5k CONTEST: The contest is now closed and the winners have been announced. The contest site is up and several developments are currently percolating. Stay tuned.
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TIME'S WINGED CHARIOT IS CONSTANTLY BEATING AWAY IN MY EAR AND I CAN'T MAKE IT STOP!
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 If you are anything like me and you are wondering where all your clothes are, they are still in that suitcase in the hallway which you haven't unpacked since you got back two weeks ago, you lazy idiot. Which would be convenient if they weren't so smelly. Go, launder, repack.
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I'm out of town until Friday and will be more or less unavailable. However, if you are in Richmond, VA (or know something interesting to do there in the evenings) drop me a line: stewart@sylloge.com
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Strange Brew is dead! Long live Strange Brew! (OK, it is not quite dead. Just went back to school or something. Summer's over kids. Move along.)
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I get so off on tangents that I completely forgot the point of bringing up Biology as Ideology yesterday. It is interesting, but it'll have to wait until next week.
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OK, one more.
She says "If the size of your penis is inversely proportional to the size of your cell phone, what does it mean if you don't have a cell phone? Is your penis infinitely large?" "Hmmm," I say, "What happens you don't have a penis? Is your cell phone infinitely large?"
Moral: For women, the whole world could just be your cell phone.
Learn more about dividing by zero, infinity and infinitesimals.
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GETTING A LIFE AGAIN
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Every year, the CBC Radio show Ideas and Masssey College at the University of Toronto broadcast the Massey Lectures on a show called Ideas. (I got hypertext fever.)
Anyway, you can get streaming or downloadable Real Audio of the past lectures (by people like Noam Chomsky, Charles Taylor, Robert Heilbroner, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Doris Lessing and Carlos Fuentes) right . . .
:: here ::
. . . and that is really, really great. So cool. Especially since I've been really frustrated lately about academic work being unavailable online (I'd conjecture that about about 98% of all academic articles are only available in bound journals in libraries, though this is changing).
But the one I recommend the most (
) is:
Richard Lewontin's Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
"Scientists view nature through a lens that has been molded by their social experience. Science, like the Church before it, is a supremely social institution, reflecting and reinforcing the dominant values and views of society at each historical epoch."
Streaming Real Audio | Download .ra File
Trust me, the quoted description does not do it justice. Here's what I recommend: call two or three of your smart friends, get a bottle or two of wine (or whatever you're into), and listen carefully (this is not the kind of thing you can have on in the background while you're working). Pause frequently to discuss and debate. I did this once with a couple of geniuses — being able to pause a lecturer mid-sentence, rewind and discuss the lecture with your interlocutors in smashing good fun (be sure to have good interlocutors).
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 As an aside, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has been a part of my life since I was born. That symbol is familiar to every Canadian and I bet it has some emotional resonance for all of us: from Mr. Dressup and The Friendly Giant to Barbara Frum and As It Happens. CBC audio streams and video streams are available. (An aside to this aside: I am a dual citizen, and I sometimes think of myself as an American, but never with any real conviction.)
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New in the misc_bin:
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I was just about to upload this page when I got an email saying that the 5k site won the CoolSTOP Best of the Cool Award. I can't help but think: you just wait and see how it develops. It'll really be much cooler later on. (I also can't help but think web awards graphics are generally very lame.) Anyway, thank you! Made my middle of the night.
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Funny: This article by Dave Eggers ("And what are the fat cats in Washington doing about this? What indeed. They say they represent us ... but they cannot even protect what we care about most of all: easy access to true love in society.") in a series of essays based on a recent poll of Americans called "The Way we Live Now." (found on the blorg).
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