gnooks.com
Ah, gnooks.com. The place on the internet for intelligent discussions about fine literature. Like this discussion about Joseph Heller, the author of "Catch 22"
Ah, gnooks.com. The place on the internet for intelligent discussions about fine literature. Like this discussion about Joseph Heller, the author of "Catch 22"
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 7:19 AM 0 comments
400 Freeware programs. Some of these I have blogged before. It's missing at least one good program Ardour a freeware multitrack audio recording program. Now if they just organized this list a little it might actually be useful.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 10:47 AM 0 comments
OK, so everyone knows their state flower and bird ..... right? Well even if you don't, you must know your state beverage. Here's the exec summary from some mildly trustable website....
18 States claim milk as their state beverage (LAME!). NY claimed it first in 1981, so the rest of you states need to find something else.
2 States claim branded soft drinks. Kool-Aid for Nebraska and Moxie for Maine. MOXIE? Are you serious? Have you ever drank that stuff? Holy crap, this one needs to be overturned by the state supreme court. But apparently Maine has a real "sweet" spot for the stuff.
South Carolina claims "South Carolina Grown Tea". Screw the Chinese.
And the winner... the only state that has the balls to claim an alcoholic beverage... Alabama with "Conecuh Ridge Alabama Fine Whiskey". I wonder what Clyde May paid for that?
And if state beverages don't do it for you, maybe you want to look up your official state dirt. NY's is Honeoye.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 10:33 AM 2 comments
Hey, I'm a big fan of the Swiss Army Knife but I think they are starting to go crazy in Switzerland. Apparently normal metal tools jammed into a knife aren't cutting it anymore (har dee har har). So first, Victorinox comes out with the Swiss Memory knife. Basically a normal knife with a usb memory stick jammed in it. These usb memory thingies are showing up everywhere and I have no idea why, since the whole point of the internet was to stop people from having to put files on a piece of plastic to carry around in your pocket. That's another rant entirely. So with the success of the ipod and the apparent ease of putting an mp3 player in anything, Victorinox decided to stick one in a knife. I don't think they sell them yet, but they are on the way. I stumbled across this on the Victorinox website, when I was thinking of getting a new knife to replace my old one of almost 30 years. The old one has had 30 years of wear and still works but it could probably use a sharpening and it's likely that getting the thing sharpened will cost more than a new knife. Welcome to the disposable society. Anyway back to my 30 year old knife. I don't imagine that any mp3 player is going to last me for the next 30 years since electronic gadgets seem to go obsolete in just 3 years. Also couple with the fact that putting a knife on your mp3 player basically makes it impossible for you to use your mp3 player on a plane. I think the ipod has every company going nuts trying to cash in on a piece of the digital music gold rush. I thought decent, 100 year old companies like this were immune to fads but I guess I'm wrong, and yes, I think mp3 players are a fad. Very soon an mp3 player/recorder/radio is just going to be another feature in something else that you already have, and stand-alone mp3 players are going to seem pretty silly. How many of you buy a stand-alone fax machine and a printer and a scanner? Doesn't that sound silly? When I'm camping and I reach for my knife, mp3 player isn't on the top of my list of survival tools. Sorry Victorinox, cute idea but dumb.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 7:35 PM 0 comments
You're damn right! Pitman Still Rules!! Pitman! Pitman!
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 9:29 AM 0 comments
Another practice of drawing women's faces. This isn't based on anyone or any photograph it's just a drawing from nothing. I'm not that great at women's faces, and most of them end up looking effeminate men, so I'm practicing. The holy grail of drawing a woman's face is to draw one that is totally bald. The hair is to much of a visual cue and distracts from real female facial features. This one looked pretty good bald so I added hair. I also got sick of naming files like practice_female_portrait_2, so I named this one Linda. The first name that popped into my head.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 2:49 PM 0 comments
Labels: drawings
FYI, here's the procedure in the minimum number of steps ....
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 11:55 AM 0 comments
I believe it is a Nissan car commercial that currently poses the question. "What if we took a trip and only made left hand turns?" Quite an interesting philosophical question but I believe the answer might be that we'd just keep going around in circles.
Maybe it's just me.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 8:12 PM 0 comments
Michael McGowan, an albino who heads the organization, The National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, said "The Da Vinci Code" will be the 68th movie since 1960 to feature an evil albino. He said the group aims to use the movie's popularity to raise awareness about the realities of albinism.
I'm waiting for "Otis Day and the Knights" to release a statement that they in no way related to Opus Dei and the Knights Templar. Oh, you make me want to shout.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 7:54 AM 0 comments
From cnn.com comes this story.
Synopsis: Religious right groups want to block Merk from getting approval on a vaccine that is "100 percent efficacy in preventing the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, which causes 70 percent of cervical cancer cases".
Why? Because "Gardasil has also shown 100 percent efficacy in preventing the sexually-transmitted viruses that cause 90 percent of vaginal and vulvar lesions in young women, including genital warts...".
And that is a problem because? "Girls as young as 11 could be approved to use the vaccine. But the idea of children that young being inoculated against a sexually transmitted disease is upsetting to many parents and parental groups."
Aren't the kids of religious fanatics supposed to be abstaining from sex anyway?
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 12:58 PM 0 comments
This is a test post from Flickr to test changing of templates, but you might as well take a look at the drawing anyway.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 8:17 PM 0 comments
In many countries in the world you eat what is available. Local cuisine is usually based on what people can get. Seems simple right? Well what if you live in a country where everything is available and plentiful? In the US, you're living in it. As a kid I even remember there being seasonal fruits. Now it doesn't seem like there is such a thing. Anyway, so now you're in this society of plenty and your choice of food is practically unlimited. What do you do? You invent some new restriction on your food to stabilize your gastronomical keel. Behold the The Frutarian! It's the latest random set of food rules to keep your eating choices simple. (Veg-Aquarians, you have been unseated!)
What are the benefits? (you may ask)
"To be a fruitarian is to be free from all forms of cooked food addiction…"
I have to tell you I'm a confessed "cooked food" addict. I can't tell you how many times I've craved a hot meal. Glad I got into the cooked food addicts anonymous program.
"The proper application of fruitarian dietary and lifestyle is calculated to allow the human to produce healthy offspring, live more than 100 years of age...."
They're quoting someone or some institute or something that they don't cite, that did some sort of calculation that they don't specify. But it sure sounds scientific. It must be true.
Oh and it also cures every disease known to mankind including cancer, AIDS, Hepatites C and gangrene.
Unfortunately they don't name all the benefits of only eating fruit. Namely, vitamin deficiency and diarrhea.
Add this to the list of other random sets of food rules to help you organize your life.
My personal random food rule is not to eat any food that is masquerading as another food. Yeah, I'm looking at you tofu hotdog!
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 10:54 AM 0 comments
Another drawing I did for the 700 Hoboes project. Doc Aquatic is one of the cleanest hoboes you'll ever meet. Though that's not saying much.
Update: Found some pictures of real hoboes for reference.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 10:23 PM 0 comments
Labels: drawings
Time for an appropriate Jonathan Coulton song First of May.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 7:38 AM 0 comments
Over the weekend, (8 months after the fact) Bruce Springsteen releases his findings on Hurricane Kartina, calling the FEMA response to the hurricane "criminal ineptitude". Next week it is expected that he will reveal that there may have been some intelligence failures by the government prior to 9/11. (This is a CNN top story)
By the way, Bruce is looking alot like "The Edge" recently.
Posted by Evan Rappaport at 7:15 AM 0 comments