found_drama

• CSS – Contents and compatibility – mobile
  at quirksmode.org
  (tagged: webdev css mobile selectors compatibility work research todo )
• Nearly 400-Year-Old Maryland Beer Finally Available in Stores
  Washington City Paper:
  

  1634 Ale is produced by Brewer’s Alley in Frederick, which has brewed the beer exclusively from ingredients that were available to colonists in the early 1600s, when the province of Maryland was founded. The ale, created to celebrate Maryland’s 375th anniversary, will be available in package stores on June 3.

  (tagged: via:lawnczar beer Maryland )
• How to Lie About Books
  at Tor.com (via JW):
  

  If Stephenson comes up in conversation, ask the people around you if Stephenson is cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk. Let them battle it out while you eat corn chips. Also, sometimes Stephenson has this really amazing beard. It’s like a wizard beard. It’s the kind of beard you could defeat Flash Gordon with, or yell “Alakazam!” in all seriousness. Sometimes he trims it, which is disappointing.

  (tagged: blog literature scifi humor reading )
• http://json.org/json2.js
  (tagged: json javascript work via:fogus )
• The Future of Reading in a Digital World
  by Clive Thompson:
  

  Books have a centuries-old tradition of annotation and commentary, ranging from the Talmud and scholarly criticism to book clubs and marginalia. Stein believes that if books were set free digitally, it could produce a class of "professional readers"—people so insightful that you'd pay to download their footnotes.

  And that's just scratching the surface of the speculation.

  (tagged: future publishing reading books )

• China Miéville on Crime Novels
  Scalzi "gives the floor" to China Miéville re: his new novel.
  (tagged: literature essay todo )
• Cover Story: Finger Painting
  at The New Yorker Blog — seen referenced/linked in multiple places already… Just plain "wow". Watch the video.
  (tagged: video iPhone illustration art )
• First Look: Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for Mac
  Nice. Now I can finally breathe some new life into my copy of High Strung.
  (tagged: Mac video DVD )
• Burnout
  at A List Apart:
  

  …burnout "is not a condition that gets better by being ignored. Nor is it any kind of disgrace. On the contrary, it’s a problem born of good intentions."

  (tagged: work productivity health stress essay )
• 8 Guidelines To Taking Panoramic Photos With Any Camera
  via LifeHacker
  (tagged: photography panorama tutorial )
• Awful Library Books
  (tagged: humor library )

In lieu of a actual substantive review, a few notes about George Saunders’ In Persuasion Nation:

(1) A typical Saunders collection. This means you’re getting some delightfully weird prose but it also means you’re getting (more than?) a few tales oblique enough to blot out the sun. Which is not to comment on whether/not those stories are any good.

(2) Recipe for a Saunders short story: take 1 protagonist (preferably male) in some way already at the end of his distressed rope; add 1 foil (preferably female) at the end of her respective rope with him, mix liberally with 2 parts cuckoldry (though henpecking will do as a substitute if beaten with sufficient vigor). Blend in a conservative portion of concentrated lampoon of consumer-culture. If you haven’t already, make sure to de-bone the protagonist before the story’s end and to remove any chance of success. Garnish with a zombie; or if no zombie is available, try ghosts.

Out to four decimal places, the composite Goodreads score is: 3.4166

• I CAN SPEAK!™ — ★★★
• My Flamboyant Grandson — ★★★★★
• Jon — ★★★★★
• My Amendment — ★★★
• The Red Bow — ★★½
• Christmas — ★★½
• Adams — ★★★
• 93990 — ★★★^[1]
• Brad Carrigan, American — ★★★
• In Persuasion Nation — ★★★★
• Bohemians — ★★★½
• Commcomm — ★★★½

A version of this review appears on Goodreads.com.

1. Note to self: oblique, re-read will be required. [↩]

In lieu of a review of Stranger in a Strange Land (because what would be the point?), a few notes intead:

(1) I can see why it’s considered a science fiction classic. On an intellectual level, I “get” that part. Hence getting shelved as “important”. Creating a character and a milieu and a plot to lampoon all of our socio-cultural conventions? Even cannibalism? Brilliant! But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

(2) How did this book get lauded and praised as the “bible” of the counter-culture/sexual revolution? Heinlein’s narrative stilts toward homophobic and what was up with the line (from Jill!) re: “nine times out of ten if a woman gets raped, it’s her fault”? Terrible.

(3) Just like I couldn’t stand what Melville did with Billy Budd, I couldn’t stand the “Christ-figure” thing that Heinlein did with M. V. Smith either. I feel like there’s this impulse in Western literature to write a Christ-figure into your story. And I think that there’s this impulse on the part of critics to just orgasm all over themselves to praise it when an author does it. But this never seems to add anything to the narrative — it always just comes across as heavy-handed and abusive. Stop it.

A version of this review appears on Goodreads.com

• 50 Banned Books That Everyone Should Read
  at Online College Degree — because everyone loves a "banned books" list.
  (tagged: literature censorship )
• 40+ Eye-Catching Mac Screensavers
  (tagged: Mac screensaver )
• ECMAScript 5 Objects and Properties
  (tagged: ecmascript javascript dev work essay todo )
• Woot : Unused Car Lots: Now What?

  Sure, we could just sit back and let the crackheads and feral dogs take the places over, but the urban planning site Planetizen has started a discussion about what cities should do with their newly empty car lots.

  (tagged: automotive urban future research )
• Hot Stuff in a Squeeze Bottle
  at NYTimes.com
  (tagged: via:kapowee cocksauce essay food )

I’m sure that there’s someone else way ahead of me but it feels pretty good to be closing in on 200,000 plays.  And since it’s been asked already:

199,000+ represents approximately five years worth of play counts tracked via iTunes, iPod synchronization, and “nudging”^[1] the playcount when we know something has been played off a CD in the car.  See you at 200,001?  Watch me!

1. Thanks to the Add/Subtract Playcount scripts on Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. [↩]

Original on Flickr.

• Bizarre animals that are new to science
  at New Scientist
  (tagged: via:ozgallagher biology weird science evolution )
• The Git Parable
  (tagged: git essay )
• Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party
  on Vimeo — pretty frickin' cool!
  (tagged: video astronomy )
• In Search of Microformats
  (tagged: via:kapowee microformats hcard webdev todo work )
• Top 10 Programming Fonts
  at Hivelogic (via CK) — this is the first I've heard of "Inconsolata" (looks promising)
  (tagged: typography fonts monospace todo )

• Mozilla Labs Design Challenge
  Summer 09 – together with IxDA and Johnny Holland —
  

  For this Design Challenge we are focusing on finding creative solutions to the question: "Reinventing Tabs in the Browser – How can we create, navigate and manage multiple web sites within the same browser instance?"

  (tagged: design navigation tabs mozilla )
• The Calvin & Hobbes Super-Stupendous Guide to Design
  (tagged: design blog humor creativity )
• Bakon Vodka
  It begs the question… what about a Bakon Vodka pasta sauce, eh?
  (tagged: vodka bacon )
• JavaScript Debugging Techniques in IE 6
  (tagged: webdev javascript IE work todo )
• The Vassiliev Notebooks
  at Cold War International History Project (via Slashdot)
  (tagged: science history ColdWar russia research )