For some reason I’ve seen one episode of A Cook’s Tour too many times, but upon eating some undercooked iguana tamales, Tony Bourdain spurts out one of the best food repulsion lines I’ve ever heard:
“Unbelievably horrible. I just want to die.. I mean really bad. I want to dip my head into a bucket of lye, you know, pull my eyes out of their sockets and jump off a cliff.”
Food tasters (especially those not trained in the cuilinary arts) are always much too passive in their reactions. “The essence is not to my liking,” or “I don’t think the separate parts are tied together.” I just want them to cut the crap and say that they hate it.
Two bits of MIT related news that might be interesting to the outside world: first, four MIT professors, including one Marvin Minsky (along with Steven Pinker and Rodney Brooks) wrote memos to President Bush answering the questions “What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?”
Marvin’s memo is short and to the point, containing only one suggestion:
Mr. President:
My idea is that the whole “Homeland Defense” thing is too cost-ineffective to be plausible. The lifetime cost of, for example, preventing each airplane-crash fatality will be the order of $100,000,000—and we could save a thousand times as many lives at the same cost by various simple public-health measures.
Conclusion: what we really need is a “Homeland Arithmetic” reorganization.
Yours truly,
Marvin Minsky
Also in the news, William Mitchell, author of City of Bits has just officially given up his position as dean of the architecture department to become head of the Media Lab’s academic program. This is an unprecidented move since the Media Lab is merely a part of the architecture department, ostensibly three steps down in the chain of command. But Bill has some big ideas about how to things are changing here at the lab.
MIT News Office: MIT Profs Offer New Year’s Advice
MIT Tech Talk:Mitchell to step down as dean of architecture
After about 15 minutes of translation with Babelfish, I was able to set myself up an account on the ISize ECard site, a Japanese electronic card system. Just check out some of the awe-inspiring flash cards they have to offer, and you’ll see why the effort is worth it.
I can’t see any reason to use any American equivalent, since ICard even provides English translation for the recipient (that is, if you can make it through the interface which is entirely in japanese.. be careful! left button = submit, right button = clear!)
A most useful writing guide, Matt Olson gives us an inverse Strunk and White for the web, along with some witty social commentary on the average virtual community member:
How to Write Like A Wanker
This week I must shift into overdrive with respect to my generals examinations, to be completed by the end of February. I’m reading a massive amount of papers every day, and since I’ll be avoiding the Interweb as much as possible, I’ll try and post some choice quotes from my reading to keep people stimulated.
Quotes today come from Barry Wellman’s essential networks paper on the roles of social support in the East York neighborhood outside Toronto:
“Fathers and sons often show their emotional support by doing things rather than saying things.”
“Parents are the most likely of all network members to provide financial aid: 52% of them have given loans or monetary gifts. Despite their small numbers, parents make up 30% of all financially supportive relationships and an even larger percentage of those giving sizeable aid.”
“Gender is the only personal characteristic related to support, with women providing more emotional aid than men… Because men rarely have women friends, their networks contain few women, and their male network memebers are less likely than women to provide emotional support. But men can get emotional support from their mothers and sisters (as well as from their wives).”
Barry Wellman, Scot Wortley (1990): Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support (pdf)
Almost 6 months to the day after it was announced, the anonymous donor of the XBox challenge has been revealed as Michael Robertson, chief executive of Lindows.com (and founder of MP3.com). His identity was revealed in a bulletin board on SourceForge
Robertson has officially extended the deadline for the contest, since no group has successfully completed a full working version. He’ll still dole out the $200k, given that none of the contracts against his life are successful in the mean time.
Mercury News: Mystery man revealed in Microsoft Xbox hack contest
It has become a tradition among my friends to release personal favorites each year shortly after the year ends. It is always one of the most arduous yet enjoyable tasks that i partake in regularly (last year’s list happened to be my first post on overstated). So without further delay, drumroll please…
Top 10 Albums of 2002
- the streets - original pirate material
- queens of the stone age - songs for the deaf
- lawrence - s/t
- wilco - yankee hotel foxtrot
- ekkehard ehlers - plays
- beck - sea change
- various - blue skied and clear
- drexciya - harnessed the storm
- rjd2 - deadringer
- people under the stairs - o.s.t.
Honorable mention
Top Movies of 2002
- 24 hour party people
- spirited away
- dogtown and z-boys
- gangs of new york
- bowling for columbine
- minority report
- about a boy
- human nature
- scratch
- 8 mile
Some of my friends are web savvy enough to post theirs: Ben, Carson…
Post your lists if you’ve got them, and let me know.. I always learn a lot about people through their favorites. Here’s some critical perspective to get you started:
All Music Guide Best of 2002
Pitchfork Top 50 of 2002
E! Online Replay 2002
All Movie Guide Best of 2002
