Unlikely Words » matt

Freudian Slip?

matt — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:50:57 +0000

Hey, Baby Gap, I'm as progressive and open-minded as the next guy, but I'm not sure girl-on-girl is an appropriate concept for baby clothing:

She Should Run

matt — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:00:42 +0000

This seems cool: nominate a woman who you think ought to run for office! ###Possibly related posts:Can Zombies run? Curt Schilling has a Blog Free Office Space in Boston for Entrepreneurs ### Possibly related posts:

Pet Sounds A Capella

matt — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:00:59 +0000

This may be old news, but it's new to me: someone has posted all of the songs from Pet Sounds with the instrumental tracks removed, leaving the only Beach Boys' vocals. It's pretty damn amazing.

Check this out:

(via nosflow)

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ProJo Snark?

matt — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:28:31 +0000

Ouch.

[Alex] Gonzalez was re-introducing himself to some of his old teammates, and some of his new ones, when he arrived at the Ballpark at Arlington on Saturday.

"It's good to be back on the best team in the world," he said of the second-place Red Sox.

(Although, I've said it before and I'll say it again, that kind of reality check only ever appears in a newspaper's sports section, not on the front page. Weird.)

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Christopher Orr’s Transformers Review

matt — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:39:39 +0000

I have no doubt that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a terrible, terrible movie. However, I have a number of bones to pick with Christopher Orr's review in The New Republic.

One! "Autobot" and "Decepticon" are proper nouns, and should be capitalized.

Two! Before you start mocking "The Matrix of Leadership," perhaps you'd best sit down and watch the best movie ever made.

Three! "The movie opens with an extended monologue by chief autobot (that is, good robot) Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, heretofore best known as the voice of Eeyore in countless Pooh cartoons)"? I think you mean, "Peter Cullen, heretofore best known as the voice of Optimus goddamn Prime."

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Meat Free Mondays

matt — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:27:38 +0000

This seems like a pretty obviously good idea.

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Free Co-Op Version of Missile Command

80′s Hits: Ragtime!

matt — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:51:31 +0000

(via MGK)

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LCD Soundsystem’s SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS trailer

Google Voice Transcripts

matt — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:24:37 +0000

I have Google Voice, because I signed up for Grand Central ages ago, and I decided to finally start using my Google Voice number for "professional" purposes. Right now I just have my Google Voice number forward to my cell phone. The trade-off, of course, is that I'd have to trade the totally awesome iPhone visual voicemail for Google's speech-to-text voicemail. I asked Rachel to call me to test it out, with the following results:

hey john it's me i'm downstairs printed diapers and the dryer hope doing internally if you're having a nice time upstairs playing the leapfrog musical what's it i'm realizing that i forgot to put the papers that you had in the living room from yesterday i forgot to put them in with this paperwork but i will put them in tomorrow morning's okay i will be back upstairs and i'm looking forward to getting the babies some possible fred soft switch they should be genetically program full of hey alright bye

So clearly that works perfectly.

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Transactional vs Revolving Credit

matt — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:54:55 +0000

This, from Steve Waldman, is an important distinction to understand, and his proposal for transactional credit as a public good makes sense, on a first reading. ###Possibly related posts:Mark Cuban’s Idea To Help The Credit Crunch What to do with Junk Mail ### Possibly related posts:

Data.gov

matt — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:40:25 +0000

I am a huge nerd, but this is amazingly cool.

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Data visualization

Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes

matt — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:40:26 +0000

Yes, please.

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Ben Folds!

matt — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:53:28 +0000

See, a capella is cool.

Lee Child, Nothing To Lose

matt — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:00:20 +0000

When my dad visits, he can always be counted on to leave behind some hyper-masculine paperback trash (what's the counterpart of chick-lit, will "dude-lit" work?). The Reacher series can be summed up as the continuing adventures of an unbelievable bad-ass who goes around doing bad-ass things for, essentially, the sake of pure bad-assery. The writing isn't spectacular, and the plots aren't realistic, but there are worse ways to spend a few hours.

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Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

matt — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:37:45 +0000

Even worse than I expected it to be, which is saying something. (By the way: best ever use for the Kindle app on iPhone? Reading books you'd be too embarrassed to be seen with.) ###Possibly related posts:Rain Fall by Barry Eisler Tony Hendra, Father Joe Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore ### Possibly related posts:

Antipodes Map

matt — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:00:08 +0000

This is a cool toy... contrary to what cartoons taught me, if you dig a hole through the Earth in the continental United States you don't come out in China. ###Possibly related posts:“Leopard Savaging a Crocodile” What Happens at the End of Deadwood? ### Possibly related posts:

(Final?) Thoughts on Kings

matt — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:05:10 +0000

Yeah, I think I'm done with this show. It's not really so much that the writers/producers seem to think that subtlety is incompatible with drama (since most prime-time dramas suffer from this problem), it's that they seem to be lazy. Problems with overwrought tone I can deal with (heck, I'm enjoying Dollhouse) but I can't abide crappy world-building.

How big is Gilboa? Big enough that it has more than one broadcast news network, publicly traded companies, a financial system sophisticated enough to permit hostile takeovers, and the Internet, but small and primitive enough that you can get anywhere in the country by car or helicopter, they're still on the gold standard, and a single commercial port generates enough economic benefit that it can catapult a country into the information age and it's worth going to war over.

Feh. Ian McShane is great, but he's trapped in a world created by lazy/unimaginative writers. I'm out.

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Moses is Departing Egypt

matt — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:23:39 +0000

A Facebook Haggadah.

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Plastic Bag Ban – Red Sea, Egypt

Rhode Island Signage

matt — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:02:48 +0000

A local designer makes the case that our signage sucks.

(Via GC:PVD)

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Supergroup

matt — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:00:03 +0000

Hanson + Smashing Pumpkins + Fountains of Wayne + Cheap Trick = surprisingly good.

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Lil Wayne and Rock and Roll

The World of Kings

matt — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:58:36 +0000

I have, so far, only seen the first episode of Kings, but the second is on my TiVo, and I have a free moment to write about it now. (If all of this is covered in the second episode, well, my bad.)

It was an interesting surprise to discover that the theme of the show was not, as advertised, "What if the U.S. had a king?" Rather, it's, "What if the Biblical story of David took place in an industrialized society?" which is pretty cool, too. (If you don't want any spoilers, don't read 1 Samuel!)

What I'm spending the most brainpower on, though, is trying to understand the fictional world in which Kings takes place. Is it a post-apocalyptic version of our world? Is Shiloh built on the site of the ruined New York City? How big is Gilboa? Etc?

We get the sense Gilboa isn't all that big. We're told in the first episode that the front is only a few hours north of Shiloh, so if Shiloh really is Manhattan, then Gath is upstate New York? Or Massachusetts? Of course, it's possible that the world of Kings can't be mapped to real-world geography: I can't quite tell.

I'm especially baffled by the level of technology. They have skyscrapers, cars, planes, computers, cell phones, and the Internet, but their military technology is totally backwards. The Gilboans are fighting in trenches, for crying out loud. Gath's military superiority comes from their tanks, which the Gilboans don't seem to have. At the same time, we've heard talk of air support, we've seen helicopters, and we've even seen fighter jets in at least one quick shot. So, what the hell? Do they not have missiles and bombs? Why is Gilboan military technology so pathetic, given the sophistication of Shiloh? And what is Evil Military-Industrial Company Crossgen making its money off of? Rifles? If Shiloh is only a few hours from the front, why hasn't Gath bombed the crap out of it?

Basically, I'm hoping we'll find out that there's a coherent and interesting story about the kinds of technology they do and don't have in the world of Kings, but I'm suspicious that it's just bad writing.

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