DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The LA Times’ automotive critic Dan Neil has a smart review of the new Chevy SSR.

Here’s my favorite line:

The weaknesses of the SSR — weight, limp acceleration, expense, a curb appeal more gimmicky than gob-smacking — are part of a larger flaw: Corporations can’t build hot rods.

Sure is pretty though. (Not that I’d ever drive one. 15 mpg?! Sheesh, there oughta be a law.)

New feature announcement: the latest development version of Monaural Jerk can send “trackback pings” to other weblogs. This enables MJ users to participate in cross-blog discussions, by linking their stories to stories published on other websites.

It’s perhaps a bit confusing if you’re not familiar with the concept. So, just trust me when I say: it’s pretty cool.

You might also want to see a screenshot of the administrative interface for trackbacks in Monaural Jerk.

(Part II of the trackback implementation — receiving pings — is in the works and scheduled for the next release. The client side will become available in a day or three.)

I inadvertently lost 7 lbs. I had no intention of doing so, but now I realize I may have stumbled onto the next great fad diet. Practitioners need not count calories nor purchase approved food replacement products nor take supplements of any kind. There are no expensive bestselling how-to-diet manuals, no consultations with doctors, no record-keeping or worry or guilt.

No, all you have to do is join a blues band. Play the drums for 5 hours a week on top of your already full schedule and you, too, will lose 7 lbs.

I guess it will help if you’re mostly vegan when you start out. So in that sense, to honestly follow this diet you can’t eat any meat or dairy, except for the occasional baked good or pizza. Then just pick up some sticks.

As a bonus, you’ll get your shuffle back.

When I heard about MoveOn PAC’s Bake Sale, a coordinated grassroots effort to raise money for the Kerry campaign, I thought of Spinal Tap: there is such a fine line between clever and stupid.

It would likely make the news. Free PR is clever. But any single contribution to the opposition from a defense contractor or energy company would eclipse the total take of a nationwide bake sale, making the entire effort somewhat pointless.

Besides, I thought, who has time to bake cookies for a political campaign?

I do, as it turns out. And I wasn’t the only one. When I checked the MoveOn bake-sale site, I was surprised to see 35 volunteer bakers staffing three bake sales in this small town.

Given our normally tight weekend schedule, we had to compromise somewhat. We planned to make cookies anyway (for a dinner party), but getting them done in time for the bake sale required us to adjust our schedule. The adjustment meant not going to the store to pick up two of the necessary ingredients; instead, we substituted lemon zest for orange, and we used the wrong kind of coconut.

The chosen cookie recipe is nearly without peer: Nancy Jamison’s Coconut-Cranberry Chews. We’ve made the cookies many times before with uniformly excellent results. But our substitutions had an unexpected effect. The first batch sucked: dry, somewhat hard, not-entirely-sweet balls with a slightly astringent finish due to the lemon.

We added a shot of orange juice for a later batch. This cured the dry problem and the ball problem; it turned the batch into one Pangaea supercookie, encompassing all the earth’s landmasses, or at least all the dough on the cookie sheet. This cookie was so big, if we’d tried to dunk it in milk, it would have caused a tide.

This episode notwithstanding, I have a knack for cookies. I’ve seen a lot of sad-looking cookies, especially at, for example, community bake sales, and I’d looked forward to delivering a batch of something better. So it was with a distinct air of regret that I loaded a plate with the best of my own sad-looking cookies, and drove them downtown to find one of the local bake sales.

I’d had to choose between the perfectionist route — skipping the bake sale because my cookies didn’t turn out the way I expected — or participating with a slightly sub-par result. In the end I realized this was a completely appropriate conclusion for participation in a political process. I’d started with the best of intentions, made a slight compromise to accomodate a conflict, and the result was disappointing, leaving the consumer with a bitter aftertaste.

In February, 2003, I recorded LCD/Plasma TV prices, in hopes of documenting a dramatic drop in price over the next six months. But prices didn’t come down.

Now, though, they have. Here are the old and new results. (Some models have been discontinued, so I’ve substituted comparable items.)

• $4200 for a 29'' Samsung (LTM295W)
  $3150 for a 32'' Samsung HDTV (LTN325W)
• $5000 for a 32'' Sony (KE-32TS2)
  Now $3600
• $4300 for a 37'' Panasonic EDTV (PT-37PD4-P)
  $2800 for a 37'' Panasonic EDTV (TH-37PA20U)

Those prices are from major appliance retailer websites (goodguys.com, circuitcity.com). The discriminating shopper can do even better…

• $2409 for the 32'' Samsung HDTV (LTN325W)
• $2750 for the 32'' Sony (KE-32TS2)
• $2790 for the 37'' Panasonic EDTV (TH-37PA20U)

~$3000 still sounds like an obscene amount of money to spend on a television. But the 16:9 aspect ratio on a flat screen would make our DVD collection look gooood.

LCD computer monitor prices do not seem to have dropped the way television prices have. Dell’s 19'' LCD still sells for $719. The 18'' has gone up in price from $539 to $639. No doubt some special deals were in place last year (and will likely return).