Archive for December, 2007
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Sunday, December 30th, 2007Shopdropping
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007From the nyt: Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage
Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.
Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.
Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section, while personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books, and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards — their Web site address included, of course — and covertly plant them into stationery-store racks.
The secret to rock, paper, scissors
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007The secret to winning at rock, paper, scissors (from yc news).
Research shows that stone, also called rock, is the most popular of the three possible moves in the game.
That means that your opponent is likely to choose paper, because they will expect to you to start the game with stone.
By going with scissors, you achieve an early victory.
Best movie of 2007: Superbad
Monday, December 10th, 2007If I were king, and the Oscars were called the Sams, Superbad would win best picture of the year.
The Littlest Hustler
Monday, December 10th, 2007From the NYT: The Littlest Hustler: Portrait of a New York childhood, in the extreme (from YC News):
But Alex isn’t like other boys his age. He’s had free rein over the streets of Nolita since before he can remember, and he quickly learned the rules of that playground, turning his relationships with the neighborhood’s shop owners into access to free gourmet meals and designer clothes and trendy sneakers, then turning those freebies into even better stuff (like courtside Knicks tickets), and leveraging those perks into even more valuable things, like connections to athletes, rappers, nightclub owners, and so on.
United Russia for the sweep
Saturday, December 8th, 2007To nobody’s surprise, Putin’s United Russia party won about 64% of the vote in last Sunday’s election. Check out the party share vs. voter turnout graph (from /.). At least Kasparov is out of jail, though his party was not allowed to run for parliament.
The question is where the democratic hegemony lies in the world today. Bush has clearly destroyed any int’l credibility the US ever had. The UK and Australia are seen as Bush’s puppets. So Putin is successfully able to position any hint of democracy as a secret power grab by the west. Which is a long way to say that Putin’s “reelection” and any election fraud in Russia is all Bush’s fault, because if the US had appropriately handled our responsibility for world leadership over the past eight years, Putin never could have sold that line and the opposition would have more support.
Pick a number between one and 53…
Saturday, December 8th, 2007Just off the top of your head… we’re waiting.
From the NYT: The 53 Places to Go in 2008. We picked #13 Sylt (known for nude beaches) and #27 Buenos Aires (for the first five-star gay hotel in Latin America). Sounds like quite a trip.