The feeling that I’m living in the future is beginning to overwhelm me: Websense is reporting that Gmail’s CAPTCHA has been broken, and that bots are beginning to sign up with a one in five success rate. More interestingly, they have a lot of technical details about how the botnet members coordinate with two different [...]
The blog post in which this game is announced to the world has two comments, whereas a recent post about a dead child actor on the web site of an ogre has 198. I sure hope the former wins out in the long run. It’s “game changing.”
More on the previous: Scientists say conservation efforts that reduce conflicts between humans and animals could play a key role in limiting future outbreaks.
1. doctor, heal thyself: I just heard Bush give one of his officious lectures about democracy with the news that Castro is stepping down. He said that he expects the Cubans to hold free and fair elections — “and I mean free and fair, not those staged elections the Castro brothers try to foist off [...]
While looking at Taryn Simon’s photographs of “the hidden and unfamiliar,” I read: In the United States, all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. Kenny was born to a breeder in Bentonville, Arkansas on February [...]
Mass rituals have always lived beside – if not in a healthy opposition to – idol worship. In the communal rite, everyone participates and is transported. The ego belongs to the group. Before an altar, the ego is projected into an abstraction. The movie camera – television, film – continues in this tradition of idol [...]
Our new rehearsal space is opposite one of the main Church of Scientology buildings on Hollywood Boulevard. Parking is very difficult in this area, as many of the metered spots are turned over to valet use at night. (Quite a racket.) As a result, we sometimes have to circle the studio for a few minutes [...]
The band Battles on the BBC television show Later! The entire segment is full of clever, rewarding details like the decision to point a camera down at the sole – and idiosyncratically tall – crash cymbal. It’s just one example of many that suggests the producers took a moment to think about about this particular [...]
I’m very, very late to this party, but, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party is an excellent movie. Warm, generous, fluid.
Juno. As it was ending, I thought, “Well, it’s cute.” On the way out of the theater, Ana called it “cutesy,” which, to me, nails it. In some ways, the protagonist is like any other movie hero – say Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. She’s not bound by the same [...]