Notes From A Master

David Mamet misses occasionally, but when he's on his game he is the top dog (anyone seen Heist... My guy is so cool when he goes to sleep sheep count him.).

If you like movies, or television for that matter, (and yes I mean good movies and tv) you'll enjoy the memo from Mamet to the writers of the erstwhile tv drama The Unit, for which he was a producer. It's been making the rounds, and it's worth the time. There's a copy up on Moveline.

On Brackets and March

So I didn't do a bracket this year (have I mentioned this already) but Jon Michaud at the New Yorker did, and Kansas did him in...

Friends, Kansans, bracketologists, lend me your ears;
I come to bury the Jayhawks, not to praise them;
The picks that men make live after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Kansas…The noble Dickie V.
Hath told you Kansas was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Kansas answered it…
Here, under leave of Dickie V. and the rest,
(For Dickie V. is an honorable man;
So are they all; all honorable men)
Come I to speak at Kansas’s funeral…
They were my pick, unprofitable and disloyal to me:
But Dickie V. says Kansas was ambitious;
And Dickie V. is an honorable man….
He hath brought many winners home to ESPN,
Whose brackets did his coffers fill:
Did this in Kansas seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Kansas hath swept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Dickie V. says Kansas was ambitious;
And Dickie V. is an honorable man.

(reprinted in full because it's just so good)

I Love The Internet: Vol. Something Or Other

I just can't imagine scientific proposals for the indirect surveying of zombies being written without the interwebs...

"How many zombies do you know?" Using indirect
survey methods to measure alien attacks and outbreaks
of the undead

Andrew Gelman George A. Romeroy

12 Mar 2010

Abstract
The zombie menace has so far been studied only qualitatively or through
the use of mathematical models without empirical content. We propose to use
a new tool in survey research to allow zombies to be studied indirectly without
risk to the interviewers.

Be sure to read the whole paper.

(via MR)

This Pisco Is Not Sour

Check out the CSM's photo of the day...

Pilar Olivares/Reuters

Follow the link for the details.

(via a certain special someone)

So That Google Phone Must Be Pretty Good...

Apple has just sued HTC over the Nexus One (aka the Google Phone). The prevailing thought seems to be that Apple is trying to slow down Google's Android phone os. Android, like all things google, will one day just take everything over.

I suppose it might be a good legal delaying tactic, but to the average consumer I think it does more to signal that Apple is scared that the google phone is better than the iphone than anthing else.

This Too Shall Pass

The song and blog post you'll one day forget. But this kick ass Rube Goldberg machine will be with you always...



That's probably the greatest Rube Goldberg ever, granted they're a band with funding to make it happen not one of the guys who just builds them around the house for fun, but I'm ok with that.