Joel's humanistic blog

Today, the newspapers are carrying obits for two different prominent humanists. Here's the New York Times ones for Ellis and Wine . I never met Ellis, although he's appeared occasionally at humanist events in the NYC area; and I met Wine only once, when he gave the keynote at Humanlight 2003. (In fact, I sat next to him in the car when going back to NYC, so it's unnerving that he died in a car accident.)

The second of two quick notes on my recent stuff elsewhere on the web: At Steve Baldwin's Ghost Sites blog, he's posted an analysis I sent in about a time capsule from the 1990s Internet: the official book promotion site for Jackie Chan's 1998 autobiography I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action , which has been preserved intact virtually unchanged from the date of release.

The first of two quick notes on my recent stuff elsewhere on the web: Here's Thorstein Veblen's description of the Icelandic Commonwealth , from his book An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation as existing in a quasi-anarchist form, where the government lacked most of the usual functions, such as defense, and coercive power. I sent this passage (which I discovered while proofreading the book in Distributed Proofreaders ) in to Roderick T. Long , who had written about Iceland in a similar vein here and here ; he hadn't seen it, and neither had David Friedman (the other libertarian most well-known for seeing Iceland as a model of anarchy).

Over the last few months, I've been making some incremental minor changes and improvements to the blog. I'm not slapping a "2.0" label or anything like that, but I feel it's worth keeping track of; they should add up to a better site experience. This includes, in no particular order: Somewhat belatedly, switching over to the new version of Blogger Cleaning up the HTML coding on pictures (and adding a few new ones) Adding categories (a New Blogger feature) and extending the categories back to older posts Deleting spam comments Deleting some posts I was unsatisfied with A major reorganization and expansion of my sidebar (made much easier by New Blogger), making it a much more complete account of my stuff around the web Finally getting a traffic analyzer, via Site Meter , providing a lot more info about traffic than I had (which was basically none) And also ... I'm going to try to commit to a more regular posting schedule; I make no promises, but will try to ...

Among bad movie fans, one particularly special favorite is the 1990 "best worst movie" Troll 2 . Without the typical features that bring attention to well-known bad movies — big-name stars, a large budget, a recent release date, a showing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 — but solely on the strength of sheer badness and massive filmmaking ineptitude, it's charmed its way into a cult following, a near-permanent space on the low end of the IMDB Bottom 100 (including occasional stints all the way down at the #1 spot), and a RiffTrax . And this summer, Troll 2 is being featured at an ongoing series of special theatrical screenings , featuring a newly rediscovered 35mm print, at cities across the United States! The next two are this weekend in Seattle, and new cities and dates are being announced. Plus, they will have a large proportion of the original cast in attendance, who are fully appreciative of the movie's badness and the strange following it's gained, who...