Yesterday Jon and Eric invited me to go rock climbing at Great Falls. It was not only non-fatal, but actually pretty damn fun. Pics and predictably self-deprecating commentary after the cut.

i was all set to write an early morning post, bitching vociferously (yet humorously!) about the lack of goddamn snow. i mean, i was supposed to have six inches by now. the federal government was supposed to have grinded to a halt. my day should have consisted of drinking hot chocolate, blogging about oscar fashion, and maybe a nap. but there's nary a flurry to be seen.

then i flipped on over to washingtonpost.com, where i saw this headline: "Car Bomb Explodes in Iraq, Kills More Than 100."

The blast occurred in an area where people were lining up outside a health clinic to get blood tests mandatory for government jobs, officials said. The clinic is next to a vegetable market that was crowded with women and children.

just - good god. that's all.

First, some background: nerds around the world have issued a hue and cry over the potential cancellation of Enterprise, the Scott Bakula-led Star Trek franchise. It's a tragic situation: there's no money for the show because there are no advertisers, there are no advertisers because no one watches it, and no one watches it because it isn't very good. The injustice! Something must be done!

And it is. Across the world, they've held rallies and secured pledges for $3 million in funding for an additional season of Enterprise. Because this time, it'll totally be different. Say, have we gone back in time to fight Nazis yet? How many weeks since the last time holographic gunslingers from the Old West ran amok and took over the ship? Hey, maybe we could make all this a metaphor for something!

Well, I'm sure the professionals will be able to come up with something even better. They just need to be given the opportunity.

Which brings me to Slashdot, where I read this:

I think when you see this level of support for a show like Star Trek it shows it has passed the point of being a mere "TV show" and has become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon like jazz or abstract art or classical music.

I have a friend who is a grant writer. She does work for charties applying to government agencies and private foundations for to get money.

I think there is a good chance of supporting Star Trek through the use of grants from the government and from charitable foundations, the way PBS and NPR do. Museums do this kind of thing all the time, look at the MOMA in New York, that thing isn't funded by selling commercial time. Someone from Star Trek should look into this.

Okay, I know it's just some guy on the internet. But so am I. And sometimes an idea is so innovative that you can't let it fade into that good night. So what do we think, guys? Is "flopsy mopsalon" onto something here?

just got back from the make-out party in arlington, where i had a blast from the past in the form of the two lovely ladies above: leigh/madflowr and natalia, respectively. i'm a little drunk right now, and more than a little nostalgic, but really - they were a big part of the reason why i like all the music i've ever liked, a big part of the reason i didn't have a completely miserable time in high school, a big part of the reason i've seen radiohead 13 times in concert. anyway. viva IRC, viva #permanent_daylight, viva xoom.com, geocities.com, viva nostalgia, viva 1998. it was a good year.

today kriston, charles, reid and i went on over to the national gallery of art to see andy goldsworthy's latest project, Roof.

British artist Andy Goldsworthy, along with his assistant and a team of workers including four dry-stone wallers from Britain, is installing a sculpture entitled Roof, which will comprise several hollow, low-profile domes of stacked slate, each with a centered oculus. While Goldsworthy has been using domes in his work in a variety of natural materials since the late 1970s, here he brings the domical form into a new context, scale, and visual perspective. By positioning Roof on the ground and by using Buckingham Virginia slate as his construction material, the artist creates a counterpoint to an architectural form in the capital's skyline, and a reference to a building stone found locally on the roofs of the Smithsonian Castle and Ford's Theater, among others. At the same time, he draws attention to the underlying geological origins of this and other urban centers.

Goldsworthy's long engagement with the dome, a form that itself follows a trajectory that includes Neolithic burial chambers and dwelling cairns, ancient Roman and Byzantine structures, and Enlightenment architecture and modern public buildings, parallels his interest in the markers of human passage through time.

kriston had called the NGA the day before and they said the work was still being built, which was good - we wanted to see it in progress. unfortunately, when we got there today, it was apparently finished and there was nary a person to be seen still constructing. it was actually a fairly disappointing experience, i thought. there wasn't a good way to interact with or view the domes (you could only see them through glass windows from a distance). it just didn't have a terribly strong impact, but i'm glad we saw it anyway. pictures follow. you can also visit listenmissy.com to see some pictures of the work as it was being built.

taken near the 9:30 club the night before the wilco show.

10 days after his actually 25th birthday, tommy and co. finally made it out for some celebrations at the big hunt in dupont circle. the photos that follow are what happen when a) you're in the red, low-lit basement of the big hunt b) you forgot to put the flash on and c) you're really too drunk to work the camera properly.

Roger Penrose is on NPR and I just received a bill from the library for his book, so now seems like an opportune time to write about it. I finally finished up Shadows of the Mind, having read it in ridiculously short spurts over the past few months (average session length: 3 metro stops).

I mentioned Penrose before, and JK of C-130 called me out on a dig I made at Penrose. Having just finished Francis Crick's highly unsatisfying "reductionism lite", I decided to have a closer look at Penrose's account.

Just a quick note: we got a message from our hosting company a few days ago indicating that we're on pace to exceed our bandwidth cap for this month. Increasing traffic, the new design and a decision to post more photos all played into this. D'oh. Well, the plan is to move to a new host sometime next week. Things should get speedier -- our current host is located somewhere in southeast Asia -- and we should get about twice the bandwidth allocation for about the same money.

But the site will probably briefly go kerflooey. I'll post more notes about this immediately before it happens, but thought I might as well mention it now. As opposed to, you know, doing actual work toward remedying the situation.

Ah, the simple joys of data archiving. The click of the spindle cover; the smooth line of the constant angular velocity test; the gentle whizz! of Sharpie intoxication.

You see, I finally bought a DVD burner. Prices have gotten quite low, and so has my available disc space, so I picked up this sucker from NewEgg -- a BenQ DW1620. Our relationship got off to a rocky start: despite having installed dozens if not hundreds of optical drives in friends' PCs, I managed not only to put my new prize in upside down but to forget to plug any cables in prior to closing the case. That's not like me at all! I *love* plugging cables into things!

That problem corrected, I found myself in posession of a sleek, high-tech means of manufacturing reasonably priced drink coasters. Reflashed the firmware to an older version, and bang! Success. I'm merrily archiving our music collection, guarding against the inevitable yet never-foreseen infocalypse. It was this or buy a new hard drive and figure out how to set up software RAID in Linux.

I'm also backing up some old movies on the server so that I can delete them to free up some space. I'm a bit of a digital pack-rat. You'll never know when that Pascal version of Tetris you wrote in 10th grade will come in handy, after all. So the first disc I successfully burned holds XviD versions of Alien vs. Predator, Blade Trinity, Van Helsing and Wimbledon. Obviously it'd be a tragedy if these were lost to the aether.

This is one of those tech purchases that I'm completely convinced will change my life for the better in immediate and important ways. I have no idea what those ways are, but it's a pretty safe bet that they'll require that I spend more money.

don't tell tommy, but i think i've found my calling. (via wonkette)

hollywood, here i come!

update: HOLY SHIT. i just saw that you get paid $1250/day for a three-day shoot. that must be a typo...but i am now considering doing this more seriously than i would like.

i have been harboring a dirty secret for some time now. i know i come off as a true indie poseur, spouting my unsolicited opinions on everything and everyone from the wrens to wilco to the arcade fire to the state of indie music coverage in the D.C. area. well, i hate to reveal it, but this is all apparently a weak ass facade. because i am in love with a song - have been in love with it for weeks now, ever since i heard it on z104 - deeply in love with this fantastic, catchy, uplifting, totally rockin' song.

it's a song by kelly clarkson. and to add insult to injury, it's called "Since U Been Gone." god. with the U for the You and everything.

i thought for sure i was on my way to clear channel music hell for feeling this way, but browsing around some other music sites today i see that i am not alone! my hero, ted leo, has come to my rescue:

I just don't know, man. I'm falling apart. The new Kelly Clarkson single, "Since U Been Gone" (which I first thought was going to be a Prince cover, which I then thought would be a smart move on her part, but which thought I was quickly then disabused of, but which disabusing I was not upset by, because I sucked into the damn hook immediately), is unarguably good. No -- stop it -- don't even try! It's unarguable. I see early retirement staring back at me from the reflection in the pickups on my guitar. :(

totally true. it's the best mainstream pop diva song to come along since britney's "toxic" - and that's saying something.

too much work today. technically, i should be at home now, or at the gym running my butt off, because the federal government, god bless their weak, fear-filled little souls, has closed two hours early due to the sprinkling of snow that we have. and we technically follow the federal government's schedule. but no one has actually gone home, and i can't really just grab my purse and coat and sweep off in full of view of everybody. even though i'm allowed. sigh.

anyway, i wrote a review of the wilco show last night, which is up at DCist. the show was a treat, even though i thought it went on too long, which is a sure sign that i am getting ancient, because if i had been at any other wilco show that was two+ hours long, i would have had my head rocked off. but it was all good, except A Ghost Is Born Stuff. sorry, but those songs kind of suck. you know it in your heart.

one of my favorite parts was "i am trying to break your heart." i really just love that song, and it sounded gorgeous. they also had a projector running during the show showing various drawings or nature scenes, and during that particular song they had flickery, stilted black and white images of an octopus rolling along the ocean floor, and somehow it was TOTALLY PERFECT.

so overall, good show. wilco basically makes me want to move to a cabin in the blue ridge mountains, wear a tight button-down flannel shirt drink some beer, and make out with jeff tweedy.

Ever wondered what it would be like to eat some moderately priced, cheese-based entrees with a bunch of white supremacists? Well, wonder no longer! (respec: fake wonkette)

Sample excerpt:

"I'm glad that he referred you to us," hater Kevin says, then asks how long I've been a "race activist."

I tilt my head back and reflect, "I started to dislike Canadians, then moved on from there." Under my breath, I mutter, "Fucking Canadians."

i was browsing around unfogged today, a site i haven't really read (though i think i'll start) that i came across because kriston links to it often. looking through their blogroll, i noticed that they had heather havrilesky linked. huzzah!, i thought. then i hovered my mouse over the link, and noticed that the URL pointed to www.tinylittlepenis.com. after much apprehension and glancing over my shoulder to make sure tommy wouldn't notice if the computer suddenly loaded a page full of penises, i clicked through, and realized it redirects to www.rabbitblog.com. for some reason, i am thinking this is the best thing ever.

on a totally unrelated note, i saw today that matt yglesias has added several female-authored sites to his blogroll, which i think is great. over the past months i'd always thought he'd been better than most male political bloggers in linking to female sites, and it always seemed to be a very unconscious thing (though i'm not sure if it was) - he was never like, look at meeee, i'm linking to girls, and am therefore a superior male human! but as much as he linked to females (what would phoebe do, julie saltman, etc) he never added them to his blogroll. for a long time there, the only girls on his blogroll were laura rozen and, um, me. which is totally laughable if you think about it. laura rozen and i - we're like totally blog sisters. so his blogroll had 1.5 girls, really, and i know he only linked to zunta because a) he stole a picture of mine for his headshot w/o asking b) tommy writes non-idiotic stuff (and NEVER writes about his clothing choices) and c) we threatened to take away his access to Karaoke Revolution if he didn't link us (and if you haven't seen yglesias singing sixpence none the richer's "kiss me," YOU HAVE NOT YET LIVED).

anyway, tommy and i have cooked some artichokes so i'm off to indulge in the leafy goodness. then the wilco show, and hopefully by the time we walk home, it'll be snowing soft white death and DC will have gone into shut down.

Turns out I misspoke yesterday when I wrote about Paris Hilton's Sidekick getting hacked. Although all T-Mobile user accounts were hacked a while ago, that isn't what happened to Paris. Engadget reports that the crafty thieves just managed to guess the answer to Hilton's lost password question -- "what's your favorite pet's name?"

So I suppose it's kind of a punishment for her television show... I guess. I was sort of hoping for something involving skewers.

Hackaday has a great little article on getting started with BASIC STAMP microcontrollers. These are little programmable chips that help bridge the gap between the world of software nerdery and less-accessible hardware geekdom.

But browsing through the comments on that post confuses the issue. Everyone seems to agree that BASIC STAMPs, while something of a standard, are a huge ripoff. Proposed alternatives include the PICAXE and Atmel AVRs. Both are much cheaper, but probably not as well supported (in terms of tutorials, software and the like).

So, to any fellow nerds out there: do you have any recommendations? How hard is it to switch platforms once you've learned the basics? I know both the stamp and the PICAXE support basic, while the AVR claims to support C (and definitely supports assembly). Less money spent on the chip means better quality components for the robotic flamethrower it'll be controlling.

apologies for the lack of blogging today. (how pretentious is it that i apologize for the lack of something that enhances nobody's lives and provides only occasional minor entertainment? oh well. i still like to think there is somebody out there feeling empty on the inside because an unrequited narcissism post hasn't jumped into their rss reader in the past 24 hours.) tommy had to go into the office for an 8:30 am conference call, poor boy, to be followed by approximately 32 other conference calls. his office is on a conference call high, lately. and i - well, i have the work. just this once, though.

anyway, hopefully there'll be blogging material aplenty tomorrow, because tommy and i are going to the wilco show tonight! wahey! and i am going to wear the totally awesome scary go round tshirt that he bought me, that came in the mail all the way from the UK. came in the post, i should say. it says "bears will eat you." i don't know why exactly it says that, or what man-eating bears have to do with the comic strip, but it's still pretty great. why i'm telling you this, i don't know. between my concert-attending tshirt attire and my dress dilemma, this is apparently the all-fashion-all-the-time blog. for real, serious, knock-you-on-your-ass blogging, check out susan's post today. she's sending dispatches from tajikistan (i didn't even know that was a country before she went there!) where's she spreading democracy like butter on toast, but still witnessing some of the most atrocious and depressing conditions imaginable.

a somewhat unremarkable three-day weekend overall, though nice and relaxing. as tommy noted, movies were watched - "million dollar baby" and "mean girls," which i had never seen. if you know me at all, you can guess which film i thought was the vastly superior one. i mean, i liked "million dollar baby" alright, and i thought hilary swank was pretty superb, but the cliches, grizzled voiceovers, emotional maniuplation and the stupid-sport-as-metaphor-for-life genre just didn't do it for me (which is weird, because i'm usually a sucker for that kind of stuff, minus the sports metaphors). plus, i had heard so much about the "twist" partway through the movie that i halfway expected an alien lifespawn to bust through swank's stomach during the climatic boxing match and swallow her opponent whole. but the scene where a partially blind morgan freeman punches out a young whippersnapper with only one glove and no effort was pretty kickass.

a good part of the rest of my weekend was spent shopping for a formal evening gown. you see, a good friend of ours is getting married in a month to a very lovely young woman that i like a lot. i think they'll be very happy, etc etc. thing is: they decided to make their wedding black tie, and (HORROR) i'm also fairly sure that the reception will be dry. at first, i thought dressing up would be fun and glamourous and exciting; now i realize i just have to spend $100+ on a dress that'll hide a thigh-flask.

anyway, after hours at the racks at such glamorous institutions of couture as hecht's department store, i think i found a proper dress (though it's a little too clingy to really wear a thigh-flask; don't worry, i'll bring along a proper-sized clutch instead), but i need my readers' fashion-forward advice. what i've got in hand is a flesh-colored gown with spaghetti straps, some beading, and some gauzey-ish material. it's not totally unlike this dress naomi watts wore to the oscars last year, except, well, a LOT less beading and more of the gauze. maybe this evening i can upload a picture of the actual thing (or beg tommy to take a picture of it today and upload it? eh?).

my questions: does this scream 2004? is it too fancy? is this color-appropriate for a wedding? will i look like one big washed-out blob of flesh? and, for the love of god, WHAT SHOES SHOULD I WEAR?

this is a dire matter. i hope you will pay it the attention it deserves.

UPDATE: here is a picture of the dress hanging from our bedroom door, with animal gaping at it in the background. it's returnable, so make fun of it all you like.

A while ago I wrote about Verizon's efforts to block the city of Philadelphia's plan to offer municipal broadband. Unfortunately this phenomenon seems to be spreading. Legislative enshrinement of private monopolies... catch it!

Alright, the slogan might need to be punched up a little. But the print campaign is coming along nicely: FreePress.net has got a good map showing the progress of this kind of legislation around the country. Hey, Virginia legislators: thanks SO MUCH for saving me from the scourge of cheap internet access. You guys have really been on a roll lately.

Okay, actually the Virginia barriers to municipal broadband are among the least onerous of those of the states with relevant legislation. But still.

If you've been doing your duty as an American media consumer, you're aware of the following recent developments:

• Everyone in Hollywood is a lesbian


• Paris Hilton's Sidekick got hacked


• Despite not living in Hollywood, Paris Hilton is also at least kind of a lesbian (NSFW)

Yes yes, it's all very titillating, but what about the cell phone?!?!

Well, the Sidekick hacking thing happened because SK data is mirrored to T-Mobile's servers. It's a neat feature that lets you use your phone's address book over the web and ensures that you'll never lose your data. Someone broke into that server and could consequently help themselves to a copy of the data on an SK user's phone. The hack affected all T-Mobile SK users, so yes, I too am dreading seeing Gawker post that photo of Aaron bowling I took that one time. I'm sure they'll get to it any day now, and it will be devastating.

But now Paris' voicemail has been hacked, too. Or, more accurately, phreaked, the term of art for hacking phone systems. Interestingly, this was done through means unconnected to the SK data theft. And unsettlingly, the exploit used might be applicable to your voicemail, too.

Kevin Rose has the scoop, but it's simple enough to summarize. There exist various services allowing users to fake Caller ID information -- you dial into a system and it places a call with customized caller ID info, then connects you. This can make for some great pranks.

Unfortunately, Caller ID appears to be the security measure used by T-Mobile, Sprint and perhaps others to let users avoid entering their PIN every time they call to check their messages. So if you want to get into someone's messages you just need to place a spoofed call from their number into the voicemail system -- usually accessible by calling the mobile number in question when you know it won't be picked up. Oof. Not great, guys.

More worrying: the fact that credit card activation is frequently confirmed via Caller ID. Businesses might want to think about leaning on this insecure system a bit less. In the meantime, you might want to turn off automatic voicemail login if you've got any messages you don't want to share with nosy friends.

I caught a little bit of the much-loved Moulin Rouge on TV not too long ago, and I've been meaning to ask: what the hell is wrong with you girls?

It's not that I dislike the actors, or the plotline, or watching celebrities die of tuberculosis. In fact, I even like musicals: I think the Buffy musical episode was great!

But what possible reason is there for the movie's bizarre timing? Or the odd sound effects that accompany the constantly-swooping camerawork? Or the outbursts of "ohmigodthisisSOfunny"-high-school-improv-workshop-style hamminess?

Well, I suppose I shouldn't hope to comprehend the work of an artist capable of creating that goddamn sunscreen song -- that ML director Baz Luhrmann could create an artifact of such bottomless banality makes me think his films ought to be viewed with the same sort of critical eye directed toward, say, the cinematic ouevre of a costume designer.

But really, I don't dislike Moulin Rouge -- I just find it astoundingly strange. Watching it makes me feel like I have a neurological disorder.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable President's Day. I had to work, bike through the rain and lose at trivia, but still had a good day. My secret? Drinking heavily at the end of it. Oh, and Kriston and Susan gave me this awesome shirt which they picked up on their Gotham/Gates getaway. Thanks guys! I'm getting even more spoiled than usual.

Not a lot to report from over the weekend: Julie and Jon came over on both Friday and Saturday night. It was cold. Doing things is hard. So we stayed in and watched movies. Million Dollar Baby was heart-wrenching and all, but having thought about it a bit more, I agree with Catherine's initial assessment: it's a little cliched. C'est la boxing movie. Of the films watched, Mean Girls clearly stands as the more lasting cinematic achievement.

maybe i'm just giddy that it's friday, but i found this vogue italia fashion spread to be the perfect bit of entertainment for those of us who revel in low class celebrity trash but aspire to be highbrow, tasteful fashionistas. frankly, i think it's brilliant. [via shesbitter]

GO TEAM VENTURE

Yesterday I promised in comments to figure out how lossless compression algorithms work. Lossless compression schemes are those that let you store a signal without losing any information -- think of ZIP files, for example. Turns out my top-of-my-head theoretical explanation wasn't bad -- a bunch of lossless compression algorithms do work similarly, and it's a set-in-stone fact that a lossless codec will make some worst-case files larger than they started out.

But I was specifically asked about FLAC, a lossless codec designed for audio. FLAC can take PCM data (a digital audio signal) and compress it to anywhere from 30-70% of its original size without losing any data. Neat. But how does it work?

now why don't they have this kind of shit at the national zoo? the baby cheetahs are cute, but this thing could blow them out of the water:

Behold Hercules the mighty liger — 900 pounds of big cat that's part lion, part tiger and all humongous.

This King Kong of cats is not the work of a mad scientist, but the product of a rarely seen feline love affair that took place in a South Carolina animal preserve.

"We have a big free-roaming area at our preserve," explained Hercules' owner, Dr. Bhagavan Antle, who is showing off Hercules this weekend at a Miami animal park.

"Sometimes lions and tigers are allowed to go out there and, lo and behold, one particular lion fell in love with one particular tiger and we had babies."

Huge but gentle, the 12-foot-long Hercules is tall enough at 3 years old to dunk a basketball as he rises up on his hind legs.

To maintain such bulk, he can devour up to 100 pounds of raw meat in a day. This intake gives him the massive strength of a lion and the 50-mph quickness of a tiger.

And at just 3, he's a baby in liger years.

"He is already as big as his mother and father put together," said Antle, who keeps Hercules at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species in Miami.

"And he should keep growing until he is 7."

Hercules isn't the only Liger in the country. He has three brothers from his tiger mom's litter — Vulcan, Zeus and Sinbad.

Ligers — which have a mane like a lion and stripes like a tiger — are the result of a union between a lion dad and a tiger mom. They are unheard of in the wild, but occasionally happen when the two kinds of great cats wind up meeting in captivity. It is a rare occurrence because there seem to be few tigers and lions that hit it off romantically.

"You gotta have mild-mannered lions and tigers," Antle said. "Normally the lion will kill the tigers."

Spend it reading comics.

Scary Go Round has got a good story going on, plus its usual amazing artwork.

And Boy On A Stick And Slither has been on a mini-roll lately.

Looks like a transcript of Larry Summers' remarks has been released. Between this and the tarring and feathering of Eason Jordan, it seems like blogs are rapidly destroying the concept "off the record". I'm not sure that's a good thing.

But, with that said, it's now apparent that Summers' comments were pretty dumb: he seems to think that sex differences' influence on variance in aptitude is more pronounced than their influence on mean aptitude, but he more or less discounts the role of discrimination and socialization out of hand, calling them "lesser factors". I think both camps in this little online debate ended up staking out tenable positions, but Summers' newly-clarified position doesn't seem to line up with the measured pro-Summers appraisal that I'd arrived at. So allow me to amend my position: Larry's a dick.

However, I still believe that Naomi's proficiency at Dr. Mario is an astounding biological oddity.

Scott Moschella's conducting an interesting experiment. He bought and downloaded a track from the iTunes Music Store, violated the DMCA by using JHymn to remove its copy protection, then placed it on his website and invited visitors to download it. The catch: the song, from Sonic Youth side-project Ciccone Youth, consists of 1:03 of silence.

Will Sonic Youth come after Moschella? Will the RIAA? Will John Cage's estate sue everybody? Stay tuned.

American Dad will be replacing Arrested Development

Arrested Development's quality seems to have fallen off a bit this season, but American Dad is an abomination. Unfortunately, Fox executives saw that it drew 15 million viewers in its post-Superbowl debut -- that's way more than the 6 million Arrested Development gets every (non-Superbowl) week! QED.

I called Napster a "bad brand" a few days ago, but I've got to admit that there seems to be a certain magic to it. In the past couple of days I've had a lot of friends IMing and emailing me about the various ways of turning Napster's DRM'ed WMA files into other, unprotected formats.

Well, yes, you can do that. As I noted in the original post, you can use Winamp's out_lame plugin to encode to MP3. The Napster trick making the rounds uses the Output Stacker plugin (which has since been pulled from AOL-owned Winamp's website), but the principle is the same -- I haven't tried it, but I imagine Output Stacker might let you transfer ID3 information so you don't have to retag your music, but there is very little difference from the out_lame solution, technically speaking.

Thing is, this is nothing new.

i haven't written about "lost" in a while, but reading over this msnbc recap of last night's episode, i'm reminded of charles's theory:

Line of the week: As almost always, the best line belonged to Hurley. When helping Charlie bury Ethan, he responded to Charlie's "I killed Ethan, I can bury him" with "Yeah, until he rises from the dead." Seems that Hurley, like many viewers, isn't sure that such a powerful evil man can be killed with a simple gun.

a hint of zombies to come?

anyway, did anyone else watch the show last night? while it was somewhat slow-paced and light on freaky monsters, i thought it was a nice bit of character development. also, sawyer and kate are totally going to hit it.

UPDATE: i just have to give a nod to this local blog in their recap of last week's OC, mostly because i sprayed my monitor with caramel macchiato when i read them call rebecca, sandy's former love-interest-fugitive chick, "an animatronic butterbeast, like Abby Bartlet's slightly-younger but still melty sister." most excellent.

also noted: defamer's take on the much-hyped lesbian kiss that took place last week: "We’ve gotten hotter kisses from fat aunts who were pinching our cheeks until we cried. Showing her usual deep commitment to the craft of looking uncomfortable anytime a camera is pointed at her, Barton snapped her mouth closed tighter than a former child actor’s asshole when “Beat It” plays on the radio. Merely showing up for work and pressing your lips against someone else’s do not a sweeps ratings stunt make, Mischa. When you don’t deliver the tongue with the season on the line, don’t be surprised to find your character solving her identity crisis by taking a four-slice toaster with her into the jacuzzi."

Right now I'm on my... let's see... seventh fucking conference call so far this week. And I skipped my usual Tuesday night conference call! Yeesh. What's going on here? Is this some twenty-fifth birthday right of passage? I knew adulthood was going to be unrelenting toil and disappointment, but I was kind of hoping my coworkers would leave me alone during it.

Hmm. Maybe I went out and had a fatally good a time on Tuesday. Oh well. As long as the broadband connection holds I should be able to get through purgatory okay.

i forgot to post this earlier, but for valentine's day, instead of joining the d.c. ratrace to obtain an exclusive table at a high-class restaurant, tommy and i cooked our own little slice of heaven right here on O street. on the menu? salad with red onion, feta, mandarin oranges, and almonds; rosemary and garlic roast lamb; polenta with gorgonzola; and strawberries with chocolate zabaglione. photos of our attempts at culinary greatness follow.

this pomeranian, being shown at the westminster dog show, is named Wicked Mean-N-Nasty. seriously.

UPDATE: and this one is called Ghostface Killah.

related: this will make the end of your work day so much more pleasant.

Well, with twenty-five of them under my belt, I think I'm starting to get a hang of this birthday thing. The existential crises are shorter, the familial obligations easier to fulfill, and the toys are better. So excuse the ugly, self-indulgent nature of this post. I assume you're used to it by now.

Okay, so the 9AM conference call was not exactly an ideal start, but Catherine gave me some pretty sweet workout pants as soon as I woke up. Also given to me by my too-generous girlfriend: some Etymotic ER-6 headphones. I know, I know -- I hate audiophiles too, even though the tendency of disposable income to rise as I get older along with my gadgetlust seems likely to turn me into one. I'll restrain myself for as long as I can from buying any scientistically certified magical speaker paint or mystic jars of rocks, but I have to admit that the ER-6s sound pretty amazing. Did you know there's a track of Isaac Brock talking quietly under the pre-chorus lyrics on "Black Cadillacs"? I didn't. I hadn't noticed the weird pin-prick percussion on Kanye West's "Jesus Saves" either. Awesome. Another plus is that I can't hear anything else when I have the Etymotics in my ears. That's going to be great for the gym. What's that? Biking? Well, I've been hit by cars before. It's not so bad.

Anyway, last night Catherine and I went and had dinner with my mom and her boyfriend Ray. She made me a cake and got me some balloons -- what a great mom. I half expected ponyrides to be announced after dinner. I'm just glad she didn't hire a clown: last Friday I caught a few minutes of an episode of CSI that revolved around a woman with a clown fetish whose husband ended up smothering some poor sucker named Doodles to death. Imagine creepy, atonal music playing over a low framerate shot of clown shoes jerking, then going still. Actually, come to think of it I was laughing hysterically throughout that sequence. So nevermind: best clown ever.

My mom went overboard and gave me a combined xmas/birthday present in the form of a pretty sweet-lookin' used bike to replace the one that was stolen out of my car last fall. I won't bore you with its technical details, which I assure you I could recite without any difficulty at all, definitely. But I will say: it has a bell! Hurrah! Rest assured, I'll be pricing handlebar streamers on Amazon shortly.

The one ingredient missing from the perfect birthday: booze, of course.

the washington post's going out gurus, whom i talked about when i mentioned them dissing local music blogs last week (not enough hip hop or go-go or stuff beyond indie rock, cliqueish, agenda-driven), have officially launched their own entertainment blog. their first music post? a blurb about a neko case concert in baltimore.

anyway. i shall be reading!

UPDATE: in a weird turn of events, kyle notes that the neko case posting has been taken down, while all the other original posts remain up. no idea why.
UPDATE2.0: apparently taken down because "the show was yesterday." okay. this is extremely boring, so i'll stop now.

tommy is one step further along in the march of death today: he's just turned 25! so leave him a big wet sloppy comment kiss to congratulate him on his official entrance to the mid-twenties club. welcome! really, it's not that bad, i promise.

the post sez:

TODAY'S BIRTHDAY (February 15). You are wealthy in love this year. The investment of quality time and affection that you put into friends and family yields the true gold, so don't bury yourself in work. Romance thrives when there are challenging shared goals at stake. Singles are infatuated and then get the prize in June. Some marry in July. Love signs are Scorpio and Aries. Your lucky numbers are: 20, 1, 12, 32 and 14.

don't worry, though, tommy. i'm not going to spring a surprise wedding on you this july. (that's because i've always wanted a fall wedding!)

celebrations, cake and liver disease are in the process of being arranged; we shall keep you informed.

if, like me, you have been endlessly amused by the ill-informed rantings and sexual politics of libertariangirl, a puported 24 year-old female working in washington d.c. with a slavishly devoted conservative male following, the following revelation will hopefully cause you to laugh hysterically for at least ten minutes. maybe twenty.

libertariangirl is, in my opinion, pretty much an idiot, and the cynic in me generally believed that she received so much male attention in the blogosphere mostly due to the fact that she has a large, prominently featured photo of herself in her very pink sidebar. in the photo, she is blond, porcelain-skinned, and disturbingly glassy-doll-eyed. not what would float my boat, but whatever. to each his own. often libertariangirl would describe dates she'd been on in our fair city; in one particular post, she mentioned that she'd slept with the guy, which led to the simultaneous explosion of the heads of all her male commentors, many of whom proceeded to insult her and tell her she must not have had a good relationship with her father, etc.

well, the next fact probably disturbed her admirers even more: liberatariangirl's photo is not her own. libertariangirl is actually a male. and libertariangirl's original photo had been lifted from a catalogue for ukranian mail-order brides. here's the poor, unknowing ukranian bride-for-sale's profile.

uglylibertariandude defends himself with a few accurate remarks about sexual identity in the blogosphere:

Well I may be an unemployed man without a wife or girlfriend still living with my parents despite being over the age of 30, but at least I’m not so stupid as to think that a gorgeous young girl would be the author of a popular libertarian blog...

One thing I learned from this blog is how easy attractive woman have it. When I had a blog as my real self, no one linked to me, no one left any comments, it was as if the blog existed in a vacuum. But things were different for Libertarian Girl. Every day I’d check Technorati and discover new unsolicited links. It was like I had warped into an alternate universe where all the rules had changed. At the rate things were happening, this would have been an A-list blog in a few more months.

It’s funny how there have been some posts in the blogosphere saying that the political blogosphere was a boys club that discriminated against women, as evidenced by how few politics bloggers were women. Boy were they completely off the mark. It’s ten times easier for a woman’s blog to become popular.

i somewhat disagree. it's ten times easier for a woman who prominently features her hot photo on the front page to become popular in the blogosphere. witness: hot abercrombie chick, majikthise, michelle malkin, the exposed libertarian girl and several other blogs written by females that i normally find pretty unremarkable, but receive an inordinate amount of attention. i won't critique a woman's choice to feature her sultry photo in her sidebar or banner or whatever, but for some reason, it always strikes me as odd. perhaps i have turned sexist overnight. in which case, i am off to remedy that by beating up tommy and making him hold my purse in public for hours at a time.

Yglesias' observation that the Democrats ought to figure out what they think about globalization got me wondering what I think about it. Allow me to preface this by pointing out that it's a cry for help: honestly, I don't know jack about this stuff and am hoping someone can explain it to me. So here's my thinking.

In the past my intuition has been that globalization will mostly be a race to the bottom -- can global economic growth really occur quickly enough to offset the diffusion of wealth from the first world? Given the gaping divide between American prosperity and the rest of the world's relative poverty, it at least seems like the answer is probably "no". I understand that assuming a zero-sum situation is a classic mistake in economics, but assuming growth will fix everything also seems myopic.

I have no doubt that globalization will increase the planet's net wealth -- to the extent that this is true it seems like we have a moral imperative not to oppose it. But I'm not convinced that everyone will come out a winner; nor am I convinced that protectionism is as futile as some people suggest. I know there are important human rights and environmental considerations to be sorted out, but my thinking generally arrives at the conclusion that Americans have an ethical obligation not to fight globalization, and that we're going to end up mostly getting screwed by it.

Yesterday's adventures with AllOfMP3 has got me thinking that this problem might be worse than I'd imagined. In globalization fans' rosiest storytime fables the US stays healthy and wealthy by virtue of being wise: we export parts of that wonderful Information Economy we've got going and in return the developing world sends us cargo ships full of injection-molded plastic lawn furniture.

The internet seems to be teaching us a couple of important lessons about how this arrangement is going to work, or fail to. First, if you want to sell information it needs to be priced affordably or it'll simply be stolen. Related but separate is the idea that the market in which it's sold needs to prosecute piracy. China's the classic example of these prerequisites not being met -- foreign music and movies are too expensive and enforcement is lax, so piracy occurs on a truly mammoth scale.

But how can you price information elastically across the world when network technology eliminates all trade barriers? Obviously this problem is worst at the consumer level of IP-purchasing, but it seems like the principle will broadly scale: IP owners will be pushed toward using a single price point, and will consequently either be unable to optimally sell their product overseas or will take a huge cut in their domestic revenues. Artificial measures like DVD region codes are feeble stopgaps -- it's easy to find a $40 player that ignores them completely. And so far, intellectual property treaties don't seem to have done much good -- what incentive does the Chinese government have to protect Hollywood?

Maybe I'm too dumb to see the alternative, but I can't figure out a way to sell intellectual property more effectively than manufactured goods. Combined with a rapidly declining monopoly on high-tech innovation -- most chip fabrication happens in Asia, you know -- I'm not feeling too good about America's economic prospects. Maybe we'll invent flying cars or fusion energy generators or an amazing new kitchen utensil that grips, flips, scoops AND strains. But assuming for a moment that such a miracle doesn't occur, what's going to save us?

Well, probably I just don't understand econ and everything will be fine. But so far I haven't been able to understand why that is.

A web-only album won a Grammy last night. No label, no distributor, just fans financing the production of a recording by an artist they liked. That's cool and all, but how did the recording industry let this happen? The Grammies aren't exactly a rigorously objective measure of musical value. So why validate a business model that's going to make you obsolete? Could I be wrong about the record companies being fundamentally evil?

Of course not. This one must have just fallen through the cracks -- music industry execs are very busy fulfilling their vital role in society, you know. I'm sure they'll be on top of this next year with an ad campaign explaining how downloading music from the internet can give you herpes.

Did anybody else watch the Grammies? I always enjoy complaining bitterly about things I freely choose to watch on TV, and the Grammies make for some prime whining. I particularly enjoyed the tribute to southern rock and the academy president's annual confirmation of his organization's irrelevance. Sweet-lookin' beard, though.

Over the weekend my friend Jeff, who really ought to know better, foolishly asked me to opine on Napster’s new music service, and to explain whether there’s a Hymn equivalent for removing its copy protection. Hah! A voluntary technical question! Better put on a pot of coffee, suckers.

The premise is this: for $14.99 a month you get all-you-can-eat privileges at the Napster buffet. Downloaded tracks will play on your computer or your Napster-approved portable music player. But you don’t get to burn them to CD without paying an extra 99 cents per track, and when you cancel your subscription all of the songs for which you haven’t purchased burning privileges will stop working thanks to the magic of Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 Digital Rights Management system.

As you might have gleaned from their hilariously ineffective Superbowl ad, Napster reckons this is a good deal since it’d allegedly cost $10,000 to purchase and fill up an iPod with Apple’s music store. First: ten grand? Hah. Second: this is still only a good deal if you plan on dying within 55 years or so.

On the upside, a few more evenings like Saturday’s Mousetrap and I won’t be able to hear much anyway. Plus, you can stretch even more value out of this deal, particularly given the free trials currently being offered. Programs like TuneBite are cheap and promise to convert your DRM-protected WMA files to un-DRM-able MP3s. There are downsides -- TuneBite is fairly slow and involves a digital > analog > digital process that will produce varying results depending on the quality of your soundcard. A less user-friendly but technically better solution is to use Winamp’s out_lame plugin to skip past your soundcard’s lousy digital/analog converter. You’ll still be losing some quality – there’s no helping that when you encode from one lossy format to another. Also, the ID3 information won’t be set automatically the way it is by TuneBite – but with a little effort, this method should get you a large number of serviceable MP3s for not a lot of money.

But I still hate this. Okay, I admit it -- I just hate Napster in general. Their software started out buggy and ended up bloated. Their technical model was inherently vulnerable. They were cocksure and unafraid when they should have been, then panicky and useless when the shoe inevitably dropped. I realize this new service has little to do with the Napster of yore, what with Shawn Fanning doing show-pony duty elsewhere in a lame attempt to latch onto the RIAA’s withering teat. But this is still a bad deal from a bad brand.

I could go all crazy on you and scream about how businesses are trying to convert all commerce to a license model, wherein nobody owns anything and our lives are lived at the pleasure of corporate behemoths for the low low price of a few dozen monthly subscription fees. Don’t sign me up for the President’s “ownership society” mumbo jumbo, but I am keen to hang onto “ownership” in general.

But I won’t wander off on that tangent. Instead, allow me to offer you a superior alternative to Napster -- and iTunes, for that matter. You might’ve heard of AllOfMP3. Turns out it’s not just a way for the mafia to harvest credit card numbers! They’re based in Russia, and offer a unique music store model: rather than paying by the track, customers pay by the megabyte. You won’t pay much, though. The current rate is a measly two cents per meg. You can choose your encoding format and bitrate, too, anywhere from 128 kbps MP3 to lossless, CD-quality FLAC (on the newer tracks; older ones top out at 384 VBR MP3).

Amazingly, it seems to be legal. The same tangled nest of laws that’s paving the way for a fresh new autocracy also gives an organization called ROMS the authority to sell licenses for any recordings released in Russia. That puts a limit on AllOfMP3s catalog, but it’s not a particularly bad one. The official Unrequited Narcissism Impossibly Limited Test Of Musical Scope (UNILTOMS) reveals a distinct lack of Arcade Fire, but available copies of both Ted Leo’s newest and the A.C. Newman record. Not bad. And don't worry about that unfortunate "foreign"ness -- they’ve got excellent English translators working everywhere but the news page. Finally, music-loving youngsters can get in on the fun of importing American products from foreign countries. Take that, you drug-loving seniors!

I’m sure the ROMS loophole will be closed eventually, but who knows when? It seems like Russian democracy has got bigger problems at the moment than protecting the RIAA’s business model. Even if it’s eventually closed, I’ll still be steering clear of Napster’s subscription service. DRM makes consumers pay more for less, and it shouldn’t be encouraged. If you want free music… well, you already know how to get it, and doing so is a lot easier than converting Napster's songs to MP3. If you want a simple and lawsuit-free music source, look no further than AllOfMP3. The nerdiness of the piratical cutting edge will no doubt keep me interested in the Soulseeks of the world, but I’ve enjoyed tonight’s brush with legitimacy: I just put together an embarrassing-yet-undeniable 22-song boy band mix and downloaded it for about 45 Rubles. In case you haven’t checked in on your Russian currency market securities lately – well, maybe you should sit down first.

Anyway, once my BSB-heavy queue finishes up I think I’ll grab the Kanye West album, even though Charles’ copy is about fifty feet away. That’s right: we’ve finally reached the point where the price of music is less than the mental toll of standing up to get a CD. I guess we could all see this coming, but it still seems like an important moment in Internet history.

earlier today, while tommy and i were waiting for kriston in front of the national gallery of art (i was off to the kersetz exhibit, they were headed to a lecture by ed ruscha), we noticed an utterly bizarre monument standing alone on a slab of concrete by 7th St and Pennsylvania Ave. it was a four-columned canopy, covering two grotesque, interwined fish; a wispy crane stood on top of the covering, and the columns were emblazed with one word on each of them: FAITH / TEMPERANCE / CHARITY / HOPE.

really, what the fuck? it was random. take a look at this photo.

so, this evening, i turned to the trusty internets to answer my freaky crane/dolphin/temperance monument question. turns out that it was actually a functioning fountain built by somebody named henry cogswell, a san francisco dentist who was disturbed by the alcoholic tendencies of soldiers returning from the civil war. he sponsored this particular d.c. monument, as well as 50 similar other ones across the country, in order to offer free drinking water to people in hopes that they'd take a sip from the fountain instead of heading to one of the nearby saloons. hmm. let's call him an optimist, shall we?

anyway, searching for information about the temperance monument led me to several pages about d.c. monuments in general, and i learned something important. and that something is that d.c. is an incredibly weird city with hundreds, if not thousands, of pointless monuments and memorials.

i had been vaguely aware of the scores and scores of random monuments and statues littering our fair city; for example, when i was training for the marathon i'd often run past the hains point "the awakening" statue. sometimes while grabbing lunch in dupont circle, i'll walk past the sonny bono memorial park. (yes, WE HAVE A SONNY BONO MEMORIAL PARK AND IT TOOK US AGES TO GET A NATIVE AMERICAN MUSEUM).

but scouring through various sites dedicated entirely to d.c. monuments, i'm finding some even stranger shit. for example: did you know this city has a monument (albeit a small statue) to Fala, one of FDR's dogs? or that little stone house on the corner of 15th and Constitution is called the Bulfinch Gatehouse, and it used to be there in order to monitor the then-heavily wooded Mall, where people would let their cattle graze? isn't it interesting that the boy scouts of america memorial prominently features a TOTALLY naked roman soldier teaching a young boy how to, um, hold a sword? and let's not forget the world's largest chair in anacostia and the plaque commemorating mary surratt, the first women executed by the US government for her alleged role in helping plan the assasination of lincoln.

truly fascinating stuff. forget valentine's day; i'm going to spend all of tomorrow stalking weird d.c. monuments.

other good resources: kitty tours monuments and DCist monuments features.

happy early valentine's day, everybody! the above image is taken by hungarian photographer andre kertesz. after much raving from susan and others, i went to see an exhibit of his works at the national gallery today. and it was lovely. very...tiny, though. tiny photos, that is. like 2x2 inches. and too many people. so i freaked out from self-induced claustrophobia 2/3 of the way through the exhibit and busted through the crowds, panting, to blow money at the gift shop where i bought this poster.

anyway, hopefully we can all agree that valentine's day is a commercialized hellhole of prepackaged love and falsified expectations (though i will cop to having eaten three of the ginormous chocolate-dipped strawberries tommy bought at love cafe) - but i still hope you have a nice day. treat yourself to a glass of wine or a shot of tequila, and enjoy.

Catherine beat me to a full review, but I feel like disgorging my impressions anyway. In short, nobody came to the Black Cat last night with the sort of professional attitude necessary for a night of efficient rocking -- not the band, not the venue staff and not the crowd. Half-assing your defined concert duties might provide a less tense evening, but it doesn't make for a very compelling musical experience.

Army of Me's Vince Scheuerman did manage to secure DC's coveted number two androgenous male rockstar slot, right being WSC's Martin Royle. But AoM didn't take their status as openers seriously enough: when you're the second of three bands, you need to play a shortened set. Their Interpolish antics at times seemed interminable -- seriously guys, multiple guitar solos? Still, on the whole they were fairly pleasant.

The same couldn't be said of the sound -- there was something wrong with the bass clipping, and the mics for the backup vocals weren't on at all. These problems seemed to be fixed by the time the Wrens came on, but count the evening as another example of the Black Cat technicians not taking their jobs very seriously.

They weren't the only ones who failed to play their part. The sold-out crowd, swollen with Friday's Express readers, provided a constant buzz from the back of the room. The Wrens' live arrangements rely heavily on a whisper-quiet-intro-and-first-verse-to-rocking-chorus dynamic. A little cliched, I guess, but I still dig it -- unfortunately it's hard to pull off "elegiac" when some dipshit is screaming into his cellphone that YEAH, THEY'RE JUST AIGHT.

Also not helping: some apparent Wren peergroup members. A nuclear family trundled through the crowd, its middleaged matron shouting "WE WORSHIP YOU!" and other my-friend's-in-a-band!-isms. Lady, look, I'm glad to see you out at the show and I know this'll make a cute story at the PTA potluck. But that shit belongs at the Grog -- and even then you're going to need about eight more Bud Ices under your belt to be credible. This is a sold-out show at the second biggest rock club in what I have been assured is a perfectly nice city, if you like that sort of thing. Those poor old men on stage have driven all the way down 95 just to rock for us. Don't embarass them.

On to the Wrens themselves. To be honest, I was expecting a tighter performance from a band that's been playing together for fifteen years. Writing this now, the checklist seems more impressive than it was in aggregate: the arrangements were frequently interesting, particularly a glitch-rock version of The House That Guilt Built; Kevin Whelan injected enough energy to buoy the entire band; and everyone on stage was an impressive instrumentalist.

But as I mentioned, the arrangements didn't match well with the less-than-reverential crowd; they stuck almost exclusively to material from The Meadowlands; the transitions were slow and jammy; and the harmonies didn't gel as well as they could have, particularly Greg Whelan's (although I'm prepared to blame this on the BC sound crew as well -- maybe his monitor was too quiet). Most galling was the band's complete inability to control the energy of the crowd -- the pauses between songs were too long, and the main set was abruptly concluded, seemingly on a whim, after a downtempo number. Combined with a short and lackluster encore, a show that started strong left me scratching my head. It just felt off.

Exactly what it was struck me on the way home: these guys were all talented musicians, but they just didn't seem to play like a cohesive rock band. Instead the performance felt a little like that of a talented tribute band with unusually good taste in material. How often do Wrens practices happen, I wonder?

All in all, I'm glad to have gone to the show -- I've been wanting to see the Wrens for a long time, and it's nice at least to check them off the list. But the performance itself left me cold. It's strange to watch a song performed by its authors and feel like they connect to it less than you do.

the wrens. black cat. 2/11/05. this is going to be long and pointless, so you've been warned.

we started off the night by meeting my brother and his friend zach at dc9 and getting a couple of drinks. they were duly impressed by the bar and i once again felt like Hip Older Sister instead of Irrelevant 25 Year-Old Who is So Out of The Loop. by the time we got over to the black cat, around 10:15 or so, the line stretched down the block and we heard that the show had already sold out.

we got inside in time to hear three or four songs from a brooklyn band called the upwelling (who carl had been pimping), and they were surprisingly pleasant. a little U2ish, a little bombastic, not incredibly catchy and powerful but nice for a first opener. a LOT of screaming fangirls. apparently they are heartthrobbish. (and my brother liked their music enough to buy their cd). the second opener was local group army of me, by whom i was also pleasantly surprised. they had three or four distinctly good songs that came off as kind of interpolish. the rest of their stuff more or less blended together for me, but they at least had a charismatic lead singer, so it wasn't a totally boring performance. but they played way too long, at least ten songs, which came off to me as due to arrogance and an overestimation of how much the crowd was enjoying their show. you weren't that awesome, buddies.

around midnight the wrens finally came on. to be honest, i had no idea what to expect from their live performance. on one hand, i was kind of prepping myself to be disappointed, because they are like 50 years old, and maybe they would be geriatric, and sitting in wheelchairs, and playing guitars with their dentures or something. i also tried to lower my expectations because i just love the meadowlands to death, and i figured there was no way a live rendering of those songs could please me. on the other hand, i had heard good things about their concerts, and as tommy pointed out, they have been together for like 15 years, and a band who's been in existence that long probably can play pretty tight.

but overall, my reaction to the show was somewhere in between ecstasy and indifference. the concert started off really promising, with the guitarist and bassist noodling around, tweaking some knobs and making all sorts of crazy spacey sounds; it sounded more like the start of a radiohead show than anything i had heard from the wrens before. but it eventually built up into an amazing version of "this boy's exhausted", with bassist and one of the vocalists kevin whalen leaping around up on amps and screaming like he was 16 again. really, i was amazed at the level of energy throughout the entire show. i couldn't tell if it was sincere or not - like, were they just rocking this hard just to prove that they are not old fuddy duddies, or did they really feel it? did i care? not really. it was fun to watch.

the first half of the set was generally pretty exhilarating. if you've never listened to the wrens before, they have this way with a lot of their songs where they start off totally quiet and intense and restrained and build up into pure pop rock awesomeness and all of a sudden you're jumping up and down and screaming along and have just slammed the person next to you with an elbow to the face. those parts of the concert were just a lot of pure joy, which is interesting because the lyrics of all these songs are so fucking depressing. but you could tell the band was really feeling it - i definitely got the sense that they were just awed that they were playing a sold-out show, maybe grateful. anyway, during the first half of the peformance, i was about to explode out of my head with joy and music love and everything good and pure in the universe. it was lovely.

unfortunately, the later part of the show sucked donkey balls, due both to the band's performance and several factors beyond their control. these external circumstances included, surprise surprise, the SHITZEN sound at the black cat. everything was fuzzy, vocals were muddled, blah blah blah. who the fuck is running the sound there? let's kill him?

the crowd also played a part in affecting the show negatively. like i said, the show was sold out and packed. i like to think this is due to the fact that i pushed it so hard on DCist and DCist is such a bastion of TOTAL HIPNESS and trendsetting that everybody read about the band and became my army of music clones and decided to come out. hmm. probably not. however, the washington post's express had written a piece on the band on thursday, thus most likely ensuring the total awfulness of the crowd. gah. several thousand exurban yuppies probably read about the band on their metro commute, decided it would be cool to check out the show, and naturally, when they got there, couldn't be bothered to play a lick of attention to the actual music because they'd never once listened to a wrens' record and didn't in fact care about watching the performance. this resulted in so much crowd chatter over the softer parts of the wrens' songs that you often couldn't even hear the vocals. several times, you actually had people throughout the crowd yelling at everyone to shut up. normally i would find this nannyish and annoying, but really - if you're going to come to a show and not even fake listening to the band, go the fuck downstairs to the red room and leave the fans alone, assholes. so this was a rare instance in which i think the concert would have been much better if there were about half the people there, because then you know they were just coming out because they really like and know the band.

however. the wrens themselves honestly had a lot to do with the fact that the show lost all momentum come the second half. their setlist seemed off, they were playing around a lot with feedback and knob-twiddling instead of the insane rocking that i expected, they took way too much time in between songs, and really, i just got the feeling that they were being utterly self-indulgent. i suppose i can't blame them too much for that - it's not that often that you achieve indie god status only after 15 years of being together and going through label hell - but still, you owe it to the fans to play straight up music and not fuck around too much with lame reinterpretations and weird vocal stylings.

ah well. even though the show wasn't as mind-blowing as i had hoped, it still felt nice to see the wrens up there having a great time and playing to a full house, because god knows that if any band deserves it, they do. i just hope that next time i see them, they're more concerned about pleasing the audience instead of themselves.

Have a look at LokiTorrent's homepage (UPDATE: the page has been taken down for some reason, but you can find a copy over at MirrorDot). Scary! The MPAA's coming to get us! Well, two things:

1. LokiTorrent initially set up a paypal legal defense fund to fight the MPAA, collecting several thousand dollars. Then this comes up. Nice, guys. Very nice.
2. Actually, you can click and hide. I wouldn't suggest relying on my internet privacy tips if you're planning on committing corporate espionage or emailing around nuclear secrets. But it seems safe to say that if the MPAA needs to issue multiple subpoenas across multiple countries in order to punish you for downloading that copy of Blade 3 they'll probably elect to go after lower-hanging fruit. So get yourself a copy of Azureus and a SOCKS proxy; or better yet, download Tor and point Azureus at that.

Yeesh! My heartfelt apologies for the lack of updates. Catherine's been adjusting to her recent promotion to Associate Box Mover at work, and I've been running to Capitol Hill on a near-daily basis to pick up the slack left by a less-than-dilligent coworker. The limited technical energies I can muster have been spent screaming at the BTD folks that they're totally all cogs in the machine, maan, and wrestling with Jon and Paul's XBoxes.

Ahh, the XBoxes. You might remember when Jon and I spread the poor machines' guts throughout the apartment prior to frying their tiny electronic brains. Well, I got a reprogrammer and put the appropriate BIOS on the chip. I acquired and installed a ready-to-go suite of apps called "Slayer's XBox AutoInstaller" that featured dragon graphics. Then -- more problems.

This won't interest anyone else, probably, but I had to search all over the goddamn internet for the solution to my problem, so I'm writing it down here, if only to allow others to find it, Google permitting.

maybe i'm just being paranoid, but i feel like the following comments from the post's going out gurus chat today were aimed at DCist music coverage as well as several other music blogs i enjoy:

Logan Circle, Washington, D.C.: Do you guys read the D.C. music blogs that are out there about the "scene"? There are a bunch and they all seem to contradict each other. Are there any you recommend for either good information, good taste or pure humor whether intentional or not? Links please!!!

Al Gore

Rhome: You know, I've never really read them. Care to toss out any specific ones? The few I've seen smelled faintly of being driven by an agenda, that clique'ish type vibe. I'm a big fan of staying up on the calendars of the local venues and going out regularly to check out stuff you've never heard. Most bands have websites with mp3's, or you can always preview material at washingtonpost.com/mp3. And if you stay tuned to this space, you might just see a new blog. Hmmmm...

Joe: Not a blog really, but I regularly amused by the discussions in the 9:30 club's forums page - especially when they are all bashing each other. The one problem I have with many of the local music blogs I've read (I won't name names) is the obsession with indie rock...and only indie rock. Gets boring pretty quickly.

hmm. i'm not sure what to say about rhome's comments - i don't understand why he would think any DC music blogs are being driven by agendas or being cliqueish. how can a blog be cliqueish, anyway? but i guess i should take this opportunity to say that no agenda drives DCist's music coverage except my personal taste - in order to do my picks, etc, i just browse though listings from several different sources and choose bands that i'm either sure will be good or that i've heard good things about. and as for any other music blogs besides the music coverage on DCist - well, they are personal blogs, done for fun. the authors aren't paid to write (neither am i, fyi) and aren't required to cover anything they don't want to cover or recommend diverse types of music. from the sites i read, i feel like their picks and recommendations are always very genuine.

joe's comment is, as far as i'm concerned, pretty true. the music blogs i'm aware of, including what i do on DCist, are always writing about indie rock except for a couple of exceptions here and there. i'm not sure exactly what to do about this in regards to DCist - i do want to expand the types of music we cover, but i don't want to do it just for the sake of trying to be more diverse. i wouldn't like to feel forced to include country or r&b listings every week or do one jazz show review a month, because a) i wouldn't really enjoy it and b) it wouldn't be very good as i'm not very well-informed on those kinds of music. that would be a concern for me if i wanted to be a music journalist-type for life, but i really really don't. this is just something i do for fun. additionally, i feel like the audience of blogs in general is, as of now anyway, the sort that really listens to an awful lot of indie rock. mid-twenties, hipster-ish urbanites. i don't think i have too many classical music fans checking in, and there aren't a ton of blogs out there writing exclusively about country music or what have you. but at the same time, i eventually would like to have people who enjoy non-indie-rock stuff looking to DCist for some musical information. we always want to expand the readership and all.

i suppose the answer right now is to try to find a co- or semi-regular music writer for DCist who is knowledgeable about music that is absolutely not indie stuff. i loathe the idea of turning to craigslist to get somebody, though - too many unreliable freakshows who think they are god's gift to terrible singing/songwriting. so, does anyone out there have a recommendation or think they are such a person? or does anybody have suggestions in general about DCist's music stuff? i am determined to be as non-cliquey and inclusive as possible. because that is what blogs are all about! right?

i've got an interview with the wrens up at DCist today. check it out.

i have to say, i am utterly excited for their show tomorrow at the black cat. my brother is coming up from charlottesville for the concert, as is appropriate, because he's the one who first introduced me to the band when he played me "hopeless" in his car as we were driving to the mall one day last year. sigh. i am so old. used to be that i was the hip big sister with all the insider music tips. now i am a totally irrelevant 25 year old. but i emailed with charles bissell, so suck it!

GOD VIRGINIA. WHAT THE FUCKING HELL CRAWLED UP YOUR BUTT?

The Loudoun County students who staged a play over the weekend about a high school football star's homosexuality heard some gasps, along with expressions of support, during their play's two-day, modestly attended run at Ashburn's Stone Bridge High School.

Now, thanks to a high-decibel dust-up over freedom of expression and values, student writer-director Sabrina Audrey Jess's one-act play, "Offsides," has a dramatically expanded audience.

Del. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun) e-mailed his supporters claiming that, in the play, "two male students engaged in a homosexual kiss onstage" and that public schools were "being used to promote a homosexual lifestyle." His son-in-law, Loudoun County Supervisor Mick Staton Jr. (R-Sugarland Run), followed up with a missive of his own, warning of the play's disturbing "indoctrination." On Sunday, activists blanketed Loudoun churches with fliers decrying the production.

...."Within our public schools, there is a tendency to encourage homosexual activity, to portray it in a cute or favorable light," Black said in an interview yesterday. "This is a considerable health hazard right now. If we encourage just one child to experiment and contract the HIV virus, then we have done an enormous disservice to our children."

YES. public schools, where gay people are traditionally MISERABLE in the face of overt hetereosexuality and jock intolerance, are in fact promoting a homosexual lifestyle and encouraging kids to get HIV. christians are being persecuted in america, so we have to pass laws explicitly defending them. and if you see the waistband of some 16 year-old boy's underwear, the DEVIL WILL START TALKING TO YOU AND MAKE YOU UNPURE AND LUST AFTER SMALL CHILDREN OR SOMETHING OMG WTF?!?!?

walking up wisconsin avenue towards the tenleytown metro stop this evening, i passed a homeless man sitting in a bus stop that he had clearly turned into his ad hoc home. there were three shopping carts full of random books, clothes and bags surrounding him, and as i got nearer, he started frantically waving a newspaper in his hand and shouting nonsensically. he was obviously mentally disturbed. but as i passed by, i heard what he was yelling: "those politicians in southern virginia! they make crazy laws! i want to call them all up and do the donald trump and tell them that THEY'RE FIRED! they deserve to be fired!"

turns out, i couldn't agree with him more. and after seeing in the past few weeks the kind of laws that the virginia house of delegates is spending time and taxpayer money on passing, i'd rather have the crazy homeless man in office than those idiots.

see:

Lst night Charles, Brian, Matt and I went to see the Wizards beat the hated Indiana Pacers in an exciting to-the-wire victory that I'm sure was deeply symbolic for some reason. This little outing was thrown together at the last moment, but things went off without a hitch -- turns out it's easy to navigate the challenges of professional sporting event attendance when the team in question hasn't won a playoff game in sixteen years.

But this year! This year things are clearly possibly going to be different, maybe. So why the game was sparsely-attended is somewhat of a mystery to me: the Wiz (actual alternate nickname: 'Zards) are in fourth place in the East despite star player Larry Hughes being sidelined with a broken hand. Friends who understand such things assure me that (ignoring for the moment their inevitable annual meltdown) Washington will be seeded against the Heat in the playoffs, ensuring an almost-immediate loss -- so now is the time to go see Gilbert Arenas wreck house. A mere $10 ticket will buy you a seat featuring the unofficial halftime upgrade plan.

This was the first time I've been to an NBA game since the days of the Bullets, although I've made it to MCI for hockey games a bit more frequently. I was glad to see that the franchise seems to be appropriately ashamed of their insipid mascot -- aside from the logo on the court and a pointed hat on the nonspecifically fuzzy mascot, there weren't any allusions to wizardry at all. It's almost like taking the most effete bits from Dungeons & Dragons and marketing them to the fans of a sport defined by contemporary black culture is a bad idea. Weird!

Anyway, the healthy sense of shame was good to see, but rest assured I still found something to get upset about: MCI no longer sells Gordon Biersch garlic fries! Outrageous! Preposterous! And while my hot dog did resemble rehydrated jerky in an interesting and fairly pleasant way, there were no packets of onions available. C'mon Abe! Washington deserves better than this. We demand concession concessions. Can't you get the folks from Ben's to set up a beachhead?

turns out d.c. is a rather lovely city to live in, especially when you've more or less got the day off of work and the weather outside is spring-in-february. tommy and i took the opportunity to ride the metro up to the national zoo, mostly because i was just about dying to see the four new baby cheetahs. the tiny little furballs were out, but since they were just in their faraway cage, i couldn't really get any good photos of them. doesn't matter. just check out this set of thumbnails and prepare to die at their cuteness.

we went on to check out the elephant house (which strangely also houses giraffes, hippos, and the nasty, nasty capybara, which is apparently the largest rodent in the world; some weirdo has archived a whole set of photos of the capybaras' original arrival at the d.c. zoo).

tommy had to leave soon thereafter, but i spent a while more, just roaming around the zoo and taking bad photos (you can see my flickr set here), and marvelling at the pure weirdness of animals. i mean, i haven't been to the zoo in over a decade so i'm not used to checking out wildlife close up, but really, does anyone sometimes look at a giraffe or hippo or seal, and think, "holy fuck, that is one crazy-looking thing?" it's like when you say a word several times over and it loses all meaning; staring into the eyes of a hippo has the same effect. and it can TURN YOUR WORLD UPSIDE DOWN.

anyway, after my mind-trip at the zoo, i walked back home (yes, i walked from up on connecticut down to shaw; i couldn't help it. it was gorgeous outside, and it's only about 2.5 miles, and i really needed to do something to get rid of my gut from eating two pizzas and 376 wings the night before while watching the superbowl). i cleaned up around the house a little bit, tommy headed off to meet charles and matt to watch a wizards game, so i have the house to myself, am listening to "the tyranny of distance" and "i'm wide awake, it's morning," and drinking several glasses of chianti. a very nice monday, overall. and after spending almost the entire day at the zoo, where i hadn't been since middle school, i'm inspired to go check out other classic d.c. establishments where i never take the chance to go. so tomorrow, perhaps the air and space museum? the botanical gardens? um, shopping in georgetown? that's totally classic.

also noted: this advertisement in the metro.

UPDATE: if you go RIGHT NOW to the cheetah cam, you can see them sleeping, wrapped up into four little fuzzballs in a row, and IT IS SO AWESOME. i've been watching it for ten minutes now. i suppose i should also let you know that i'm the kind of person who watched 45 minutes of the puppy bowl last night.

Tyler Cowen's got a post up offering an economist's perspective on filesharing (link via BTD). Its three parts are short, and so will be my responses.

1. In ten year's time, what will happen to the DVD and pay-for-view trades? ... a song download can be a loss leader for an entire CD or a concert tour. Downloading an entire movie does not prompt a person to spend money in comparable fashion.

No argument here. I believe that filesharing will flatten musicians' incomes, and that -- counterintuitively -- this will actually raise the quality of the product available by improving the signal/noise ratio of the marketplace. But for movies, this is going to be a real problem. Technology may democratize the process in the same way that it has music, letting anyone with a couple thousand dollars produce a professional-quality product. But it seems likely that the barriers to entry will still remain relatively higher, and certain types of movies -- effects-heavy scifi epics spring to mind -- will doubtless be selected against as their high budgets create a substantial base cost and their tech-savvy fanbase steals the final product freely.

2. Perhaps we can make file-sharing services identify (and block) illegally traded files.

This badly misunderstands the technical situation. Certainly you can legislate such a thing, but until US IP law extends across the globe (and enforcement improves by orders of magnitude) this is pragmatically untenable. The industry can respond in an ad-hoc manner by both finding and prosecuting violators and injecting junk into P2P networks. But the collective distributed intelligence of thousands of users will filter out that junk and find new ways to trade their files, and there *are* decent ways to make finding violators sufficiently difficult to be effectively impossible. The next increase in processing power and bandwidth may not revolutionize the way we trade media in terms of speed -- it could be that the revolution will lie in bringing truly anonymous FreeNet-style systems up to current technology's speeds.

3. I question the almost universal disdain for the "Micky Mouse" copyright extension act... Economic research indicates that current cash flow is a very good predictor of investment. So the revenue in fact stimulates additional investment in creative outputs... We are fooling ourselves if we deny that the extension will benefit artistic output, at least in the United States.

From an economic standpoint, perhaps -- if we're going to measure artistic output by some kind of universal metric, then yes, Disney keeping the rights to Mickey will result in them getting more money, which will result in more Mickey utilization. But surely that can't be considered useful artistic output -- once we're 75 years out, who cares how good the cartoon mouse on your Taco Bell commemorative cup is? I suppose commercial Mickey-driven success may result in more money being invested in Disney, which could then presumably be spent on the creation of new characters. But I think you'd have to show that this would increase the content industry's total share of the investment pie -- and I'm not convinced of that.

Even if it does, is it worthwhile? We don't give NEA grants to NBC, after all. Improving society's creative output is a worthwhile goal that we can talk about implementing, but are we really so sure that it's a good idea to rob from the commons in order to provide an intellectual subsidy to entrenched copyright holders? It seems like an awfully regressive way to subsidize the arts. I can't say I'm convinced.

Catherine's office is moving this week, so she's ""working"" from home. Normally I'd just use one set of quotes, but I've already laid claim to "working" from home.

Anyway, all she has to do is check her email periodically. I had added "blog furiously" to that job description, but so far she's been slacking off. In fact, right now Catherine's at the zoo -- I went over with her during lunch hour, but then my company's little corner of the internet exploded and I had to scurry home. If she hasn't gotten herself eaten by something I imagine there'll be an awful lot of photos of cute critters available here in a few hours, but for now you're stuck with me, and all I can offer is this preview: both the baby cheetahs and the video of the elephant giving birth are about what you'd expect.

Two quick security links

• Kazaa is even worse than you thought: not only is it chock-full of malware, it also keeps track of your downloads.
• Boston's South Station's got wifi security problems. This whitepaper is kind of silly -- the author's self-serious adoption of the "white hat hacker" monicker is a bit much, considering that the exploit he used was guessing some abysmally bad passwords. But it does provide a decent entry-level overview of how not to run a professional wifi access service.

"I'm a thirteen year-old girl who just kicked your ass"

last night at the black cat, tommy and i went through something that, at the time, i thought was a trial sent down by god in order to determine if we should, like, be allowed to keep on living, or perhaps merely to see if we were the dedicated indie music fans that we often profess to be. you see, we had headed out to the club to catch exit clov, a much buzzed about local group that we were both interested in, me because from what i'd heard of their mp3s, they have great harmonies, airy vocals and interesting melodies; for tommy, because they are fronted by hot female asian twins. but now i realize it was not a trial or a test or a way for god to laugh mightily at our pain: it was something we were meant to go through so that we could WARN THE REST OF THE WORLD ABOUT AN UNHOLY TERRIBLE FREAKSHOW THAT COULD RUIN YOUR LIFE. through the power of our blog, i think.

there were two opening acts that night for exit clov: some group unfortunately named rude staircase, who we missed, and a duo called human marvels. luckily for us, after drinking a beer in the red room, we made it upstairs in time to catch human marvels. joy of joys. now, you may have heard of this group, if only because they have the fame and fortune of being the only people to ever perform at the black cat AND be on "ripley's believe it or not." this is because, simply put, they are tattooed freaks. katzen, the female bass player, is a woman who a) has tiger tattoo stripes all over her body and face b) has whiskers implanted on her upper lip and c) scares the living daylights out of me. enigma, the guitar/vocalist dude, has horns implanted under his forehead skin and is completely covered, head to face to stomach to toe, in a blue jigsaw puzzle tattoo.

The Enigma and Katzen with the Smothers Brothers. For some reason. Photo stolen from humanmarvels.com

apparently, in addition to being famous for their body tattoos, katzen and enigma also have the burning souls and poetic desires of "musicians." i put "musicians" in quotes because they played "music", and i put "music" in quotes because i really mean "honking terrible shit that made my brain melt into liquid and then set itself on fire." their songs were mostly composed of awful laptop drum beats that blared incessantly while katzen wiggled around playing guttural, unchanging bass and enigma abused his guitar until it cried tears of blood and begged him to just destroy it already.

i wondered about 2300 times during their show how exactly human marvels got paired with some normal indie pop group like exit clov; it must have been set up by black cat management, who were obviously on mind-addling drugs when they did it. but nevermind, i said to myself, this whole experience could at least be interesting, because in addition to playing "music", human marvels are also supposed to have sort of a sideshow aspect to their performance. apparently they used to travel around with an official freakshow carnival act of sorts, swallowing swords and doing freaky things to their bodies for voyeurs to drool over, and they've incorporated this into their "musical" performances. fine, i thought. let them do their little dance. it could be fun to watch, and for the love of god, maybe they'll set themselves on fire accidentally and put a stop to the show.

if only i'd been so lucky. one, they didn't set fire to themselves during the show, running off stage in a twisted mass of burning flesh while i laughed hysterically and rejoiced in the whole spectacle. two, i don't know how one can make using a toolsaw to create a shower of sparks from your bass, drilling nails up your nose, and swallowing vats of windex through a seven foot tube that's inserted into your stomach TOTALLY AND UTTERLY BORING, but human marvels managed to do it. by the time katzen was shoving a thick, seven-inch needle through her hand near the end of the show, i was yawning and thinking, just, like, for the love of the BABY JESUS do something original that doesn't result in me simultaneously wanting to kill myself AND fall asleep into a deep, deep dreamland where people aren't allowed to get on stage and charge money because they have tattoos and can sniff a condom up their nose. BORING. give me two hours and a bottle of red wine and *i* could do that, jackass.

so anyway, when i woke up today, i surfed around the internet for people who also hated human marvels and would validate my total hatred of the experience and we could all rejoice in being hate-y, hate-y people. but you know what? PEOPLE LOVE THEM. for example, i found an article from the austin chronicle that reviews human marvels' cd; it says, "The lead cut, "Human Marvels Theme," is steeped in carny lore, a marvel of musical composition that recalls the gentle lilts of Nino Rota and twisted turns of Kurt Weill. The lush, Eighties-tinged pop balladry of instrumental "Paper Hearts" could easily score one of those poignant Cirque du Soleil pieces about a sad clown, while "Iron" melds the ominous basso profundo of Cramps-era stomp with some creepy Angelo Badalamenti."

WHAT? the woman sounds like she's reviewing a CD that was put together by god, the dalai lama and thom yorke instead of the utter piece of crap that it is. to her credit, she gets slightly more critical later on, but not much more so. the worst she says is that the band can get "mired in gothic gloom."

that is not nearly enough of a warning to the poor souls out there that might be tempted to go see this unholy act of utterly mundane sideshow tricks and ear-bleeding music. so that is why i allowed myself to indulge in one of my favorite activities - hating - and wrote the above missive. it's all for you. please, don't ever go see human marvels. save your eardrums, your eyes and your sense of dignity for something more worthwhile. like, say, celine dion. do it for me; do it for humanity; do it for the simple fact that people who have absolutely no talent except the ability to permanently disfigure their bodies should never, ever be encouraged. trust me. the world will be a better place for it.

It's been a long while since I visited Michelle Malkin's site. I should do it more often; it rarely fails to entertain. A post from two days ago is particularly good. Now, Malkin can't claim to have created this entertaining nugget of conservative apoplexy, but she is trying to push it -- so credit where it's due. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The dispute began Monday, when the Marquette [College Republicans] student group set up a table in the Alumni Memorial Union along with signs mentioning "Adopt a Sniper," a program of the Pulaski-based non-profit Snipersonline. "Adopt a Sniper" raises money to buy special equipment for American snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The College Republicans were taking orders for bracelets and other trinkets provided by "Adopt a Sniper" that bore various slogans, some of them well-known in military circles. About an hour after the Republicans set up Monday morning, university officials shut them down. An appeal was denied, and the group has not been allowed to reopen the table.

What could anyone have against well-known military slogans? These young patriots are just trying to buy equipment for our troops! Not that they aren't already perfectly well-supplied, of course.

This is outrageous. Catherine, you go buy some rope at Logan hardware; Charles, warm up the car. I'll just double check on that sloga... Oh. Oh dear. That slogan? Yeah. It's "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide". Hmm. So, this wasn't so much about supporting the troops. Seems like it might have been more about celebrating the merciless slaughter of our enemies. Yeah... that doesn't sit quite as well.

Everyone knows I'm hesitant to generalize*, but in my experience most college-aged activists deserve whatever they get. Safely insulated in their echoing ivory towers, their views tend to self-exaggerate to the most cartoonish extremes possible. Among the Democrats this tends to produce epic levels of dreamy-eyed weenie-hood and an astoundingly low tolerance for debate about Israel, but nothing that can't be easily ignored. On the right, though... well, I've got plenty of Republican friends and relatives whom I deeply respect. But the politically-active college-aged Republicans I've run into have always been best described as "horrifyingly bloodthirsty". Perhaps they're just the ones who make themselves visible through stunts like this one -- although articles like this one imply otherwise. Reagrdless, I have no doubt that there are many, many principled young conservative thinkers out there. But there are also a shockingly large number of furiously angry kids.

So, sorry Michelle. If these kids were really motivated by altruism, you and I could agree on wishing them the best as they quietly went about their laudable work. But that simply isn't the case -- so please, don't act all surprised when the Marquette administration gently discourages psychopathy. It's nothing personal; it's just that it scares away the basketball recruits.

Last night's State of the Union was surprisingly inoffensive. Maybe it's that I was playing with the internet throughout, but the President's delivery was okay, much of the rhetoric seemed reasonable, and even the standing O's weren't any worse than expected.

I did find the dyed fingers pretty irking, but perhaps that's because of my job: after spending a year or two dealing with House of Reps staffers, I find virtually every non-anthrax-receiving activity that congressmen perform intensely irritating.

The renewed support for the FMA was a little surprising, but c'mon now -- our nation's gay citizens should surely have been able to read the writing on the wall by now. They've had months and months to wrap up their committed, loving relationships and begin settling into their new, more patriotic lives of loneliness and psychological repression. No more dilly dallying! And no, that is not a euphemism for anything.

But while there weren't any revelations of the "Mars, bitches!" sort unveiled last night, I did have a personal epiphany: if you're ever going to be on TV, ask to be seated next to the guy who looks like he's about to have a heart attack. I get that the blue fingers were a symbolic reference to the Iraqi election -- but what was Speaker Hastert's skin supposed to symbolize? American Heart Month? Clothing, Mr. Hastert -- it's supposed to be red clothing. But no harm done -- I suppose it still served to raise awareness of cardiac disease. And with that sly, asymmetric grin and healthy pallor, I'm sure Dick Cheney stole a few more schoolgirls' hearts.

god. i really, truly have tried to avoid politics in all forms lately, honestly (i even watched "under the tuscan sun" last night instead of subjecting myself to the SOTU), but stuff like this creates such a visceral reaction that i am basically just puking everywhere:

House Republican leaders tightened their control over the ethics committee yesterday by ousting its independent-minded chairman, appointing a replacement who is close to them and adding two new members who donated to the legal defense fund of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Republican officials have spent months taking steps to ensure DeLay's political survival in case he is indicted by a Texas grand jury investigating political fundraising, and House leadership aides said they needed to have the ethics committee controlled by lawmakers they can trust.

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who clashed with DeLay so often that they barely spoke and was considered wayward by other leaders, was replaced yesterday with Rep. Richard Hastings (R-Wash.). Hastings has carried out other sensitive leadership assignments and is known as a favorite of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who made the decision.

Hefley said in an interview yesterday that he believes he was removed because he was too independent. He said there is "a bad perception out there that there was a purge in the committee and that people were put in that would protect our side of the aisle better than I did."

...Republican leaders put on the committee two new members who have donated to a DeLay legal fund: Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex..) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). Smith gave DeLay $10,000, making him among the seven largest donors among congressional members, and Cole gave $5,000, according to an analysis of disclosure records by the watchdog group Public Citizen.

and here:

As for Hulshof, John Feehery, a spokesman for Hastert, said there was no connection to the DeLay matter and that the speaker simply wanted fresh faces on the panel.

“It wasn’t really removing him,” said Feehery. “It was more like relieving him of his duty. The Speaker doesn’t like to have people who are such talented legislators like him have to spend so much time on ethics.”

...But Hulshof said he had specifically asked Hastert to reappoint him to the panel and noted that two other GOP members who were allowed to stay—Reps. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Judy Biggert, R-Ill.—have served on the committee longer than he has.

this desipte the argument from hastert that hulshof "had served the mandatory number of terms allowed without a waiver of House rules."

do they even try to cover up this shit in a believable manner anymore?

i read these articles, then immediately clicked over to bull moose blog, because i knew he'd be on it like a fly to honey. and he is:

"The very same chamber where the President eloquently hailed the virtues of freedom was the site where Republicans were replacing the rule of law with the rule of the Bugman! And those very brave Republicans had the audacity to display their ink stained fingers as if they had risked all to defend the virtues of democracy! Why these courageous warriors would walk across a field of land mines to get a campaign check from a K Street lobbyist."

damn straight.

matt yglesias today notes that the new DC media blog is edited by garrett somebody, who once was editor-in-chief of the harvard daily newspaper at the same time matt was editor at the weekly newsmagazine. i followed matt's link through to a heeelarious article about how he once stole a foosball table from garrett's newspaper, or something. i chuckled, and then clicked through to matt's newspaper bio, just out of curiosity. and then i proceeded to FREAK THE FUCK OUT because in his headshot, matt looks EXACTLY LIKE A YOUNG TOMMY. EXACTLY. did i not say exactly? BECAUSE I MEANT THEY COULD BE FRIGGIN TWINS.

i wish i had a better picture of tommy at a younger age, like, circa, 1999 or 2000 or something because then you would see how TRULY BIZARRE IT IS, but this following comparison will have to do:

god decides to use unholy nature to freak me out

now, i find this so surprising because i obviously know tommy pretty well, and i know matt, too, though, um, not in the same sense or anything, but i do hang out with him and co. on a somewhat regular basis. and i have NEVER, ever seen even a fleeting glimpse of similarity between the two except they are fairly tall, have brown hair, glasses, an effusive nerdiness and a propensity to take terrible photos. and they buy their clothes almost exclusively from the gap. and they're both jewish. okay, not the last one. oh yeah, and somebody on kriston's site once saw a photo of them and thought they were twins.

perhaps there is something matt and tommy would like to share with us?

I find the latest scientific hubub a tiny bit irking. If you haven't heard, the media is pushing a new study saying that the risk-avoidance portion of the brain doesn't finish developing until around age 25. I'm having a hell of a time finding even an abstract for the study -- why do pop science writers insist on avoiding proper citation? But I've still got two more weeks of youthful recklessness to enjoy, so allow me to charge ahead without having seen the study and explain why I think this is junk.

First, what does this "not done forming" thing really mean? Odds are pretty good that they mean the frontal lobe hasn't finished myelinating. Myelin is a fatty sheath that coats your brain's axons -- this allows for much faster and more efficient conduction of nerve impulses. It's a good deal -- nasty things happen when you lose your myelin, MS being the classic example. Contrary to the "aha!" flavor being attached to this study, my intro to neuroscience textbook was pretty clear about the fact that myelination doesn't conclude until at least your early twenties.

But more to the point, it's not perfectly obvious that incomplete myelination always translates to poorer performance. If memory serves, myelination inhibits neural plasticity -- this is the preferred explanation for why young kids are better at picking up languages. And while the frontal lobe is considered to be essential for deliberate planning, it's tough to translate a slight morphological difference into a causal factor. If you remember high school psychology, you recall how Phineas Gage is the textbook lesion study used to answer "what does the frontal lobe do?" For those who don't remember: Gage got most of his frontal lobe (and connecting fibers) shot out by a railroad spike. Cool, I know. But his personality changed immediately from that of a thoughtful, deliberate person to that of a profane, lazy jerk with wild mood swings.

So yeah, it's tempting to lump all these symptoms together and say "youth is a disease of the frontal lobe!" But do we really think that part of the brain goes offline at age 12? Or could the mood swings be the product of something more related to the Hair that suddenly shows up Down There?

Well, who knows; maybe the sudden influx of hormones somehow screws up frontal lobe performance. Maybe it does something else entirely. The point is just that establishing causation in neuroscience is tough to do unless you have the luxury of lesioning your subjects. Instead the best we can usually do is come up with somewhat suggestive anatomical studies such as this one.

If this study correlated myelination with whatever Analytic Risk Taking Protocol is officially used to measure these things, it might be a little more definitive -- but as far as I can tell from the articles I can find about it, this is a purely biological study.

But that fact won't stop the science press from running with it, like on the last page of this Post story. Apparently teens playing a driving videogame take more risks than twentysomethings when they're in front of their friends. By jamming this factoid together with the other study, we're supposed to conclude that the difference comes from frontal lobe development. Personally, I suspect it's got more to do with us having had a few extra years to get bored with the Grand Theft Auto series of videogames.

But again: who knows?! The point is just this: everyone wants to quantify What's Wrong with those Damn Kids, but a correlation this weak (a several year gap between biological process completing and the perceived peak of irresponsibility) isn't exactly conclusive.

I see now that the YouSendIt link that I picked up came from Nick Denton's latest blog startup, LifeHacker. Credit where it's due, I suppose, but to be honest LifeHacker doesn't yet seem very impressive to me. Obviously you're not going to earn my nerdmiration by penning phrases like "the software that’s closest to making BitTorrent usable". Bah! The fact that some XP-only tricks aren't designated as such, and that the site has already begun repeating itself (via unnecessary "review" posts) isn't encouraging.

The problem here is that existing Gawker tech site, Gizmodo, has been getting its brains beaten out by rival Engadget for months now. I've got no idea how their traffic compares, but Engadget is faster to post stories, covers more items, and has considerably more technical depth. I still love Gizmodo's snappy writing, but it's just not a go-to tech blog. I guess LifeHacker is supposed to flesh out Gizmodo's missing bits, but so far it isn't providing a very compelling justification for its existence separate from Gizmodo.

If you still have a technical itch that needs scratching, though, you'd do pretty well to visit these sites (plus the aforementioned Engadget):

• Hack-A-Day - infrequent updates, but if you're as intent on electrocuting yourself as I am, this is the place to start.
• TheBroken - nothing much other than episode downloads are currently available, but updates are pending. For a while, though, its message boards were an amazingly friendly resource for 14 year old aspiring hackers. I mean that in a good way.
• Digg - Collaborative nerd news filtering. It's getting pimped pretty heavily by TheBroken's Kevin Rose and his orbiting array of TechTV castoffs. It's not bad, but I'm not completely sold on it quite yet.
• Dan's Data - I've mentioned it in passing before, but this site isn't just about magnets and rubberband guns. It's also about belittling audiophiles. Oh, and tech stuff.

Finally, I would normally mention LearnToHack -- it doesn't live up to its domain name, but it is a decent way to learn how to subvert various types of websites, mostly through manipulating HTML and javascript. Unfortunately, it looks like one of their students just completed his thesis...

Now that you've all had a day to grieve, I think it's probably okay for me to mention Andrew Sullivan's retirement. Another gentle soul lost to this merciless game we call "blogging". You'd retire too if you had to work a backbreaking ten months a year on a meager six-figure salary.

I just discovered YouSendIt earlier today -- I wish I'd known about it yesterday, when I made my laptop spend hours shoving a 70MB archive up through a slow SMTP connection, emailing it piece-by-piece to a friend.

YouSendIt aims to make email transfers of large files easy. While almost all mail services cap individual attachment sizes at 5 megabytes or less, YSI lets users send chunks of data up to 1 gigabyte at a time. Go to their site, specify a destination address and upload the file using a simple web form. The recipient will get an email containing a link that'll allow them to download the attachment from YouSendIt's servers. Simple.

What's not so clear is how YouSendIt intends to make any money off of this little scheme. For that reason I'll be sure I use the just-mentioned SpamGourmet whenever I utilize YouSendIt's service. If the recipient doesn't have a SG account you can always send the email to your own, then communicate the YSI link to your buddy through a private email. Zipping up your files into a password-protected archive probably isn't a bad idea, either. It's not exactly a secure solution, but it should at least be enough to keep YouSendIt from automatically poking through your files for who-knows-what.

Spam! Everyone's talking about it, I guess because of today's NYTimes article. All parties seem to agree that the CAN-SPAM act is pretty useless and that the problem is getting worse. So what's to be done about it?

the post starts the official Arcade Fire Backlash with its lukewarm review of sunday night's show, complete with backbiting attempts at underhanded snark. i have to wonder, were they even at the same concert?

The 9:30 club stage seemed too small for the eight musicians of the Arcade Fire, whose Sunday night concert operated according to the formula that constant movement and shouting in unison create a powerful show.

...Despite the energy and chaos, the songs weren't very memorable, and Butler's vocals were murky and often unintelligible.

...While its simplistic musical style and histrionic vocals had little substance, the Arcade Fire is certainly to be admired for its extreme and unwavering physicality.

jeez. what is she, 98 years old? i feel like the entire thing was written very purposefully, because normally, whenever i read pop music reviews in the post, they are almost always universally falling all over themselves to write positive things.

anyway, she can latch herself on to the official Backlash Bandwagon if she likes. i'm not so far gone to believe that "funeral" is a life-changing album, or even album of the year, but you have to be a) deaf b) blind and c) apparently incapable of physical movement to find the only thing to appreciate about that concert was that the band can jump around admirably.