romulusnr

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• Commented on The Occult and Hip Hop
  Unclassifiable? Pretty sure it's a form of Islam, an offshoot of Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. And it's not exactly new. My introduction to it came in an early 90's SPIN Magazine feature ("The Five Percent Solution", Charlie Ahearn, Feb 1991)....
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  Dear humankind: it's time to move out of the forests and hills and polders and tornado and hurricane-prone lands. Arcologies anyone?...
• Commented on bOING bOING advertisement in Factsheet Five #33 (1989)
  It is completely inexcusable that not all of these zines are now online. I mean, if the Internet is going to replace the zine it ought to open up the inherited archives...
• Commented on Former French President says Bush invaded Iraq to thwart Gog and Magog's apocalyptic mission
  Imagine no religion....
• Commented on What is the meaning of this unusual tombstone?
  Just last night visited with family that went to school with Sterling Drake. He is apparently alive and well, does not live in Walla Walla but seems to visit on occasion. They know of his gravestone and also said it...
• Commented on What is the meaning of this unusual tombstone?
  The sayings on the tops of the monument are quotes from A Bronx Tale....
• Commented on What is the meaning of this unusual tombstone?
  Maybe this speaks too much to my own inner mental state, but... Anyone trying to read into these specific symbols some sort of hard scientific bent I think is too analytical for their own good. (A la "oh, the rocket...
• Commented on "Smart Parking Meters" not as smart as the hackers who pwn them
  Not sure where globalization comes into play, unless these manufacturers have shipped their QA off to cheap, quick, uninvested and unfamiliarized offshore firms....
• Commented on Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" finds out what kind of doomsayer you are
  Hey, they're using my Nine Nations map (via Wikipedia). An odd choice, to be sure, because Joel Klein never suggested that the Nine Nations were lines on which North America would be geopolitically divided, but that, in the non-political sense...
• Commented on Dude in Sbux watching black & white TV with converter box
  Grr, I just imagined a B&W tv with a DTV box the other day. I'm always a day behind the curve....
• Commented on Mystery blob devouring Alaska coastline
  UL much? I think Alaska's rednecks (bluenecks?) are just jealous of all the attention the lower 48's rednecks get from mutilated cows and crop circles, so they've imagined a mysterious sea-blob that disintegrates goose flesh....
• Commented on Justice Department to review wireless carriers for anti-competitive practices
  Dear 2009: FIGHT ATT RATES! BREAK UP THE TELECOM MONOPOLY! Love, 1982 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture...
• Commented on HOWTO drive a Model T
  Step 1: Put on a tanned leather mac....
• Commented on Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies
  Ah yes, the "photo wheel". My J-school editing class spent a whole day on how to use this -- which is just a circular slide rule. Apparently journalists simply aren't capable of dividing x1 over x2 and dividing y1 by...
• Commented on Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time
  This is in a nutshell why I don't run a business. There's no way I would ever think I could charge 6 dollars to generate 4K of random data. That's almost the same byte/dollar rate as SMS messages! head -c4k...
• Commented on Telephones
  This is awesome, do want, and I recognize about 5-6 of those....
• Commented on A weekend with the Palm Pre (Verdict: Second place is still a win)
  Considering Palm literally founded the smartphone paradigm that is now ubiquitous, it has no excuse to come in even second place after so many years. What's their excuse? Gross mismanagement? Boneheaded creativity-killing business process? Too busy selling off divisions for...
• Commented on Paul Harvey (RIP)
  Paul Harvey's legacy only serves to prove two things: 1. that the news media was never objective and 2. that it was never free of invasive advertising posing as objective news....
• Commented on Kid on Drugs
  Am I the only one who thinks the kid is acting? Or at least overdoing it? Kid logic: You've taken drugs, so you are supposed to act funny and stupid, cause that's what people on drugs do. Whether or not...
• Commented on Sixth severed foot found in British Columbia
  @5: Sure it could. Bus accidentally drives off cliff, etc. You'd wonder though how it would go unnoticed. Maybe they're mob hits. Vancouver Mafia, eh?...
• Commented on Your Virtual Girlfriend
  They really are crazy at Feministing. I mean, getting upset about the rights of fake women? Come on....
• Commented on Scans of old Scholastic book covers
  God, I had every E.B. book I could get, plus Donald Sobol's three books of Ten Minute Mysteries, along with the T.A.C.K. which was sort of the less-brainy clubhouse version of E.B. And I had 100 Pounds of Popcorn. And...
• Commented on Metal detectorist's mysterious find
  Clearly the bent-up nub would smack into the arrow on the other side. When it makes contact, the gear would have a gap centered in the opening. Another gear must have interacted with this contraption via that gap. It looks...
• Commented on MTV's video archive
  My problem is that I'm grown up, more suburban than I was when I was a kid, and I still want to join the urbane sophisticated world represented in rock videos. Or even more so, the world that was still...
• Commented on Harper's Weekly for November 4, 2008
  Makes me want to go out to Seattle's Eastside and put up fliers that say something a la "IF YOU CHEATED ON TAXES IN THE PAST 10 YEARS YOU CAN'T VOTE"....
• Commented on sayHear: why are you voting?
  After hearing a NJ caller put on a thick-sounding drawl and go on about "i dont want a neeger president", I'm inclined to agree with #1 about the false calls. OTOH that doesn't make it any less interesting, as I'm...
• Commented on Short Attention Span Science Theater
  Hey, I miss the original SAST. The era of SAST on (The) Comedy Channel/Network/Central is like the era of music videos on MTV, except shorter and more recent....
• Commented on Cell phone thief takes phonecam shot of himself
  They don't say, but I'm betting it was a Sidekick. Actually, I wonder why they don't say... wouldn't this make both the carrier and manufacturer look good? Then again the Sidekick is out, the G1 is in....
• Commented on Andrew Keen predicts the end of "free labor" online
  Keen doesn't seem to believe in the notion of giving something to society to better society as a whole. If you give something to society, you've wasted it, because you've gotten nothing back. Ergo his equating crowdsourcing with "free labor"....
• Commented on Andrew Keen predicts the end of "free labor" online
  Sigh, I had plenty of *other* instructors that are much more deserving of blogosphere time. Keen's problem is that he sees everyone with a good social idea as an unyielding opportunist. This is a common thread, from his sociology-class railing...