What happens when Bob Thompson, a writer who grew up in a house without a television and lives a TV-free life to this day, decides to find out what he's been missing, with his namesake the Professor of Television as Virgil to his Dante?

[...] all in all, I was having a pretty good time. So I decided to keep going and watch "Friends," which was the very first show my girls mentioned when I asked what TV their sixth- and seventh-grade pals talked about.

It turned out to be about a dorky college professor having an affair with a beautiful young student, ho ho ho, who groped him in his office, hee hee hee, and then bought herself a teeny-weeny bikini for spring break, heh heh heh, which made the dorky professor jealous, especially after one of his gal pals informed him that "spring break is doing frat guys," hah hah hah …

Aiee! I didn't run screaming from the room, but the impulse was there.

In fairness, Thompson also had a lot of more positive experiences as he encountered everything from The Sopranos to The Bachelor.

As you'd expect of an article from the Washington Post there's a considerable emphasis on American TV history, but the meat of the article is Thompson's reactions to the shows and his thoughts on whether TV qualifies as art. Well worth a read.

[Via PopPolitics]

ProfQuotes: think of it as In Passing for college students.

So, yes, Mother Teresa is a moral freak.

…and it was a circuit just like this that failed in the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. When I worked for GE, I designed quite a few of these. Oh, did you know that GE did the Three Mile Island plant?

[Via User Friendly Link of the Day]

Unfortunate banner ads: number 1,453 in a never-ending series. Look Honey, No Hands!

[Via NTK]

As we await a decision on whether the government will back a London bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, Catherine Bennett has come up with 20 reasons Why London should go for gold:

1 It would finally put Britain on the map. As Ken Livingstone, perhaps the most ardent campaigner for the games, has suggested, it's time everyone else discovered the United Kingdom, one of the world's best kept secrets, previously known only to asylum seekers, George Bush and millions of French schoolchildren. "Boosting our country's profile abroad," he says, "would be an essential element of a London bid."

Charlie Stross interviews Cory Doctorow about Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, reputation economies, sociopathic weasels and what he's working on next:

The second book is "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," which is an urban fantasy/magic realist novel about the eldest of ten brothers who are the offspring of a mountain in Northern Ontario and a washing machine. The brothers are as strange as their parents: one is procognitive, three nest like Russian dolls, one is an animated corpse, one is an island, and so on. The animated corpse was actually murdered by the other brothers, but bootstrapped himself back to life and made his way back to the mountain to complain to their parents. Alan, the eldest moved to Toronto and became a successful serial entrepreneur, finally retiring to Kensington Market to write a short story that is to be discovered after his death. While there, he falls in with crusty-punk dumpster-diver community wireless activists who are unwiring all of Toronto with a meshed network built out of junk hardware salvaged from suburban industrial parks. Alan wants to help, but he's distracted by his corpse brother, who is hunting down the remaining brothers one at a time and murdering them, possibly abetted by his neighbor, Kirshna, whose girlfriend, Mimi, has mysterious wings that Krishna saws off once a month, but which keep growing back. It's pretty strange techno-utopian stuff, and very optimistic in tone.

That sounds like a novel I just have to read…

[Via Charlie's Diary]

You may think that you've seen The Two Towers, but until you've seen this subtitled version you really haven't seen The Two Towers.

I do hope that when the official DVD is released they can find room for some Engrish subtitles alongside the English ones.

[Via MetaFilter]

Rachael Oliveck, animal rights activist and vegetarian turned omnivore, seems uncommonly happy to have abandoned vegetarianism after fourteen years.

Neil Gaiman would like to apologise for his presumption in writing American Gods:

Nobody's asked the question I've been dreading, so far, the question I have been hoping that no-one would ask. So I'm going to ask it myself, and try to answer it myself.

And the question is this: How dare you?

Or, in its expanded form,

How dare you, an Englishman, try and write a book about America, about American myths and the American soul? How dare you try and write about what makes America special, as a country, as a nation, as an idea?

And, being English, my immediate impulse is to shrug my shoulders and promise it won't happen again.

[Via Anita's LOL]

The Sith Academy is an utterly wonderful collection of Star Wars fanfic. Where else could you find out what happens when Darth Maul mans the technical support lines at Software Industry Technical Help, Coruscant's #1 technical support service.

"A Sith Lord does not need to see his victims in order to destroy them, my apprentice," hissed Lord Sidious. "You must be able to wreak havoc from a distance."

"I understand, my master."

"Good. Now, find the one who has been on hold the longest."

Staring intently at the blinking operator's board, Maul reached out with the Force. So many anxious people waiting, full of anger and frustration. So many tiny minds, worrying about their insignificant futures. They were all at his mercy.

"This one has been waiting for nearly thirty-five minutes. He has an important meeting tomorrow and can't get his presentation software to work."

"Excellent. How would you deal with him?"

Maul activated the vidphone and purred, "Thank you for calling Software Industry Technical Help, Coruscant's #1 technical support service. Your call is very important to us, and will be answered by the next available operator. If you would like to continue holding, press 1. If you would like to try our automated voice mail system, press 2. If you would like to find out what time the movie starts, press 3. If you would like to leave a message with our answering service, press 42597398. If you would like to dial another number, press 10-10-321. If you would like to be connected with an operator immediately, press Q." Before the befuddled caller could reply, Maul placed him on hold again.

Sidious observed the operator's board. "Well done, my apprentice. He's still holding. You offered him the tiniest sliver of hope that he might get through to a live person. It will be all the sweeter for us when his hopes are crushed." He pronounced "crushed" with such glee that Maul shivered in anticipation.

"Ah, but he is only one man," continued Sidious. "What are the rest of them doing?"

"They're listening to hold music, my master." Maul held up a CD case. The bright pink label identified it as The Best of Ewok Party Music, Volume 2.

There are a lot of stories to choose from, so I'm going to ration myself to a few stories per day or I'll never get anything done online. My favourite story so far: Darth Maul vs Kittens.

[Via dust from a distant sun]

Spider Robinson, who once wrote a short story called Melancholy Elephants about the need to limit copyright terms, has decided to slag off Lawrence Lessig:

[...] I suspect what really got on Prof. Lessig's wick was that a major lobbying force behind the Sono Buoni Act . . . I mean the Sonny Corleone Act . . . I'll have it under control in a minute . . . that one of the biggest supporters of the Sonny Bono Act was none other than Mordor itself: the evil empire men call Disney.

I've never understood exactly what's so vile about Disney. Every time I've ever given them a dollar, I got back a buck and a half of value. If the Sonny Boy Williamson . . . I say, if the Sonny Bono Act hadn't passed, Steamboat Willie (the Mouse himself!) would have slipped into the public domain.

Naturally, the Disney corporation pressured Congress. If it hadn't, today we'd probably be paying half a buck for cut-rate Mickey Mouse gear that isn't worth a dime, and wondering why nothing good ever seems to last.

Granted: As far as I know, precious few of those who are currently major players at Disney are relatives, loved ones, friends, or even associates of Walt himself any more. I wonder how many people getting rich on his genius today ever met the man. And I'll bet they all wear better clothes, drive better cars, and have more aerobic sex than the average Stanford law professor. I'm not disputing that they're scum.

As far as I can tell, Robinson is worried that if he drops dead today his daughter Terri, who is now 28 years old, might find herself in dire financial straits when she's all of 98 years old. This isn't a terribly strong practical argument for what amounts to perpetual copyright. If Spider is anything like the average writer, the trickle of royalties from her father's books is going to be too meagre to live on. Realistically, it's going to be a nice little supplement to whatever income his daughter earns from her own work. If Spider's work is "rediscovered" somewhere down the line and suddenly in great demand Teri will get lots of cash for the publishing rights and be able to invest or spend that cash as she wishes.

Spider closes with a plea that "We creative types are content for our information to be reasonably inexpensive. Whether we ourselves happen to be breathing or not, don't begrudge us that pittance, as long as someone we loved is alive." Presumably one day if Spider's daughter has a kid Spider will love his grandchild too. Should copyright be extended to cover that generation too?

[Via MemeMachineGo!]

Have you ever wondered what William Gibson thought of The Matrix? He liked it, though he thought it was more akin to Dick's work than his own.

I'm now going to lose several million brownie points by admitting that I've never made it to the end of Neuromancer. I've enjoyed some of Gibson's other work, but somehow I just bounce off Neuromancer every time. Perhaps reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash first spoiled me for Gibson.

I know a visit to an art gallery isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it never occurred to me that modern art could be an effective instrument of torture.

[Via burnt toast]

One for the biker in your life: a motorcycle hearse, to transport them to their final resting place in style.

Never let it be said that day of the great English eccentric has passed…

[Via Boing Boing]

Parking Spots is a very, very strange site. Nicely done, to be sure, but definitely a bit odd…

[Via I Love Everything]

I think it's safe to say that Tom is not at all impressed with Trackback:

"How Trackback works in a nutshell: So linky article links to linked article then the linky thing sends a little note to the linked thing saying I'm trying to link to you and the linked thing goes So the fuck what? and the linky thing asks Didn't I do this right? and the linked thing goes No, you don't use the actual URL you use a magic different one that you don't know and can't easily find automatically unless you understand weird magic code and the linky thing goes You're shitting me and the linky thing says No."

I can't say that I'm desperate to enable Trackback links on my site. (But then, once upon a time I wasn't sure that I was all that interested in comments or permalinks, and I'm still not quite convinced by desktop RSS readers. Eventually I'll catch up with the bleeding edge, two years late as usual.)

This collection of Japanese Facemarks (a.k.a. Smileys) is impressive, but I can't help thinking that smileys like ((((((^_^;) – which means "Leave secretly: he moves from left side to right side stealthily" – aren't something I can imagine myself using terribly often.

[Via Jejune.net]

Exploring The Waste Land is a tremendous piece of work. The text of the poem is flanked by frames containing annotations, cross-references and half a dozen other types of supplementary material.

My only qualm about the design of the site is that the colour and typography are fairly garish and don't do much to distinguish between different classes of text, or to make the poem's text stand out as the focus for the page. However, that's fixable without too much work. Give it a bit of a tidy up and it'd be a killer proof-of-concept.

One day all annotation sites will be made this way.

[Via MetaFilter]

At last, the answer to a vital question: Is Windows Ready for the Desktop?

We've heard it year after year after year: "This is the year Windows is for the masses on the desktop." Well, then another version comes out and still "Joe Longkneck" can't use it. I would love to see Windows on the desktop for the newbie. It's just it's going to take some effort.

First off is, "Why?" Well, here's why:

1. It supports not only those common win32 apps, but also those many dos and OS/2 programs now. What other operating system can run OS/2 software? Heck, there's even a few Java VM's for it.

[...]

4. Security. Bill Gates is really trying here. And security is only getting better. Soon, you won't have to worry about your ATM not functioning because of some SQL worm. I want that amount of security on my desktop!

[...]

6. Signed drivers. Let's say there are many drivers for one device, but only one official driver. Now, that official driver may not be the best, but you still should use it so that you can tell the company about it. If it were not for signed drivers, you might use an older or different driver that does not have all the bugs, and then how are you supposed to report the bugs if you're using a good driver? Nobody will know about them and they'll never get updated.

Very good.

[Via Slashdot]

Over in rec.arts.sf.written, Sea Wasp knows what it'll take to rid Usenet of spammers. Sometimes only the harshest measures will do the job.

The Fly UI should definitely win some sort of prize for Best Use of an Icon in a Non-Computer Context. Very clever.