Random musings of a child progeny
Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past
Update 19/08/08
I think I may have found who may be responsible for Blockbuster going down the tubes. When your CEO is this out-of-touch this you should start worrying. I’m wondering the same thing as John Gruber: How does Jim Keyes still have a job?
Isn’t technology wonderful? I was worried about missing the Champions League final and probably would have had to change my flight had Liverpool beaten Chelsea in the semi but it turns out that I needn’t have worried. WestJet had ESPN available on their seat-back screens so I managed to catch the game at 40,000 feet. Annoyingly we landed 30 minutes ahead of schedule so I missed a large chunk of the second half but I made it through baggage reclaim in plenty time to take up a seat at the bar for extra time and the ensuing penalties.
I have to say that I’m glad Manchester United won. I only actually dislike them now compared with hating Chelsea with a passion and I think that it was somehow a fitting victory 50 years on from the Munich disaster. Bobby Charlton showed so much decorum when Platini tried to give him a winners medal and you have to admire the sportsman in Paul Scholes who went straight to console the opposition.
I had another celebratory pint with the Liverpool supporting barman and then made my way into Vancouver on the Airporter bus trying to spot anything that looked vaguely familiar but a lot has changed in the six years since I last visited the city.
Was it not for Kottke, I would have missed this paper on restaurant sobriquets and subsequently an earlier piece on the Guardian food blog. There are some absolutely hilarious examples in the comments but here are some of my personal favourites:
I’ve not eaten in all of them so I can’t make any comment on the quality of the fare. I’m not sure I could ever order anything from the last in the list for laughing out loud whenever I even just think about it.
“For my birthday I got a humidifier and a dehumidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.”
- Steven Wright
I was out and about in Edinburgh this afternoon to blow away the cobwebs after an epic weekend. It’s fair to say that I wasn’t really paying attention and I just about walked into the huge guys of the French rugby team leaving their hotel on Princes Street on the way to Murrayfield for the 6 Nations match against Scotland. I then saw this item for sale in a shop window and thought I was still not thinking straight.
Of late, in-and-among the pop-culture dross that seems to somehow pass itself off as newsworthy, I’ve noticed a lot of items on the state of the stock markets.
I do understand the basic tenets of commerce. However, the exchange of currency for goods or services rendered is about as far as my understanding of the financial world goes. Take, for example, the €4.9 billion loss made by Societe Generale which has been attributed to just one of their traders, Jerome Kerviel. Where has all that money ended up? At the other end of the spectrum is the $11.6 billion made by Goldman Sachs in 2007 by gambling against everybody else. Michael Lewis sums it up and concludes Goldman Sachs assumed that everyone in the industry (including their own employees) were “a bunch of idiots”.
I am also curious as to why this speculation is given protection by the government. Of course, I’m talking about the £25 billion bailing out of Northern Rock. Alistair Darling is obviously defending his actions but I don’t see why other forms of gambling are not given the same protection. I understand that my pension is affected somehow. Just how different is this to when I lose money in the casino?
In an attempt to find out more about this befuddling area I came across an interview with a hedge fund manager. I think I’ll have to read it again a few times as the only thing that is currently sticking in my mind is an arcane Simpsons reference. For now I’m going to rely on Bird and Fortune to simplify things for me and make me chuckle at the same time.
“Final” in every sense of the word for the nominees and eventual winner of the Darwin Awards 2007 (ironically announced in the same week as 12 school districts in Florida effectively banned the teaching of evolution). For the uninitiated among you, the Darwin Awards are named after Charles Darwin and are given posthumously to those that kill themselves by performing some remarkably idiotic act and therefore advancing mankind by removing themselves from the human gene pool.
Another unwanted awards list is this breakdown of the worst science stories of 2007. This is how the media spreads fear and panic among the non-scientific populous who in turn fan the flames with chain emails. I can forgive Joe Sixtooth for not checking their facts before blindly forwarding these ‘warnings’ but professional journalists should really know better.
The last review of 2007 is far less idiotic and much more creative. Nicholas Felton is a graphic designer in New York city who produces a personal annual report on the facts and figures that constituted his past year. I’m not sure that I’d remember to record everything I do over the course of 365 days.
Something was very familiar about the Love Mattress I saw on BuzzFeed the other week. I knew that I’d seen it somewhere before but as it was still a prototype I couldn’t think where and it certainly wasn’t going to be found on any of my favourite shopping sites.
Eventually I remembered where I’d seen it (or at least seen a possible source of inspiration). I submitted the link to BuzzFeed to let them know about the cuddle mattress in this xkcd comic.
This is a brilliant recent example of why I love Slashdot. You just don’t get this level of humour in the comments on Digg (or any other community-driven aggregator for that matter). Slashdot is also inhabited almost exclusively by nerds and geeks which makes for some fascinatingly educated and insightful discussion. Until the StupidFilter is fully implemented and actually deployed on Digg, YouTube et al. I’m sticking with Slashdot.
Of course keeping on top items of from several important news oriented sites (and entertainment like xkcd and I can has cheezburger) becomes a lot easier with the use of RSS but when relying on these feeds alone you do miss out on the interaction element and fun of the comments.
Scientists have found the key to controlling the human body clock. Suffering from transient insomnia (sporadic bouts of sleeplessness) myself I am hopeful that this will soon develop into new viable treatments.
From the linked BBC article:
“The gene CLOCK and its partner BMAL1 control the body’s internal clock.”
Now, I’m no expert in genetics but I would have thought that a gene called CLOCK would have been one of the first places to look for clues about defective circadian rhythms.
Research into climate change seems to be a shoo-in for funding these days. However that all studying and analysis sounds to be a bit too much like hard work for my liking. I propose to just circumvent this by liberal use of the word “quantum” which nobody really understands but nobody likes to admit to as they are afraid of appearing stupid. I could also introduce the occasional reference to string theory to cement my funding for next year.
Now that it’s finally getting cold in Edinburgh I propose to study the effects of sudden relocation to warmers climes on the human body (specifically mine).