Some people are sick in the head, some just foolish

“Times are tough, man, just getting tougher–cover me!” Those words from Springsteen sure apply to us today, between the terrorism, the economy, and sick people sending real and fake anthrax though the mail. The people I really resent, though, are the ones trying to take advantage of people’s fear to make a quick buck. Fortunately, the government can sometimes help with this, and in fact, the FTC is doing just that, as Reuters reports in U.S. Warns 40 Web Sites on Bogus Bioterror Products. The people running these companies are sick in the head, I think. But okay people, scared or not, oregano oil and zinc mineral water will not prevent or cure anthrax!

While the operators of the websites discussed here have clearly passed the line into unlawful actions, I am also getting more than a little fed up by companies that are adding patriotic graphics and words to their advertising. What bin Laden and Al Queda did was bad enough but please, let’s not use it to make a few bucks, okay? Keep America rolling, says one of the big car companies, but what they’re truly doing by offering zero percent financing, according to analysts, is pulling in future sales and settting themselves up for weaker spring and summer sales. One market researcher suggested that as many as 400,000 sales were being pulled into October and November from the first half of 2002; the car companies like the incentives so much, though, that they’ve extended them into January. These executives are just foolish.

Today’s movie: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Of course, there was no waiting a week or two to see this one. Warner Brothers has The Official Harry Potter Website, with online games and such, and IMDB (which is part of Amazon.com, actually) has the more informative site. Good movie, lots of great effects, and the three kids who star as Harry, Ron, and Hermoine do a super job carrying this film. Certainly worth seeing and you can see the trailer online if you want.

Director Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone, Bicentennial Man) and screenwriter Steve Kloves (Wonder Boys, The Fabulous Baker Boys–how did he get this assignment?) put a solid story up on the screen, you can see where the $125 million was gloriously spent. They had a tough time choosing which 20% of the novel to include in the movie and did a mostly good job–although novelist J.K. Rowling was noted as having substantial input– but I think we needed more on the Harry/Draco Malfoy animosity and the same on Professor Snape (Alan Rickman does a smart job in the role). Along with Rickman, Columbus will be providing significant numbers of older English actors with employment as this and the other six Potter movies are made, including John Cleese, John Hurt, Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Griffiths, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, and Richard Bremmer.

Steven throws down the gauntlet!

Steven DenBeste, a self-styled “a demented starship captain who sometimes dreams that he lives in San Diego,” has written some of the best commentary I’ve seen on the war against terrorism. He and I are very much in agreement on a key point, that neither of us have seen “a single convincing argument against this war, because they all had the same fundamental flaw: none of them would work in the real world. None of them would actually solve the problem we face.” Now he has challenged three weblogging anti-war writers to a debate:

Resolved: The United States is correct to be fighting this war and should not stop doing so.

Rebecca Blood was given the original challenge but she has declined; I am waiting to see which others will debate Steven via weblog, each posting arguments and counterarguments to their own sites. Anyone can drop out at any point and the judgement of winner and loser is up to us, the reading public. I am sure this will be a very interesting series to follow.

One of the South’s most divine foods

Nakada, who is probably a little too fond of these delights for his own good, points us to the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts appreciation page. I didn’t think it was possible but Taquitos Senior Editor Stewart Deck has compiled too much information on this simple snack food vendor. But looking through the site I realized that there are more people with too much time to spend on snack foods. I mean, a recipe for Keith’s peanut butter and Cocoa Puffs sandwich on toast? Oh god!

Today’s movie: The One

Considering how anxious I was to see it, I’m as surprised as anyone that it took me two weeks to get to it. But Jet and his buddies at the Multi-Verse Authorities were worth the wait, this flick is far superior to the last two movies I saw. Others (friends, critics) weren’t too impressed but I sure was. Li plays the hero and the villain this time out and he really creates two separate, very different characters–this is the first I’ve ever seen him play a baddie and he’s a nasty boy! Writing/producing/directing team James Wong and Glen Morgan found a way to take cool concept right out of today’s physics journals (the multiverse) and make a tense action movie out of it. Okay, they went a little too far with the central conceit that drives the bad Li but you have to give them a little slack. This is 90 minutes that keeps moving and moving until a titanic confrontation and a conclusion that leaves both Li’s happy, sort of.

Wong and Morgan came together as a team writing for the X-Files in its early years, went out on their own with the underrated and sorely missed Space: Above and Beyond, worked again with X-Files creator Chris Carter on the darkly serious TV series Millenium, made their feature film debut with last year’s Final Destination.

Carla Guigino plays her character in two of the universes, also as different as the two versions of Li, with few pitfalls. Delroy Lindo shows up here with hair! Morgan and Wong bring some of their regulars in here to good effect, especially James Morrison and Tucker Smallwood who played starring roles on Space: A&B.

Zaphod: the anti-Dave

Dave Winer is an interesting guy with a weblog who is also Chairman and CEO of Userland Software, Inc. As with many people who write things worth reading, though, sometimes he crosses a line that pisses people off. As Dave has been writing for years he has pissed certain people off, or at least amused them no end, so that some of them are now documenting Dave’s follies (the folks behind WinerLog, led by the mysterious Zaphod, choose to remain anonymous for some reason). Even some big industry names have had it up to here with him. I have to admit, I admire Dave most of the time but he can piss me off as well; one telling point about Dave’s attitude towards this topic is that even though he proclaims openness as majorly important, he shut down the discussion group associated with his weblog a long time ago. OTOH, WinerLog is hosted on EditThisPage.com, which is owned and operated by Userland Software, Inc.

Update: The swell folks at WinerLog give BillSaysThis a little love, thanks guys. Only a few hours since their link to this article went live and a dozen hits already!

Advertising (by me) for the laughs

A new trend in web advertising, after so many other forms–banners, popups, pounders–have clearly failed, is being called micro advertising. Pyra Labs, the company behind Blogger (the service that I use to publish this weblog), today debuted the Pyrads service and I figured for $10 for 3,333 views I’d try it out; I expect I was one of the first since I have RAD Order ID #104 (whoohoo!). You can see the results in this screen capture. Yes, I had to use up one of the views to get the shot but since the ads rotate, it was the only way I could see it myself. In the first few hours (no more than four, since that’s how long ago I bought the add), I had 11 hits (out of 276 impressions delivered) from it, so that’s cool. If you’re reading this page after clicking through on the ad, please drop me an email and let me know what you think.

About the ad itself. The title is limited to 20 characters and the text to 50, so I wrote: title – BillSaysThis is fun! and text – Wandering comments on the real and online worlds

Okay, not going to overthrow Madison Ave. anytime soon, still a cheap thrill.

Update: In response to an email from Alex Rose (thanks!), I checked the referrer logs to see that after about 23 hours Blogger/Pyrad delivered 992 impressions of my ad and 29 people clicked through to see this site. Three percent may not sound like much but it’s much higher than the average banner ad gets. And I still get over 2300 more impressions delivered!

Pompeii: New erotic murals

Reuters is reporting on a set of recently unearthed erotic murals at the ancient Roman playground of Pompeii. The 16 works were found in a unisex public bath nicknamed the Pleasure Spa. I bet they were having some pleasure, judging from the murals. Pompeii, which was huge, much larger than I expected, is the city buried in lava when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD but incredibly well-preserved and the subject of ongoing archeological efforts. Oh well, Dad and I got there a little too soon. Is another trip called for?

Doc gets funny

Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and an often insightful weblog made me break out in laughter todday with this line:

“Follow plainly unwanted advertising to the limits of wanton self-justification and you arrive at a Fart of Darkness like no other.” (Emphasis mine)

Gotta love this stuff. He was discussing the self-serving, not to mention self-deluding, logic of some folks at advertising research firm Dynamic Logic.

Tonight’s recipe: Chicken Rosalita

A friend was over for dinner tonight and I took the opportunity to experiment with chicken and my cast iron skillet. I made up a dish, kind of like Chicken Parmagianna without the final baking step. The chicken came out really nice, so I thought I’d share the recipe. The indicated ingredients are enough for two+ portions depending on the size of the chicken breasts and how hungry you are!

Ingredients:

  • 3 boneless chicken breasts

  • 6 cloves of garlic

  • 2 tomatoes

  • 4 oz. white mushrooms (really to taste)

  • 2 eggs

  • 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs

  • 4 tbsp canola oil

  • 2 tbsp oregano

  • 2 tbsp parsley

  • 4 oz. Jarlesburg cheese (or mozzarella, swiss, etc)

  • 1 tsp. Arrow root (can substitute corn starch)

    Preparation:

  • Cut tomatoes into large slices

  • Cut cheese into thin slices

  • Cur garlic into thin slices

  • Cut mushrooms into thin slices

  • Pound chicken breasts flat (always cover the chicken with plastic!)

  • Put breasts into egg wash and then coat with breadcrumbs

    Cooking:

    1. Heat skillet, then add oil

    2. Add garlic

    3. Add chicken breasts

    4. Once breasts begin to brown, add tomatoes

    5. A little salt and pepper

    6. After tomatoes begin to soften (about 5 minutes), flip breasts

    7. Add mushrooms

    8. Top breasts with cheese slices

    9. After cheese softens, add oregano and parsley

    10. Stir thoroughly and spoon mushrooms, tomato, and liquid over chicken

    11. Stir arrow root into a few ounces of water in a glass, then add mixture around skillet and stir

    12. Let cook another 2-3 minutes and then serve!

    • Dershowitz: Be good because it’s the right thing to do

    (Via garret) If it wasn’t for the interminable length of this “Letter to a Young Lawyer,” Alan Dershowitz’ essay Why Be a Good Person? could be summarized as a parody of the old Wilfred Brimley Quaker Oats commercials. The “superlawyer” spends hundreds of words explaining why behaving in accordance with one’s religious beliefs is at best simple obedience and at worst calculating hypocracy. Fine, I can’t disagree with that too much. But the title of the article says we are supposed to learn why we should be good and in the end, all he says is that being good is the right thing to do. Wow! That’s impressive, isn’t it? Why is it right, though? The best he can do is a variation on the old definition of pornogrpahy: I know it when I see it. This allows for individuals to differ greatly, Alan, so how does your answer stand in light of current events? Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush see good as very different things, don’t they?

    Paying for the Web: Umm, no

    (Via garret) Marshall Brain posits the idea of How “Penny Per Page” Might Work on his Howstuffworks website. He suggests that you, me, and the rest of the websters pay a penny per page view to finance the web and particularly the content like Google and ESPN that we all love so much.

    Worried about sites that would simply take advantage by popping open huge numbers of new windows? Don’t be: “The billing mechanism should track for and eliminate charges for that, as well as for pages that auto-refresh themselves, error and non-existant pages, pages arrived at by pressing the back button, duplicate pages and so on.”

    Just a few other concerns, which the article doesn’t address:

  • Doesn’t this violate U.S. antitrust regulations?

  • Wasn’t this already proposed by the people behind micropayment systems like CyberCash, which have since failed miserably?

  • While $20 per month (his suggestion for monthly cap on the viewing fee) might not be much for an American, what about people in nations like China, India, and so on where $20 is a huge portion of their monthly income?

    Marshall, we all want to find ways to ensure that interesting, useful, and meaningful content continues to be available to all, so keep those ideas coming. In the meantime, stick to the really cool articles with which HowStuffWorks excels.

    • Tonight’s movie: Heist

    This must be the year for aging stars to make not quite good enough crime flicks. In August we got DeNiro and The Score, with Marlon Brando impersonating a beached whale. Now, in a better movie with really strange dialog, is Gene Hackman in Heist. Writer-director David Mamet makes an interesting but not $9 a ticket interesting no honor among thieves movie that has Danny Devito somehow in a position to take down Hackman and Delroy Lindo, as if that’s believable. Mamet previously gave us gems like Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag the Dog, and The Postman Always Rings Twice but his last few films have been such stinkers as State and Main (although Alec Baldwin was totally believable as a jackass in that) and The Edge (Baldwin again).

    Tivo: Bill’s new toy

    You’d think that after 20 years of having a VCR, it would be enough. But no, not really, and anyway new toys are so cool, so I got myself a TiVo yesterday. So after some mild but annoying problems setting up the machine–hello! have we heard of usability testing?–I’ve got it working and will never have to miss another episode of Enterprise again! Woohoo!

    Update: Alright! I used Tivo to record three shows while I was out seeing Heist and it worked just fine. Although apparently UltimateTV has a very useful button on its remote that mine doesn’t–skip ahead 30 seconds. Oh well.

    Cascadia: For real or another web prank?

    Surfing around this morning, I came to The Republic of Cascadia website. What? You’ve never heard of this nation? Okay, it isn’t recognized by the United Nations just yet and the governments in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa would be quite upset, one thinks. Apparently, some people believe that the bioregion composed of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and a small piece of Alaska (not the part with all the oil) ought to be a separate and independent country. On the other hand, the same person who publishes this website also believes that black helicopters are living beings.

    Reason to love the web, part {next}

    Evan points us to Archiving Early America, a website that provides a “unique array of original newspapers, maps and writings come to life on your screen just as they appeared to our forebears more than 200 years ago.” The site, an excellent resource for students, has short historical films, a large number of important documents, discussion forums, and hosts the online version of The Early America Review (a scholarly journal). Although there is no About Us page to give full credits, this nicely designed site appears to be the work of archivist D.E. Vitale; Joshua R. Greenberg wrote a good academic review of the site for the Public History Resource Center.

    Rainy, nasty day or opportunity for romance?

    It’s been a nasty, ugly rainy day here in Mountain View today and although there was some let up mid-morning this could cause serious flooding problems being that it’s so early in the season I doubt many folks are adequately prepared. According to Weathernews (via Yahoo!), rain should end late tonight, then a couple of days holding at partly cloudy before good prospect of rain again through the weekend. On the other hand if you and your significant other are home from work then it’s a great time to cuddle up and make some of those rainy day fantasies come true!

    Using Capitalism to fight the causes of terrorism

    One commonly held view is that a good deal of terrorism or at least anti-American feelings which run rampant through Asia and Africa (and even parts of Europe) is that America is rich and abuses its wealth by consuming more than a fair share of resources (this is not to discount other reasons, including cultural differences regarding culture and sexuality). Over the years America, alone or in combination with allies, has launched many programs to combat Third World poverty but few have succeeded due to ineptitude, corruption, and simple bad luck. Erick Schonfeld, writing in Business 2.0, discusses the ideas of C.K. Prahalad to use corporate self-interest to succeed where past efforts have failed. Prahalad points to successful ventures by Citibank and Unilever to develop win-win situations in India that allow “the disenfranchised who want to join the market economy” to do so. The cited programs not only develop the disenfranchised as customers on a consumer level but permit them to develop new businesses (or make significant improvements to existing ones) that bring them squarely into the capitalist camp. Prahalad wrote The Multinational Mission (back in 1987) to explore this concept in depth; he is also chairman of San Diego-based software house Praja.