2004

24 Publications, 89 Posts, 172 Links

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Meats

By Paul Ford Nov 29

Today Helena (this is not my girlfriend’s name, and I am going to change it every time I use it, in order to keep the cops at bay) and I saw a van that read: Flushing Meats, from Queens. In 6,000,000-pt type with a picture of a pig.

Weekly Review

Weekly Review: November 16, 2004

By Paul Ford Nov 15 Weekly Review

[Weekly Review] Weekly Review Adjust by Paul Ford , November 16, 2004 A kinkajou, 1886. Nobel Prize winner Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa, better known as Yasir Arafat , died of unknown causes at a French military hospital.

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Of Presidents and Ontologies

By Paul Ford Nov 2

Of Presidents and Ontologies November 3, 2004 Paul Ford As I write this, the outcome of the elections in the United States it entirely uncertain. But, eventually, someone must win.

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Voting Story

By Paul Ford Oct 31

I was talking with a good friend of mine about the weather. “Vote,” she said.

Link

Christian Retail

christianretail.blogspot.com Oct 27

“It looks like Santa puked.

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The Election

By Paul Ford Oct 26

We’re going on 18 years now, give or take a few, 18 years of constant recriminations and condemnations, assassination attempts, and meaningless rallies. Both of the candidates look exhausted, gaunt.

Post

Stuck in the Senate

By Paul Ford Oct 12

Stuck in the Senate October 13, 2004 Paul Ford Last month we created an RDF representation of the United States Senate , and this month I was going to do the same for the House of Representatives . But after looking closely at my Senate RDF, and thinking about the sort of queries I wanted to make of it, I realized that it's a mess.

Link

Sex Tetris

liberatorshapes.com Oct 3

Foam blocks for shenanigans. Careful, nekkid!

Post

The pigs

By Paul Ford Oct 3

I forgot to tell you--when I was down in Maryland helping my mother after the flood, a woman came by the house and told the story of her three caged pigs. These pigs were nearly carried away during the flood.

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Flood 2

By Paul Ford Sep 20

A second flood in two weeks brought five and a half feet of water and inches of thick river mud into my mother’s basement. So I came down to Maryland on Sunday.

Link

Giuliani vs O’Malley

friendsofomalley.org Sep 16

From more pleasant times: O’Malley and Giuliani face off over who’ll win the 2001 in a series of ads.

Link

Library Signs

librarian.net Sep 16

“The FBI has not been here.

Post

Uncle Sam's Semantic Web

By Paul Ford Sep 14

Uncle Sam's Semantic Web September 15, 2004 Paul Ford From the EPA to the Navy, the United States government is coming to see the Semantic Web as a solution to huge data-processing problems. XML.

Link

Cocktail Hour

postworldindustries.com Sep 7

You know that scene in Do the Right Thing where Mookie throws the trash can through the window? It’s like that, but for five straight minutes, in the dark, with molotov cocktails and a marching band, and over a dozen screaming people leaping on a flaming police car.

Link

Knob Goblins

coloradocanines.com Sep 7

Knob Goblins are cat toys that hang off a door. Someone should be fired, or promoted, at Great American Pet Co.

Link

Brokentype RNC roundup

brokentype.com Sep 5

The best write-up of the RNC you’ll find in any major or minor medium.

Link

Mandonna

mandonna.com Sep 5

Videos are worth watching.

Link

DivX videos of Amiga demos

amidemos.org Sep 5

“Demos” are animated works of art where pushing the limits of the computer you’re using is part of the art. This would be an ideal set of .

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Screenscraping the Senate

By Paul Ford Aug 31

Screenscraping the Senate September 1, 2004 Paul Ford Note: In this inaugural article of Paul Ford's new column, Hacking Congress, he introduces his plan to create an RDF description of the U. S.

Link

The Civil Liberties Blimp

cnn.com Aug 30

And in other news, “The camera on board the airship is so powerful that it can read the newspaper over your shoulder from 1,000 feet,” Bruce Renny of the Lightship Group said.

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Yet Another

By Paul Ford Aug 29

As we walked north along 7th Ave, balloons in hand, a man wearing a smock popped out of a restaurant. “I wish I could come!

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Gone Protestin'

By Paul Ford Aug 28

In a few moments, I’m heading to the protest, the big one. After that I may wander up to Central Park to see what happens there.

Link

Choire Sicha quotes

bazima.com Aug 27

You know how in those mystery books, they’re always telling you that the corpse was gay because of trauma to the anus? I love that shit.

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Misc. Dialogues

By Paul Ford Aug 23

I was entering the York St. station at 10 tonight, and as I swiped my card through the turnstile, a young woman, standing next to her boyfriend, said something to me—I wasn’t sure what.

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Introduction

By Paul Ford Aug 10

He had just turned 30, and now he was sitting up in bed, ebbing in and out of sleep after hitting snooze on the alarm. His dream had been remarkable.

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A First Look at the Kowari Triplestore

By Paul Ford Jun 22

A First Look at the Kowari Triplestore June 23, 2004 Paul Ford Kowari is an open-sourced (Mozilla Public License) triplestore optimized for RDF storage, created by Tucana Technologies , and written entirely in Java 1. 4.

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Commentary: All About Eve, and Other Mothers

Jun 21

Some scientists believe that all of humanity has a common ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve, who lived 150,000 years ago. Commentator Paul Ford thinks she has something in common with his mother.

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Commentary: Be Proud of Guilty Pleasures

Jun 3

Commentator Paul Ford believes that everyone has a guilty pleasure they like to read, watch or listen. He thinks that it's time for people to proudly face up to this, and stop ripping the covers off of their fantasy novels.

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Northeast Corridor

By Paul Ford Jun 1

Hospitals take the life right out of you. The huge sliding doors, the phalanx of clerks and guards, the waxed linoleum.

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WWW2004 Semantic Web Roundup

By Paul Ford May 25

WWW2004 Semantic Web Roundup May 26, 2004 Paul Ford According to Tim Berners-Lee's WWW2004 keynote address , the Semantic Web is entering " phase II ", a time of "less constraint" when Semantic Web developers are encouraged to build upon the foundations of RDF and OWL to create working applications on both the server and the desktop. And while other topics were discussed at WWW2004, such as mixed markup and XForms , this was definitely the Semantic Web's moment in the sun, with academic and corporate presentations alike focusing on the uses of RDF, triple stores, and data sharing.

Essays

Take the Downtown Train

By Paul Ford May 24 Essays

In 1997, Ian Kerner was my supervisor at an ‘internet strategy’ firm that evaporated in the dot-com crash. I hadn’t heard from him in years, but a few months ago, I asked a mutual friend what Ian was up to.

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Berners-Lee Keeps WWW2004 Focused on Semantic Web

By Paul Ford May 19

Berners-Lee Keeps WWW2004 Focused on Semantic Web May 20, 2004 Paul Ford New York City, May 19 -- A peculiar buzz is back in the halls of WWW2004 -- the mix of hubris and geek name dropping, cheap suits and over-eager handshakes that last prevailed in 2000. "I nearly invented the web," says a fellow with a large stack of promotional postcards advertising new social networking software.

Link

SAP Ventures

sapventures.typepad.com Apr 21

Venture capital shenanigans.

Link

Mocoloco.com

mocoloco.com Apr 21

Expensive pretty things for spoiled people.

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The Doomsday Canticle, Part II

By Paul Ford Apr 20

Jack @ RhetoricalDevice has challenged Alex @ Logodrome, Alex @ Brokentype, and myself to write a Lovecraftian novel round-robin, called The Doomsday Canticle. This is the second installment; you can read the first installment on Jack’s site.

Link

Famous Scientologists Past and Present

home.snafu.de Apr 16

Leonard Cohen, Darby Crash, Neil Gaiman, Isaac Hayes, Chaka Khan, Juliette Lewis (and Brad Pitt when they were dating), Charles Manson, J. D.

Link

Panoramas

panoramas.dk Apr 16

Piles and piles of Quicktime panoramic shots from around the globe. New York, Jerusalem, and Everest.

Link

Famous Scientologists past and present

home.snafu.de Apr 14

Leonard Cohen, Darby Crash, Neil Gaiman, Isaac Hayes, Chaka Khan, Juliette Lewis (and Brad Pitt when they were dating), Charles Manson, J. D.

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Falluja

en.wikipedia.org Apr 13
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Ornament and Cryptography

dfnct.com Apr 13

“My tenet of ornament is therefore its renewal through computational means, a method of bringing ornament back into the cultural vocabulary as a visual container for information. ” Serious consideration of design from Christian Marc Schmidt .

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The English in India

harpers.org Apr 13

“The governors appointed by the Crown were powerless for good. The practical exercise of power was in the hands of the servants of a soulless corporation on the opposite side of the globe, whose predominant feeling was contempt for the people over whom they were placed.

Link

Gary Benchley: State of Train

themorningnews.org Apr 13

Wayne Coyne: Now I’m going to ascend into heaven in a golden chariot, lifted by a huge flock of doves, and throw confetti over the chariot’s side.

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The Spy

By Paul Ford Apr 12

Protecting myself, and others, from my own geek nature.

Link

Tiny Brain Implants

nytimes.com Apr 12

Once there’s an emacs mode and Eclipse plugin for this, I’m down.

Link

Monster Island

brokentype.com Apr 8

A serialized New York City zombie apocalypse novel written by David Wellington, and explained by Alex at Brokentype.

Link

Monster Island: Chapter 1

brokentype.com Apr 8

Read it, because it has zombies, and if 200 of you click through, I get to be a character in the novel, and possibly eaten.

Link

Hey! Rosecrans! Kottke!

brokentype.com Apr 8

Don’t you go taking this zombie link for your wildly popular sites and blowing my chances of being a character in this novel. This link is mine until I get 200 referers and am turned into a character in a zombie novel.

Link

Monster Island

brokentype.com Apr 8

Goddammit Rosecrans, back off. Everyone!

Link

An Amusing Flash Movie

brokentype.com Apr 8

This flash movie is great. The way that it fades in and out and whatever.

Link

Movable Type 4 Pre-release Download

brokentype.com Apr 7

With TypeKey integration and a robot that does your laundry, and total integration with everything ever, including the ability to natively blog from your brain just by thinking, until YOUR BRAIN IS EATEN BY ZOMBIES. Only available if you click that link.

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Okay.

brokentype.com Apr 7
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PETA Timeline

rotten.com Apr 6

Timeline of PETA projects: pro-beer campaign, Timothy McVeigh, etc.

Link

Movie Budgets

the-numbers.com Apr 6

Scroll down for the worst failures. Donny Darko is one of the worst bombs ever.

Link

The Full Brice Taylor Story

conspiracyplanet.com Apr 6

Bob Hope’s mind controlled sex puppet; Henry Kissinger’s human filing system.

Link

Chinese Dog Farms

taipeitimes.com Apr 4

“A series of bloody puddles beneath a crossbeam affixed to a line of weeping willow trees.

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Wolf Nurses in India

harpers.org Apr 4

“He still prefers raw flesh, and when a bullock dies and the skin is removed, he attacks and eats the body, in company with the village dogs.

Link

Dog Island

thedogisland.com Apr 4

Send your dog to Dog Island! With different islands for big, medium, and tiny dogs.

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Dogs in Elk

jeryrypournelle.com Apr 4

Dogs living inside an elk, with followup.

Link

Project MassiveOffshoringClusterfuck

plainlayne.dreamhost.com Apr 1

“I’d like to introduce you to Layne. She’s here to take Project MassiveOffshoringClusterfuck to the next level of massive offshore clusterfucking.

Link

Amazon World

amazonworld.blogspot.com Apr 1

Amazing reviews.

Link

Found at Starbucks...

americanprogress.org Mar 31

... Rumsfeld’s talking points: “Everything we say is always true.

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Excerpt from “Jubilate Agno”

eir.library.utoronto.ca Mar 30

The great cat poem of Christopher Smart, written while insane. “For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

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Tiny Apps for PC

tinyapps.org Mar 30

An appreciative collection of small, elegant PC applications.

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Hyperworlds

hyperworlds.org Mar 30

Website of a Xanalogical true believer.

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APN Records

apnrecords.org Mar 30

“The era of selling reproducible content is dead.

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Copy Massage

copymassage.blogspot.com Mar 30

A young copy editor explains things.

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News Designer

newsdesigner.com Mar 30

Newpaper layout and front page approaches examined in detail.

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Don Delillo in Gnooks

globalnetworkofdreams.com Mar 30

People who like Don Delillo might also like these writers. But they might hate touchgraphs.

Link

Analysis Paralysis

c2.com Mar 30

“Analysis Paralysis is a term given to the situation where a team of otherwise intelligent and well-meaning analysts enter into a phase of analysis that only ends when the project is cancelled.

Post

The Law

By Paul Ford Mar 29

In honor of ancient Internet tradition, pictures of my cat.

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Trapped by unded, need help

survivezombies.blogspot.com Mar 28

The blog of two men trying to survive zombie attacks. “That’s not very funny.

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The Trial

eudaemonist.com Mar 28

A remarkable short photo-story in 4 panels.

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Involuntary parks

home.ecn.ab.ca Mar 28

To create a nature preserve, plant landmines.

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Genetic Sexual Attraction

geneticsexualattraction.com Mar 28

Long-lost sons, daughters, and siblings turn each other on. “One male talked of his need to be sexual with his brother but, not being homosexual, they shared a woman.

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F Train Spotting

nytimes.com Mar 28

The F train illustrated by Danny Gregory.

Link

The Passive Voice

webster.commnet.edu Mar 26

A lengthy and detailed explanation of the passive voice in English speech.

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The Passivator

By Paul Ford Mar 26

A passive verb and adverb flagger for Mozilla-derived browsers, Safari, and Opera 7.5, with caveats. NOTE! NOTE! FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY--DOES NOT REPLACE REAL GRAMMAR KNOWLEDGE.

Link

Nanniebot breakdown

waxy.org Mar 24

Nanniebot - a chatbot designed to catch pedophiles, and it apparently passes the Turing test. Nanniebot’s creator - a holocaust denier, but please note also a pet lover .

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How I Learned to Swim

By Paul Ford Mar 22

Part I It was a storm that pushed me back in. I took swimming classes at the Community Center in 1980, in the summer, when I was six.

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March March

By Paul Ford Mar 19

Images from an anti-war (and a bit of anti-everything) protest, 20 March 2004.

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Commentary: Obsolescence, the Killer App

By Paul Ford Mar 15

For decades, U.S. manufacturing firms have moved factory jobs overseas. Now technology jobs are being sent overseas too. Commentator Paul Ford is struck by the irony that the system built by programmers is the very mechanism that allows these jobs to move overseas.

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The Passion of 1870

harpers.org Mar 15

Reactions to the passion play of Obbergamerau in 1870, at the outset of the Franco-Prussian war.

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Blimp

wired.com Mar 15

A massive mind-control orbital laser blimp, from the defence agency that brought you the Internet.

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Passion opens firehose of horseshit

nytimes.com Mar 15

NBC orders a pilot for “a new series about a nun and a skeptical scientist who begin to believe in the Bible as the events of Armageddon begin to happen.

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Shock Sites

en.wikipedia.org Mar 15

Goatse. cx and other foul sites.

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Unnamed foreigners!

nytimes.com Mar 15

“I noticed recently that Senator Kerry has been making some observations about foreign policy,” Mr. Cheney said a moment later.

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Commentary: Tilting for iTunes

Mar 8

Pepsi is running a promotion that if you get a bottle cap with a code, you can download a free song from Apple's iTunes. Commentator Paul Ford says that this kind of subversion of advertising is what the Internet is really great at.

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The Landlord

By Paul Ford Mar 6

Marta’s landlord was always checking on something. He wore expensive white shirts, pressed slacks, and sneakers.

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Sleepless

By Paul Ford Mar 1

See also: The Passion of the Christ: Blooper Reel at The Morning News . The creature perches upon the bed, orange stripes and yellow eyes.

Essays

The Passion of the Christ: Blooper Reel

By Paul Ford Mar 1 Essays

(Translated from Aramaic and Latin) Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shopov) stands with the scourged and thorn-crowned Jesus (James Caviezel) before a throng of Jews, all of whom shout for Christ’s crucifixion. Pilate has a bowl of water brought to him so he can ‘wash his hands’ of Christ’s condemnation.

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See Also...

By Paul Ford Feb 23

See: Interview with Paul Ford at Gothamist . I strongly encourage you to let loose hell’s fury upon me in the comment boards.

Essays

Diamonds Aren’t Forever

By Paul Ford Feb 22 Essays

On Friday February 20th, 2004 the MTA is retiring the Q Diamond train after more than 20 solid years of service, to make way for ‘progress’ and ‘faster trains’ over the newly restored express tracks on the Manhattan Bridge. Well, we aren’t letting the Q Diamond disappear without a party honoring its awesome service.

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Commentary: Age of 'X'

Feb 17

If there are any future historians in the audience, commentator Paul Ford has a question for you: what age are we living in?

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Meeting

By Scott Rahin Feb 16

There are two basic sorts of pedestrians, those in motion from A to B and the loomers, who move stop-and-start, and set a shuffling pace, investigating trash, asking for quarters. To them we add two recent variations: cell phone users, and now the smokers, both of whom are banished from the bars and restaurants, self-selected social pariahs who breed either annoyance or lung cancer by their presence.

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Commentary: Early Periodicals Go Online

Feb 8

Commentator Paul Ford spends more time than he'd like to admit browsing the "Making of America" website, put up by Cornell University. Recently, he found Herman Melville's "Bartelby the Scriviner," just sitting there halfway down page 546.

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Lists

By Paul Ford Jan 31

A small selection of hundreds of lists from Wikipedia.

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Israeli Rabbis Hope to Search Vatican

209.157.64.200 Jan 26

Israel’s chief rabbis, who will meet the pope Friday, said they hope to get permission to search Vatican storerooms for artifacts such as the huge golden menorah that stood in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

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4701

By Paul Ford Jan 24

Dragons and Jesuits for Chinese New Years.

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The Idiotarod

By Paul Ford Jan 23

I want to set a story in Union Square Park, and so I went there to pace the park’s boundaries and observe its statues. Suddenly, a group of men ran up, all in black, four of them tethered together to a shopping cart, one behind pushing the card, and yelled “timekeeper!

Link

A Rap Beef in Israel

universalmetropolis.com Jan 16

“The lyrics are we should never be divided again, only together will we survive and maintain Israel. What is so wrong with that?

Post

Smith St. Between 9th and Nelson

By Paul Ford Jan 15

Here you will find a few brownstones, and across the street, some sort of red-painted brick structure which belongs to the concrete factory, and some trash lids chained to a wall so that they will never escape. All night the cans strain at their chains, for a freedom that will never be theirs.

Link

My First Voodoo Curse

rhetoricaldevice.org Jan 14

As I was considering that things were only likely to get worse, I remembered then that I had, in my little red backpack, a decommissioned Second World War hand grenade; the kind that looks like a big metal pineapple.

Link

Ad Banner

logodrome.net Jan 14

Given this context, one might ask whether economics approves of advertising? Since the primary concern of economics is efficient allocation of scarce resources, the question should be restated as follows: does advertising promote efficiency?

Link

Why I don’t like RDF

simonstl.com Jan 14

Simon St. Laurent delivers an accurate list of the problems with RDF, many of which are truly crazy-making (and which many people implementing RDF-like solutions, including me, continually hack around, coming up with custom XML schemas so that they might leverage hierarchy and do basic transformations).

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Ceiling

By Scott Rahin Jan 13

Hole in the roof of the Smith & 9th St. Subway Station I went for an interview at a branding firm in midtown.

Link

At Night

bartleby.com Jan 13

For now I see the universe outspread Within my vision, as with close-shut lids One may read clear the history of the dead And stand with Pharaohs by the Pyramids, Or sit within some rare Athenian home; Yes, as the words and deeds of men are brought Into the widening circle of my thought, The stars grow real to me like deathless Rome.

Link

Bumper Stickers

brushstroke.tv Jan 13

... and Howard Dean, violence, and orcs.

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The Soldiers at Smith & 9th St

By Paul Ford Jan 6

in an edited form The sign at my subway stop said “by using this station you consent to appear in a film. ” On the platform, I found actors in camouflage, holding fake guns, in stone-faced formation.

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Commentary: New York Stories

Jan 6

There's a cliche about how many stories there are in New York. But cliche or not, commentator Paul Ford would like to add a few more.

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Predictions

By Paul Ford Jan 2

An old man came up to me; it was 1AM & I was waiting for a bus. “Hey,” he said.

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Sickbed

By Scott Rahin Jan 1

A thing that comes from dreams, but would be better forgotten.