"daryl hall elected to congress"
Awesome. This blog is now #5 on google for the fictional event of daryl hall elected to congress (an actual search that led someone here). "If it please the chair, I would like to introduce my bill preventing Maneaters from coming into a drug-free school zone. If it further please the chair, I would also like to amend it to prevent record producers from making album covers with androgynous pictures upon pain of catapult."
mike sold out at - 10:57
Credit where credit is due
11.25.2006
File Under "General"
Back in the Northern Virginia, where I have many thoughts about good and bad urban planning (true, I have thoughts about this wherever I go).
Herndon seems to have a pretty activist planning department in the past few years, doing some aggressive traffic calming in the neighborhoods. It also seems to have
Reston, on the other hand is almost completely built-out, except for the Town Center and developments around the future Metro stations. Reston has done some good work on having a mix of different income neighborhoods, great work on preserving stream valleys and providing nature trails, and has good 1960s-1980s modernist residential architecture. However, the newest developments, especially the commercial office buildings are all crap (there are some complex politics that enabled this in the mid-90s that are too much to go into) and there is little effort to reduce automobile use, with the small exception of the denser developments around the village centers.
Aside: I reminded myself how awesome the nature preservation and trails are today when I took a five-mile bike ride. For some reason, one of the lakes was half-dry. The lake bed looked like a wierd kind of evil future world with boats were thrown up on the shore and a small stream carving a path through the muck of the lake bottom.
Having said that, on a non-urban planning robot level, I have a pretty visceral reaction to the blandness of Northern Virginia. After living in one of the most hyper-diverse (but racially-segregated) regions in the country, I feel uncomfortable when the places I go to are entirely white and entirely devoid of creative-types.
I went out with some good high school friends tonight, who I was thrilled to see, as I hadn't seen them in years and I've known each of them for most of my life. After much debate, we went to a large bar in Clarendon that was all prepped out. My reaction to it reminded me of my reaction to UVA that developed in my first year there. A guy with my quirky sense of humor finds it difficult to fit in at UVA, where the more preppie and southern cultural strain didn't really get me. And that's OK--to each his own. But it left a sense of being kept at arm's length socially. I remain able to negotiate the Southern social scene, but it's not one I would indulge in if given a choice.
Anyways, the social scene at this bar really summed up why I can't move back to Northern Virginia. I could do Charlottesville, or maybe an edgier neighborhood in DC, like Mt. Pleasant or Brookland. But not Reston and not Arlington.
Yeah, I like Brooklyn a lot. Now only if I could just have a little more room...
Word UpDate: this is the 600th post here. I can't believe I've kept this thing up for over four years
mike sold out at - 02:42
11.22.2006
"This is what you get for protesting"
Janitors in Houston won a new contract after their rally was brutally suppressed last week by mounted police officers. They are currently paid $5.30 an hour. Their new contract has set pay incerases over the next three years and provides for health care in the future.
Read the full post on Firedoglake
[In jail] they really tried to break us down. The first night they put the temperature so high that a woman—one of the other inmates—had a seizure. The second night they made it freezing and took away many of our blankets. We didn’t have access to the cots so we had to sleep on a concrete floor. When we would finally fall asleep the guards would come and yell ‘Are you Anna Denise Solís? Are you so and so?’ One of the protesters had a fractured wrist from the horses. She had a cast on and when she would fall asleep the guard would kick the cast to wake her up. She was in a lot of pain.
The guards would tell us: ‘This is what you get for protesting.’ One of them said, ‘Who gives a shit about janitors making 5 dollars an hour? Lots of people make that much.’ The other inmates—there were a lot of prostitutes in there—said that they had never seen the jail this bad. The guards told them: ‘We’re trying to teach the protesters a lesson.’
mike sold out at - 13:08
Credit where credit is due
11.21.2006
America's Top Jefferson
Brilliant...
You designed the Rotunda [at UVA]. When you're inside, you can whisper on one side of the Rotunda and hear it on the other side. My understanding is that if you are high and you do that--it blows your mind.
mike sold out at - 22:39
Humor Slay Mikebot Party with Perv Patrol: Agreed.
There is a special version of English that the NY Post seems to have invented for its headlines (e.g. "Drive Slay Mom Read Rap In Crt." = "Mother is Charged with Vehicular Manslaughter in Court"). And it does seem mandatory that the words "Perv", "Slay" or "Victim" be used in some way. So it warmed my heart to read this article in Slate: The New York Post Perv Patrol.
The New York metropolitan region teems with pervs, if the city's tabloid headlines provide any guide.
Over the last eight years—as far back as Nexis covers the Post—the New York Post has woven the word perv into the heds of at least 642 stories and the word pervert into another 59. That's almost 90 a year. Working as a slightly slower clip, the city's Daily News has published at least 163 perv heds (29 pervert heds) in the past four years. That's about 48 a year, which makes the Daily News half as perv-minded as the Post.
Another unique facet of the NY Post headlines is the colon with the object and subject reversed. e.g. "I Played Perv Game With John: Kerry Whore". I've never quite gotten in my head why that is necessary, except to play up the paraphrased quote versus the identity of the speaker.
There's probably a J-School thesis in here, so J-school friends, feel free to interview me about this. "Call When Talk Time: Mikebot"
mike sold out at - 14:04
Credit where credit is due
11.19.2006
Party Time Mix
mike sold out at - 18:18
Credit where credit is due
11.12.2006
Processing Humor
via Dr. P
Jokes Made by Robots, for Robots
BY J. ALEX BOYD [ed.: Does a real robot abbreviate its first initial? Does not compute.]
- - - -
A rabbi, an Arab, a robot, and a Catholic priest walk into a bar. Only the robot exits.
A robot walks into a pharmacy. The pharmacist asks him if he'd like anything. The robot replies, 'A soul.'
How do you stop a robot from destroying you and the rest of civilization?
You don't.
'Waiter! Waiter! What's this robot doing in my soup?'
'It looks like he's performing human tasks twice as well, because he knows no fear or pain.'
Knock knock.
Who's there?
A robot.
Oh, shit.
What's the difference between a regular robot and a killer robot?
The gnawing jeers of men.
What's a robot's favorite cereal?
Rob-os.
(Note: Rob-os are made of the tears of human children.)
Little Susie tosses a clock out the window. A robot inquires, 'Why did you do that?' She replies, 'I wanted to see time fly!' The robot says, 'Ah ... A perfect subject for elimination,' and shoots her with a laser beam through the face.
Why did the robot order a milkshake?
To blend in with the general human population, making it easier to infiltrate society and—in time—conquer it.
Why was six afraid of seven?
Because seven was a robot."
mike sold out at - 22:54
Credit where credit is due
I'm Tired of the Doublethink
I have had it up to here with what George Orwell called "Doublethink" in 1984. It seems to pop up more and more in political discourse.
What is http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html#doublethink target=_blank>doublethink?
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'
Forgive me for hearing doublespeak in the following instances:
I'm tired of this reality-redefining crap. The facts are this:
Die doublethink. Die.
*The following factoid is still up in the air as I write this because votes are still being totaled in Georgia. It has never happened in a national election before that there seats only moved one way. That is, no seat held by a Democrat in the 109th Congress or governorship that was up for relection this year was run by a Republican. This has never happened before in this history of the country- at least one seat has always been captured by the party that lost seats.
mike sold out at - 15:17
11.09.2006
Know Thy Congress
John Hall, Congressman-Elect of NY-19 is the songwriter of "Still The One", the hit wuss-rock song by Orleans.
Also his latest album is called "Rock Me On The Water". Unfortunately, he is probably not related to Darryl Hall nor has he formed a supergroup with John Oates.
mike sold out at - 14:26
Credit where credit is due
11.08.2006
Victory!
Regular readers of the word up know that I'm a regular in grassroots Democratic politics in NYC. I was extremely active in the 2004 Presidential primary and general election, and to a lesser extent in local races in 2005. Because my work takes up a lot of my political energy these days, I haven't been super inclined to do a whole lot of direct voter contact (which is mostly phones & door-to-door). Another is just getting beat down from losing many elections. In fact, a core of friends from the Dean campaign have this joke that we probably shouldn't volunteer for a particular race, because then the candidate will lose.
Because of all that, this year I've mostly stayed in the background, helping build long-term organizations, giving guidance to friends and helping build the architecture of Do More Than Vote (an extension of a 2004 project). It's much easier and less emotionally draining.
But it's finally great to see some of the work since 2004 paying off. Great to see progressive politicians taking the helm of the House and Senate. And great to wipe the smile off this guy's face. I approve this message. And in fact, I think it is awesome.
mike sold out at - 23:25
11.03.2006
No comment necessary
partyanimal
Originally uploaded by morgpet.
mike sold out at - 11:04
11.01.2006
Don't Crack the Cork Yet...
NYT: Substance in Red Wine Extends Life of Mice
But hold off on the vino...
The mice were fed a hefty dose of resveratrol, 24 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Red wine has about 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol per liter, so a 150-pound person would need to drink from 1,500 to 3,000 bottles of red wine a day to get such a dose. Whatever good the resveratrol might do would be negated by the sheer amount of alcohol.
That's about 1600 mg of resveratrol at the same dose for a 150-pound person, for those who are counting.
