January 2000

Some of the recent evolution theory (via peterme) I find fascinating. A funny irony to it all is that we didn’t start studying evolution until we stopped evolving. Since the industrial revolution we’ve had the ability to change the world and our bodies faster than the world can change us.

I sit in front of my computer with my shiny new cable modem, the Counting Crows are cranking away, and I wanna check out something interesting, something stimulating on the web. Where do I go? I check out some commentary (Salon), some music (the Top 100 at CDNOW), but nothing is really doing it for…

The collaboration of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony sounds, well, interesting. As if your neighbors have their Mussorsky turned up loud next door while you’re listening to Metallica and they happened to blend a bit. As an “event,” it was done live to hieghten the excitement, but Metallica has never been great live, and…

Just discovered Rebecca’s Pocket, a weblog I like so far. Today I noticed a Viktor Frankl quote there; more reason to like that blog.

Is the 5-Day Forecast Bullshit? It seems they overpromise what’s possible. I don’t think we can currently predict the weather with reasonable accuracy more than one or two days into the future. I have to wonder if it was cutoff at 5 days because of some threshold of accuracy, if 5 sounded good to marketers,…

I want to link to this Paglia article for many reasons – her opinion on the symbolism of football, her take on the current presidential candidates and on Hillary Clinton. I also like her reference to the Internet as the “liberation network.”

Just when I had become accostomed to Benetton’s style of alternative advertising, they go and hit me over the head with a profile of death row inmates. At first I laughed a bit, when the interview sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit: Q: What does that feel like, to lose your freedom? A: Don’t…

I think all the publicity about Elian is an outlet for us to express our pent-up feelings about Cuba. The island is too close to us and too un-American to simply feel ambiguous about, but without a catalyst such as Elian we try to ignore Cuba and silently wait for Castro to die.

Note to self: must be more constructive and inventive when hitting obstacles. Shouldn’t simply bitch like my last post, just find a better way within the constraints, it might be better than I think.

Been thinking lately about how much of an impression advertising can make, in a purely positive emotional way, when done well. The examples below make my point. And I’ve been comparing this to the way we design and present web sites – showing strategy, then a month later schematics, then a month later designs, then…

And the Pets.com – Christmas Time spot is equally hilarious.

Whereas the Wazzzup! commercial is just side-splittingly funny, much better than the frogs.

After his cycling comeback, the very thought of Lance Amstrong would bring tears to my eyes. Sorry to say I’ve lost some respect for him after seeing his Nike commercial. The alternative press has been exposing Nike for over 10 years now, and lately the criticism has been widespread. It’s a shame Lance chose to…

My first post on my new cable modem. Not as fast as I would have thought, faster than my modem but not as fast as the T-3 at work. My computer, a PowerMac 8500, may be part of the bottleneck. The “always-on” factor is something that’ll take getting used to, I always have this sense…

One of those days spent entirely in my apt, not seeing another soul and only speaking to two people on the phone. I like it once in a while. Being on the ‘Net keeps it from feeling too alone: still emailed my co-workers, still did some stock trading, still surfed around a bit. Then of…