Monthly Archive for April, 2009

Mon
Apr
27
2009

More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops 0 cmts

Despite changing attitudes, polls continue to show that atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.

Sun
Apr
19
2009

“In the event of moon disaster” 0 cmts

The speech Richard Nixon would have given had Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the Moon but been stranded there due to unforeseen technical problems.

Looking forward to my first farm share 1 cmts

This year Yoni invited me to split his farm share at Parker Farm. Farmer Steve has started blogging about the farm and his daily work planting and cultivating crops. Understanding more about where my food is coming from and the effort that goes into growing it makes me more determined to use the spoils well, by cooking interesting recipes and wasting as little as possible.

Fri
Apr
17
2009

Twilight 3 cmts

I was lacking for reading materials in Italy, and Shaina was kind enough to lend me Twilight, the first book in a young adult fantasy series about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. The series is very popular right now in the US, especially among teenaged girls, and I read the book on a long train ride from Cinque Terre to Lake Como.

I disliked Twilight for a variety of reasons, including bad plot, bad dialogue, bad pacing, and bad character development. I was additionally concerned about what I felt was a borderline abusive relationship between the female protagonist and her vampire boyfriend. According to a post on Yahoo! Answers (contains spoilers), the theme of emotional abuse only intensifies in the later books.

As if I needed another reason to avoid reading them.

And then there was Paris… 0 cmts

Shaina’s post about our visit is more interesting than mine. Sadly she missed our picnicking while watching the Paris Marathon on the final day.

Thu
Apr
09
2009

Lawyer’s offbeat tactics in music-sharing suit stun peers 0 cmts

If nothing else, Charlie’s tactics are resulting in massive publicity for his cause.

Photos and video from Paris 0 cmts

There is little useful information in the captions, because we mostly stuck to well-known tourist areas, but I am trying something a bit different this time, embedding the Flickr slideshow below, with a few short video clips interspersed between the pictures. Full screen it for best effect. Now that we are in Perugia and I am once again with internet, the card reader in my silly little computer has stopped working, so I’m not sure when the Rome photos will come. I’m trying to keep up because otherwise I won’t end up posting anything until 2010, knowing my track record…

Sun
Apr
05
2009

Larger Than Life in London 0 cmts

Mr. Obama is the only popular politician left in the world. He would win an election in any one of the G-20 countries, and his fellow world leaders will do anything to take home a touch of that reflected popularity.

A.A. Gill in the Times

Harry Beck’s influence on the Paris Metro 0 cmts

Beck’s 1933 London Underground map, an iconic design that removed curves, distorted distances, and used consistent iconography to create clarity, was replicated around the world over the following decades. But the Paris Metro held out, only adopting a Beck-like design in the early 1990s.


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I'm Danny Silverman, a guy in Cambridge, MA with an interest in law, culture, media, and using technology to bring people together even as we work ever harder to push ourselves apart.

My day job is maintaining computer systems. I like exploring the outdoors. I catch and throw flying discs for sport. My cat is fuzzy.

To contact me: zeno@ this site.

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