Fane Henderson / Stuff

Here is a bunch of random stuff. Enjoy.
You can help me out by submitting something cool.

All these worries disappear if one makes use of a lifeless human body for this purpose. The sight of a corpse evokes solemnity and reflection, and this is the most appropriate mood for a child under such circumstances. By a natural association of ideas, his memory of the scene will also produce a solemn frame of mind in the future.

J. Oest

Source:	An essay by Morris Berman entitled "The Body and History" from Ways of Knowing: The Reality Club 3 edited by John Brockman. It's from a German child-rearing manual published in 1787. It's discussing how to teach children what the genitals of the opposite sex look like (pictures would be too provocative).

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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to.

Franz Kafka

Source:	An essay by Mark Jay Mirsky entitled "Fiction—Its Uses and Misuses" from Ways of Knowing: The Reality Club 3 edited by John Brockman.

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Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.

Milan Kundera

Source:	An essay by Mark Jay Mirsky entitled "Fiction—Its Uses and Misuses" from Ways of Knowing: The Reality Club 3 edited by John Brockman.

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Chrome
2008-09-04 09:18:30

I haven't had much of chance to try out Google's new browser (Chrome), but I did finally see its tribute to U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (type "about:internets" in the address bar):

I actually wasn't as impressed with that Easter egg as everyone else on the Internet was, mainly because it actually runs the tube-ish screensaver in your browser window. . . which doesn't work over Remote Desktop (at least not from XP to Tiger). It's a little funny, I'll admit, but it was anti-climatic by the time I finally saw it.

I am much more amused by how emotional the browser is:

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The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.

William Jennings Bryan

Source:	WaPo op-ed by George F. Will

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Netflix, Part 2

September 2, 2008 - Here's a handy step-by-step guide to winning the Netflix Prize. Read on . . . if you dare!

Spam
2008-08-28 09:44:41

Most of the spam I get is pretty lame. In an effort to get past standard spam filters, most spammers use horrible misspellings (the idea is that spam filters tend not to block emails containing lots of words they've never seen before).

Another strategy is cribbing actual news headlines from a news website and using those as the subject line for completely unrelated spam.

But my favorite strategy is fake news headlines. Obviously I knew that was spam when I saw it, but I had to read it anyway. (In fact, it was caught by my spam filter, but I went to the trouble of undeleting it). I couldn't resist.

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Netflix, Part 1

August 28, 2008 - Here's a handy step-by-step guide to winning the Netflix Prize. Read on . . . if you dare!

Seinfeld as Microsoft spokesman
2008-08-26 08:25:19

I love The Onion's take on Jerry Seinfeld becoming a spokesperson for Microsoft, especially "Ben Jankowsky's" comment.

For those of you who don't know, John Hodgman plays PC in Apple's Mac-PC commercials.

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Fark approvals
2008-08-25 15:48:37

My recent Fark approvals.

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