
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Superboy #21
Superboy #21Superboy #21
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