Free TMBG foam hands

We also got these great free They Might Be Giants foam hands. They looked really cool when we all waved and were rocking to the music. As you can see the crowd was great and we all loved the band.

I haven't been a fan for all 20 years because I am not quite old enough. I have been a fan long enough that when I first heard them I was more like thin John, but over the years I have become a little more like thick John.

The concert was great and worth the long anticipation. They are such a great band in concert because they have always stuck with their sparse instrumentation but great sounding songs, and this translates great to the concert venues. Go to TMBG.com for more info.

Why don't some of you tell me your favorite They Might Be Giants song.

TMBG sings my favorite song.

My favorite song is "Particle Man". Not just because it is a great song with an accordian solo but also because I quoted one line in my thesis - "Is he a dot or is he speck, when he's underwater does he get wet, or does the water get him instead." - which, if you read my thesis, essentially captures the theme. Here is the required picture of John playing accordian.

They Might Be Giants at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia

I am so excited because we just got back from their 20th Anniversary concert in Philadelphia. They started with "Istanbul is Constantanople". We were so close we could almost touch John and John.

Just how rich are you?

One of my recurring themes has been the fact that we in the Western world have it good. We are the wealthiest people as a whole in human history. We have to make critical decisions about what to do with these advantages. This is one of the themes of The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook. Our society is suffering from a transition from searching for the things we need, to searching for meaning in what we do. Needs can be met eventually, and the book contends that most of us in the western world have these needs met. Searching for meaning can be a never ending inexhaustible task, and therein lies some of the uneasiness.

I ran across this interesting calculator, the Global Rich List, on TreeHugger. Go to it and see where you land, it will be in the top few percent. Those of us in the United States fall among the richest people on the planet, which puts us among the richest people in the entire history of the human species. Appreciate where you are and what you have. Now what are we going to do about it. Tell me if I am just being a pollyanna here or is this a singular unique opportunity in all of history and we must do something with it now.

Moon Day - If they can put a man on the moon why can't they...

A phrase that has struck fear into the hearts of designers and engineers everywhere - "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they ..." - fill in your favorite seemingly simple task or device. I think that the men putting men on the moon had a few more resources than the rest of us.

Today is the 36th anniversary of man landing on the moon. July 20th, 1969 is one of those dates dividing everything before from everything after. My parents tell me that I watched the first steps on television, though I was only 6 months old. It seems like a long time ago, and we haven't fulfilled the future promised. Where are the cities in space and on the moon? When will man walk on Mars. Many a great novel has been written about this longing. Stephen Baxter has revisited this longing with his books Titan, Voyage and Moonseed. I daresay the Space Age yet continues when the daily activities of the satellites we put up to take our phone calls, take pictures from above and track our locations are commonplace, though still amazing.

On the other hand, back then one might not have predicted the Information Age with the Internet and cell phones and the continuing upward progress of mankind and its gadgets. We may yet get our flying cars and orbital cities, but they will have bluetooth and wi-fi and artificial intelligence.

I agree with the others that this day should be an international holiday. Look up tonight and remember that we touched that moon up there.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." -Neil Armstrong

Ribbon magnets with empty sentiment

I have blogged about this before, and even taken some action. But I wanted to point out this item that I saw on StayFree Daily.


This ribbon is great in that it captures the unthinking way in which people plaster their cars with these things. A great quote from the creator, Deirdre Doyle, in the article states:

"...If you spell it out: placing mysteriously produced, cheap pieces of vinyl and magnets in an impermanent fashion onto your non-fuel-efficient vehicle to show support for a war in a land that fuels that vehicle ... the irony seems plain as day."

I can't say much more than that. The article states says you can get a template of the magnet at her website. Direct link to the template here.

Simpsons take on Pre-millenial dispensationalism with "Left Below"

I must have missed this episode when it was first on in May but the repeat Simpsons on Sunday night was a hilarious send up of the Left Behind series and The Rapture. The episode was called "Thank God its Doomsday" and has Homer predicting the date of the end of the world with funny results.

Homer and the kids end up seeing a movie called "Left Below", a clear parody of the movie "Left Behind" based on the book of the same name. This and some more signs Homer sees on his way home inspires him to calculate the date of The Rapture. Homer gets it wrong and then he gets it right. We all know the intellectual level that the creators of the Simpsons attribute to Homer, yet the writers credit Homer with the correct calculation of the date, which is the certainly a scathing comment on calculating the date of the Rapture and those that do it.

Many a new religious sect has been formed when some leader attempted to calculate the date of the End of the World and the Second Coming, but got it wrong, recalculated and still got it wrong. Even more offshoots of the original breakaway group form from the crisis caused by date of the Rapture coming and go with nary a last trumpet to be heard. Jehovah's Witnesses have calculated it several times. Seventh Day Adventists arose from another failed attempt.

I am not going to present an even handed detailed description of pre-millenial dispensationalism and tribulationalism (a great phrase to write and say) and a breakdown of the Left Behind series. The reason I am interested in this stuff is that one of my hobbies is crazy conspiracy theories. The whole Left Behind phenomena falls squarely onto that bookshelf in my library (though I do not and never will own any of the Left Behind series, I own the debunker's books).

I have been reading the Slacktivist, who has been carefully analyzing the Left Behind book and the whole phenomena and is well worth exploring for a former insiders view. ReligiousTolerance.org presents a non-biased review of all of the data, has histories and origins of Christian groups that I have never even heard of. More fun is the Rapture Index which is kind of a speedometer showing the rate at which the rapture is approaching. We have been moving at a steady clip since the Gulf War in 1990 with an all time high shortly after 9/11 of 182, this week we are at 150. The creator has taken great pains to do many calculations based on world events and esoteric theories, which pretty much describes the whole movement in a nutshell.

I think when your movement is a parody on the Simpsons that you have officially jumped the shark. Welcome to syndication, Left Behinders, I will always think of Homer's Rapture calculation when I think of you.

I am finally a poseur gamer!

I broke through my resistance with the help of another and actually went out and purchased an X-box this weekend past! I am so excited.

Allow me to explain. I have been following the gadget blogs and the gamer community for a while yet I did not own any game system. I could comment on the reviews for all of these games that I had yet to play. I am not a hacker, I am not a cyberpunk, yet I am drawn to the allure of technology. The best you could say is that I am a poseur. As an Honest Hypocrite I am comfortable with admitting that. My one foothold in the early adopter bin is that I have owned a Treo 600 for a year and that my current peer group and associates (except for one) are blissfully unaware of all of the cool technology passing them by. Remember all the folks I told you about that still don't know what a blog is.

So I am officially a poseur gamer. My current favorite videogame is Lego Star Wars. The player follows the theme of the movies but all of the characters and sets are made of Legos, which convincingly blow apart into Lego pieces if you shoot at them. I am pretty sure that this is a game for five year olds, yet I find it a little difficult to play because I am getting old, or at least slightly less adaptable. For example, in one level you get to pilot Annikin's Podracer, but you must complete each section of the race in a fixed amount of time and you can't run into rocks and things. For the life of me, I have had to play it over and over, memorizing a little bit each time and coaxing my misadapted reflexes to the new technology. It generously puts you back at the same location each time to do this. I beat it last night, but I am sure some toddler somewhere thinks the game is easy and boring.

One amusing part of setting up the game is that my fiance was very impressed with just setting the time on the X-box. It has been a long time since either of us have owned a video game system and the advances have been meteoric. She wants to know why the time setting interface on her computer can't be as cool as on the X-box. So I ask you out there on the internets, why can't it?

Wrigley Field and the Cubs Today!

Guess where I am today.

I finally made it to the right baseball park in Chicago. I am, this instant, watching the Cubs play the Pittsburgh Pirates at Wrigley Field. I am conflicted because I used to go to school in Pittsburgh, but today I have my Cubs hat on and I will root, root, root for the home team.

I would tell you that the score is nothing all and it is the bottom of the 1st with the Cubs up to bat, but that would be transmitting a description of the game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball and that could get us all in trouble.

We are rich compared to the past

Having finished Accelerando I have been thinking a lot lately about how wealthy we are compared to previous generations. This is a consistent theme in the Progress paradox and I want to point out how clear demonstrations of this effect are available all around you.

Case in point is the all in one video game boxes. These are items that contain all (maybe 7) of the video games that were on the Ataris of the early eighties in one single box. The exciting thing is that the box only costs ~$40 but contains what was once hundreds of dollars worth of games. Not only that, $40 in 2005 is worth less than $40 20 years ago so inflation boosts the discrepancy. These days many more kids that couldn't have afforded the games in the eighties can now have all of them.

However, one interesting and piercing point of Accelerando is that the rate of progress makes it so that if a kid today only had the "Atari in a box" video game we would think that they were disadvantaged. The middle and upper class have X-Boxes or PSP's or multiple game systems. Progress is that more people today have a standard of living that is better than 20 years ago, the middle has been lifted not just the top. That is good for everybody. The acceleration of technology though, always ensures that there is a next big thing. In the coming weeks I will continue to point out this acceleration.

I have been patiently waiting for the future all of my life. I have started to notice that some of it has started to arrive.