Peter McArthur

Human beings are animals, but that’s a bit misleading, sort of like calling a golden retriever a dog. Human animals have domesticated bees, which are hardly animals. It used to be, the human:bee ratio was 1:3 at most. But ever since bees were first cultivated — hatched in crops and set loose in groups of ten or more — bees have in effect fed cows, which are animals, but are also cattle. Let’s call this the cattle-bee system.

Anyway, diesel fuel is fashioned from lead paste, which if you’ve ever donated plasma, it’s sort of like that. But from the earth. It’s not pretty coming out. It pays the most. Most of the earth is like that; deep below the ground. A lot of people don’t know that. They think it’s in Wyoming, or maybe South America. But most of the earth is actually below ground. Which is impervious to humans, unless you believe articles like this.

» The Final Countdown

Ted interviewed me for my previous job, in October 2000. We’ve worked together since then. I really don’t know what Monday will be like.

I would be absolutely terrified except that he’s agreed to continue sharing his .emacs files.

I think Muxtape should have a “hardcore mode” that forces you to plan out two sides, and if you go over the time limit for one side a song just cuts off. - jeffrubinjeffrubin

This is the last out of yesterday’s cubs game. The ball is past Kendall. It’s a strikeout. Nobody, except maybe Kendall and Wood, know that yet. The crowd is still watching the pitch. Lee is waiting for a ground ball. The catcher is thinking about fishing. The umpire is watching the catcher’s glove.

By David Sameshima, via bcb

Justin gave a great presentation at the NY tech meetup tonight. Simple and straightforward like muxtape. I started making mixtapes about the time I started on the internet, and 15 years later you can use a web browser to buy helicopter tickets and trade put options on celebrity death bets. You can rate the trade and find the two traders like yourself, perhaps so you can ask them to leave town. And Justin went and made mixtapes. Something so straightforward and optimistic.

I couldn’t be happier for him. I’m incredibly sad he won’t be coming into work anymore.

The Great Man

One very good character. Many of the details were wrong, either in placement or in fact. I wish she had written Maxine instead.

The Energy Crisis

Like a lot of people, I’m very concerned about the energy crisis. It seems that production has not kept pace with demand, and as of today the price of oil is $107 a barrel. For a while I was trying to think of a new kind of electricity that’s easy to make, but I’m not much of a scientist so I couldn’t figure it out.

Here in the U.S. we don’t even use barrels anymore. Oil is sent around in tanker trucks. The barrels alone cost $45 a piece. Of course, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela probably get them wholesale, but if they just switched to a bigger container we save a lot of money right there.

“ building a [solar thermal power plant] in California requires hiring a licensed tortoise wrangler

— More excellent vocations, via Turning Glare Into Watts - New York Times.

» 1 in 100 in American Are Behind Bars - New York Times

Am I the only one who thinks that the american should be chosen at random???

If you liked High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace, check out Something’s Got to Give, a look at the air traffic controllers at “the New York Tracon — which handles up to 7,000 flights a day into and out of Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, as well as 47 smaller airports, all within a 150-mile radius”

» Charles Bock's Beautiful Children available for Download

Random House is GIVING AWAY their/Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children in the form of a PDF download.

I paid full price, and almost immediately wanted to return the book. Anyway, it’s not worth the download. The book would have been greatly improved by cutting a third. Indiscriminately.

EDIT: I wasn’t going to like publish a review of this thing, but the publicity stunt pissed me off. It doesn’t have enough publicity already?

“ And the early tenants were reasonably prosperous. There was Charles Augur, a twine merchant, who lived at No. 3 Agate Court, and Amédée Braiteau, a French-born hair dealer, who lived at No. 18.

— emphasis mine, from Streetscapes - Bedford-Stuyvesant - Agate Court and Alice Court - Once Exclusive Enclaves, Subject to Change - New York Times