Interesting Reading

I’ve been proving it for years, and the New York Daily News has finally decided to back me up: Nerds Make Better Lovers.

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The Colbinator has comments on AC/DC’s Back in Black (which I wrote about in this entry) here and here.

In his first entry on the topic, Colby states that no AC/DC album has

any “chick flick” parts the way Led Zep albums do. My DJing and AC/DC

accordioning experiences suggest otherwise. I must agree with his

friend Jason, who says the the chick flick part of Back in Black is in fact the booty anthem You Shook Me All Night Long. Think of it this way, Colby: the chick flick parts of Zep albums are analogous to Gilmore Girls; the chick flick parts of AC/DC albums are analogous to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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I wish to throw my support behind my friend Suw Charman’s campaign for publicly-accessible power points.

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I also wish to throw my support behind my friend Ben Hammersley’s call for a new Tatler [1.2MB, PDF].

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[via BoingBoing] Downing Street Memo site. Read and learn!

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Remember that site I pointed out

— the one that lists the ten most

harmful books of the past 200 years? The Flea has compiled what he

considers to be the ten most helpful. Interestingly enough, Charles

Darwin’s The Origin of Species appears on both lists.

Worth repeating is the original list’s critique of Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money:

The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business

cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued,

the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to

spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the

U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an

$8-trillion dollar debt.

To which The Flea adroitly responds:

Though one could also say, “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and

the U.S. government now administers the largest economy and highest

standards of living in human history” or, following the non sequitur to

its logical conclusion, “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and I

like lappi cheese”. It seems to me a more germane observation is the

irony of how those governments adopting policies from the Nazi or

Communist representatives on the reading list would share Human Events’

disapproval for the work of Sigmund Freud, Betty Friedan or Alfred

Kinsey. But that is the tricky thing about arguments advocating greater

individual responsibility, choice or liberty: we are always going to be

stuck with the problem of other people disagreeing with us or, heaven

forbid, having fun while we sit at home typing grumpy articles and not

getting laid.

That last sentence reminds me of just about everyone with posting privileges over at The Shotgun.

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Linux is a great and wonderful server operating system. However, it

leaves much to be desired as a desktop OS, even to guys who eat, sleep

and breathe computers like me. I’m not alone, either. I’ve seen lots of

alpha geeks of all stripes — programmers, systems architects,

sysadmins and people who generally tweak computers for money and/or fun

— simply switch to an operating system which combines Unixy goodness,

a great UI and the “it just works” mantra: Mac OS X.

The latest

convert is Jamie Zawinski, Netscape/Mozilla developer turned club

owner, who’s just had enough of Linux’ primitve support for sound cards. There’s much carping going on in the comments to his entry as well as in Slashdot from the Linux zealot crowd, to whom I say: turn off the computer, get out of the basement, and go help Mom do the dishes.

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[via MetaFilter] This sounds even worse (in the so-bad-it’s good way) than the Star Wars Holiday Special: Legends of the Superheroes, a live-action show featuring your favourite DC Comics heroes and villains. And Ed McMahon. Kareeeeeeem!

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Jeffrey Rowland is funny because he’s true: