It will surprise nobody who reads this journal to realize that I keep up a lot on current events, mostly those involving conflict.

In the aftermath of 9/11 one of the first questions America asked itself was "Why do they hate us?" A lot of answers came fast and furious, because of past events, because of religion, because of fundamentalism, but they were mostly wrong because this is the wrong question. As people became aware that the entire world was involved in a great clash that transcended a religious divide, a political divide, and even geographic divides. The world was, in its entirety, in struggle.

It is human nature to draw narrative out of a great panorama. A number of narratives have been drawn out of this one. One of my personal favorites is the idea that what you see throughout the world is a grand reaction to global inter-connection. On one side is a world where people communicate across the world at the drop of a hat via Skype and SMS and Twitter, where you can order something from a shop in China for delivery in Uganda; a place with a huge culture made up of common threads that pokes its sharp, pointy elbows into every available spot. On the other side lies a world of our fathers and grandfathers, or traditionalists and ancient cultures and a cycle of years that passes back centuries (nostalgic centuries of course, history is rarely so kind as to be comfortingly static).

( It's hard to explain human nature, but that's never stopped me from pontificating before )

Went back to LJ's homepage for the first time in a while. I note the new look, and I've got to admit it looks better than it once did, but it doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of improving the content on the site. The problem with LJ was never really the appearance, it was that everyone on it just sort of left for a whole host of reasons. The way it looks and acts only papers over the fact that most of the non-ONTD communities are sort of dead.

Well, I guess of those two there's only one problem you can really fix. Who knows?

Also, in things that make me grumpy, here I am being grumpy.

Surfing over to Amazon today, one can't help but notice that they have a number of Black Friday specials. And, because Amazon knows how to create a browsable web site, they've split those deals up by category. Some of which, honestly, I'm not too fond of:

( Because Amazon Hates Us... )

Most ads are exercises in name recognition or quick self-promotion. Amidst the ton of ads featuring flashy product shots and actors explaining to you why exactly this product is worth your time, some companies try to create a more memorable experience.

One way to do this is by trying to portray the world as a great place, an inspiring place, and imply that somehow this company is involved in making it that way. Sports apparel ads are famous for this kind of thing. So are beer ads. Usually it's sappy and overbearing and annoying.

Sometimes it does okay.

Since this is the Christmas season, the season where we are supposed to interpret crass commercialism as heart-warming affirmation of our moral virtues, here is this year's attempt by Google:

( Google Zeitgeist )

When I Google "What am I doing with my life", the fourth answer is a blog by someone talking about advice they found by Googling "What am I doing with my life".

Recursion is a powerful CS technique. As a method for solving life's dilemmas though it seems to lead you in circles.

As you've no doubt noticed, the internet is currently down.

Expect normal service to resume once Congress gets its head out of its ass.

Thank you,
-The Management

Looking at the new Google Reader (actually, I've been looking at it for about a week or two), I've come to realize what it is that I don't like about the new Google look.

I think it's that Google, being rich as sin, must buy all their developers giant new monitors, monitors that are so giant that the fact that there is enough white space on the page that you could fit the entire works of Shakespeare in it doesn't bother them. For the rest of us, the crushing post-modern blankness means that the only actual information on the page has to fit into a space that is increasingly tighter and tighter, making it more and more difficult to read. Because some of us still use things like Google Reader for, well, you know, reading.

The problem with the Googleplex seems to be that the more time you spend there, the less likely you are to remember that your products are used by people outside of the bubble...

Want to learn more about the economic theory of recessions and depressions? Want to watch rap videos made by old, dead, white guys? Want to seriously raise your geek rating through the roof? Well now, thanks to this, you can do all three. Just watch this video and you will have it stuck in your head all goddamned day be enlightened.

I don't know why I think this is awesome, but I do, and I don't even like the Austrians.

I just came back from a trip to Fermilab (to give a talk at the Collaboration meeting), and I noticed, on the plane from Phoenix, that the woman next to me was reading a book.

Now, I, like most readers, have the ability to judge the genre of a book based on the cover. Sometimes it's obvious, like spaceships, and pirates, and kilt-wearing Scotsmen with their shirts unbuttoned, but sometimes, it's more subtle. It's in the way the words are written, the expressions that are allowed on the face, even the way that the author's name appears in conjunction with the title. This set off a bit of the romance warning for me, but also another sensation that I rarely experience in regular life. The cover illustration was simply drawn, there was no information on the binding, or on the cover other than the title and the author; only the bareness of the book's cover testified to its uniqueness.

Although it is always bad to judge a book by its cover, this one was screaming Vanity Press.

I don't see Vanity Press work on a day to day basis, so this aroused my curiosity. I caught a peak of the back as she was getting off the plane, and discovered that she was reading Pride and Prejudice fanfic. This Pride and Prejudice fanfic to be precise. Once my access to the internet was restored, I quickly discovered that this author has already produced other various works of P&P fanfic. And furthermore, there seems to be a whole industry devoted to the concept.

Now, I shouldn't find this very odd, considering that my choice of literature has never exactly been accused of good taste (in fact, Pride and Prejudice fanfic may be considerably closer to true literature by virtue of association), and furthermore I try not to malign other people's choices, but does anybody besides me find this vaguely disturbing? As if a piece of the internet, where I normally find fanfiction, had intruded on real life?

I don't know why this bothers me. Perhaps it's just because all those times when I was telling people to try making their pseudo-fanfic into an original work, I was apparently giving them the wrong advice.

Hee.

GAFF is back. Sort of quiet perhaps, but back. I have posted a review of an old Kingdom Hearts fic here just to stay in practice.

I should really be doing work though.

Really.

-dA