Because what the world needs noware blogs, more blogs. |
| Sunday, April 13, 2008 |
| Overheard |
|
As part of my annual tax-prep torture routine, I've been going through the absolutely-must-take-care-of-immediately pile, which managed to grow into about a crate's worth of junk and is now more of a living journal of our seven years living in Boulder. Somewhere near the bottom I found a scrap of paper containing a note that I believe was for this blog. If memory serves, I wrote this on a trip to Seattle maybe 3, 4 years ago? Anyway, I offer it now simply to be able to throw it into the recycle bin with a clear conscience: OVERHEARD: "She always said, 'If your dad ever leaves me or dies, I'm either gonna be a nun or a trucker.'" "Yeah?" "Yeah." (pause) "I guess she couldn't give up sex." |
| // posted by dug @ 5:00 PM [link] [comments (0)] |
| Saturday, April 12, 2008 |
| I kid you not... |
|
In what can only be considered one of the best examples ever of each generation choosing exactly the music that will make their parents crazy, Alison now has a favorite song. That's right: She's 16 months old, only has a half-dozen or so hand-signals, and speaks no words (save the infrequent "Mam!" or "Da da da" when coaxed), but she has managed to make it incredibly clear that there is only one song worth listening to over and over and over (and over) again. Which song, you ask? ... wait for it ... The Macarena... ...as performed by Elmo. She even has a hand-signal for the song, one she invented herself: When she wants to hear the Macarena, she lets us know by slapping herself in the head repeatedly. Appropriate, no? |
| // posted by dug @ 2:19 PM [link] [comments (0)] |
| Saturday, March 08, 2008 |
| District B13 |
|
One of the greatest, less appreciated values of Netflix is that it lets you experiment. Because the cost of the movies you're watching is spread out over the month, you don't find yourself wondering whether you've picked something worth the $5.75 (or whatever Blockbuster is charging these days). If you end up with a lemon (which I've done more than once), just return it -- of course, then you have to wait for the new disc to arrive, and that's always a bummer. There's now a way, however, to get rid of even that small annoyance: Netflix's new Watch Instantly service. If you use Netflix and haven't tried it, it's time. If you don't have Netflix, it's worth it for this feature alone. Download a simple extension to IE7, and boom: you're watching movies on your computer on demand. Truly the way things were meant to be. Up until recently, I've been using it mostly for known TV shows, either 30 Rock, when I'm watching with Sara, or old episodes of Columbo, if I'm doing housework. But last night, when faced with an hour or so before bed and no interest in any kind of entertainment that required my participation, I took a little gamble, and it paid off big time.  Banlieue 13 (or District B13 in English translation) is eighty minutes of sweet, sweet action without any of the annoying love interest crap or useless sub-plots that American action directors seemed compelled to include. And if you're a fan of parkour, the acrobatic Jackie-Chan-like art form of the chase, then all the better.I'd like to say that I can't recommend this film too highly, but the fact is, I could do so pretty easily. The two male leads were almost certainly chosen for their parkour skills rather than their acting abilities, and the plot is about as conventional as the chase scenes are awesome. Even within the genre, these two gifted acrobat/athletes don't bring the kind of charm and wit to the action that Jackie manages so effortlessly. But if you've got a little under an hour and a half to waste some evening, and you're in the mood for formulaic fun, then I really, truly recommend this movie. Aw, geez, there I did it; I recommended it too highly. Please ignore. p.s. If you want to see what I'm talking about, but don't want to watch the whole movie, try this on for size. |
| // posted by dug @ 9:34 PM [link] [comments (2)] |
| Saturday, March 01, 2008 |
| Don't Be Evil |
| I try to not get all gushy about Google, but then they go and do something like offering a life-time phone number and voicemail to every homeless person in San Francisco and I think, "Dang, that's just brilliant." Can you imagine if the federal government decided to do this? It seems to me like a cost/benefit no-brainer. |
| // posted by dug @ 8:33 AM [link] [comments (0)] |
| Silly Dreams |
|
Last night I dreamed that Alison could name the entire cast of the original Broadway production of You Can't Take It With You, which is silly, because she rarely manages to get past Jimmy Stewart, Lionel Barrymore and Jean Arthur when naming the movie cast. Labels: Observation |
| // posted by dug @ 7:40 AM [link] [comments (0)] |
| Saturday, February 23, 2008 |
| The Stuff of Thought (Steven Pinker) |
 There was a time during my college years when I seriously considered majoring in computational linguistics. Of course, there was also a time during my college years when I stayed up until 6am drinking and then spent the entirety of my cafeteria manager shift trying to stay awake in the walk-in freezer. The idea of me being a linguist of any kind may have been just as stupid.Be that as it may, I still enjoy learning about almost anything language-related. Which is probably why Sara picked The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker pretty much out of the blue for me for Christmas. I've spent the last several weeks reading this 500-page linguistic treatise bit by little bit, and now that I'm done I feel like I need to regurgitate some of it back here for fear of losing it entirely. (Regurgitating on friends and family has produced less-than-desirable results.) The Stuff of Thought starts innocently enough: with babies. Specifically, how do babies/children learn the complex structure of language. Even more specifically, how do they learn the nuances of sentence construction in such a way that they understand instinctively that while one could either "stuff bread into the turkey" or "stuff the turkey with bread", one cannot both "pour water into the cup" and "pour the cup with water". The latter sounds awkward to any native English speaker, and does so even with the verbs being used are rarely heard. (E.g., which do you prefer: "festoon the ribbons onto the bandstand" or "festoon the bandstand with ribbons"? Why?) It would take more than just a blog post (a 500-page book, perhaps) to explain the intricacies the way that Pinker does, but the answer has to do with how we conceptualize the language we use, endowing verbs not just with specific endings or the ability to take direct objects, but with spatial, temporal and causal properties. (Stuffing a turkey is about changing the state of a turkey -- from unstuffed to stuffed, but pouring water isn't really about the cup, it's about the act of pouring, which fills the cup only indirectly, with gravity acting as a middleman ... well, like I said, the explanation is complicated.) Later chapters describe our innate use of physics in language, how certain metaphors pervade our speech and idioms, the difficulty of coining new words, why popular names ebb and flow, and -- likely to be everyone's favorite chapter, as it was mine -- the use of taboo words in language, including a lengthy and hilarious description of the unique grammatical properties of the word "fuck". If the description I've given so far hasn't gotten you excited, you may not be enough of a grammar geek to enjoy this book. Keep in mind that it's often quite funny, and Pinker sprinkles in enough anecdotes, movie references and even comic strips to keep things rolling. Furthermore, some of what he comes up with is downright surprising, both his theories and the examples he uses. (Did you know, for example, that the girl's name "Madison" -- currently the third most popular girl's name in America -- comes from Daryl Hannah's character in the movie Splash?) But he doesn't skimp on the real linguistic theory; there were definitely paragraphs here and there that required double reading, and several 50-cent words thrown in where -- I'm guessing here because I'm too freakin' lazy to pick up a dictionary -- a 10-cent word would probably have done as well. In the end, I'd say that this book reminded me mostly of a really good lecture, the kind I sometimes had the pleasure of attending in college. That is, when I wasn't hung over in the walk-in freezer. Good lord, that was stupid. |
| // posted by dug @ 9:00 PM [link] [comments (1)] |
| Thursday, August 30, 2007 |
| Sally Decker |
|
Last Sunday night, at about 10pm Eastern time, my grandma died. She was in her 90s, had suffered from Alzheimer's for years, and she passed in her sleep. Everyone who knew her agreed it was for the best. But that didn't keep me from crying when I heard. Grandma taught me several important things that I have since passed down to my children and expect (unless my girls beat me to it) to pass down to my grandchildren as well.
I never knew my grandma that well as an adult. I know some of her history from what my mom has told me. I remember her house pretty well. I loved her as a grandson, and enjoyed being around her even as a teen when I barely tolerated most adults. But I don't know what she might have wanted to be remembered for. Still, I think she'd be happy knowing that my girls know how to dip Graham crackers and that I think of her when I sing to them. |
| // posted by dug @ 9:59 PM [link] [comments (1)] |
| Monday, August 06, 2007 |
| Jenny, I've got your moment in history |
|
Today at nine seconds after five-thirty, it will be... 8/6/07 5:30.09 |
| // posted by dug @ 9:55 AM [link] [comments (3)] |
| Wednesday, May 30, 2007 |
| !tnellecxE |
| As a fan of both The Once and Future King and Christopher Nolan, I thought this comic was particularly hilarious. |
| // posted by dug @ 9:17 AM [link] [comments (1)] |
| Friday, May 18, 2007 |
| Just call me "Dooce" |
|
As both of my readers know (hi, Charlie; hi, Nate), I've tried on and off to keep this blog going, both because I'd like to be writing more regularly and because I'd like to have a record - a log, for the more StarTrek-inclined - of my life to be able to look back on. Not for me to look back on, so much, but the kids; for some reason, I believe they'd like to hear about my life, or maybe more realistically they'd like to hear about their lives someday when they're as old as I am and can barely recall last Monday. My model for all this has been Dooce's blog -- the sometimes moving, always funny journal of a woman who lives with her husband and young daughter in Utah (of all places). Now that she has an RSS feed I read it pretty much every day. The dog pictures don't do much for me, but everything about the writing is what I'd want my writing to be. Which is why I've decided to give up on my own journal and just take hers. So now, instead of writing down all the cute and funny and important and not-so-important things that happen to me or my family in a witty and charming way, I'll just convince my daughters that we used to live in Utah, that they used to be named "Leta", that I used to be a sexy-in-a-geeky-way Mac enthusiast, and that their mom used to be a hot but neurotic web designer. That should be easier. Ah, who am I kidding? Mac enthusiast? Please. |
| // posted by dug @ 8:24 AM [link] [comments (2)] |
View from my jog. [*] |
| Blogs I Visit: |
|
Defective Yeti Fanatical Apathy Apostropher OnReligion.Com Static Zombie This Modern World |
| Where I Waste Time: |
|
Working For Change (great comics) Uselab - Acno's Energizer (darn that level 35!) Ironic Times |
| My News Sources: |
|
National Public Radio (the show, not the site) On The Media (these shows I download) Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me The Onion (America's Finest News Source) |
[*] And this of course doesn't do it justice.
...and a little .NET
of my own design...