Well, another Monday has rolled around. Time to leave the old rack and earn the spondulac. Exit your cribs to get the dibs. Act the noble savage to get the happy cabbage. Brave the debris to get the dough-re-mi. Feel the balm of the oil of palm. I hope by close of business that you pile the oof up to the roof.
Your humble blogger (I've never encountered of one of those, but stay with me) doesn't get a day off, even though blogging is dead. Oh, you haven't heard? You know; that blogging is dead? It was all over the blogs a year ago.
I have my doubts. I read blogs, including this one. Then again, I'm not like most people, so maybe you should take what I say at a heavy discount. I still bring my lunch to work in a plaid metal lunchbox. You should probably find a more forward-looking guru, like H.G. Wells or something.
Let's test out the blogging is dead theory. We'll visit the first blog in the Maggie's blogroll listed under "Mostly Political", Ace of Spades, and take a look at their blogroll. If it's full of going concerns, we'll forget the whole idea of the end of blogging. If tumbleweeds reign supreme, I'll be the first to throw a handful of dirt in my own face:
Alarming News: Just a bunch of links to writing done elsewhere
Ambient Irony: Dead
American Digest: Very much alive
The Anchoress: Dead
Anticipatory Retaliation: Dead
Antidisestablishmentarianismesque: Abandoned
Anwyn: Abandoned
Armies of Liberation: Dead
Attu Sees All: Contains one post from five years ago
Bad State of Gruntledness: Taken over by a porn site
Bastard Sword: Nothing since 2006
The Baron: Dead
The Bastige: No idea what's going on there, but it's not a blog anymore
Beautiful Atrocities: Taken over by a Thai spammer, then abandoned anyway
Beleaguered Conservative: Abandoned or hijacked. I'd rather touch Charlie Sheen's pecker than press the redirect button on that page
Well, you see what I mean. I can assure you that the percentage of live blogs to festering pixel corpses doesn't improve as you continue down the blogroll. I guess it's true what Sir Walter Scott said about blogging:
Despite those URLs, PayPal buttons, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unlinked.
I'm not picking on Ace, of course. He doesn't have time to read his blog. If he's like most bloggers, he leaves his blogroll as it was eight years ago, as a kind of shrine to his friends, many of whom are his commenters, I'm sure.
So blogs are dead, I guess. Long live ... I dunno: Short-form articles written daily?
The Global "Vietnam"
"Don’t do stupid shit" was a synonym for "I'm not going to get trapped in a Vietnam". However Rothkopf observed that the most important Red Line in Obama's world could be crossed the other way around. You could get into Vietnam by backing into it. The administration's greatest weakness was failing to realize that inaction was also policy. Not doing something could also be "stupid shit" and passivity was no protection from landing ass backwards in a quagmire.
Obama is barely smart enough to order the most expensive thing on the menu at a Sizzler, and the press corps thinks he's a polymath.
Bosch's Giant Robot Can Punch Weeds to Death
The most organic and eco-friendly way of dealing with weeds is the old-fashioned way: physically removing them. “Physical removal” can mean pulling weeds out completely, but that involves both grasping the weed and doing something with it. A better solution is to just smash it way down into the ground, which is faster, easier, and something a robot can do excellently
If this works better than the current eco-friendly method, which is having illegal aliens crapping on the weeds, then Chipotle and I are all for it.
How to Baffle Web Trackers by Obfuscating Your Movements Online
“Unless you want to go live in a cave away from society,” Nissenbaum notes, you need to be online—often for work or to access government services. Online services claim they’re voluntary, but the cost of being a refusenik grows every day.In this context, obfuscation is a clever judo move. It’s a way for people in a relatively weak position—which is to say all of us, compared with Google or Facebook—to fight back.
Living in a cave is the alternative, huh? You could, you know, shut the goddamned thing off.
Top 10 Ways Wood Pellets Beat Firewood
Federal and state regulations for burning firewood are increasing yearly. If you’re worried that you might not be able to heat your home using your existing wood stove or wood furnace, changing over to burning wood pellets is a smart move.
I say the old ways are the best ways, so I'm going to stick with burning peat in a brazier in the middle of my great hall, thanks.
Nutrition is personal. Identical foods produce “healthy” and “unhealthy” responses in different individuals.
Participant A maintained a stable blood glucose level after eating a cookie but responded with elevated glucose levels after eating a banana. Conversely, participant B experienced an increase in blood glucose level after eating a cookie, but not after consuming a banana.
In order to test my personal reaction to ingesting a cookie, a banana, and seven scotch and sodas, you're going to have to give me a banana and a cookie.
The strange case of 77 blue-collar Chinese migrants that Kenya is calling “cyber-hackers”
Less than three months after his arrival, Luo and 76 other Chinese were arrested. They have been in jail for nearly a year, accused of running an illegal call center and engaging in or intending to commit cybercrime—charges of which they say they are innocent. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison.
Help, I'm a Chinese businessman being held in a Kenyan jail, and I'll transfer one million dollars to your account if you'll just pay my bail. Please enter your bank account information...
Independent Music Is Big. Really, Really Big.
The “music industry” is a misnomer itself since it lends credence to the thought that there is a singular music industry in which to exist and do business. This is incorrect because there are in fact multiple paradigms that exist within the music universe, all of which operate according to very different rules. Independent music is a whole different world than major label music, and thus the opportunities that lie there do not necessarily mirror the opportunities that lie in the latter.
After reading the article, I realize I have no idea how anything works anymore, but neither does anyone else, so I don't feel bad.
Why has Italian cinema lost its appeal abroad?
When I speak about the failure of Italian films to translate, I’m not only referring to the work of auteurs beloved by a fairly esoteric circle of scholars and cinephiles. An excellent picture like Gomorra, for example—based on an international best seller and the winner of the Special Jury Prize in Cannes—did poorly at the U.S. box office: it shows the worse of Italy with neither a clear plot nor the possibility of redemption. The protagonists imitate Scarface and the mobsters from Goodfellas, but we hardly understand their names or their motivations, and we witness only the violent squalor of their lives.
Why has Italian cinema lost its appeal? Sophia Loren's bustline finally dipped below the horizon. It's really that simple. And stop calling her abroad.
What I’ve learned from sitting next to a pro salesman
The first thing our salesman did was to ask for our leads that did not convert. Big portion of these leads were from trade-shows. So he asked for the business cards we collected. I remember asking myself “Why the hell would he need the cards for”. He was looking for phone numbers, it turns out a prospect that did not answer to 30 emails will answer the phone and might even be a pretty easy sell. Yes, phone is intrusive, it’s bold and maybe the other side does not expect it but it works big time.
The author talks in wonderment when the salesman asks about the health of a customer's family members before trying to sell them things. The concept of using good manners, or any manners at all, doesn't even register as "a thing" with the author. Honestly, iPhones have utterly destroyed an entire generation of human beings.
Coming soon: chicken meat without slaughter
Dutch tissue engineer Mark Post made international news last year when he cooked up a beef burger made from lab-cultured cow muscle tissue. He claims that within a couple of decades, fairly priced cultured meat could satisfy the world’s growing demand for meat while eliminating the ethical and environmental problems of raising animals for food.
I've raised chickens. Chicken breast grown in a petri dish will be 10 percent smarter than any chicken I've ever met.
OK, everybody, time to get after that spondulac!
