A review of I am Legend, a tale of apocalypse, societal rebirth, and vampirism.
From a BBC News article on the dangers of drinking too much coffee:
The Department of Health (DoH) advises people not to drink more than five single espressos - roughly seven instant coffees - a day, although individuals vary in their sensitivity.
Drinking one cup this morning was enough to make me wake up at 9 PM [...]
Spending last weekend visiting friends in New York City has (temporarily?) made me far more materialistic than I normally am. In addition to trying to take shrewder control of my finances, I am trying to focus primarily on tasks that directly benefit me, as opposed to all of those other things that seem like good [...]
Having come of age online in the era immediately after the first Internet boom, I was naturally a bit wary of websites that describe themselves as "Web 2.0." Their pastel colors, misspelled names, and use of JavaScript to do everything concerned me. Articles noting the continual data serfdom that such websites promote only aggravated my [...]
When I heard about the Postal Service's new "forever stamp" - which retains the value of a first-class stamp regardless of USPS rate increases, I was excited. I expected it to have some kind of futuristic design in keeping with its radical concept. Like an infinity symbol, or an ouroboros, or a picture of a [...]
In general, I shy away from Flash-based games. I am not sure whether it is because of the low quality of most Flash games (i.e. stick figures) or because I feel guilty about wasting time or simply because most of them are not really that much fun. There are only so many times you can [...]
Earlier this evening, I ran across materials relating to retirement when I was cleaning my room. I will be 65 in 2050. At first, I thought 2050 was not that far away, but then I considered the events of the 20th century. If it was April 20, 1907, the Great War[1] would still be seven [...]
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
A confession: I am not a fan of February. Reading through my private journal (which goes back to late 2001), it is not clear that it has never been a good month for me, especially since I started living in Cambridge. In New Jersey, February is mild enough that it feels like the beginning of [...]
I am sympathetic to the fact that some people have trouble pronouncing my name; it is not particularly easy. While I am always surprised when people get it right on the first try, mispronunciation of my name is not a cardinal sin.
Unless you are contacting me electronically. If you are sending an message to an [...]
I was walking through Harvard Yard at about 10:50 PM last night when a girl standing at a window on the fourth floor of Thayer called out to me. "Hey," she said. "When does Hannukah start this year?" Obviously, I was not able to answer her question.
When I was a Harvard freshman, I generally [...]
The environment of Harvard Summer School is quite different from the regular school year. Instead of the 18-21 year olds that made up the majority of undergraduate students in Harvard College, I am experiencing "people of all ages, from around the United States and more than 90 countries, live and learn together as they satisfy [...]
While the title of this post may be hyperbolic, an article in the New York Times' fashion section about a recent show in Paris annoyed me significantly. The couture outfit shown in the picture to the right is unlikely to be worn by anyone after the model discards it. It will not be mass-produced nor [...]
Several viewers of the Ghana-Czech Republic game in the World Cup seemed confused as to why Ghanaian player John Pantsil was waving an Israeli flag as the Ghanaians beat the Czechs, 2-0. I have heard many explanations, including one suggesting that it was a repudiation of Holocaust denial!
Since a number of people have been directing [...]
From the New York Times' World Cup blog comes information about a site entitled Who Should I Cheer For?. It purports to tell you which team you should, based a number of non-football related indicators, like human rights, military spending, and the number of multinational companies that call the country home.
Partly because of that last [...]
My thoughts on the news that three prisoners at the American prison in Guantánamo have committed suicide by hanging themselves with their own bedsheets.
Previously, I wrote about the Calvin & Hobbes RSS feed I was scraping from UComics. Unfortunately, UComics replaced the image that was placed in the RSS feed with a Flash file. While I have updated the RSS feed, I am still a bit angry, since the Flash utilized on UComics is Flash 8. Since Flash [...]
From a birthday dinner on Monday night:
Girl: I think CampusTap might really take off. Lots of people are blogging now.
slight pause, during which I am trying not to smile…
Girl: I mean, besides people in the underworld.
I took great effort not to burst out laughing, especially imagining the crazy hijinks that would ensue if I did [...]
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Before Bits last Wednesday, a friends showed me the Crimson. "Look at this ridiculous article," he said, "it's about the weather. Apparently people change their clothes when it gets cold."
Faced with slushy, icy terrain on the Monday morning commute, students broke out bulky jackets and the occasional pair of moon boots. Shorts and flip-flops, which [...]
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Lately, I have been looking at this website's traffic. If you were to graph traffic in number of actual people visiting the site and reading the content here, your graph would look a lot like a bell graph, with the highest number of people visiting in the summer months (June through August). This seems reasonable, [...]
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Team Zebra's website describes their goals succintly:
TEAM ZEBRA seeks to bring two zebra to Harvard Square to raise money for hurricane / earthquake survivors and triumph in a challenge that will raise even more money for the cause.
My first thought was "This is the most ridiculous idea that I have ever heard." But it [...]
Friday, September 2, 2005
David Brooks' latest New York Times column is tame in its suggestion that the aftermath of Katrina will cause political upheaval, but also devoid of a legitimate conclusion.
The Wikimedia Commons "Featured Pictures" is an excellent place to find photographs and other artwork that are in the public domain or have lenient licenses. Using a photograph of MIRVs re-entering the atmosphere during the test of a nuclear missile, I was able to create beautiful wallpapers.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
If only cheerleaders were more like the musk ox.
Source: An Animal Planet show explaining how in recent years, NFL football players have had less broken bones than NFL cheerleaders. The football players have helmets which "reduce the force of tackles" in a fashion analogous to the thick skulls of musk oxen.
Some weeks ago, a entity going by the alias "righthand" posted a comment asking several questions about Blackspot Sneakers. That comment appears below, unedited:
how are these sneakers now do they hold up well is the quality good craftsman ship was it a good purchase. how is the stock or share older thign going is it [...]
The "disengagement" of Israel from its settlements in the Gaza strip is less than two weeks away, and virtually all of the articles in Haaretz are focused on what might be a pivotal event in the history of both Israel and Palestine. While I thought the televised cursing of Prime Minister Sharon so that he [...]
I found this Washington Post article about the American military's attempts to entice recruits by allowing them to get rid of part of their service obligation by serving in the Peace Corps (assuming, of course, their application is accepted by the organization) interesting, especially since while opposition to it is just beginning, the program was [...]
Also tagged C-SPAN, Congress, egovernment, government, GovTrack, Internet, legislation, Open Congress, Peace Corps, Politics, RSS, Technology
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AIM Fight [via Waxy Links] is pretty cool, despite its Flash-based interface. I was a bit paranoid about entering my screenname at first (spim happens!), but was reassured after I read the "What is AIM Fight?" page ("Who made AIM Fight? Two AIM programmers with a little bit too much free time on their hands.") [...]
To celebrate the 36th anniversary of Apollo 11, Google Maps has introduced "Google Moon," which displays the location of the Apollo landings on the moon, thanks to NASA giving them lunar satellite imagery. The funniest part is hinted at in the FAQ:
3. What happens if I try to zoom too close?
Well, you'll have to go [...]
Back during freshman year of college, my group of friends had a meme about not eating the stickers on fruit in Annenberg (the freshman dining hall). Alas, future Harvard freshmen might not have to worry about the danger of stickers, if the technology in this New York Times article comes to "fruition." Instead of stickers, [...]
This BBC News article about William Crutchfield, a Georgian man who shot his postman in order to get sent to prison confuses me. I understand that Mr. Crutchfield has very large medical debts, and that he would prefer to be in prison than to be homeless, but the way he carried out his crime was [...]
If I worked in the Capitol, or if I had a pilot's license, I think I would be really annoyed right now. The fact that the mere sight of a private plane in the restricted airspace surrounding Washington DC is enough to prompt evacuations seems a bit ridiculous. The most recent "scare" involved Georgian Scott [...]
I do not like dogs. When I was little, this was because I was afraid of being bitten. The thought of sharp canine teeth plunging through my delicate skin still makes me feel uncomfortable. This translates into increased jumpiness when I am around them, as I attempt to mentally prepare for an attack. While I [...]
I like Margaret Cho as much as the next person, but her reasoning behind the naming of her new puppy seem a bit over the top:
Gudrun is named after the infamous Gudrun Ensslin who was the female leader of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, an art terrorist group from the 70s. Terrorism was different then. It had [...]
The London News Review takes a humorous look at Giancarlo Neri's sculpture "The Writer," a 22 foot chair and table set that has been constructed on Hampstead Heath in north London:
Neri has called his table and chair “a monument to the loneliness of writing”. But if this is what it is meant to be, then [...]
The EFF's Deep Links blog has a post on how some websites charge different prices to different customers. However, the post only look at the negative aspects of such a situation - when a website decides to charge you more because it knows you will pay it. What about websites who offer preferential prices to [...]
The news that a trojan horse attempted to trick users by telling them that Osama bin Laden had been captured is not surprising; malware have created false news events for several years now. However, an event like the capture of Osama would be important enough that it would be relatively easy to verify. A more [...]
Olle Wastberg's New York Times editorial lays out why he thinks former New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani would make an excellent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It begins thus:
Today I will send a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee nominating the former mayor of New York City, Rudolph W. Giuliani, for the [...]
From a New York Times article on Christian video games:
"When I became a Christian in 1992, I still wanted to play, but it was hard when the best-quality games out there were Doom, Quake — Satanic stuff, you know? Stuff that if I went to church on Sunday and came home and wanted to play [...]
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
The Boston Globe reports that the MBTA will soon install a closed-circuit television network with both newscasts and advertising in the subway, in an attempt to increase revenue without raising fees (currently at $1.25). I am just happy that it is going to be non-intrusive:
Details of how the television network would work have not been [...]
With the advent of the baseball hearings, increasing numbers of Harvard students seem to be concerned with the actions of Congress. However, their responses seemed to fit into one of two groups:
Leave our baseball players alone!, or,
There are more important things in the country and world that need Congressional attention.
While I think the former is [...]
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
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Today, in an article covering The Daily Jolt website, the [...]
In many ways, it would be wrong if the District Attorney for Los Angeles decides to seek the death penalty in the case of Juan Alvarez, the man who killed 11 people by trying to commit suicide by train. Unfortunately for him (and of course, the passengers on the train), he decided at the last [...]
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
I was initially hesitant to reveal my birthday, as I feared that one of my various online accounts' sole security question was "What is your birthday?" After some thought, I could not think of any, which suggests that even if it were an issue, any such account would probably not be that important.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
A rivet fell off of one of my blackspot sneakers tonight.
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Sunday, November 21, 2004
When I first posted about blackspot sneakers back in July, I had just decided to buy them. In August, I ordered a pair. Now, I am actually wearing the freaking things.
They smell sort of funny (I assume it is a "new shoe" smell, rather than a "this shoe was made from organic materials" smell) and [...]
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Sunday, November 21, 2004
Jim Holt's article in today's New York Times Magazine has an unique plan for Blue Staters weary of Republican political control: adopting a pro-states' rights platform.
There are big differences among the states, as the last election showed — differences in their understanding of tolerance, in their attitude toward the role of religion in public life, [...]
A strange text message on my cell phone:
Message From
484-919-####
Ramadan
Mubarak!!!
10/15/04 12:16 am
The phone number resolves to Norristown, Pennsylvania's exchange. While, as I have written earlier, my cell phone number belonged to a young man named Carmine, I assume (based on his name and on the people who call him) that he does not celebrate Ramadan. Once [...]
Thursday, October 14, 2004
I have purchased a digital camera. Despite the two-day shipping, the SD memory card I ordered has still not arrived (although it was sent "out for delivery" yesterday morning); limiting the capacity to 16 "medium-size" pictures. Of course, it is a 3 megapixel camera, so "medium-size" pictures are 2048×1536, which is a higher resolution than [...]
As I stated earlier, I planned to buy a Blackspot sneaker. Yesterday, around 8pm, I received an email telling me that "my sneaker" was able to be ordered. I assume the exhortation to "tell my friends" to buy the sneaker means that I can post about it. Read on to receive the "secret" URL when [...]
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The first reports that I read about the recent theft in Norway of two of Edward Munch's paintings concentrated only on "The Scream." As a result, my only thoughts on the matter were, "How sad. I hope they find it." Then, later on, I read Boing Boing's account of the theft, which included pictures of [...]
Thursday, August 12, 2004
When I first read the story about McGreevey resigning, I assumed it was because of new allegations in the rash of scandals currently afflicting his administration, not because he was a homosexual. Assuming his sexual orientation is the only reason for his resignation, I do not think it is right. Sure, social conservatives would undoubtedly [...]
Thursday, August 12, 2004
From the Guardian comes the story of Iorworth Hoare, a man who won seven million pounds in the British lottery. The problem? He is a convicted rapist:
Mr Hoare is 15 years into a life sentence after being convicted of attempted rape in 1989. He was also jailed for a string of sex attacks during the [...]
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Slashdot reports on a plan by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a group dedicated to preventing the illegal use of software, to educate American schoolchildren about copyright by distributing comic books through Weekly Reader. The short comics will include their cartoon mascot, a 'copyright-crusading ferret,' who will be named in an online contest. And your [...]
Because of the extensive amount of time I have spent configuring my laptop, I am extremely behind on my blog-reading. I spent all of last night awake trying to catch up. I still have not.
A large part of the problem is a prolific blogger like Atrios. On a whim, I selected his latest post "The [...]
From Slashdot comes the news that Kensington laptop locks may not be all they crack up to be (pun intended). Seriously, the author ("Marc") of the security alert claims that the lock can be breached without the use of force in less than a minute using common objects. However, the language is used in the [...]
I think it is telling that the two Biblical quotations that Byron from Slings And Arrows uses to elucidate his views in "Democrats and Deity," which analyses the Democratic Party's outreach to religion, both come from the New Testament:
First off, the Democrats are looking at faith from the wrong direction. They see the correlation between [...]
Blackspotters,
We found it! After two years of researching shoe plants in Slovakia, Poland, Indonesia, China and South Korea, the hunt for our factory is over.
When the search started, we found Phil Knight's Nike had plunged sneaker manufacturing into a macabre scene of export processing zones and sweatshop labor. To make a sneaker, all roads led [...]
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The Guardian reports on the use of "anti-social behaviour orders" (ASBOs) in Manchester.
Since Asbos were introduced five years ago, Manchester has issued more than 300 orders - almost twice as many as any other city in the country - and has led the field not only in numbers, but in the imaginative audacity of its [...]
Two parts "Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels." One part "Pulp Fiction." Mix well. The similarities are almost too strange to be true: armed robbery of a man growing marijuana at home, and a samurai sword saving the day. Of course, the prison sentence of eight years for manslaughter never appeared [...]
After watching the Patriots win the Super Bowl, I had some questions about the halftime show, especially in view of the apology by Jason Timberlake and MTV. Was the event staged, or a "mistake?"
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