zeitgeisted out: the suburban years of my life

A totally different era...

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:20:00 +0000

A 1968 exchange between Gore Vidal and William Buckley bartering "crypto-nazi" for "pornographer." Makes me wonder if there's any hope for a little more Jerry Springer in modern politics. (catfight documented here, lasted until 2003).

Bizarro World

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:33:00 +0000

In what universe is the following okay? (from The Ethicist column)

My friend Natalie had a small party, to which another friend brought a movie on his portable hard drive for all to watch. When Natalie got up to get a sweater, she tripped over the cord, killing the hard drive. She offered our friend $300 to replace it, but he demanded $1,800 to cover data retrieval too: the drive contained his digital artwork, not backed up. Who owes what?

So much to unpack... but all so unsavory.

you don't have parties where it's okay to bring laptops
you don't have parties where it's okay to bust open laptops
you don't have parties where it's okay to huddle around a laptop to watch a movie
you don't become friends with dbags (that covers the last 3 points I was going to make)

Signs I've made it as a college journalist?

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:03:00 +0000

I was plagiarized by some exceptionally desperate reviewer for a new zealand newspaper! And subsequently exonerated!

link: http://www.dispatch.co.za/2007/09/19/Easterncape/boni.html

[original article]

It's almost not sarcastic...

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Here are a few random post ideas...
Hundreds of blog post ideas! Get some more »
Write an essay.
Take a figure of speech and write about its literal implications.
Write about how lucky you are to be you.
Write about how visitors can use your blog's RSS feeds and email subscriptions.
Write about an untold secret.
Write about your dreams.
Create a slideshow about something cool.
Write a post introducing new readers to your blog. Share links to your best posts.

Unfortunately, my secrets of blogging are all revealed with this website (hundreds more ideas, here.) Alas, it does not suggest blogging about blogging topics, so there, I win.

Robinson, Schroeder, and Majumdar

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:01:00 +0000

So Bill Richardson gave $1.5 million of New Mexico's money to a consulting firm in exchange for $100,000 of campaign money. The name of the company was CDR Financial Services and it was run by this guy:

"David Rubin, whose firm, CDR Financial Products, is entangled in investigations by the Internal Revenue Service, used to call his company Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin & Co. He says he picked those names because he liked the sound of them together. Chambers and Dunhill didn't exist." (Bloomberg)

Who does that?

happy travels, new year

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:04:00 +0000

I guarantee it folks, you'll never see the process of stuffing luggage into overhead compartments quite the same way...

If you're not part of the solution...

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:32:00 +0000

I was looking for something clever on the subject of being the problem.

Two things:

Amusing:

And hillarity:

My friend josh started a company

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:05:00 +0000

By day he stretches DNA on coverslips.

By night, he makes surfboard locks that look like this:

(He calls his company BoardSecure.)

worth noting

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:22:00 +0000

the 1976 electoral map:

That's Texas in blue, California in red.

Have a good day/night/earlyAM of CNN. I sure will.

Even the best role models...

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:43:00 +0000

Can't say it's up there with Eliot Spitzer, but reading this was kind of a disappointment. A 7-week marriage for Bill Nye (from '06).

Yay for Debt

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:19:00 +0000

Another moment of work avoidance, another blog post. That's just how it works.

Tough times we face. So tough that the US Treasury Secretary, the Alberto Gonzales of money, says there's imminent global financial cataclysm unless we donate to the rich. But serious thoughts are gloomy, and let's just focus on the good old times, before America entered the third world:

The new Seinfeld/Microsoft comercials were made on a Mac. Got no dog in this fight, just thought it was funny.

Why the NSF Encourages Outreach

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:19:00 +0000

"We as a nation have got to ask ourselves... what is oozing out of the ground?"

Off to Zion

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:56:00 +0000

Away again this week to Utah to hike and rediscover the big and little dippers (typically invisible to Los Angeles) while missing minute-by-minute press coverage of awkward moments at the DNC convention.

As I was flying lately, been thinking about those unfortunate birds who end up in jet engines. You've probably seen the video, but have you read the wikipedia article entitled "Bird strike"? Things you'll learn:

They deforest areas near airports and hire dogs to keep birds away
"United Air Lines suffered a twin engine bird ingestion by a B-767 on departure from Chicago's O'Hare Field in the spring of 2007. One engine caught fire and bird remains were found in the other engine"
12 pounds of bird = force of 1/2 ton dropped from 10 feet.

The link from the lower post was removed at another blog -- but Slate also says it: Paxil gives you weeks of the runs.

Blogging again, but why?

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:16:00 +0000

You guessed it -- another late night of work ahead of me leaves me no choice but to blog. Anyhow, read this Paxil horror story. I guess the drug also makes you lose weight...

some catch on late to the whole nature documentary thing

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:22:00 +0000

I see this and I think: this photographer did something with his life.

Shark Spotted

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:33:00 +0000

Cape Cod, where you pay $20 to park at the beach, gets a shark!

The dorsal fin of the shark, sticking some 2 1/2 feet out of the water, was spotted 75 yards offshore at South Beach in Edgartown. Authorities received reports of other sightings along State Beach, on the island's northeast and the site of the opening scene of "Jaws." [link]

So here's my question, how do you really definitively identify a great white fin? Things I learned while trying to find the answer:

Dolphin fins curved backward. Porpoises are stubby. [link]
An example: The two white dots correspond to dorsal and tail fins.
Along with teeth, man-eating, and a Jaws association, "e-How.com" tells us that the fin is remarkably large. This tells me nothing.
And finally, the most awesomeist page on the internet: How to identify New England Sharks. The guy has a fun game here where people send in pictures and say "What shark is this, Tom?" and he figures it out. For instance, he identified this one as a Sandbar Shark:

Take home: I'm scared and fascinated by sharks. Happy Summer, folks.

Because you get paid to be creative

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:44:00 +0000

You're here because you're wasting time. So try to figure out what on earth the point of this site is? (Answer here).

The Terrorist Fist Jab?

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:42:00 +0000

Kind of a let down

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:47:00 +0000

So there's that scene from Network where you have a mesmerizing but senile network executive declare:

You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

Turns out that, consciously or unconsciously, I've always wanted a guy like this to be the President. Forget for a minute that that guy is more likely McCain than Obama, more likely Dean than Kerry, but this idea that the compelling & honest diatribe has more currency than the patchwork quilt of meaningless sentences that now pass for political rhetoric.

Anyhow, the point of all this is that I'm just flat out wrong. Seasons of the West Wing should have taught me this -- that careful vetting for loyalty, heterosexuality, and apparent marital fidelity is an absolute necessity in politics. I bring this up in light of a current list from Politico actually titled: "A guide to undisciplined messaging" where they explain why you simply cannot use the words: sweetie, pansy, cojones, articulate, and some more obvious ones (tar baby, fatal attraction references).

Furthermore, if you are going to message undisciplined-ly, absolutely under no circumstances may you do it on camera. All this acknowledges a fundamental reality in politics that you need a smooth panderer -- all this acknowledges that I acknowledge that there is no room in politics for a Howard Dean.

But wait, there's more -- I guess if taken as a metaphor for my own life, does all this acknowledge that it's simply an exercise in fulitiliy to remain outspoken in life? I'd say that half of the people I know are at some level good at being smooth panderers. Is that the name of the game, then? Until we just about have a nice NYT obit in the bag, do we writhe in sycophancy? Does Randy ultimately win over Simon in life? How's that for a sex and the city ending?

Pointless Odds and Ends that make you not want to revisit this blog

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:36:00 +0000

The North Face conundrum consummated.

Feel defamed? Sue from London.

I like Keith and the Girl, a podcast. And kind of like once I wanted to bond with people over old episodes of "Out of this World" and obscure bands (embarrassing in retrospect, but what isn't?), I want (desperately?) to know that somebody in my life finds this podcast amusing. (Sarah hates it, a lot. It's a bunch of crass people that somehow supplant my lack of social life in grad school.)

karma's a bitch, but I have pretty eyes

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:36:00 +0000

The "Compare people" application reminds via e-mail that it might have been prudent to be nice to people all those years:

Here is what your friends think about...

... your strengths:
most attractive
cutest
person with the prettiest eyes

... your weaknesses:
most adventurous
most likely to succeed

Fun with Urban Dictionary

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:58:00 +0000

So the Canadian press (you too will be surprised that you've never heard of such newspapers as "The Star" and "The National Post") has landed on a whopper of a story: whitefolks have been using the word "Canadian" as code for blackfolk.

The evidence? This email from a district attorney in Texas:

"He convicted Mr. Sosa of a double intoxication manslaughter, got a weak jury to give him 12 years in each, and then convinced Judge Wallace to stack the sentences," Harris County assistant district attorney Mike Trent wrote in an office-wide memo. Then came the odd part: "He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing."

Then came the headlines:

The new code word for black: 'Canadian'

When is a Canadian not a Canadian?

Racists using code word `Canadian' as substitute for N-word

So, if one is to believe the fourth definition provided on Urban Dictionary, then this really is some racist large-scale phenomena.

The strange thing behind all this, though, is that the DA involved now insists that he would never send out such an epithet to an email list of 200 lawyers. I kind of buy this argument. He insists he thought they were actually Canadian, and is quoted saying (to the Houson Chronicle):

"Do you guys think I'm crazy?" Trent wrote recently in response to a blog post. "Am I insanely stupid enough to send a racial slur to 250 LAWYERS? Litigious, complaint-ready lawyers, some of whom are African-American?? That is just absurd."

Of course, one might argue that it's also absurd to believe Canadians were serving on a Texas jury.

Trent's response: "All that is required to serve on a jury in Harris County is that you have a TDL (Texas Driver's License) and reside in the county."

So my new thought on the matter is that:
1) Racists are using Canadian in other circles
2) The DA is actually making fun of Canadians,vand learned to do so because he has racist friends and he never picked up on the joke

Grandma's taking care of Rapture

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:47:00 +0000

(by roz chast, from the new yorker via someone else's blog).

Oh, being a genius, I figured out how to make comments work. So now they work.

And Moby's new album sampler is quite nice. And free.

Date Scientists for the Greater Good?

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:26:00 +0000

So there's a whole group of people whose goal in life it is to package science into mass culture. So their endeavors culminate in sometimes mediocre tv shows like "numb3rs" and sometimes into cult icons like Bill Nye. They even paid (via the National Science Foundation) for the back of my head (second post, "0.5 microseconds of baldspot fame") to go to the American Film Institute and learn to stick science into screenplays, a goal that has since waned in awesomeness.

All this comes to mind as I learned that director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Brokeback Mtn) is married to a professor of microbiology in New York Medical College, Jane Lin. And it got me thinking: for all the money it takes to educate screenwriters or teach scientists to write engaging screenplays, one might as well arrange singles night between the two crowds. The reason people don't pursue science is that it's not cool without a moon landing involved. So what I'm thinking is that the solution is to marry it to Jude Law and Brad Pitt.

Of course the obvious flaw to this plan comes from the fact that Ang Lee hasn't made a single science-related film, far from it really. So although a scientist-hollywood pairing makes an excellent New York Times marriage announcement, I suppose it won't advance the cause of humanity.

kibosh

noreply@blogger.com (devdoot majumdar) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:11:00 +0000

You'd figure the word kibosh would have a rich etymology, culminating in a biblical story where some historic fire was put out with a similarly named device. Instead, the etymology is sadly dissatisfying ("we have no idea").