I always wonder what a space death would be like every time they jettison someone out the airlock on Battlestar Galactica. Dramatic and painful perhaps, similar to drowning…but just imagine the view. I’ve never thought of asphyxiation as an acceptable dramatic death for myself, but soaring through space may be an exception.

At most, an astronaut without a suit would last about 15 seconds before losing conciousness from lack of oxygen. (That’s how long it would take the body to use up the oxygen left in the blood.) Of course, on Earth, you could hold your breath for several minutes without passing out. But that’s not going to help in a vacuum. In fact, attempting to hold your breath is a sure way to a quick death.

Last week I watched Battlestar Galactica on my computer, full screen, 10 hours before it aired on the sci-fi channel. There were 3 or 4 Intel commercials that were really short. I think networks are starting to get the picture. TV is going away, like CDs are, and like radio is, like all traditional media is.. But then again nothing is going away, fools, it’s resurfacing in new environments, with updated, perhaps tighter business models. If a band like Vampire Weekend can get big overnight because some pretentious website says they are the new “IT” band, well, you can hardly blame the internet pirates for ruining the world. The media is the message, the message is free, but the resulting buzz is what people will make money off.

Going but not gone. Tonight I thought I’d kick back and watch BSG on Hulu, which has been putting up the episodes, but someone at corporate sci-fi gave millions of sci-fi nerds blue balls and decided not to let them post it. The Gods giveth, the Gods taketh away.

Words of wisdom, no doubt:

Or are they? Here’s a rebuttal from my favorite anger movie of all time, Falling Down:

I think blowing shit up wins.

While I want to believe in such simple truths as the government always gets it wrong, plain old statistics wouldn’t support me. Even the government could theoretically get something right…by chance.

The latest libertarian leaning criticism of government is blaming the government for the subprime crisis, particularly, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Sounds reasonable at first glance:

But to earn high ratings, banks were forced to make increasingly risky loans to borrowers who wouldn’t qualify for a mortgage under normal standards of creditworthiness. The Community Reinvestment Act, made even more stringent during the Clinton administration, trapped lenders in a Catch-22.

But perhaps this is exaggerated to lay blame on the government when in fact it’s much more complicated than that.

Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure. Believing the bubble would never pop, lenders approved risky adjustable-rate mortgages, often without considering whether borrowers could afford them; families took on those loans; investors bought them in securitized form; and, all the while, regulators sat on their hands.

Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn’t even apply to most of the loans that are behind it. As the University of Michigan’s Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

Somewhere in the misty lands of corporate america, a building super is getting tough on smoking. Because that’s your job in a bureaucracy, making everyone else’s job more difficult. I’m not really kidding. Management has to justify their existence.

Smoking - Smoking is permitted in the designated area in the lower deck where the benches and ash trays are provided. Please remain in the smoking area and not in the pathway of oncoming traffic. Smoking is prohibited in the front of the buildings, in front of handicap parking, inside the parking decks, at the bottom of the hill and on top of the parking deck landing. We are receiving complaints that people are walking through smoke to get to their cars. Please do not use the old planters, grassy areas, pine straw and rocked areas to extinguish your cigarettes. Please use the designated smoking area only.

Update: this is not related to the cigarette smokers problem.

The Corna. Who knew? Can the Italians shed some light on this please? Personal histories, anecdotes, etc., anything involving anyone in the Dio family and their relationship with the Moloch would be appreciated.

Mesmerized with Animal Planetesque curiosity I watched and listened to two very young hipsters have a conversation amid a flurry of electronic interruptions in a coffee shop and for the first time really noted the difference between the generation that has grown up inundated with technology and my own, which didn’t even really have a useful internet in college. I cannot speak for their internal conscious states, but this was no commercial for ADHD. On the contrary, they navigated the changes like expert gymnasts, or finely tuned computer processors, picking up exactly where they left off without missing a single beat. It flowed, noticeably different then most adults I see attempt this. We all think we can multitask these days, but the truth of the matter is that most people still can’t talk on the phone and drive at the same time (this is a fucking epidemic, actually.) I was beginning to think that these two were examples of The New Human, efficient in inhuman ways due to our co-evolution with technology. But then I saw another dude adjusting his slacker mop with the aid of his own webcam. iNarcissist?

I was late heading out to Lennys Friday night which in retrospect was a good thing. But once a friend text messaged me that Lennys had just got hit by a tornado (I had heard earlier that there were tornado warnings, etc. but who pays attention to that?) I do the stupidest thing imaginable and hop in the car to go “check it out.” Then I am texted that there is another tornado on the way but continue to swing down Decatur ST and through EATL to survey the damage because what storm takes the same path, right? Ok, perhaps I am a bit of a disaster junkie. And there were hundreds of folks out the next day snapping pictures of the carnage. These are mine.

Update: Fox Interactive Media has put some of my photos on the FOX website here.

Holy Jesus, I think I have found my calling as corporate guerrilla ironist.

In a typical event, a few brave people volunteer to “present” a random deck of slides pulled off the Web, or borrowed from friends or employers. (I first heard about PowerPoint Karaoke when an organizer asked if she could use a deck I had presented on word meanings.) The audience laughs, cheers, and yells out suggestions as the presenters gamely struggle to link one slide to the next, transforming something that probably started life as a tedious corporate monologue into a five-minute flight of creative irony.

Although for long I’ve been envisioning something riffing on the absurdity of the conference call…