New/Old Look for Bond, James Bond

New awesome covers for reissued Bond novels look amazing. [via Daring Fireball]

Ihnatko pegs Hillary Clinton’s campaign

Andy Ihnatko, despite his protestations, is the #1 most-beloved industry figure, at least in my book. I’ve been a big fan of his since his days adorning the back page of MacUser ca. 1992.

In a fairly serious and non-writing-about-technology turn, he completely nails what has happened to the Hillary Clinton campaign: she has become a vanity publisher. But pumping $6.4 million of her own money into her campaign, she has become the equivalent of a vanity publisher. There aren’t enough people in the world who are willing to support her book (campaign), so she’s using her own money to publish it (keep it going).

Seriously. If she can muster enough monetary support to keep the campaign going, it means that not enough people want her to be President. I believed it before I read Andy’s article, but I see even more clearly now just how pathetic she’s become.

Senator Clinton, please bow out gracefully now and help us ensure that Senator Obama becomes the next President of the United States. And Senator Obama: Senator Clinton would make a kick-ass Vice President.

One (of many) reasons I left academia

This WSJ piece about a clearly insane prof at Dartmouth represents just one of the reasons I left academia 15 years ago. Go read it. I’ll wait.

See? That’s some crazy shit, no? I saw the grad student version of that ALL the time, and I went to podunk little grad schools where they weren’t quite as well-versed in bullshit theories.

I remember an eye-opening conversation with a female grad student who stated that, flat-out, every bad thing ever was invented and perpetrated by men – war, guns, poverty, racism, etc. It was breathtaking in that she sorta tossed it off casually in conversation as if everyone standing around her bought into that. Now, I’m not necessarily arguing that she’s WRONG, mind you, it was the follow-up that men have never produced anything GOOD that sent me over the edge. I’m not sure how women are responsible for all benevolent scientific knowledge, art, and beauty in the world, but she sure believed it.

As a (sometimes) good liberal, I felt pretty guilty about not subscribing wholesale to the “white men are the root of all evil” argument I found quite prevalent in graduate school. But, As an actual white man, I often felt like I was put on the defensive about all sorts of crap. Maybe that’s just my racial, genderal (new word! I should be in academia!)guilt coming out. I dunno.

I would have loved to be in crazy prof’s class at Dartmouth, though. I’ll bet it was entertaining as hell.

Consolidation

I launched a new blog a few months ago, and I started writing in in pretty diligently, though that feeling has now passed.

I started it because I wanted to be able to write without editing myself for some people I know might occasionally read this blog. However, I’ve since discovered that I don’t really feel the need to post many NSFW posts (see my bro Meat for those!), and I really don’t care all that much who sees what I write about here. Most readers are my friends or (I suppose) random or potential employers. I’d rather not scare the latter off, but I’d also prefer they get a more or less accurate (if incomplete) picture of me, warts and all (but there are no actual warts. Really). If I really get a hankering to hide something, I’ll just publish a Private post, I guess.

So, I’ve imported the other posts from the other joint and pointed that URL here, too. If you didn’t know it, you still won’t. That’s okay.

I hope to start posting more here again. Now that I’m writing for a living again (sortof), I think I’m more inclined to write AT ALL, so maybe some of it will trickle over here into Non-Work Land. We’ll see.