Tony Pierce talks to the strangest folks.#

but then i said, jessica, is it less acceptable to write the things that i write in the way that i do it or be a dumb fake tittied bleach blonde who marries a boybander?

she blinked.

and then she said, are you talking about me?

i said no baby, i could see why people would want to pay you money for being cute and slow and lazy and shallow, and i can see why major companies like viacom and now abc would want to associate with you: because they think that you're the type of young woman that

Diego writes about the Matrix trilogy. It contains spoilers.#

When we walked into theaters four years ago to watch The Matrix, the overriding question was: What is the Matrix?

Coming out of that movie, the sense was that we had an answer: a prison for the mind, the Matrix was a device created by Machines to win a war against Humans, creating yet another war, this one just for freedom from the shackles of a virtual world.

Then came Matrix Reloaded. The question going into the movie then was: How will humans win the war? (Note: How, not If). The answer was, in essence, "There is no spoon." Or rather, "There is no war." The Wachowski Brothers turned everything on its head and destroyed all our preconceptions. The rebels were actually being controlled. Their revolution was a sham. Another lever of control. We were pulled out of the Christian and even Muslim parables of Neo-as-Savior (Muslim because Neo is much more a "Warrior Messiah" like Muhammad, than a Christ-like character of peace and understanding), into a new level of pure science-fiction possibility. Just as the first movie studiously created a fictional reality, the second dedicated itself to proving the first one wrong. Just as the first one required us to suspend disbelief more than once, the second one gave potentially reasonable explanations for everything that was going on. Reloaded, more than anything else, revived the question: What is the Matrix?

David Madore also writes about the Matrix,

One of my major grievances against Matrix Reloaded was the amount of utterly pointless—and perfectly boring—fighting. Fortunately there's much less of that in Revolutions: there's still a lot of fighting which I care little for, but at least it takes place mostly within the real world, not within the Matrix (where everyone worth speaking of is essentially immortal), so it isn't as completely pointless as it might be.

The really lame dialog lines (such as, Everything that has a beginning has an end) are still just as lame, but at least now some fun is made of it, and some sentences are deliberately ridiculed (agent Smith's last lines make this abundantly clear).

Reloaded was entirely incoherent, probably the worst bit (to my mind) being when the Architect told Neo, in essence, that if you choose what I hope you will choose, your girlfriend will die—what a magnificient way to convince anyone—and, incidentally, I wanted you to come all the way to me, which is why I made it so difficult: how absurd can you get? In contrast, Revolutions basically makes sense; the plot isn't too terribly intricate and people do things which are more or less reasonable considering the goals they strive to achieve. Now there isn't anything really remarkable in this film, but it holds water.

Ed Cone writes about the best way to see the Matrix,

Elijah and I saw Matrix Revolutions. My advice: for maximum enjoyment, see this movie with a bright 12-year-old.

Elijah was open to post-screening discussions of the meaning of "Logos" and its role in carrying the people of Zion to their destiny, and he had no trouble fitting the blind seer into his growing database of archetypes, but none of that distracted him for a minute from enjoying the fighting and the flying and the popcorn.

Kaye Trammelll posts here celebrity blog list.#

Jon Buscall compliments. Thanks Jon.#

Jay's blog is beautifully simplistic. It reminds me of sushi, an Apple Cube and Danish furniture. But aren't so many blogs beginning to look so dreadfully alike?

Jane writes about the Tao of Shopping.#

There is a boy I know who doesn't like to shop. Like many boys, if he doesn't find exactly what he needs in a few minutes he gets frustrated and slightly claustrophobic. He loses his inspiration and retreats, defeated.

What boys often don't understand is that shopping requires as much dedication, stamina, and concentration as any serious activity. This is especially true when engaging in the difficult but rewarding task of thrifting. You must be prepared to swiftly browse through miles of hideous polyester to find that vintage Saks Fifth Avenue silk. Your judgment must be finely honed to be able to decide instantly whether to grab the item off the rack or pass it over. Efficiency like this will save you hours of standing on tired feet. You must have a hand for fine fabric and an eye for cut, and most importantly, you must know your own body and taste so intimately so as to be able to envision the item integrated into your wardrobe. What shoes will you wear with it? What accessories will enhance it? How will it make you feel while you wear it? An experienced shopper with a catalogue of her clothing already in mind will be able to answer these questions without thinking.

Matt May writes about the professor who got shit on because of his blog comments about gay men.#

There is value inherent in his statement to those who are most directly affected by it: namely, gay students who may take his class. What was seen in his posting was not simply some guy spontaneously becoming a bigot. Chances are, his bigoted attitude has been present for years, and had it affected gay students in his classes, they would probably never have known it, or at least been able to prove it. With this statement, and the outrage it created, people are now aware of a potential factor that changes their relationship with the professor.

To the extent that offensive speech is damaging at face value to people, it should be condemned. But offensive speech drives confrontations that are necessary in general social discourse, and so the solution is not to eliminate it, or drive it down into smaller social circles and cryptic statements, but to take it head on. The professor should publish his opinions freely, and the university should take what legal steps are necessary to distance itself from blog comments, and otherwise stay out of the way.

Aslam loves the blog, but loves life more. Good priorities.#

So...I wanted to see how long I could go without blogging...well...no, not really. There's this very demanding project that I've had to manage, to which I'm kinda committed and it involves working with a high-maintenance but indispensable guy. This project is code-named my life and identifying its objectives only seems to cause its focus to mutate.

Jim Moore compliments the Thursday group.#

Dave Winer shows why I am a fan of his (at least one of the reasons): he is radical, brilliant, and he gets stuff done. And he brings others into the game and helps all of us win. (this attitude is more rare than it should be, obviously) Check out this post, which is essentially (1) competitive analysis on the Democratic campaign weblog organizing sphere, (2) stiring up the competitition further, (3) demonstrating the sorts of simple but revolutionary ideas that are now available on top of the evolving-really-simple-but-powerful-collective-blog-services-platform, and (4) conveying a sense of the skunk works of creativity that is blossoming around town these days, catalyzed by Andrew and others who have taking on more and more creative initiative within the extended Thursday night club..

Ryan Overbey ponders on course blogs.#

In a course weblog, every student can post. So the burden on the TF and prof to provide content is deemphasized. Students can aggregate their lecture notes, point to interesting links on the web, and initiate discussions.

This is completely essential. I really like class wikis for this reason.

Ryan Overbey comments on people missing the point.#

There's a wildly misleading article in the New York Times, entitled Rich Colleges Receiving Richest Share of U.S. Aid. It opens with an administrator from California State University at Fresno complaining that Stanford gets more federal aid than Fresno. Then it goes on to lament the fact that Ivies and other elite private institutions receive so much in work-study and loan assistance.

This kind of bullshit makes me angry. If I had it my way, I'd want elite universities to receive even more aid. Could you imagine if every great university had the resources of, say, Princeton, to offer need-blind admissions and sweet, loan-free packages to every poor incoming student? Wouldn't that be great? But no, this journalist characterizes entire universities as rich, which implies that they could simply shift their resources to financial aid if they really wanted to. Sure, they could, and they would quickly become low-quality institutions. The author misses the point entirely.

Richard Tallent writes about his "third place."#

Just read a book review on "third places," the places that provide people with a social outlet, a wide variety of interesting people with which to "affiliate" (acquiantances from which to draw potential friends). Unfortunately, Beaumont, like most US cities, is hideously lacking in such places. On one end of the pendulum are churches. Great for meeting friendly faces and developing your spiritual life, but, on-the-whole terrible for finding people of high intellect or diverse opinion. On the other end are the bars and clubs. Great for a different sort of "spiritual" inlet I suppose, but terrible for finding mature, stable people who are good for more than an alcohol-clouded discussion on pop psychology or sports.

John writes about "Hunting Chris Ryan."#

I just watched the last in a 3-part series last night called "Hunting Chris Ryan". Ryan was the member of the infamous Bravo Two Zero SAS squad that was compromised behind enemy lines in the 1991 Gulf War. He was the one who evaded capture and walked 200 miles into Syria, and he's one tough son-of-a-bitch. The premise of the program was that he'd be dropped somewhere and given a mission. There would be a hunter force of other ex-special forces soldiers on his tail trying to capture him and prevent him carrying out the mission. It was run like a military exercise so the normal rules applied.

The first week saw Chris dropped in the jungle with a mission of picking up some information from a cache and escape on a boat pick-up at a certain point. Despite the fact that the hunter force got close to him (they included two US Navy SEALs, a Royal Marine and a Pathfinder) they never managed to actually capture him. It was easy to see on a map the clever diversions and deception trails he put in to throw the trackers off but when you saw what it was like on the ground you wonder how he managed to see the bigger picture and keep a clear head. He booby trapped the cache by putting a small satchel on it connected to a grenade. But knowing he had military people after him trained to leave that sort of thing alone he put in a secondary trap with a trip wire, hoping they'd be too busy looking at the bag to notice it. And so it proved, if it were for real he'd have killed the hunter force in one fell swoop. The end was tense as Chris was holed up in some trees as the hunter force patrolled to within metres of him. When his rescue boat came in he sprinted and managed to escape - quality viewing.

Kevin Drum points to a Wesley Clark profile.#

Among other things, I was interested in her counterpoint to the common meme about Clark being unpopular with his fellow military officers, which usually takes the form of the rather odd charge that he was viewed as too ambitious and too willing to promote himself — characteristics that I suspect are pretty common among both four-star generals and presidential candidates. Here's what Drew says:

Several people who are well informed about military politics or who worked with Clark during the Kosovo war believe that his enemies were largely motivated by professional jealousy of a US general who rose so quickly and also got international attention for a war unpopular with many of his colleagues.

....Clark's conduct of the Kosovo war, and his earlier participation as the US military negotiator in the meetings in Dayton following the war in Bosnia, earned him the admiration of several of the civilians he had worked with. Strobe Talbott, then the deputy secretary of state, reminded me recently that Clark is, after all, the only Supreme Allied Commander of NATO who actually had to fight a war, "and it ended in victory." Talbott told me that he found Clark to be "extraordinarily determined and able, and open to working with diplomats and civilians, US and foreign." Talbott pointed out that Clark, in commanding the Kosovo war, had had to deal daily with nineteen nations.

xkot links to a girl so hot, she melts walls.#

And each month it has become a game to look through and find the pictures of that month's unnatural Maxim created women. I laughed once because they actually edited the nipples on a man as well. The game has become tedious over time, the mannequin like women frustrate me.

This month they have crossed the line. Take a look at the picture of Kata Dobo I've scanned in and tell me if you can spot the problem.

Rayne asks, "How has blogging changed your life?"#

It's pretty easy to see ways in which blogging affects our society at large. The furor over Trent Lott, the success of Howard Dean's presidential campaign to date are just a couple examples of blogging in action.

But how has it impacted your life?

Harald says he's watching a lot less television now that he's reading blogs and posting in his own; it sounds like no great loss on his part. Heck, it sounds like television is just as dreadful in the Netherlands as it is here in the U.S. More importantly, he's making discoveries, exploring the arts because of new interactions and relationships with others he's met through blogging.

Via Metafilter is a Buddhist adventure game.#

Via Dave Winer is news that Howard Dean will reject public financing.#

BURLINGTON, Vt. - Front-runner Howard Dean (news - web sites) became on Saturday the first Democratic presidential candidate ever to reject taxpayer money and avoid the accompanying spending limits, saying he had to act to compete against President Bush (news - web sites)'s cash-rich campaign.

"We have supported public financing, but the unabashed actions of this president to undercut our Democratic process with floods of special interest money have forced us to abandon a broken system," the former Vermont governor said at a news conference.