The future of club music is audience reactivity. Dj's will dance, beats will result. Scanners will monitor the audience and modify frequencies and mixes accordingly. Go-Go dancers will be internationally renowned musicians. interestingly: here's an interesting patent on the subject.  ¶ 1/31/2004 04:38:00 PM links to this post

I'm a bit annoyed with all these johnny-come-lately War on Terrorism objectors. Where were these people when America was bombing the hell out of various arab countries? Enjoying their CNN and cheering, that's where they were. Now that the fun is over and the morning-after, 300 billion dollar fiscal deficit is staring them in the face, now they finally stand up to say it might have been a bad idea. Getting drunk on power means getting hungover on consequences.  ¶ 1/28/2004 05:04:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

A ham and cheese sandwich walks into a bar. The bartender says: "I'm sorry, we don't serve food here."  ¶ 1/27/2004 08:47:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

One of the interesting things about living in an absolutely huge market like America or Japan is that globalization and internationalization don't seem to be so prevalent, or at any rate doesn't seem so foreign. This is because, when the market reaches a certain size, it becomes worthwhile to heavily invest in custom, culturally adapted packaging of that product. Our Indian customer service reps speak with an American accent, our Swiss chocolates have a familiar look and feel, and our Chinese food is loaded up with sugar just the way we like it. The same thing happened in Japan. Everything there was so Japanese. Denny's and McDonalds are both there but the experience is completely different than what you'd find in the states. L'Oreal hair dye boxes feature Anime cartoons. The global products have been carefully digested and transformed to appear local. The story in smaller countries like the Czech Republic or Singapore is much different. Nobody invests to customize, so one feels the foreign-ness of these global commodities and services. Indeed, globalization seems obvious, is everywhere apparent. That an international mentality is necessary smacks of cliche.  ¶ 1/09/2004 01:45:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

The immediately preceding Starbucks customer today was greeted as "Sir", while I merited only a meager "man" (as in, "Hey man, what can I get you" and "anything else for you man?"). At some point a man/sir inflexion point will occur, and suddenly I'll be sir to everyone. A bit like Sir Elton John. I bet he never gets the man treatment.  ¶ 1/05/2004 04:02:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Website privacy policies are completely incomprehensible. You click on the link and there's three pages of sales and/or legal mumbo jumbo, interspersed with technical computer jargon. If you can parse that policy, you're some kind of legal computer genius. And every website has something completely different. What they need to do is create a single, table format webpage with checkmarks in all the boxes. "Sets and reads cookies." Check. EPIC.org should create a standard template and browbeat content publishers into compliance.  ¶ 1/04/2004 12:23:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

I recently discovered that Almanacs are truly the best bathroom reading ever. Since having placed it there, I've discovered that there used to be a 10,000 dollar bill from 1934-5, that the prison population of California has quintupled in the last 25 years, and that the US military maintained a 68,000-strong military presence in Germany as recently as 2002, and nearly has 280,000 overseas altogether. The government should make a "public-bathroom-Almanac" civic education program.  ¶ 1/03/2004 08:15:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

On the suing McDonalds for inflicting obesity on our nation's youth subject: I think that McDonald's should pay up. Here's why: they aggresively market their product under the pretext that it can be used as "food." As if, by consuming a Big Mac, you might have eaten lunch. Obviously this is patently false. Carefully engineered meatlike substances, topped by cheese-like substances and bread-like substances are not interchangeable with "food" and cannot substitute for what humans need to consume daily for energy. The "Happy meal" is nothing of the sort. When I was a kid, Sugar Cocoa Puffs had to put a little phrase at the end of their commercials. "Sugar Puffs are part of this complete breakfast . . ." And they'd show a spread of orange juice, eggs, toast, milk, etc. They could take the Sugar Puffs out altogether and you'd still have a complete breakfast. In fact, the "cereal" had nothing to do with the breakfast at all. Sugar Cocoa Puffs is not food and the advertisers knew it. Thus, the principle that should be applied to McDonalds is that they've breached truthful advertising norms.  ¶ 1/02/2004 04:32:00 AM 0 comments links to this post