news at seven or genie in the bottle

Do you remember when everything was a matter of timing? Nostalgia aside, certainly it still is though without the help-meets of expert and extended knowledge that someone, somewhere is willing to share and amend recall.

Before this breed of miscellany turned trivia into something less than esoteric and studied but more of a lifestyle, one could not be tardy or absent from a broadcast—however well carefully curated in the afterwards. I gave an impromptu film review once upon a time on a cable television call-in show hosted by a younger Bill Macy, and where is that archived—closed-circuit and not even dispatched weakly beyond the star Sirius at this point? Cable was another kind of memory-hole, replace mostly by the well-aimed reception of satellite dishes. Somewhat earlier, the part-time network, Nick-at-Nite, had some pretty special and swank interstitial pieces—including a self-parody, an homage from Suzanne Vega of Tom's Diner (herself the godmother of digital music congress) for I Dream of Jeannie in reruns. What does that mean that that act is not documented (while so many others are) and someone could handily demonstrate this factoid as wrong?

information-action ratio

Via the ever-resonate Kottke, maker of fine hypertext products, blog comes the documentary adaptation of the engrossing Tom Standage work on technology and innovation, The Victorian Internet. The curious tale of the development, peopled with many colourful characters, visionaries and opportunists with not unfamiliar foresight of the telegraph provides an fascinating and disarming reflection on contemporary achievements, which has created far fewer connections and shrunk the world less than our 18th century forebears.

as high as an elephant's eye

While the staple crop, one of the more domineering and hardy among agriculture, perfected by millennia of stewardship, presents nothing objectionable in itself—and quite the opposite if tended responsibly, corn management and corn policy (native to America but an invasive species) has grown into something untenable and potentially disastrous.
Without even addressing the myopic decision to tinker with the genetics of our food, the way corn is grown, the harvest almost exclusively diverted into feeding animals and automobiles and producing food additives and fillers, like the dreaded corn-syrup. Not counting acres and acres destined to become ethanol, biodegradable plastics or base ingredients for something more chemical and refined than flour or meal, this second-hand nutrition, feeding livestock rather than eating what we've reaped ourselves, reduces the efficiency of the land by some eighty-percent and more. Of course, through subsidies at the expense of the tax-payer and at the expense of the environment, creating vast tracks of monocultures and demanding more and more resources and land be used to satisfy exponential appetites with nascent returns, are eventually articulated as something more profitable to some, which is also something not valued-added for all.

billy goat's gruff

The Pre-Surfer offers an interesting glimpse at a very nimble population of domestic goats in Morocco that have mastered the skills of tree-climbing in order to reach berries and other delicacies. It is the argan berries though that have driven them up a tree: afterwards, the indigestible kernels of the berry are pressed into oil for a variety of health and cosmetic applications—for humans, sort of like civet coffee. There is a certain unexpected grace to see these determined creatures posed and poised.  I wonder whom has whom trained to perform.