Today's entry in Dr. Foster's Dictionary comes from the section on slang usage, under "R".
ran-dom [ran-duhm]
adj.
1. occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.
"Since they still rely on fixed inputs for their algorithms, computers remain unable to generate truly random numbers.
2. [slang] irrelevent, disconnected, lost, apropos of nothing:
"Most of the Phi Kappa Alpha guys love Seth MacFarlane's random humor."
3. [slang] distasteful, tacky, or otherwise unaesthetic:
"Jane noted on her MySpace profile that her taste in music was 'really random'. She liked everything from Panic! At the Disco to Ashlee Simpson."
4. [slang] signifying choices made for the wrong reasons (usually because of inebriation and/or low self-esteem):
"Tori was not really looking for a relationship because of her recent success with random hookups."
5. [slang] as a beat, or placeholder, in the hipster patois.
"I was at some random bodega in this random part of Park Slope with these random people trying to find directions to this random gallery opening at random in random."
Friday, September 08, 2006
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Parallelism isn't necessary, and necessary.
My father always used to say "Consistency over Accuracy." This means that if you aren't sure how to, use commas, you're supposed not to, use them the same way. That way, when people realize that you don't know how to, speak English or, make yourself understood, they can filter your idiocies. This is much better than guessing at, how to use commas. Incidentally, this means that once I started listening to crappy Pop Punk/Emo as a teenager, I had to keep listening to it.
I believe in Consistentcy over Accuracy. And so I hate Shuffle. Don't give me snippets, give me the whole album. If they have a good single, goes my reasoning, the rest of the album must be decent, right? Christina Aguilera's video for Ain't No Other Man is good, therefore her new album is on my portable digital music device. Like I said, I'm devoted to this principle. Instead of per-song Shuffle, I use per-album Shuffle. Great.
Except it menas when I'm not in the mood for a song, I'm not in the mood for the next 15 songs. Please oh Please Apple, won't you let me fast forward an *ALBUM* instead of per song?
I know, I know, this is ugly. It would require a new button. You have those 4 buttons arrayed so elegantly around a slide wheel that also controls volume! And 1 in the middle! Beeeeeeeeutiful.
But worthless. I spend my life click-click-clicking past B-side albums purchased in a wake of fanboidom that are best listened ot at night; when demo tapes were meant to be reverently passed around to and listened to in the same hushed tones with which they were produced. Add a new button I can customize. Y'know what? Fuck other people who don't care about this. Add a button that fast-forwards to the next album. It must not be able to do anything else. And it only works if your name is Dan. And if you don't like Indie (the taller/smarter/more handsom/better older sibling of Pop Punk/Emo) and press it accidentally, it electrocutes you. Then throws you in a pool of Stingrays to be Irwin-ed.
Please Apple, give up your fanatical devotion to Metal/Lucite aesthetics and Turtleneck/Jean wardrobes and give me this ability. I will pay $100 for it.
Signed,
A Concerned Customer
P.S. Alternatively, make it quick again to fast forward without the lag as you spin up your disk to find the album art for this song that WAS THE SAME ALBUM ART AS THE LAST 8 SONGS. I have a hint for how you could speed up this embarrassingly linear access pattern. I can't just come out and say it, but it starts with a p, ends with an h, and has a refetc in the middle.
I believe in Consistentcy over Accuracy. And so I hate Shuffle. Don't give me snippets, give me the whole album. If they have a good single, goes my reasoning, the rest of the album must be decent, right? Christina Aguilera's video for Ain't No Other Man is good, therefore her new album is on my portable digital music device. Like I said, I'm devoted to this principle. Instead of per-song Shuffle, I use per-album Shuffle. Great.
Except it menas when I'm not in the mood for a song, I'm not in the mood for the next 15 songs. Please oh Please Apple, won't you let me fast forward an *ALBUM* instead of per song?
I know, I know, this is ugly. It would require a new button. You have those 4 buttons arrayed so elegantly around a slide wheel that also controls volume! And 1 in the middle! Beeeeeeeeutiful.
But worthless. I spend my life click-click-clicking past B-side albums purchased in a wake of fanboidom that are best listened ot at night; when demo tapes were meant to be reverently passed around to and listened to in the same hushed tones with which they were produced. Add a new button I can customize. Y'know what? Fuck other people who don't care about this. Add a button that fast-forwards to the next album. It must not be able to do anything else. And it only works if your name is Dan. And if you don't like Indie (the taller/smarter/more handsom/better older sibling of Pop Punk/Emo) and press it accidentally, it electrocutes you. Then throws you in a pool of Stingrays to be Irwin-ed.
Please Apple, give up your fanatical devotion to Metal/Lucite aesthetics and Turtleneck/Jean wardrobes and give me this ability. I will pay $100 for it.
Signed,
A Concerned Customer
P.S. Alternatively, make it quick again to fast forward without the lag as you spin up your disk to find the album art for this song that WAS THE SAME ALBUM ART AS THE LAST 8 SONGS. I have a hint for how you could speed up this embarrassingly linear access pattern. I can't just come out and say it, but it starts with a p, ends with an h, and has a refetc in the middle.
Facebook's Folly
Warning: Among our small but sophisticated readership there will no doubt be some for whom this post is just so much nonsense. Perhaps these people have the best of it.
What has it been--all of 72 hours since Facebook.com introduced its new Orwell-meets-People Magazine "feed" format? And how long will it be before it's gone, or at least swept under some e-rug? I give it weeks, or less. In a delicious example of the twisted, ultra-reflexive physics of virtual space, the most prominent news(?) items on my facebook feed--and I supppose on many others'--are all about how much the feed sucks. Just a few examples of Facebook groups started or joined by "friends" of mine in the past 48 hours:
FACEBOOK FEED SUCKS
BRING THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK
FACEBOOK MASS EXODUS
STUDENTS AGAINST FACEBOOK NEWS FEED
THE NEW FACEBOOK LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A HYPERACTIVE FIVE-YEAR-OLD
I'm especially fond of this last one, created very early on by my buddy Neil and apropos of precisely nothing.
In any event, the lessons here are as many and varied as they are trivial and trite. For one thing, this display of hyperirony goes to the dubiousity and double-edgedness of the "democratizing of information" brought on by the internet and blogosphere revolutions. It used to be that things like laziness, lack of ambition, poverty, and death-squads kept the mouth-breathing masses from opining at the top of their lungs about whatever was grinding their gears on a given day. But the price of opening your mouth has gone down drastically in terms of dollars, elbow grease, and blood. And even this band of anonymous troglodytes that calls itself the American public can point and click.
Behold the era of the Blog Montaigne, the Message Board Martin Luther and the Forum Oscar Wilde. But 92% of it is still tripe, and there is no democracy of taste.
The other thing--and here I borrow again from Chuck Klosterman's stuff on Snakes on a Plane--is that people don't know what they've got til they've got way too fucking much of it. The secret demographic of Facebook, MySpace and their ilk has always been the Peeping Tom, the voyeur, the stalker in all of us. We worshipped the deus ex machina that told us where our exes had last logged-on; we relished in secret the infidelities implied by Joe's girlfriend's claim to be "single" and interested in "anything [she] can get", and we imposed ourselves upon the ever-abiding trust of 19-year old party girls as we scrolled through their photo albums. All of this under a greasy skin of anonymity, safe from reproach in our dormroom lairs.
Let's get down to brass tacks: Facebook and MySpace are gloryholes for the young bourgeoisie.
always have been, always will be. All the feed amounts to is a sign reading "PLACE GENITALS HERE". It reveals to you nothing that you wouldn't have found out yourself on a lonely enough night. But the danger of gonzo-marketing to people's basest desires is that you remind them just how base those desires are.
Mason Malmuth, a guy who was taking down Hold Em pots when your Friday night game was "Shit in the Diaper", is on to much the same thing when he talks about winning at tables full of terrible players. The worse thing you can do, Malmuth says, is put on too many plays. As long as it seems like you're all just having a little fun with your paycheck, your straightforward, correct play will be rewarded. But start getting cute, check-raising, over-punishing bluffs, pushing your position too hard, and you'll actually bully your "amiable gambler" opponents into playing correctly. You'll remind them that this is a poker game, and that your objective is to take their money, and the result will be that you get less of it. Mutatis Mutandis for the Facebook feed. All it has done is bully its perverted base into virtue.
Oh, and forget the fact that I write these words on these topics using the software of the biggest blogging host in the world--bask in the sheer postmodernity of it, be comforted by the fact that string theory does indeed predict this result, and rest assured that present company is excluded.
Feedback: What has been your favorite Facebook Feed so far? I would have to say that mine is "J.D. Removed Star Trek: TNG from his Favorite TV Shows" (name repressed to protect the innocent)
What has it been--all of 72 hours since Facebook.com introduced its new Orwell-meets-People Magazine "feed" format? And how long will it be before it's gone, or at least swept under some e-rug? I give it weeks, or less. In a delicious example of the twisted, ultra-reflexive physics of virtual space, the most prominent news(?) items on my facebook feed--and I supppose on many others'--are all about how much the feed sucks. Just a few examples of Facebook groups started or joined by "friends" of mine in the past 48 hours:
FACEBOOK FEED SUCKS
BRING THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK
FACEBOOK MASS EXODUS
STUDENTS AGAINST FACEBOOK NEWS FEED
THE NEW FACEBOOK LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A HYPERACTIVE FIVE-YEAR-OLD
I'm especially fond of this last one, created very early on by my buddy Neil and apropos of precisely nothing.
In any event, the lessons here are as many and varied as they are trivial and trite. For one thing, this display of hyperirony goes to the dubiousity and double-edgedness of the "democratizing of information" brought on by the internet and blogosphere revolutions. It used to be that things like laziness, lack of ambition, poverty, and death-squads kept the mouth-breathing masses from opining at the top of their lungs about whatever was grinding their gears on a given day. But the price of opening your mouth has gone down drastically in terms of dollars, elbow grease, and blood. And even this band of anonymous troglodytes that calls itself the American public can point and click.
Behold the era of the Blog Montaigne, the Message Board Martin Luther and the Forum Oscar Wilde. But 92% of it is still tripe, and there is no democracy of taste.
The other thing--and here I borrow again from Chuck Klosterman's stuff on Snakes on a Plane--is that people don't know what they've got til they've got way too fucking much of it. The secret demographic of Facebook, MySpace and their ilk has always been the Peeping Tom, the voyeur, the stalker in all of us. We worshipped the deus ex machina that told us where our exes had last logged-on; we relished in secret the infidelities implied by Joe's girlfriend's claim to be "single" and interested in "anything [she] can get", and we imposed ourselves upon the ever-abiding trust of 19-year old party girls as we scrolled through their photo albums. All of this under a greasy skin of anonymity, safe from reproach in our dormroom lairs.
Let's get down to brass tacks: Facebook and MySpace are gloryholes for the young bourgeoisie.
always have been, always will be. All the feed amounts to is a sign reading "PLACE GENITALS HERE". It reveals to you nothing that you wouldn't have found out yourself on a lonely enough night. But the danger of gonzo-marketing to people's basest desires is that you remind them just how base those desires are.
Mason Malmuth, a guy who was taking down Hold Em pots when your Friday night game was "Shit in the Diaper", is on to much the same thing when he talks about winning at tables full of terrible players. The worse thing you can do, Malmuth says, is put on too many plays. As long as it seems like you're all just having a little fun with your paycheck, your straightforward, correct play will be rewarded. But start getting cute, check-raising, over-punishing bluffs, pushing your position too hard, and you'll actually bully your "amiable gambler" opponents into playing correctly. You'll remind them that this is a poker game, and that your objective is to take their money, and the result will be that you get less of it. Mutatis Mutandis for the Facebook feed. All it has done is bully its perverted base into virtue.
Oh, and forget the fact that I write these words on these topics using the software of the biggest blogging host in the world--bask in the sheer postmodernity of it, be comforted by the fact that string theory does indeed predict this result, and rest assured that present company is excluded.
Feedback: What has been your favorite Facebook Feed so far? I would have to say that mine is "J.D. Removed Star Trek: TNG from his Favorite TV Shows" (name repressed to protect the innocent)
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
An Elegy for Irwin
I'm a philosophy student, so sure, I'll buy that "every death is a tragedy"--even the deaths of minor celebrities. But the news of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's passing hit me a little harder than I expected. A lot of people saw Irwin as novelty act, a slightly crazed and comically earnest punchline to be filed next to William Hung. But would some East Asian Premier weep on national TV at the death of Hung, as the Australian PM did today? I don't think so. Maybe it's because Steve Irwin, as a compelling, entertaining spokesman for conservation, made Al Gore 2006 look like Al Gore 2000.
More likely it's that Steve Irwin's unselfconscious enthusiasm and almost (almost) naive wonderment were a breath of fresh air in a culture too crusty in our cynicism and shadenfreude to ever risk such ingenuousness.
Suffice it to say that the world was a bit more interesting with him in it.
More likely it's that Steve Irwin's unselfconscious enthusiasm and almost (almost) naive wonderment were a breath of fresh air in a culture too crusty in our cynicism and shadenfreude to ever risk such ingenuousness.
Suffice it to say that the world was a bit more interesting with him in it.
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