{"id":192,"date":"2003-07-31T11:17:04","date_gmt":"2003-07-31T15:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/linkdump_contrarians_and_barbarians"},"modified":"2003-07-31T11:17:04","modified_gmt":"2003-07-31T15:17:04","slug":"linkdump_contrarians_and_barbarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2003\/07\/linkdump_contrarians_and_barbarians.html","title":{"rendered":"Linkdump: Contrarians and Barbarians"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Fortune Magazine: <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortune.com\/fortune\/investing\/articles\/0,15114,471785,00.html\">Is a Futures Market on Terror Outlandish?<\/a><\/cite><\/p>\n<p>Yet another mainstream publication stumbles upon Salon.com&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/ent\/movies\/feature\/2002\/01\/09\/lotr_starwars\/index.html\">patented<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/ent\/movies\/feature\/2002\/01\/18\/lotr\/index.html\">technique<\/a> of writing contrarian articles that trample both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.siliconvalley.com\/mld\/siliconvalley\/business\/columnists\/gmsv\/6427824.htm\">logic<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freep.com\/voices\/editorials\/eterr30_20030730.htm\">good taste<\/a> in order to draw a few extra readers.  On message boards this is called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Internet_Troll\">trolling<\/a>&#8220;; on Madison Avenue, this is called &#8220;guerilla marketing&#8221;. <em>Dude<\/em>, Fortune &#8212; when the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\">Cato Institute<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\/dispatch\/07-30-03d.html#1\">crapping all over your market-based solution<\/a>, it&#8217;s time to pick up your marbles and go home.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Speaking of good ol&#8217; contrarian Salon.com, it turns out they&#8217;re (surprise!) rather enamored of the movie <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonypictures.com\/movies\/gigli\/\">Gigli<\/a><\/cite>.  Although reviewer Charles Taylor deems it a &#8220;minor failure&#8221;, the film still &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/ent\/movies\/review\/2003\/07\/30\/gigli\/\">deserves credit for its refreshingly frank sexuality<\/a>.&#8221; Heh. If &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,93150,00.html\">It&#8217;s turkey time!  Gobble, gobble!<\/a>&#8221; constitutes &#8220;refreshingly frank sexuality&#8221;, you Earthlings are straaange cats indeed.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>John Gruber solves his labor shortage problem in <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2003\/03\/code_monkey.html\">Code Monkey<\/a>:<\/cite><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>See, back in 1998 I became the owner of a South American woolly monkey, whom I named Paco, with the intention of training him to assist in my freelance graphic design work. Everyone told me this was a terrible idea, that it would not work, that at the very least I would need a chimpanzee or orangutan, that a mere monkey would never be able to do graphic design.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Everyone in the Bay Area is worried about losing their programming jobs to cheaper labor from overseas. Meanwhile the <em>real<\/em> danger is lurking right around the corner, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newtechusa.com\/PPI\/pressroom.asp#higher\">brandishing a banana<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Darren Barefoot and his <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.darrenbarefoot.com\/hall\/\" title=\"Link via 'Good Morning Silicon Valley'\">Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness<\/a><\/cite>: &#8220;Note that I&#8217;m not looking for just bad technical writing&#8211;there are plenty of examples of that. I&#8217;m looking for the inexplicable, the surreal and the strange.&#8221;  By the way, if you&#8217;ve somehow gotten it into your head that <em>all<\/em> young male technical writers are as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darrenbarefoot.com\/\">suave and handsome<\/a> as this Darren character&#8230; well, you&#8217;d be dead right.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Speaking of suave and handsome, take a gander at ESPN&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/games.espn.go.com\/content\/fba\/2003\/story?id=1585035\">Eric Karabell<\/a> and DiveIntoMark&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/diveintomark.org\/about\/\">Mark Pilgrim<\/a>. <em>Separated at birth??<\/em> We report, you decide.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The Onion, <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/onion3929\/index.html\">NPR Listener Acquires Kick-Ass Tote Bag<br \/>\n<\/a><\/cite> (scroll to bottom):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n&#8220;If I knew listening to Morning Edition every day before breakfast was gonna get me this cool bag, shit, I woulda sent them money a long time ago.&#8221; Hasaji added that Renee Montagne&#8217;s insightful interview with author Diana Abu-Jaber was &#8220;totally off the hook.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I think we would all have to agree that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/about\/people\/bios\/rmontagne.html\">Renee Montagne<\/a> is indeed &#8220;totally off the hook.&#8221;  Still, she ain&#8217;t got nothin&#8217; on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/about\/people\/bios\/ntotenberg.html\">my Nina<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><em>Finally<\/em>&#8230; in case you were wondering, it turns out that Xena <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.uchicago.edu\/~wald\/lit\/heroine_barbarian.html\">Is the Very Model of a Heroine Barbarian<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nXena: <br \/>\n<cite><br \/>\n    I am the very model of a heroine barbarian;<br \/>\n    Through Herculean efforts, I&#8217;ve become humanitarian.<br \/>\n    I ride throughout the hinterland &#8212; at least that&#8217;s what they call it in<br \/>\n    Those sissy towns like Athens (I, myself, am Amphipolitan).<br \/>\n    I travel with a poet who is perky and parthenian<br \/>\n    And scribbles her hexameters in Linear Mycenian<br \/>\n    (And many have attempted, by a host of methods mystical,<br \/>\n    To tell if our relationship&#8217;s sororal or sapphistical).<br \/>\n<\/cite>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nChorus: <br \/>\n<cite><br \/>\n        To tell if their relationship&#8217;s sororal or sapphistical!<br \/>\n        To tell if their relationship&#8217;s sororal or sapphistical!<br \/>\n        To tell if their relationship&#8217;s sororal or sapphisti-phistical!<br \/>\n<\/cite>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nYup, I&#8217;m out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dude<\/em>, Fortune &#8212; when the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\">Cato Institute<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\/dispatch\/07-30-03d.html#1\">crapping all over your market-based solution<\/a>, it&#8217;s time to pick up your marbles and go home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}