Another weird fetishist site from Jay (a bubble gum blowers' photo gallery, in this case). I don't know, Jay, what is the difference between a teacher and a train?

Interesting futurist page (thanks to Jay for the tip).

I'm bloated. Adi's out of town for two weeks, and I have lots and lots cake left over from the party. I may soon no longer be buff.

I've been out of town a couple of days, so I'm late on this, but Nick Denton, who frequently tries to offer a European point of view on American issues (and in this post admits to being a "European nationalist"), offered this interesting "Declaration of European Independence" on Monday that's worth reading. A couple of excerpts:

First, the US rightly suspects that European multilateralism is a devious way to inhibit its power; it might better respect open rivalry. The aversion to armed conflict is deep within the European psyche; it is time for Europe to exorcise the ghosts of the two world wars. Finally, the US has become complacent and arrogant: a bit of real competition would do it good.

...

People say that Europe doesn't have the will or resources to build up an independent military, but it doesn't need to match US military spending. Remember that the majority of US military expenditure goes on expensive toys for spoilt airmen, and bases in the districts of influential congressmen. By starting from scratch, a common European defense force could achieve substantial efficiencies. For a blueprint, just take some of Rumsfeld's more radical notions, which will never make it through the military-industrial complex in the US. So here's the plan...

Nick Denton points out this piece in the NY Post saying: Israel has canceled an Albert Einstein exhibit in China after Beijing officials insisted there be no reference to his being Jewish or a supporter of the Jewish state, a government spokesman said yesterday.

After hanging out with bloggers intensively for the last month or so, I can assure you that bloggers are not cool, as Jeff Jarvis observed recently (thanks to Elizabeth for the tip).

Elizabeth and Jeff are among the bloggers I've been hanging out with frequently of late, and I mean them and the rest of the gang no offense. It's just..."cool"? I don't think so. And bear in mind, I include myself in the category. I like these people, which is why I am hanging around with them of late, but they're pretty much like the nerds I hung out with in high school, only older and frequently drunker.

This lack of cool was in evidence last Saturday at Adi & Miki's birthday party at our house this weekend. The bloggers, about eight of them including several "well known" bloggers (I'll spare the who's who), were the first to arrive (how cool is that?) and spent virtually the entire night talking about Dave Winer whinings and other recent bloggossip. With only one gratefully acknowledged exception, none of them danced. And the Hungarians (who, simply by virtue of their European-ness and the fact that they are a generally beautiful breed, must be recognized as having some greater "cool" status) were observed at least once to be mocking the bloggers for our blog talk.

No, we bloggers aren't cool, not since the 25th writing of the "blogs are neat" story in the mainstream press. But I'm happy to contribute the Bruner Blog to the blogosphere and hang out with my NYC blog posse on the weekends nonetheless, because that's just that kind of middle-to-late early adopter kind of nerd I am.

Here is another example of why computers and the Internet are just too hard to use, or rather, how incredibly stupid and dysfunctional Microsoft is.

I am not a great fan of instant messenging, but a friend has been bugging me to get MSN Messenger. I already have Yahoo's and AOL's IM tools, and I generally think Microsoft has too much control of my life already, but he's hung up that MSN Messenger is the best, so I relented and decided to install MSN Messenger today after he bugged me about it again. So I download and install it and am prompted for my .Net Passport password, thusly:

Again, I'm not thrilled about giving Microsoft any more information about me, but I've got to register to use it, so I click the link that reads "Don't have a Passport? Get one here" and I am met with this error message:

It's telling me I don't have a browser installed. I'm using Microsoft Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows 2000, and Microsoft MSN Messenger can't find a browswer on my computer? I've searched throughout the settings in IE to make sure it's the default browser, but I can't find any such. Besides, though, it's the only browser on my machine. I can even generate the error message starting in the browser, selecting "Messenger" under the tools menu and then try to create a new Passport that way. How absurd.

Sorry friend, you'll just have to call or email me.

An Update

This is a sad comment on the economy. I remember when I was a kid in Northern Jersey and my older sister would go into NYC to the Russia Tea Room as a teenager, I thought that sounded really cool and sophisticated. I never actually made it there myself.

Is it just me, or have telemarketers gotten even worse since the collapse of WorldCom? I've had the same phone number for three years, but telemarketers have been on a bananza in recent weeks. After two calls so far this morning, I finally got around to signing up on the NY No Call List, which, thanks to Pataki's legislation a couple of years ago, means they're liable for a $5,000 fine if keep you on their lists after you're registered with this service of the New York State Consumer Protection Board.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. NY loves you. You're not far, just a Fung Wah ride away, come back for the good parties.

The NYT's respected language columnist William Safire has a column today about blogs, calling the word "a useful addition to the lexicon."

Is my blog HOT or NOT?

Have been remiss in blogging on films I've seen recently. Can't claim them as a biz expense for taxes if I don't review them, so here's a quick catch-up:

• Men in Black II - to hell with everyone who panned this film, I thought it was great, the only summer blockbuster I've enjoyed so far. My friend and I were laughing about it again the next day, and we howled throughout the film. Laura Flynn Bolye was excellent as the evil space monster threatening earth, and even if Will Smith was a bit over the top, he's earned the right and the film delivered lots of laughs. Tommy Lee Jones was excellent as always, and the effects were superb. Cameos by the likes of Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart as alien imposters were great. If you liked the first one, go see it while it's still in the theaters.

• Sunshine State - Very good film by director/writer John Sayles (Men with Guns and Lone Star) with a great cast, including Agela Bassett (who over-acts a bit), Edie Falco (an excellent performance), Timothy Hutton and many others. Reminiscent of Short Cuts in its stringing together several overlapping narratives of many characters. Set on a Florida island with a history of a prominent black middle class, the story revolves around two women (Bassett and Falco) facing their pasts in the face of a massive real estate development project. Beautifully acted, filmed and edited, it's slow and rewarding.

• Until the End of the World - Ugh. Adi brought this 1991 Wim Wenders film home on video the other night. She loved it -- her whole Euro art thing -- but I found it really hard to stick with. Starring William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin (also in Wenders's 1987 masterpiece Wings of Desire) and Max von Sydow (who is also in Minority Report) and a cast of many more (including, I see on IMDB, uncredited cameos I missed by Tom Waits and David Byrne). The photography and editing were beautiful, but the tortured plot just left me in the dust: woman crashes into bank robbers, carries their stash to Paris for a 30% cut, meets Hurt, a mysterious hitchhiker who steals a small bit of her loot and she becomes obsessed, following him around the world (Tokyo, San Francisco, Paris and 12 other cities on four continents), in a nonsensical cat-and-mouse chase that includes her ex-boyfriend, a detective, a bounty hunter and others. Then the second half of the film is set in the Australian desert with a team of aboriginal scientists helping Hurt's maniacal father, von Sydow, with his neuro-computer lab to let his blind wife see and, later, after her death, to record people's dreams (driving them mad)... Visually very stimulating, and amazing all-star soundtrack, but it was impossible to take seriously. Maybe it makes more sense in the five-hour director's cut, but Adi will be watching that without me.

• Minority Report - Eh. I'd rate it a B-. The effects were cool and the basic premise was vaguely interesting, but my Tom Cruise aversion remains intact, and the plot was just too stupid to be tolerated. I have something like a three-strike policy for plot holes before my suspension of disbelief collapses. There were so many, I'll just name a few: with no weapons, he beats up 10 cops with jet packs and a wide assortment of futuristic pain inflicting devices and makes a clean getaway; immediately afterwards, he beats up 10 feds, including doing battle in the midst of a robotic car manufacturing plant, and no factory employee is anywhere to be seen to stop the dangerous assembly process the two are battling through before Cruise is pinned under the front seat that a robotic arm slams down on top of him and a bed of spikes, yet Cruise then sits up in the car (an extremely cool ride, I'll confess; a Lexus) and finds it fully fueled with keys in the ignition so that he could just drive off and make a clean getaway; he continues to drive this very conspicous car throughout the rest of the movie, and no one in this Big Brother landscape can track it?; retinal scans are everywhere, and his eyeballs are the most sought after, yet they continue to grant him unfettered access to his own top-secret agency (even after they're torn out of his head); three crack-baby psychics are going to police all crime in the entire U.S., if the evildoers would prevail... I liked Spielberg's vision of 2054, with its sarcastic comment on the horrific future of advertising (yet ironically all the annoying 3D ad holograms are illustrated by product placement from a long list of 20th Century brands), and all the super high-tech jive was cool, but it was just too silly. Oh, also, once you understand what a "minority report" is according to the film's convoluted logic, Cruise's case doesn't even turn out to be one, so why'd they call the movie that?

• Borne Identity - Big disappointment. I'm a fan of this kind of spy/psychological thriller genre, but the really good ones (Conspiracy Theory, Enemy of the State, The Conversation, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Third Man) are few and far between, and this definitely is not one of them. So many plot problems, where to begin? In the first five minutes, Matt Damon is dragged out of the ocean by a fishing boat, and while he's passed out the ship's captain (?) digs two bullets out of his back (with no anesthesia), which have only just broken the skin and are removed with tweasers, and out of curiousity (?) the captain also pries out a microchip embedded under the skin on Damon's hip. Damon, who has amnesia, is content to hang out on the ship for two weeks (no one thought he could use some real medical attention after being shot and half-drowned?). And on and on, it just gets more implausible as it goes.

• Coming Attractions: I Spy - My friend and I saw this coming attraction (due out in the fall) for this comedy based on the old Bill Cosby TV series starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson (who was quite good in The Royal Tenenbaums). If the trailer was anything to go by (and they are obvously often not), it looks hilarious. True, Murphy has his string of flops, but he's also proven his brilliance with films like 48 Hrs., The Nutty Professor and the excellent Bowfinger, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Best of all, it's set in my beloved Budapest!

To quote Nick at Miki's wild-ass 4th of July party, "I love New York!" Ever since Adi and I moved to Manhattan three years ago, we have had a great time socially. I've twice before lived in cities where I've been fortunate to belong to a giant gang of friends: at college in Missoula, MT (shout out to Team Rasta!) and in Budapest in the early '90s. In between Bp and NY, however, was a four-year dead zone known as San Francisco in the dot-com heyday. Feh! I'm having soooo much more fun here, even before Sept. 11, but since then we've only been partying harder, like we're dancing to the Devil's fiddle.

I couldn't agree more with Nick (who I must point out has followed me from Budapest first to SF and now NYC) when he slags SF as a soulless backwater. No offense to my friends who do still live there, but I never went for that town. And neither Adi nor I ever really had what you could call a "gang" of friends there -- a bunch of individuals and couples who gradually got to know each other through us, but no sense of a posse.

The NYC posse Adi and I are a now a part of is something to behold. Parties nearly every night of the week. For example, I'll never live it down that I missed Gogol Bordello last Saturday (read Nick, Peter or Elizabeth raves). On Wednesday, Ildi got folks together for the Philharmonic in the park. Then last night... I'd like to think this photo about says it all:

What started out at Nick's fabu new Soho loft as a big NYC blogger welcome to the Notorious M.E.G. (Jason, come visit, you'll love it!), ended past 2am some funky dive on E. Houston (Rosi?) after passing in between thru the painfully chic GenArt party (a few thousand would-be glitterati), the venue for the photo above (no idea who the flanking freaks are, just the three in the middle). We were all on the guest list thanks to Pearl, who's brilliant short film "Great Balls of Fire" was screened at the event.

At the end of the night, looking around the half-drunk group (to be generous) sprawled on the broken-down couches of the dark bar, it dawned on that this was an exceptional group of people. Earlier in the night I had told Meg that almost every one of dozen friends I had visited a few months ago in SF were unemployed and desperate for work. It struck me then, looking at one of these NYers -- Cameron (the hottest Cam on the Net by popular vote), Anil (who remained deliberately vague in his irony about the blog-groupie comment), Elizabeth, Pearl, Joan, Ildi, Sapna, Caroline, the other Nick (and anyone else I'm blanking on) -- none of them had "normal" jobs (duh, we're in a bar at 2am on a school night), with the possible exception of Anil (who doesn't have to show up for work before noon). But none of them were complaining, either. There were all getting by somehow, a bunch of slack-happy freelancer beautiful bohemian freaks, to a person. They were also a microcosm for our extended group of 50+ folks who all regularly hang around together, made up of a motley collection of Gen Expats, Magyars, film makers, journalists, netrepreneurs, artists and, most recently, bloggers (since the welcome social impact of Mr. Denton's arrival to town, a mere 2 months ago (seems so much longer!)). Whatever it is that unites this group, I'm glad for it and will raise a beer to it at my next opportunity.

Nick, I hear, is doing something again tonight, but I'm going to have to pass, needing one night to recuperate and plan our birthday dance party for Adi and Miki tomorrow night...

Cameron, stay!

Shout out to Gaby D, with her own rap-MC-styling domain and everything.

Congratulations to Anil, for celebrating three years of blogging the other day. I'm surpirsed, however, that he credits one of the benefits of the medium as helping him get laid. Not only do I not want to imagine what type of groupies blogs attract, I thought John Hiler made a convincing case recently that blogs and sex don't mix.

I should be so lucky. My wife apparently stopped reading my blog weeks ago (how sad is that?). Haven't noticed whether that's produced dividends or losses in the bedroom...

Can't attest that this is absolutely accurate, but it sounds about right:

If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago,it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you bought $1000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

The only problem with this logic is that even on the beer you're losing money, just less than on those stock picks, and meanwhile according to those calculations, that's roughly a six-pack of Bud a day, which means you'd be a fat alcoholic, to boot.

[Via Haas]

Brace yourself: this is perhaps the most self-indulgent and dullest post to make its way to the Bruner Blog to date, but I must proclaim to the world that I just did seven pull ups, which is the most in several years. I also kicked Heidee's ass last night biking on all the hills in Central Park (true, she's a girl, but she was a bike messenger for a year), and I could probably do the same to Kevin (not necessarily true, but since he doesn't read the blog, I'll dis him regardless). Adi is not yet willing to concede that I'm no longer fat, but her standards are impossible. Q's loss. Of course, I'm still no match for Warren, who reportedly biked seven fast laps (~45 miles) in the park yesterday at the height of the 90+-degree heat, but that's his problem.

I didn't end up attending the Blog Meetup event last week that I had been hyping (due to client deadline stuff), but from what I hear, I didn't miss much. Apparently, the low turn out (~30 folks for the downtown NYC event) was made worse by the fact that the blogger bonding took place in a coffee shop -- i.e., no alcohol. How insane. You think it's just a coincidence that "schmooze" and "booze" rhyme? (Well, maybe it is, but a handy coincidence at that.)

Meetup may want to take a cue from WebMasterWorld (an excellent community news blog focused on tech in general and search engines in particular). The publisher recently announced its annual conference will take place at a London pub.

UPDATE: A friend writes of the Meetup event:

the coffee shop sold beer, so technically there *was* alcohol, but no one was partaking, because who gets drunk at a coffee shop? (when's the last time you got wasted at Cosi?)

Parody of Apple's "Switch" campaign.

"The DARPA Information Awareness Office (IAO) will imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption; national security warning; and national security decision making."

As if that logo and mission weren't scary enough, this weird new Big Brother-ish military agency is headed by John Poindexter, who, as BoingBoing points out, is "the retired Navy Admiral who lost his job as National Security Adviser under Ronald Reagan, and was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran Contra scandal."

I feel much safer now. More links on this (from Mark Haas):

• From The Guardian
• From HereinReality.com

With all the money this guy extorted, he couldn't get himself a better looking rug?

Rarely do TV shows live up to their advertising hype. I caught the end of NBC's "Most Outrageous Game Show Moments" last night in time for what they had been promising was the best game show blooper ever. It delivered. From a 1977 episode of the "Newlywed Game" hosted by Bob Eubanks, here is the actual transcript of what they showed last night:

Bob: Here's the last of our five-point questions. Girls, tell me where, specifically, is the weeeeeiirdest place that you personally, girls, have ever gotten the urge the make whoopee. The weirdest place. Olga?

Olga: Umm . . . [audience laughter]

[pause]

Bob: Yes, Olga?

Olga: Uh . . .

[Husband] Henry: Go ahead.

Bob: Yes, Olga.

Olga: I'm trying to think. Umm . . . [Turns to husband.] Gee Henry, what did you say?

Bob: Hey, don't ask him. He can't help you out at all.

Olga: Is it in the ass?

Needless to say, NBC bleeped "ass," but it was pretty clear what she said. Apparently, Eubanks has been denying for years that the exchange ever took place, although it seems like a moment that even a jaded TV hack should remember. Wouldn't have believed it myself had I not seen it with my own eyes. (The blooper, I mean, not the actual whoopie. Let's give NBC another few years before they're airing that in prime time.)

I like the sound of this. Wired reports:

How radical is it? It dispenses with just about everything that makes a car a car, such as the engine, transmission, steering wheel, and gas tank. Rather than spitting out carbon monoxide and other smog-causing gases, it emits nothing but water because it runs on hydrogen. With few moving parts, it will last for decades. It will generate more electricity than it uses and be equipped to apply the surplus to power the owner's house. Manufacturing will cost a fraction of what it takes to build a traditional car, because the AUTOnomy will contain many fewer components. And it will be ready for mass production by the end of the decade, which in the automotive world is a week from Tuesday.

The site's been around a while, but I just came across GWBush.com, an amusing lampoon site (rather on the amateurish side), mainly driving you to shop their many bumper stickers and T-shirts with phrases like

• Prosperity Is Boring: Vote GOP for Graft, Recession and War
• The Pretzel Lives!
• One Person, One Vote* (may not apply in some states)
• Don't Blame Dubya: He's a victim of Social Promotion

In looking further through it, I am astounded, yet not astounded (or perhaps astounded that I'm not even astounded) to hear an MP3 of our fearless leader say, about this very web site at a 1999 press conference, "There ought to be limits to freedom." Well, all I can say was this site was ahead of its time.

Nicholas Kristof, in an op-ed in the NY Times, offers more evidence that the FBI has its head up its ass regarding the anthrax investigations. (Here's some of my earlier rantings on this topic.)

My friend Peter Maass will be the subject of an interview on NPR's "On The Media" program this weekend. In the NY area, you can catch it on Sunday at 3pm (? - that's what the site says, but I think it's 4pm) on WNYC (820 AM).

The OTM site says of Peter's segment:

Journalists and the World Court
Former Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal has been subpoenaed at a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Despite Randal’s protests, the court is refusing to grant any journalist a privilege against testifying during trials that do not involve unpublished information or off the record sources. [Co-host] Mike [Pesca] talks to former war correspondent [former? he just got back from Afghanistan a couple of months ago] Peter Maass, who wrote an op-ed on journalists being subpoenaed.

Okay, I just signed up for the Blog Meetup thing. It's still five days away (till Thursday, July 18 @ 7:00PM ), but so far there are only 28 people signed up. That seems pretty lame. I'll bail out if none of the rest of my NYC blog posse shows up. I just don't need more humiliating reminders of how inherently geekly the blog habit is. But, if the numbers pick up by the time of the event, I suppose it could be fun. We shall see. Meetup is an interested idea, but I wonder...

Just discovered Fotolog.net. Got a digital camera and like the idea of blogging but find yourself at a loss for words? Consider fotologging, instead.

Install this in half a second into your Links Toolbar and then you can then highlight phrases on standard web pages and click the toolbar link button and get Google seraches of the prhases. Easier than I make it sound.

I've never actually met Chris Pirillo, but I would enjoy the opportunity. We've exchanged emails a few times, and maybe even a phone call or two, and I enjoyed his book Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing. He's most famous, however, for his technology email newsletter LockerGnome. I just stumbled on his web log, C:\PIRILLO.EXE. I laughed for about two minutes over the blog's slogan, "No match for domain 'CLOWNPENIS.FART'."

Don't believe everything you read, especially on the Internet. Could this possibly be true, or is it just another example of the media peddling bullshit?

My favorite new blog. Also check out his homepage. His photo essay on Anna Kournikova is pretty funny, too.

This is nice: the American Chemical Society (sounds like a grunge band name) has a page explaining the chemical composition of common products such as tanning creams, baseballs and Cheez Whiz. Mmmm, chemicals.
Source: Jay Niemann

Mark Haas points out this news brief from the Kyodo News Agency

Japanese team wins fuel-efficiency car race in London
LONDON July 11 Kyodo - A Japanese motor team won the fuel-efficiency Shell Eco-Marathon race in the northern London suburb Corby on Thursday, completing 15.9 kilometers with just 4.836 cubic centimeters of gasoline. The fuel consumption translates into an astounding 3,294 kilometers per liter of gasoline, but still short of the 3,600-km-per-liter record marked in a similar race in Scotland last year.

According to Mark's calculations (I'll take his word on it), that works out to 7733.456 miles per gallon.

I can't find any other source on this piece but would be interested in more details if anyone finds some. Does anyone besides me believe there is a real political/corporate energy conspiracy going on keeping us addicted to gasoline?

Ever heard of Zero Pollution Motors (aka Motor Development International), a company manufacturing a car that runs solely on compressed air (based on technology created by a former French Formula One engineer)? They got some publicity a couple of years ago (here's a BBC piece), but I haven't heard boo about them lately, and their web site is about the clunkiest, least-informative business sites out there, unfortunately. I suppose they'll probably get acquired by GM, never to be heard from again. Personally, I haven't owned a car in almost 20 years, and I like it that way, but this is the car I would buy if I were to break down (despite its completely retarded design; why must all alternative power cars look so asinine?).

"Experts can now download a genetic blueprint from the Internet and use mail-order materials to assemble a deadly virus, say researchers who made a synthetic polio virus in the lab to demonstrate the threat."
Source: New York Times story

Per my comment this morning about my most hated conversation these days being "what the hell is blogging," it was unavoidable again tonight and reached new levels of humiliation. Out with a couple of friends, the wife asked the dreaded question, and half way through my tedious answer, she offered her opinion (apparently having missed the point that I myself am a blogger), "I think anyone who would do that must be a little disturbed." That would be bad enough on the face of it, but given that she's a professional psychologist, she was rendering her professional opinion!

I can't believe this isn't on DayPop Top 40 yet. Quite amusing. Thanks for the tip from Miki.

We're used to airlines treating comments about bombs and guns as no joking matter, even before Sept. 11. But America West (an airline that has inconvenienced me or worse enough times recently that I don't need to read the newspapers to have a grudge against them) clearly has a stick up its ass. Did you hear this news yet about them hauling a woman off her flight and accusing her of being a security risk because she made a wisecrack about hoping the pilots weren't drunk? My friend Mark is simply fuming, saying he hopes she "sues their wings off." I'd love to hear Jerry Sienfeld's comment.

This looks almost as exciting as The Hulk. I notice that BatmanvsSuperman.com is already registered. I wonder if Warner Bros. knows that.

I'm still getting the hang of this blogging thing, particularly where it intersects with real life. I just spent a whole evening feeling like I was making apologies for my uncontrollable blogging jones.

As advertised, I attended Arthur Phillips's reading of his new novel Prague at Barnes & Noble tonight, along with many other former Budapest expats. Despite my earlier reservations, I'm a third of the way through the novel by now, and, while I am infatuated perhaps less than some rave reviewers, I'm begrudgingly engaged. I also caught Phillips's interview this afternoon on WYNC's Leonard Lopate show, where he proved himself to be humble, witty and charming, a performance he repeated at tonight's reading.

So I figured I'd give him his proppers and lay off at least until I finished reading the book. After tonight's well-attended reading, there was a long line for book signatures, so I hung back with a group of friends debating whether to bother getting him to sign mine. As things were winding down and we were deciding on a restaurant, a lovely young woman came up to me and said, "Arthur, the author, would like to meet you. I'm his wife, and he asked me to tell you to come speak with him before you go."

"Uh oh," I said, as soon as she left. Of course, I was right. He had Googled his name and found my earlier rant about his book. (Jeez, that was just a few days ago; don't search engines take months to update their databases anymore?) For a guy who set out to write a book about irony (as he explained to Lopate on the radio), he seemed to take the Bruner Blog a bit seriously. (It was satisfying to note, however, that at the same time I'm reading him, he's reading me ;-)

Paraphrasing, our conversation went something like this (bearing in mind I wasn't taking notes, but since I graduated with a degree in creative writing, my "creative license" is actually framed on the wall):

Hi. Your wife said you wanted to see me.

Oh yes, hello.

I take it you saw my little write up on my blog?

Yes, I did.

How did you discover it, out of curiosity?

Typical vainglorious writer, I searched for my name. I didn't expect to find hate mail.

You realize I was just joking, of course? "Sour grapes," and all?

You made fun of my hair.

[Dude, men over 30 with frosted hair. It's just not really done, State-side.]

I was kidding. [Glancing at my copy of his book open on the table] It's "Rick."

I know. [That famous Phillips irony. Despite this, he signed it "Ric." I don't know whether the ironic nod is to me or to him in this case.]

I'm actually enjoying the book. :-)

I'm glad. You know that the editor of BudapesToday is not you, and BudapesToday is not Budapest Week?

Yes. Thanks. And congratulations again on all your success.

To his credit, he was smiling through all this. What I still don't understand is how he recognized me. True, I have a photo on the blog page, but I'm wearing a hat and rubber teeth and was 19 at the time. I think it would be hard to pick me out of a book-signing crowd based on that alone. Maybe it was the New York Bloggers T-shirt I was wearing. Or perhaps, as I suspect, a friend (whose initials might be S.S.) gave me up when she got her book signed. Whatever. Rude shock, though, to have meatspace and blogosphere collide unexpectedly like that.

The rest of the evening was spent over a feast at the Jewish deli across the street explaining to incredulous new friends what the hell blogs are. This has become my least favorite conversation ever since acquiring this strange new addiction. "Who on earth has time for that? Don't these people have any work to do?" Well, no, not really. Heard about the recession? Lots of smart people have more time on their hands these days...

That and having to retell the whole S. debacle. Plus Nick threatening to post to his blog a photo my wife put up on her Yahoo! Photos page of me at a party engaged in activity that let's just say it might be better that my clients not witness. Where the hell does all this crazy blogging lead, I ask you?!

Final note: shame on Daniel Mendelsohn for revealing so much of the plot of Prague in his New Yorker review. I mean, I didn't need to know that Emily was, well, you know. Hadn't gotten to that part yet. Thanks a lot.

Paraphrasing from Letterman's monologue tonight: "So President Bush was on Wall Street today giving a big speech on cracking down on accounting fraud. Wait a minute. Accounting fraud? Isn't that how he got elected?"

"Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week. A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life... The report, based on scientific data from across the world, reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades."

Story: UK Guardian

Little reminder: tomorrow (i.e., Wednesday) night at 7:30pm all fellow former Budapest expats are encouraged to drop by the 81st & Broadway branch of Barnes & Noble to hear Arthur Philips reading excerpts from his novel Prague, which is set in Budapest in the early '90s.

Turns out we're going to have to refrain from pelting him with vegetables and epithets. We have identified a second degree of separation from him that establishes his legitimacy. Ernest Beck (who promises his blog is coming soon) writes:

Before we start heckling: some late breaking news-- seems this guy is indeed legit. This by way of Doug Rediker--you might remember him--who called today (he's in NY) to say he was good buddies with Phillips in BP, they hung out together, etc. Seems he went to BP at first to work for Marc Holzman, then just stayed around, and did stuff like playing sax at the Piaf. Btw, Peter Magyar (the lawyer) married Phillips' sister.

Still think we should all turn out en masse. And Doug will probably be there, too.

Oops! He did it again. In President Bush's press conference today defending himself and Corporate America against accusations of funky accounting practices, I distinctly heard him twice use the word "malfeance," which doesn't exist. Obviously, he meant "malfeasance." I find it interesting that on the NYTimes.com transcript of the press conference, they correct his usage to "malfeasance" without any editorial comment on the correction, while the WhiteHouse.gov transcript of the press conference uses the erroneous spelling "malfeance" without any "[sic]" or other editorial note. I wonder if anyone there knows the difference. I guess the better question, though, is why the Times feels the need to gloss over the president's mistakes?

The WhiteHouse site also provides a video link where you can hear it for yourself (though it's about three quarters of the way through the 35-minute conference).

My good friend Travis Shook has been helping me over the last several months with some java database projects (see his programming resume) on my ExecutiveSummary.com site (see the Vendor Universe section). Travis and his wife Veronica Nunn are also very talented professional jazz musicians. He plays piano and she sings, and both do gigs around NY and beyond. In exchange for Travis's expert programming help, I'm returning the favor with some online and offline marketing assistance, including of Veronica's excellent new solo album, "American Lullaby" -- hear sample tracks and more at VeronicaNunn.com.

As a result of that help, I've been looking at lots of jazz-related sites in recent months (hardly a sacrafice; I'm also a big fan of the genre). So, I figured as long as I'm doing all this online jazz research, I'd do web surfers a favor and create a jazz links section on my site. I think you'll find it extensive but discriminating. I welcome feedback about it and plan to keep it up to date.

Without further ado, dedicated to Travis and Veronica, click here for Rick's Jazz Links.

Great piece in the New York Times Magazine yesterday (the cover story) by Gary Taubes titled "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" challenging the National Institute of Health's dietary dogma since the late '70s that fat is bad and that most of our diet should be made up of carbs. Think of the famous nutrition pyramid (put out, oddly, by the Agricultural Department), which recommends that our diet should be based foremost on 6-11 servings per day of pasta, bread, rice and cereal. There are many who now argue that pyramid provides is terrible advice, responsible in large part for America's current obesity epidemic, which coincides with the same period since N.I.H. made that philosophy the official government recommended food policy.

This is a topic around which I am embarrassed to admit I have a fair degree of passion, ever since I read the book the The Zone, by Barry Sears, about five years ago. Although I never followed the diet quite to the letter, it had a big impact on me and I have made adjustments in my diet ever since to limit my intake of starchy carbs and eat more protein and "good fats" (e.g., olive oil, nuts, fish, etc., while still avoiding animal and dairy fats). The Zone diet is also known as the "40-30-30" diet, in that it recommends that 40% of all calories come from "good carbs" (i.e., green veggies and fruit) and 30% each from protein and "good fats." By comparison, the N.I.H. dietary recommendations suggest we get 70% of calories from carbs and only 15% each from fat and protein.

The basic argument of The Zone is that "bad carbs" -- mostly the starchy or sugary stuff we love, like processed wheat products (including bread and pasta), rice, potatoes, sweets and soft drinks (including fruit juice) -- are the real enemy, not fats, as we've been told for 30 years. The argument as to why that should be the case is complex, but at a high level it has to do with how carbs are broken down in the blood into sugar to fuel the brain and how insulin kicks in to convert that sugar to fat. Too much carbs, and carbs that convert too quickly to into sugar in the blood (therein the distinction between good and bad carbs), and we over-activate insulin and thus create fat from blood sugar. We never properly burn that fat off because we're always converting more sugar to fat with every high-carb meal.

All of that food science and more is explained in detail in the article. The really interesting thing about the article, though, is its examination of the controversy surrounding the N.I.H. on this whole question. The article explains that the whole "dietary fat raises cholesterol levels and gives you heart disease" theory was put forth in the '50s by Ancel Keys, but there has been virtually no scientific proof since that time that the theory is correct. Regardless of scant scientific evidence, politicians, including then Senator George McGovern, started pushing for government intervention in the nation's dietary habits in the late '70s, and in 1984, the N.I.H. officially recommended Americans should eat less fat. Quoting from the article:

In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however...concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administration then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same.

That leap of faith, upon which today's whole "anti-fat" movement seems to be based, had its critics even at the time, as the article explains:

Phil Handler, then president of the National Academy of Sciences, testified to Congress...in 1980. "What right," Handler asked, "has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?"

But such critics were ignored and the N.I.H. high-carb, low-fat dietary recommendations have been the official Big Brother position ever since, which has coincided with an average 60-pound-per-person annual increase in the amount of grain Americans consume, and 30-pound-per-person increase in high-fructose corn syrup in the last 25 years. And with the dramatic increase in obesity in that same period. During that time, the N.I.H. has refused to fund virtually any dietary study that challenges the wisdom of the high-carb diet. That may be changing, however, as the article reports from lots of top medical researchers that are beginning to question the fat/carb gospel.

The conclusion a reader comes to, unfortunately, is that medical science really seems no closer than ever to understanding how nutrition affects our health, so they might as well eat the buttered steak and enjoy it because they may not get a straight answer out of the medical community on whether it's good or bad for them in this lifetime. In fact, it seems to me that the field of nutrition is about as scientific and credible as accounting and politics. The N.I.H. certainly comes off in this investigation as being more concerned with covering its own ass on past policies than in leading scientific investigations into these questions, more critical to the health of the nation now than it was 30 years ago when we were in better health concerning weight and heart disease.

My friend Peter Maass wrote an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times, which I thought I'd point out, about the debate over whether journalists should be compelled to give evidence in international criminal trials. Peter himself has been served with such a subpoena from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The FBI's refusal to call the LA airport shooting incident "terrorism," where an Egyptian man killed two people at El Al's ticket counter before a security guard shot and killed him, simply raises a question no one seems to want to give a straight answer to: what is our definition of "terrorism"? As far as I am aware, our government doesn't really seem to have a precise legal definition of this. (If someone can correct me on that, please do.)

The FBI is considering calling it a "hate crime," which I guess makes sense to me, if it was just one guy going bonkers. (Interesting to note that his birthday was July 4. Premeditation seems likely, either way, though, as he sent his wife and son back to Egypt last week.) I suppose some form of conspiracy with others might be the determining factor that it was terrorism? Where is that written down?

NYTimes.com coverage
CNN.com coverage

I'm delighted to hear that Firesign Theater has begun (today, July 4) a series of month installments on All Things Considered, NPR. For anyone who doesn't know this comedy troupe, they are basically America's unsung answer to Monty Python, about the most twisted, surreal, hysterical brand of humor this side of the Atlantic. They did a few movies that are hard to track down (I've seen "Nick Danger in the Case of the Missing Yolk"), but it's almost too surreal and low budget to truly enjoy. But their albums are genius. The were a bunch of alternative radio guys in 1970, so their humor has always worked best in audio. I'd particularly recommend "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" and "(All Hail Marx & Lennon) How Can You Be in Two Places at Once (When You're Not Anywhere At All)."

To here the bit that ran on NPR today, click here.

I see they have a web site (FiresignTheather.com) with amusing doo-dads, and a page that describes their history and has links to all their material. I also see that while they have remained fairly obscure, they have continued to put out new records, their latest (from the fall of 1999) presciently titled "Boom-dot-Bust" (a good six months before the April 2000 NASDAQ collapse).

My old friend Steve Carslon offers his $0.02 on the great Budapest v. Prague debate. Like Rob McLean, living in Prague, Carlson remains a resident of the East, in Budapest in his case, where he has resided for the past 14 years, so his perspective is notable.

Many thanks to Peter Maass for bringing a group of us last night to see the powerful documentary film "War Photographer," by Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei, a portrait of James Nachtwey, an amazing photo journalist who for the last 25 years has focused his lens almost strictly on war zones, extreme poverty, starvation and other forms of human suffering.

This film is powerful on many levels. First is the amazing "artistry" of Nachtwey's images. Artistry is perhaps not quite the best word, given his subject matter, but he is clearly a brilliant photographer. The film features hundreds of his shots, all of which are mesmerizing. Nachtwey is also a fascinating character personally. The sacrifice he has made throughout his career -- e.g., foregoing most vestiges of a normal life, notably any stable romance (that much more of a shame considering his uncommon good looks) -- is nothing short of inspirational. Zen-like in his self-control and single-minded dedication to documenting injustice at the risk of death on a daily basis, the photographer comes off one of those rare people so driven by a higher idealism that the rest of us can only admire with trembling lower lips. How he has seen what he has seen and yet not become in insufferable cynic, raging alcoholic or intermittent puppy strangler is hard to imagine.

The filmmaking itself, by Frei, is also remarkable. First of all, the documentarian followed the photographer on assignments for nearly two years, the video camera unquavering amidst plumes tear gas in Ramallah, swarms of flies at a garbage dump in Jakarta, choking fumes at a sulfur mine in Indonesia, mass graves in Kosovo and more. (For a film so dedicated to the visual image, it did a great job conveying putrid smells.)

One of the most innovative techniques the filmmaker employed was a micro-video camera mounted on Nachtwey's still camera, affording us a deep-focus view that included in the movie frame the top of Nachtwey's camera with his finger poised on the trigger as well as the view of the photographer's shot. Another similar micro-camera was pointed back at Nachtwey's face as he angled his shots. The result is many dramatic sequences seen from the photographer's perspective as he runs through hectic scenes of gun battles, assaults by rock-throwing Palestinians, grieving Kosovar families and more.

The editing, narration, pacing, musical score and other elements of the film all came together beautifully for an impressive work. Although the film is emotionally draining, there are several moments of levity that help keep it from being a complete downer. In the end, the film is genuinely uplifting, an inspiration that there are still people out there trying their hardest to make a difference in the world. Nachtwey, a man of few words generally, provides some narration near the end of the film that give the greatest insight into the sincerity of his character, explaining that his essential optimism despite all he's seen motivates him to persevere in the hope that showing these horrors to the rest of us, most of whom will never venture anywhere near where he goes, may somehow compel us to act differently in the long run. Very eloquent, I wish I had the transcript.

In NYC, the film has been held over by popular demand at the Film Forum till July 9. Highly recommended. Bring a hanky.

I'm not especially worried about it, but just in case NYC is attacked today, I want to be on record saying "Up yours, Al Qaeda!" in advance.

Very funny Art Spiegelman cover on the current issue of The New Yorker (not!). What struck me about this was that the mushroom cloud looked a bit like the WTC. Is that deliberate, do you suppose? (Jeez, and some people think the Bruner Blog is edgy.)

BTW, for the rest of you outside NY, even if we don't go up in flames tomorrow, we stand a good chance of simply melting. Heat index at the moment is 101 degrees (at 4:30pm), with 210% humidity, or so.

Steve Carlson inadvertently recommends I change the browser bar subtitle of the Bruner Blog from "Rick Bruner's reflections on life" to "Rick Bruner's self-indulgent rants, peeves, trivial obsessions and the like," which I think is an improvement. (See your browser title bar.) Opinions?

He also promises to get back to blogging, which is a good thing.

In an effort to heal the bitter rift I've created between Budapest and Prague expat bloggers, I offer the following idea from a reader:

The guy who wrote "Prague" is reading from his tome at Barnes & Noble on July 10, 7:30pm (81st/Broadway branch); I suggest we show up en masse to see if anyone remembers this guy.

Thank you Mayor Bloomberg, you may just get me to quit at last. Just bought my first pack of cigarettes since the mayor's new sin tax took effect on Monday: paid $7.25 a pack, $2.92 of it taxes. That's almost as expensive as a movie ticket, for crying out loud. Just about makes me want to move back to California, where at least it's just plain illegal to smoke, or Hungary, where it's illegal not to. I can tell you, it's going to get to get mighty tough to bum cigarettes from friendly strangers anymore when you're talking 36 cents per butt.

Man am I a lousy speller. I even recently upgraded to Blogger Pro, which has a spell checker, but obviously never use it. Prague resident Rob McLean read my rant on Prague and replied, pointing out (among other things) that I misspelled the ethnic identity of his hosts. I subsequently ran a spell Czech on the whole thing, and it was ugly. Ouch. That's embarrassing. Apologies to those of you who know how to read out there.

McLean, meanwhile, makes a case for busking on the Charles Bridge and other issues on why I should lighten up about Prague. I'll let him speak for himself: click here.

Matt Welch responds to my earlier rant about the novel "Prague" and my comparisons between Prague and Budapest, giving the Prague point of view. I concede to the fact that Matt has a better perspective on the question, having lived for years in both cities:

Ha ha! Of course, you realize, I used to busk on the Charles Bridge... [No, I did not. Oh well...]

Funny stuff; I always noticed & enjoyed the consternation/mild jealousy among the Budapest crowd about all the Prague hype. I would take issue with your melt-into-the-culture observation, though -- a far higher percentage of American expats I knew learned pretty good Czech than Hungarian (easier language, after all), more of them inter-married, and far less fathered surprise children. It was my experience that Americans in Prague were far more likely to live on a similar economic level as the Czechs (at Prognosis, we basically made the Czech minimum wage; and I knew a lot of English teachers who made less). This explains, in part, why you saw so many young hippie bums doing unseemly things like busking -- they needed the money! The Budapest expat scene always seemed more apartheid-like... But then, that was my personal experience, too -- poor as shit & speaking some of the language in Prague & Bratislava, rich as Midas and living like a colonialist in B-town. And since Prague was so damned small (and only longtime residents would know how to deal with downtown w/out running into tourists), you couldn't help but notice the fucking Americans everywhere.

I'm a bit behind in my reportage, but Round Two of ClicktoAddTitle.com (the 7-round East vs. West PowerPoint presentation design competition I mentioned a month ago) has already taken place and been judged.

The theme of Round 2: "The Horror (Pretty Inside: PowerPoint's Inner Beauty)" By at resounding public vote, the round went t