After a long search for what iRi is, I have finally found it, and now I'm taking the time to write it down, or at least part of it.

iRi is the leftover stuff in my life. Talking about politics, religion, ethics, science, programming, epistemology, all that jazz is important to me, but I can't talk about them in "real life" because talking about this stuff is really, really hard in the real world, due to the limits of the conversational form.

iRi is my platform for getting such things off my chest. As such, you are welcome to read it, but that is a secondary concern to me.

Per the recent news about TiVo and Amazon Unbox integration, and a $15 dollar credit for trying it out before April 1 (or so), my wife and tried it. First, at least TiVo series 2 machines don't download very quickly, a problem I've already had trouble with when trying to download things from the TiVo directly. It's not much better with Amazon Unbox; a 42-minute TV program took quite a while to download, two hours at least.

The commercial for The Last Mimzy attracted my attention, because it sounded an awful lot like the 1943 Mimsy were the Borogroves by Lewis Padgett. I'm not sure I can quite call it my favorite short story ever (there are so many other good ones), but it's in the top 5 for sure. But I seriously doubted that, because Golden Age science fiction stories do not frequently make it to the silver screen, especially in the 21st century.

In the Star Trek the Next Generation episode The Outrageous Okana, it is revealed that the funniest comic in history was "'Stano Riga', a 23rd Century comic who 'specialized in jokes about quantum mathematics.'" I've always wondered what kind of real-life situation would lead to someone being able to successfully become a comic with such niche appeal. The answer, of course, is the Internet. In the last month I've been treated to two funny comedians that are very, very niche; one in classical and modern music, one in economics.

You'll need to read at least some of that piece to understand the ways I'm critical of it, but you don't need to read it all. Be sure to get the last paragraph (quoted in my post body).

I find myself agreeing with about a quarter of it, disagreeing with the reasons given but agreeing with the conclusions for about a third, disagreeing with the rest, and finding some of the implicit casual assumptions to come pretty close to "arrogant asshole".

All in all, a stimulating read, which is why I blog about it.

Reading over my web server logs, it's a little annoying how certain big-name web search crawlers will continue to ask for a file years after it's been removed. It's also annoying that some crawlers will get a permanent redirect, but years later, still have to retrieve the original page and then follow the redirect. Makes it impossible to find any "real" 404s in my error log anymore.

Generally, when I'm this quiet, it's because I'm simply not writing for iRi. But this last month has been an exception; I've been implementing one of those things that made me write my own weblogging platform in the first place: "BlogBook"s. A BlogBook is a way of tying together a series of posts into a cohesive whole like a book. It's intended to help with my larger projects that just don't fit into the "

This ("Who's Pretending?" on Townhall) I can't vouch for one way or another, but it reminds me of something I've been meaning to post about lately. Every year, the wisdom of "actions speak louder than words" strikes me as more and more true; every year, I find myself valuing words less and less, and actions more and more. I also consider "meta-words" in the action department. Someone who criticizes their ideological opponents for racism, but gives their ideological allies an unlimited pass for racism, to me this says that racism is at least less important that partisan politics, and quite possibly indicates that they don't really care about racism at all.

Via Instapundit:

I can tell you exactly how a pointless blog full of poorly written, incoherent commentary made it to the front page on Digg. I paid people to do it. - I Bought Votes on Digg

The profusion of community sites on the Internet, each with their own technical quirks, has enabled an unusual opportunity to study the effects of community structure on the resulting community. I haven't made anything like a formal study out of it, but somebody should; it's strangely interesting in an academic sense, but also very practical as you decide what communities to participate in, and for a few, how to create a community.

I find it amazing how many people refuse to understand something they don't believe.