Generic Viagra Good Or Bad

Thursday, November 17, 2005 10:32 am by Jason

How to Tell When a Relationship Is Over

This 90-second video has been making the rounds on the intertron for a while now, but I came across it again today, and it’s still funny, so you should watch it.

Thursday, November 17, 2005 9:51 am by Jason

Skipping the Birds and the Bees and Getting Right to the Good Stuff

Not sure how long this article will be available to non-subscribers (remember that if you’re at a university your school library probably has an online subscription), but the New York Times just featured an interesting article about how some parents are teaching their toddlers about sex before they can learn it on the street (or in line at the supermarket, looking at magazine covers). The image to the right is from Robbie H. Harris’s upcoming book, It’s Not the Stork, a title I kind of can’t help but enjoy. I think it’s interesting that the artist chose to illustrate the couple looking a little plump or round-faced, presumably because that makes them look more innocent and jolly rather than, you know, “sexy.” (I love that blanket, by the way.)

I have sort of mixed feelings about this strategy, though my first inclination would be to suspect it’s probably not a terrible idea. I mean, logically speaking, if you’re going to teach kids about their heads, shoulders, knees, and toes, why not throw in a vagina while you’re at it? It’s pretty much common knowledge that creating a taboo around something can make it seem more mysterious and appealing at some point, and I think it’s stupid that kids grow up thinking that their genitals are scary and bad.

On the other hand, very young children are simply not socially or psychologically equivalent to adults, and I can see some concerns with teaching stuff they really might not be ready for. A decent body of research suggests, for example, that kids below a certain age (6 or 8, I think. ) are simply psychologically incapable of recognizing persuasive intent in others. I don’t know about anything that specifically says kids will be ruined by teaching them about sex at a young age, but if you wait to give the details of what those genitals are used for until after they’re 6 or 8, you can at least expect them to understand that people try to persuade one another to have sex when it’s not always a good idea, that ads use sex to try to persuade people to buy stuff they don’t need, and so on.

Whatever the case, though, 13 seems kind of late to be holding out on “The Talk.” After all, by that age, most kids know how to use Google. Once they learn the truth about Santa, some kids will want to get to the bottom of the adult conspiracy to keep them ignorant.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005 9:47 am by Jason

Hop From Grace

Tuesday, November 15, 2005 12:07 pm by Dan

The Space Between Your Ears

As it’s November, that can only mean one thing: turkey-induced comas are sweeping America. That, or it’s National Novel Writing Month. I had planned on writing last year, but I ended up being so busy that I never got my book off the ground. This year, though, I have nothing to distract me. And I mean nothing. Having concluded the Irish Vision Quest, I’ve set off on the lesser known Washington D.C. Bumming Around Adventure. I while away my days in coffee shops outfitted with free Wi-Fi connections, drinking huge cups of tea and eating pastries and the like. Difficult decisions for the day include: what should I have for lunch? Should I take the upholstered chair in the corner, or the table against the wall? Occasionally I consider more pressing issues: is that person at the next table likely to engage me in conversation? If I’ve spent several days in the same place, should I think about paying rent? Regardless, most of the time I’ve spent in cafes has actually been taken up by writing. Which is good, I suppose, as that’s what I’ve been claiming this whole rigmarole is about.

Writing is tough, it turns out. It doesn’t help that my memory is seemingly deterioriating. In writing a novel, there are lots of details to keep straight, especially in one where you are creating an entirely different world. It’s no surprise that Tycho over at PA has started up a Wiki to keep track of continuity for the novellas he’s been asked to write. To that end, I’ve downloaded an app called Voodoo Pad, which is sort of a Wiki in application form. The app has been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it does exactly what I need it to do: let me create bunches of pages of information on different characters, places, events, and the like, and link them together using hypertext, without requiring any writing of HTML tags.

The downside to this is that I’ve realized I could easily spend as much time writing background information for the novel as I could writing the novel itself. The tricky part of inventing your own world is that nobody has written the reference manual for it yet, so if you need to look up how many kids a certain character has, or when a particular event took place, the only authoritative source is your head. Some might think: “Great! No way you can get it wrong then!” Unless of course you have already established somewhere how many kids the character has, and suddenly it changes from 1 to 5 in the course of a novel, when only two weeks have elapsed. Some might try to cover it up with a clever rejiggering of gestational periods in this alternate world, but most of us would probably have to just go and fix one of the instances, all the while hoping and praying that it doesn’t sent continuity shockwaves throughout your world.

Sure, that’s what editing is for, but even in editing you may forget minor details if the two mentions are chapters, or even books apart. Even if you’re omnipotent as far as the world of your book goes, it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s happened, is “currently” happening, or is going to happen.

Things like this make me think it must be awfully stressful to be God. Which brings me back to my original point: how does Nicole Ritchie make it look so easy? I mean, writing a novel about the adopted daughter of a famous music star who cruises parties, does extensive amounts of drugs, and has a falling oout with her best friend, with whom she starred on a reality TV show? You can’t make that up, people.

Sunday, November 13, 2005 11:02 pm by Jason

Spam of the Day: Medication Infographics

I swear, this was the only thing in the whole message. I guess clicking on the highly technical diagram above would have transported me to a web site where I could have obtained a few “tabs” of my own. I can’t see myself getting past step 2 as pictured, though, as I don’t own a wristwatch.

Saturday, November 12, 2005 10:15 am by Jason

How Marketing Could Be Making the World Better

Bonus link from that same site because it’s too darn funny not to link to: Sometimes, screwing up your ad kind of does make the world better, at least for those of us who like to point and laugh.

Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:16 pm by Jason

Politics in Action

In July, the Pennsylvania legislature took advantage of a loophole in order to raise its own pay while everyone was still in office. Legislators are only supposed to be able to approve pay raises that would take effect after the next set of elections, so that they have some incentive to actually, you know, make themselves useful in the meantime. They were able to get around it by claiming “unvouchered expenses.” This got my goat, as it were, but I figured most people would never hear about it, and those that did hear would probably feel too helpless or apathetic to do anything about it.

For the first time in state history, a judge is getting fired because 51% of voters pressed “No” when asked on the ballot whether he should keep his job. The going theory now is that people are mad that he didn’t do anything to stop the pay raise. I’m not even clear on whether he had the power to stop the pay raise at all. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

“I believe the public was so angry with the legislature they became blinded,” said Nigro, who narrowly lost his seat, with 51 percent voting no. “They said, ‘We don’t care. Get rid of him.’ “

LaGrotta, the Democrat from Lawrence County, agreed.

“I see a very good Supreme Court justice who was targeted by people who were trying to prove a point. And that’s sad,” he said. “Even the mafia has a code of ethics where innocents are not targeted.”

I think it’s a bad idea to look like you know a lot about the mafia in a state that is really pissed off about government corruption. But maybe that’s just me.

On a more serious note, though, I’m a little puzzled why he is getting booted and the other supreme court judge up for review isn’t (though it was pretty close for her, too). I can’t help but wonder if it has anything to do with the last name “Nigro,” considering that I’ve read that the judge was pretty well supported in Philadelphia but not in the areas of Pennsylvania sometimes derisively referred to as “Pennsyltucky.”

Friday, November 04, 2005 1:15 am by Tony

Doom – The Movie

Doom the Movie is awesome, don’t believe the hype.

For optimal effect see in an empty theatre.

Thursday, November 03, 2005 10:03 am by Jason

More Robot Hijinx

Some graphic novelist made a deadpan web site about a 19th century robot. (My favorite part: Boilerplate with Teddy and the Rough Riders.)

The funny part, though, is when the graphic novelist threatens a novelist with legal action for copyright infringement. Cabin Boy, Handsome Boy Modeling School graduate, and now novelist Chris Elliott put the robot in his work of humorous pseudo-historical fiction, thinking it was a 19th-century spoof rather than a modern-day spoof. Elliott remarks, “I think it’s really kind of funny. The whole thing about this book is that I did almost no research for it, and the one little bit of research I did I got wrong.” In the end, they were able to settle it amicably.

It just goes to show you: research is bad. Oh, and also, being on a web site is not the same thing as being public domain. Also, comic book creators may not be as practiced at the art of deception as politicians, but their lies are significantly funnier.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005 9:35 am by Jason

The Matrix, Terminator, and Cybertron: I Knew It!

I don’t know what I could say about this book that isn’t already made plain by this interesting article and the image above (stolen from said interesting article, which also appears in some form on the book’s cover).

As far as I’m concerned, though, this lends a lot of credence to my “alternate theory” as to why the transformers are in the shape of humanoid vehicles, despite having come from a distant planet.

Update: I need to update this post to make a correction. Apparently we are not in as much trouble from the killer robot pictured above as we thought. Whatever methods we devise to resist in the robot revolt, their own inner workings may be their undoing.

Doombot – 2005 – November, Generic Viagra Good Or Bad.