This is the coolest bike
in the world for short trips around town, the Strida.
Folds in seconds, relatively light, rolls when folded,
stores easily, grease-free Kevlar belt (instead of a
chain), able to fit easily on subways and buses. I've
had mine for almost 3 years and love it! Perfect
for NYC. Click here
to visit the site.
I like your idea for the West Wing episode, but I think it might be a
little too far out to depict the whole Internet down, unless it's the
April 1 show. But I think it could be a good vehicle for speculating on
just how vulnerable we have made ourselves to the technological
foundations we more or less take for granted. I mean everything from
basic electricity and water and oil to all the things that have been
built upon this infratstructure, like the food distribution system,
financial system, communications, etc. Just think of all the things you
come in contact with every day that can be traced back to a few basic
infrastructure components. Scary. Think of it. People get pretty
weirded out when the electricity goes off for a few days after a big
storm or an earthquake. But what would happen if the disruption were to
be much more widespread? (I think it's called France!)
A few days ago I posted a survey under the title Existential Survey: How Much Is 'The Pure Life' Worth? probing the question of what a life of sobriety (no booze, caffeine, cigarettes, pot or other fun nauty indulgences) and of austere eating would be worth to you in financial terms. I just noticed that the number of survey respondents has surpassed 100 (106 as of this blogging). That's big skip up from less than 20 last time I checked. I must have gotten a link from someone with a lot of traffic, but I don't track my log files on this site right now, so who knows.
Anyway, to celebrate this milestone, I thought I'd share a summary of the results to date:
Screenshot tally as of this posting. Click here for the latest tally.
What do I make of the results? Clearly, people value vice.
8% of respondents said they already lived the monkish life, tho I provided no mechanism for distinguishing between those whose sobriety was a matter of necessity (health, far-gone addiction) versus a natural inclination towards purity.
27% place a relatively low value on sobriety, based on adding the above staight edges to the additional 19% who would be willing to live an abstenimous life for the lowest annual stipend, $100,000. Perhaps to those of you readers who live in the heartland and work as nurses, teachers, firefighters and other noble professions $100,000 a year sounds like a lot of money. But to me, a post-Internet Boom Manhattanite, $100,000 seems like a decent living wage, but not exactly what I would call great wealth.
Nearly three-quarters placed a high value on sobriety, as the remainder from the above would require at least $500,000 a year in exchange for giving up beer, cigarattes and cake.
44% could go clean for a lot of money. 19% would do it for half a million a year, and another 25% would do it for at least a million (the larger share, 15%, wanting $10 million).
25% of Bruner Blog readers would not straighten out for any price. Fully a quarter of my site visitors would appear to be such hardcore abusers of drugs, fats and sugars that no amount would be enough for them to forego. Interesting.
Bumping the thankless Nick Denton from the top position in my Friends Who Blog linky love section is that of none other than my lovely wife, Adi! Yay! I've been nagging her for months to give it a try. Only catch is, it's in Hungarian, so I can't really understand what the hell she's saying about me to the world. Titled: "Adi a nagyvilágban" (or "Adi in the Big World"). We just set it up 10 minutes ago, so depending on how soon you see this post, she's still working on the color scheme, etc.
What do you bet Nick gives her link on his blogroll just to spite me?
Everybody's favorite Apple Computer stoner spokesperson breaks her long media silence and gives an interview to Brown University's Daily Herald. Details on MarketingFix.
Bruner/Haspel Parties: Thanksgiving and Friday the 13th
There are two memorable dates for you. These invites are for friends only. Weird strangers reading my blog, thanks for visiting, but please don't enter my real world, at least not at either of these parties.
But, for the gang, we decided to have a Thanksgiving potluck for anyone who has nowhere better to go. RSVP ASAP so we have some idea of what we're in for. For Thanksgiving, I'll do a turkey (notice I don't say "we"), you bring a side dish, appetizer or desert, plus booze.
Friday the 13th is a wild holiday dance party, so bring your boogie shoes and a date or two. Plus booze. (Do we notice a theme here? BTW, if you haven't checked it out yet, the votes on the Vice Survey are pretty interesting.)
If I know you and you need directions to our place, drop me a line.
Wow, an icon of my generation in NY, Cana Jeans, is closing (NY Post story | Downtown Express story). My first thought was that it was a victim of the downtown recession post Sept 11, but I see that it's being replaced by a Bloomingdales (excuse me, that's not very SoHo) and that Canal is looking for a new location, perhaps around Union Square (tho, if they're no longer on Canal St., what's up with that name?).
This is more a story for Nick, surprised I beat him to it. NYT reports:
Muslims and Christians armed with daggers and machetes rioted in two Nigerian cities Friday, burning cars and attacking bystanders in a third day of violence over the Miss World pageant. About 100 people have been killed and 500 seriously injured, Red Cross officials said Friday.
Adi notes that the official Miss World site mentions nothing of the riots. Also, on the section of the site titled Eyes of Africa, the only text on the page reads:
During the four week run-up to the Miss World 2002 live event, staged on the seventh of December, news articles and information relating to Nigeria, the host country will be made available in this section of the site.
Oh, what a sad, ironic world we live in. The irony doesn't really help. It only makes it more painful, because you're intelligent enough to see it but too powerless or unmotivated to do anything about it. Here's more irony: most Americans just don't care, because they have no idea where Nigeria is.
Then I bought this book: "Core CSS" by Keith Schengili-Roberts, and life was good again. A much better book, very easy to understand.
So far, I've just scratched the surface of CSS (a very powerful formatting language, a subset of HTML), but already I was able to recode this page so much more elegantly. It shouldn't act all screwed up anymore, if you've had funky experiences with the site framework jumping all over the place in the past. That was due basically to the fact that I'm a lazy hack and the code was so crappy you can't believe it. I got into the habit years ago of coding everything by hand in a text editor (UltraEdit is what I prefer for the PC, though I sorely wish that BBEdit would develop for the PC, as it's a better program, but only for the Mac). When I finally got around to redoing the whole thing in Dreamweaver, turns out there's a reason that program sells so well. My old code was just atrocious (I really can't emphasize that enough, and enjoy doing so).
Anyway, everything's spic and span now, brand spanking new and other cliches with "sp-k-n" sounds in them. Should load much faster and behave it self from now on. Now tomorrow night I need to do the same to ExecutiveSummary.com, the site that actually pays the rent around here.
Was minding my own business this afternoon and my Internet connection went down. Who knows why. Presumably something screwed up at Road Runner, my ISP. (Years ago I came up with he motto "I never met an ISP I didn't dislike," although Road Runner has probably been the best of the lot so far.)
Got me thinking of an episode I'd like to see of the West Wing. Josh comes into his office in the morning and asks Donna if she'd had a reply to her email from so-and-so senator or whatever, and she comments that the Internet is down. He says, "What do you mean the Internet is down?" She says it went down half an hour ago, the techies are looking into it. "They think it's our ISP." "Our ISP?" he says "Who the hell is the White House's ISP?"
Turns out, it's not just the White House, it's everywhere. The Internet is down. The whole thing.
Remember that great Nike commercial (what other kinds of Nike commercials are there?) during the Y2K hysteria showing the guy jogging on January 1, 2000 with stop lights blinking, cash shooting out of ATMs, missles doing curlycues in the background? A whole episode of West Wing like that.
Cyber Terrorism scares me, mainly because it seems we're incredibly vulnerable yet no one really talks about it. I'm only surprised it hasn't happened bad already.
In my case, however, it turned out to be just my ISP (back on half an hour later).
Got this sad little email today. Can anyone help him out?
Hi,
I cued up my West Wing tape to the right spot but forgot to set the
timer on the VCR. So I missed tonight's West Wing. If you have it
recorded by some stroke of luck I will pay dearly to get it from you.
Existential Survey: How Much Is 'The Pure Life' Worth?
I spent the previous weekend down at my friend Mike's new farm. During our many pointless conversations, we came up with an existential question that intrigues me. Imagine there were some ridiculous philanthropic foundation willing to pay you a generous annual living stipend on two conditions:
You had to totally give up all "mood altering substances": alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes, pot, etc. -- whatever floats your boat
You had to eat a strict limited diet of boring, nutritious foods
The ground rules are straight forward. You would be monitored and tested sufficiently that if you tried to cheat on the above two rules, you would get caught. Your food would be prepared for you or closely supervised to assure that it not be the source of any more pleasure than necessary to assure your health. You would be supplied with a cook, who isn't particularly talented in the kitchen beyond nutritional science. You also would not be permitted to substitute the loss of alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs with legal stress-reducing drugs such as a nicotine patch, Valium, Prozac, Zoloft, etc. (unless you are currently so prescribed for prior medical reasons).
You could compensate for these lacks of mortal pleasure with any other material and service indulgences you see fit. You could get all the exercise you want. Your sex life is your own business. You could live where you want and wouldn't need to work, but could if you wanted. In short, you could use the stipend to live otherwise however you like. If, however, you were ever caught having a hamburger, a beer, a cup of coffee or whatever, you'd lose it all. The stipend and all accumulated assets would vanish and you'd be immediately back to your life today.
What is the minimum you would need to make up for those sacrifices of indulgent food and booze, caffeine, etc. in an annual living stipend?
There's nothing funny to say about this, despite a number of obvious Pee Wee jokes. When actor Paul Reubens was caught masturbating in a porno movie theater back in 1991, I thought he was the undeserving victim of an over-zealous vice squad with nothing better to do than hang out in porno theaters. But hearing now that he was allegedly involved in a child porno ring, I'm so bummed. Of all fucking things. I always really liked his acting and was delighted to see some six months ago or so a pilot for an insane game show You Don't Know Jack, where he was the host (never saw it again, tho).
But child porno. There's not much you can say about that. I see he's denying the charges, claiming to be the victim of blackmail. For his sake, I certainly hope he's right. Even if he is, I wonder if he can rescue his career a second time after charges of being a pervert. On the other hand, Michael Jackson is still putting out records...
I should have blogged about this a while ago, but I got distracted. Some four weeks ago or so Elizabeth introduced me to her friends John Hiler and Here I Type. Much fun (and beer) was had by all. At the time, many moments from the evening seemed worth blogging, at least in as much as we laughed our asses off for hours and we are all bloggers, after all.
At this point, however, I remember only a couple hightlights. One was Here I Type's long, hilarious story of a recent disasterous date, but that is probably better left un-blogged, at least by myself. The other, bearing no relationship to the former, is the word "misandry," which Here I Type correctly guessed (based on its Latin (?) roots), in answer to John's question, was the gender opposite of "misogyny" -- that is, "the hatred of men." Why is it, John pondered, that we are all familiar with the word for the hatred of women, but the word for the hatred of men is so obscure. Particularly considering how much more deserving men are of hatred than women, when you come right down to it (my sentiment, not necessarily John's).
How obscure? The word is not in my go-to dictionary, the 1500-odd-page Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) or on Webster.com or in the Oxford American Dictionary. It is, however, in the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as on Dictionary.com. Odd.
Also, John, FYI, my favorite phrase of the night is an available domain: morallowground.com
