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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 31, 2006
What I did on my Memorial Day Weekend, Part Two
... I drank him, Horatio
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 30, 2006
What I did on my Memorial Day Weekend, Part One
Alas, Poor Yorick ...
Daily Blah for... Thursday, May 25, 2006
Future Boy Tackles the Singularity
The latest column is up, pegged to the Singularity Summit. Enjoy, and please send in your suggested business plans.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Meanwhile, in Thailand ...
Daily Blah for... Thursday, May 18, 2006
You Don't Have to Be Scottish ...
Check out this Scottish health site, which purports to offer a service beyond Dorian Gray's worst nightmares: upload a picture of yourself, and the site will show you how you're going to age. At least, in theory. I can't get the thing to work beyond the bit with the green circles for your eyes and mouth. Maybe it doesn't work on Macs -- or maybe the older version of me is too horrific for words.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The Zipfizz Solution
 Time for a confession: I, Chris, have become a Zipfizz addict. We got several hundred tubes of this vitamin powder in the office recently, after a CEO wrote a guest review in the most recent issue explaining how his company basically ran on the stuff; after lunchtime, he said, everyone grabbed a tube of Zipfizz. I can see why. Dilute one in a large water container -- believe me, it has to be a large container -- start sipping, and five minutes later you'll be astoundingly alert, with none of the jitteriness you get from excessive amounts of coffee. Its magic ingredient? Not the guarana seed caffeine, and not so much the taurine (if it was all about taurine, we'd be slamming Red Bulls). No, what really does the job is the 2,500 mg of vitamin B12. That, as I'm sure you can all calculate, is 41,667 percent of your Recommended Daily Amount. Bzzzzz!
What concerns me is our dwindling supply of the stuff. Right now everyone's being very civil, walking up to the art department and casually slipping one or two zipfizzes into their pockets. But it can't be long before civilization breaks down and we start hoarding. Then come the turf wars as we fight for control of supply and distribution. I've already staked out the north side of the office, and if anyone tries to muscle in on my operation, believe me, it's going to get bloody.
We could always buy more, I suppose. But if there's one thing journalists are addicted to more than Zipfizz, it's getting stuff for free.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Why I keep plugging away at science fiction
"Here I am, forty-three years after I wrote my first robot story, and we do have robots ... what's more, they are what I have envisaged them to be in a way -- industrial robots, created by engineers to do specific jobs and with safety features built in. They are to be found in numerous factories ...
Where are these robots coming from? Unimation, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of industrial robots, responsible for one third of all robots installed. The president of the firm is Joseph Engelberger, who founded it in the late 1950's because he was so interested in robots that he decided to make their production his life work.
But how in the world did he become so interested in robots so early in the game? According to his own words, it was in the 1940s, when he was a physics undergraduate at Columbia University, reading the robot stories of his fellow Columbian Isaac Asimov.
I didn't write my robot stories with much in the way of ambition back in those old, old days. All I wanted was to sell them to the magazines in order to earn a few hundred dollars to help pay my college tuition -- and to see my name in print. If I'd been writing in any other field of literature, that's all I would have attained.
But because I was writing science fiction, and only because I was writing science fiction, I -- without knowing it -- was starting a chain of events that is changing the face of the world."
Isaac Asmiov, 1983
Daily Blah for... Sunday, May 14, 2006
Ziggy Really Sang
Saturday night saw what was quite possibly the finest karaoke experience of my life. In fact, I'd hesitate to describe it as karaoke -- a word which, as much as I adore it, has been tainted by the cheese factor. Singing along to a machine, however much you sing your little heart out, is not the most soulful way of making music. Singing along to a live backing band, however ... that's hot.
And that's exactly what you get when the Amazing Embarrassonics come to town. These troopers are a three-piece rock band with a playlist of 500 songs and a perpetual need for a lead singer. You get up on stage, tell them your tune, and they launch right into it. Basically, The Embarrassonics are on a mission to make drunk people look like superstars. They'll play louder if you can't sing well; if you forget the words, the guitar and bass player will come to the microphones and do what looks like pre-planned, synchronized backup vocals; if you loose the plot altogether, they'll end the song with a distracting bang. Call them the music world's answer to the Good Samaritan.
All of which, along with four bottles of Magner's cider, is how I came to treat the crowd at trendy Bernal Heights dive bar El Rio to what had to be the most stunning rendition of Ziggy Stardust they'd heard all evening, possibly even all day. By the time we got to the final "Ziggy played guitar," I wasn't just channeling Bowie. I was channeling the very myth of Ziggy himself. When you're backed up by a live band, let me tell you, the energy is that intense. Thank you, Amazing Embarrassonics!
Daily Blah for... Thursday, May 11, 2006
Future Boy Goes Virtual
As disappointing as the Google press day was -- and by the way, its hefty, healthy lunch improved my mood considerably -- it did help focus my latest Future Boy column on virtual worlds and metaverses. Specifically, how Google Earth is turning into the uber-metaverse.
It's my most successful Future Boy column yet -- nearly 100,000 page views since it was posted this morning, and counting ... which just goes to show what happens when you put "Google" in a headline.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Googleplex Grumbles
Greetings from Google's 2006 press day, the largest event I've yet been to at the Googleplex. As I write, Larry Page is on stage talking about how the company "had to grow." And grow it has. We've got a theater-full of press here, with the walls and tables and chairs plastered in giant cloth curtains bearing the Google logo. The wireless network was down for a good portion of the morning, for which a succession of execs apologized profusely. The company's reputation for snacks is not being upheld well; all I've got sitting in front of me is a tray of prunes, a fistful of almonds and a bottle of warm spring water. And perhaps the most enlightening part of the whole morning was the feelgood video -- you know, doctors and harried parents talking about all the wonderful things Google has done for them recently while a jingly violin and guitar tune plays in the background. In other words, just like every other feelgood video ever produced by a corporation.
Now the speeches are over and there's a scrum of cameras and reporters huddled around the triumverate. Oh, for the days when this was a hundred-person company. Where the hell is my lunch?
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 09, 2006
I am not, repeat not, going to E3
The last couple of weeks have seen a rise in the number of annoying phone calls from flaks. (They've also been two of the busiest weeks I've had since joining Business 2.0, which is, of course, typical). The conversations, however, are mercifully short:
FLAK: Hi, Chris, this is Stephanie BLAH from BLAH Communications ...
ME: Hi. This about E3?
FLAK: Yes, we were wondering if we could set up a booth appointment with BLAH ...
ME: Yeah. Not going.
FLAK (shocked and concerned, as if I'd just announced I wasn't going to sleep for the next seven days): You're not going?
ME: No, my dear, an editor doesn't need to go to conferences. Not even mega-conferences like the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
FLAK (crushed, her entire weltanshaung called into question): Oh. Well, E3 is going to miss you.
What I didn't want to tell them: I was planning to head down for Friday, just to check out the show on its most relaxed day and stick around for Souris' famous "missed my flight" BBQ on Saturday. But the Singularity Summit at Stanford beckons, and alas, I can't be in two places at once. So I will not be attending my seventh E3.
Seventh! Has it really been that long? All those rooftop or warehouse parties, those indifferent but free cocktails, which for some reason I remember as being all cranberry-colored; all those conversations with obsequious game execs and fawning flaks and cynical fellow hacks; the booth babes, the alien suits, the thumping, shuddering miasma of background noise ... it all blurs into something like a single day.
Seven years, though. Suddenly I feel I know what it's like to have been trapped in an abusive relationship. If E3 misses me, well, maybe E3 needs to spend some time thinking about what it did to me.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, May 07, 2006
Why Microsoft Sucks
This video on what would have happened if Microsoft had designed the iPod is, like the best parody, acutely observed. It explains everything that's wrong with the Redmond behemoth, to wit: it's a behemoth. This is an unweildy, vast organization, driven by marketing people and engineers whose instincts are to make everything more complex and overloaded with features. Its image, thanks to its arrogant swagger and some short-sighted business choices in the 90s, is irretrievably anti-consumer.
The Microsoft name is part of the problem. The company should take an AT&T strategy at the next available opportunity: break itself up into profitable and differently-named organizations that can spend a decade or two buying each other up in billion-dollar names until they consolidate into the New Microsoft, older, wiser, shorn of all negative associations and ready to dominate us once more.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Thank You For Your Concern
A study out today says that the British are on average more healthy than Americans, despite spending way less on health care (even counting the national insurance tax). Various explanations are being bandied about, some obvious (fast food, car culture, longer working hours) some less so (the stiff upper lip mentality is better for you? Brits feel more involved in politics and community?). But what made me most amused, and somewhat chagrined at the same time, was a segment on NPR that asked: what about Brits living in America? They called up some of my fellow expats and asked them what they thought of the study, in a somewhat apologetic tone -- sorry our country is likely to make you more sick.
Well, thanks for the concern, NPR, but I have to say I've never felt healthier in my life than I do now. Of course, that could be because I live in California, the health nut capital of the world. When I lived in New York, I put on more than 30 lbs in three years.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Jester Relief
What is there left to say about Stephen Colbert's masterful performance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, steps from the scowling President? That when you look up "speaking truth to power" in the video dictionaries of the future, this will be exhibit A? That its opponents have derided not one jot of its substance? That the court jester role is alive, at last, in America, a young nation that still needs to learn how to roast and skewer its leaders with humor, like the British have been doing for hundreds of years?
No, I would never think of saying any of these things. I am a loyal member of the American press, and therefore this tasteless display wasn't funny. Not at all. And I certainly didn't go out and immediately buy a season pass to Colbert's show on iTunes, nor would I encourage any of my fellows to do the same, because at $10 for 16 shows it's not at all a good deal or a cheap way to support the country's most daring comedian.
Daily Blah for... Monday, May 01, 2006
Galactic Conquest? Later, dude
The ever-fascinating science magazine Seed has an intriguing answer to Fermi's paradox, also known as the question: If the cosmos is as full of intelligent life as its sheer size suggests, why haven't we met any aliens?At the height of Cold War paranoia, the most popular answer was: because they've all blown themselves up with nukes. Author Geoffrey Miller posits an alternate answer that is at once amusing and sobering: they're too busy playing videogames.
In other words, the natural evolution of intelligence doesn't just lead species down the blind alley of atomic ruin. It also leads us into a whole series of what Miller calls "fake fitness cues" -- things that trick or reward every need, every urge our brains have developed over the millenia to keep us advancing. After a certain point in evolution, our best inventions have nothing to do with the real, physical world. Miller lists some of today's most common fake fitness cues:
"iPods, DVDs, TiVo, Sirius Satellite Radio, Motorola cellphones, the Spice channel, EverQuest, instant messaging, MDMA, BC bud. The traditional staples of physical, mental and social development—athletics, homework, dating—are neglected. The few young people with the self-control to pursue the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute. Take, for example, the MIT graduates who apply to do computer game design for Electronics Arts, rather than rocket science for NASA."
How depressing to think of all the alien races that could have ground to a halt this way, never colonizing the galaxy because they were too busy, and too happy, playing with their Xboxs. You could say one of the most important motivations for my career is making sure the human race doesn't fall into the same trap.
I'll get started just as soon as I'm finished with the new Fifa World Cup game.
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