brainflak.com

Every corporation claims that what distinguishes them from other, similar companies is their earnest and impressive frugality.

Every department and group in every corporation thinks its name must have “Global” or “Worldwide” prepended to it, and that their unique symbol should be the Earth. Every department and group in every corporation also has an exciting new initiative called “Fusion.”

And the monk was immediately enlightened.

Wanna hear me grumble and whine? Of course you do…

Movies and TV:
Magical Image Enhancement: You’ve seen this many times, I’m sure. A low-res image from a traffic camera, or a grainy blow up of a photo from the 1930s is enhanced with magic software, turning a tiny, indistinct grey rectangle that was comprised of 768 pixels into a fully readable copy of a shipping manifest or an Illinois license plate complete with expiration date stickers. I don’t think you need Photoshop Kung Fu as strong as mine to know that this is crap. The data is just not there, people. Read more

Television dramas have their heroes. The prefascist hero was a policeman. The fascist hero is a torturer.

Read more

When I read the email I receive from some of my favorite not-for-profit organizations, and see links to further information like this: http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=Fa_ZPSW_W-e_kiG002aSKxB (don’t try to go there – long alphanumeric strings have been changed to protect the innocent), I become cranky. Why? Read on.

Read more

I remember flipping through a shiny new roleplaying game when it came out in 1989 and seeing an illustration spread labeled “The Evil Races.” It had lovely renderings of orcs, trolls, goblins, and ogres, giving rise to the following chain of questions in my tiny brain:

Why do there have to be “Evil” races? Doesn’t evil exist more at the levels of actions, individuals, institutions etc., making it foolish to call a whole race “evil?”

Further:

Why “races?” Why not species? Are we to believe that elves and ogres differ only in “race” but are the same species, capable of interbreeding? Yikes. There must be some reason the term “race” is always used in these things.

Read more

For about a year I’ve been consuming egg and dairy products for the sake of convenience. My wife and daughter are lacto-ovo vegetarians, and I was getting tired of cooking two dinners every night. So I’ve followed the lazy and more-cruelty-laden path of lacto-ovo-ism.

But before that, I was from a planet orbiting the star Vega, apparently.

Yes, this is a rant.

Read more

I keep coming up against the widely held belief that Web design can be done by monkeys. Aside from bruising the egos of folks like me, this has an unfortunate corollary: if you have something that needs doing that’s appropriate for a monkey to do, make the Web designer do it.

Read more