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Showing posts from January, 2010

Throttle Music

This is the playlist for my 35 mile motorcycle commute to work via 101. I Will Follow - U2 Mongoloid - Devo Date With The Night - Yeah Yeah Yeahs Detachable Penis - King Missile Clap Your Hands - Wu Tang Clan Soldier - Eminem Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers Disorder - Exploited Ride To The Bottom - Small Axe Raw Power - Stooges Wicked - Ice Cube Metal Militia - Metalica This mix started with riding at night. The streets are for the most part quiet and weirdness steeps into my ride. Part of it is the limited visibility; navigating the road surfaces at speed becomes a mental exercise. Sometimes you can remember how the road bends or bumps, or you can draw from your experience to find you the right line. I will just imagine how I am are going to roll through it and hope for the best. It was also an experiment. I wanted to see if I could ride safely while listening to my Ipod. I listen to music on most of my rides, safety and the laws be damned. This playlist originate

Racism and Rudeness

"The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists." - David Brooks I think this was an elegant statement on racism and other means to divide us. Beyond the very clear cases of discrimination, most stories about racism are really about rudeness. "Someone said something I found offensive concerning race". There is a blog on the SFGate website, and the author wrote about visiting an Oakland jazz club and his outrage seeing "Happy Nigger Day" scribbled on a bathroom wall board. Is this graffito offensive in a racial? Definitely. But is something written on a bathroom wall even worth mentioning? I thought it was more racist to comment about the almost entirely white audience, as if personal tastes in music and friends is an attempt at discrimination. But

How to create a great Batman story

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These are the elements to any great Batman story. 1. Must have a scene where he is brooding in the Batcave. Bonus points if he is also solving a mystery. 2. Have you ever met a professional rugby player? Average height 6'3", weight 230lb. While football and hockey players are just as huge, covered up in pads and helmets, they do not tower like a flanker or centre does. Batman should dwarf the mere mortal, and many comic book artists cannot do perspective correctly. Tim Sale does it perfectly in series of panels with Catwoman: 3. Beat up the supercriminals, finesse the regular ones. Yes, yes, Batman can trash henchman by the dozen. But it is way cool to see a high tech device in action, one of the many reasons why Batman has endured for 70 years. But there has to be some creativity lest you fall into the campy bat-belt cliché. I just read No Man's Land, and Batman threatened to destroy the Penguin's generators with a micro electromagnetic pulse device. He was bluf