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-- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" |
miércoles, febrero 28, 2001
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linkydink ah. i'm at work once again, so instead of doing my Linear Algebra homework (or studying for the test in that class tomorrow...), i'm once again bringing you some fresh 'n tasty links from my random internet meanderings. here's one now: fiction from fisticuffs.org. this one's "a preposterous little short using vocabulary words," as the author describes it. hey, i liked it.
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linkydink "Instead of acknowledging this reality, we all came up with Cyberculture, and then, as a further compromise, when the world wanted into the networks, we came up with the New Economy. Now that the old economy has figured out how to get what they need out of the new technologies, we're left with nothing to call our own. Alas."
martes, febrero 27, 2001
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linkydink Here are some things those born in 2001 will wish they had been around to be a part of. We, however, are around so be a part of it.
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linkydink "Miss Silverstone has starred in many movies such as The Crush and Clueless and is well known for appearing in 3 Aerosmith music videos. Although she has had a very successful film career, few people are aware of the fact that in her leisure time she enjoys radio astronomy, quantum mechanics and most of all, configuring a Cisco 3620 which sits on a nightstand next to her bed."
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linkydink timmy: what frustrates me about not having lived during one of the interesting movements/eras of the past is that i feel like people today are unwilling to be stirred into any sort of movement or behind any sort of issue. c'mon, the event that's inspired the most global outpouring of emotion in the last, oh, decade was Princess Diana's death. are people lazy? satisfied with the status quo? what? of course, there are always the (relatively) little groups of people who do care. and who knows when the next big wave of artistic change will sweep over us?
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linkydink Murray Hill, N.J. (Feb. 26, 2001) -- Claude Elwood Shannon, the mathematician who laid the foundation of modern information theory while working at Bell Labs in the 1940s, died on Saturday. He was 84.
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linkydink timmy: i had a similar experience when i was in chile: it, too, was right under an ozone hole, and despite applying spf40 sunblock at least 2x per day, i was more tan than i've ever been in my life. usually spf15 is enough to keep my skin looking as pasty as ever. it's funny how many environmental, economic, and social problems we Americans can conveniently ignore because we don't have to directly deal with them - overpopulation, poor labor practices, super-toxic industrial pollutants that get dumped in the water supply, etc. scary. in a similar vein: i'm doing a paper for my Environmental Economics public policy class, and chose as my topic "Do recycling programs make economic and environmental sense?". if anyone has any suggestions for resources i can use for this, swing 'em my way.
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linkydink I like the article JRandom posted about AllAdvantage. Reading it provoked a thought I've been having a lot recently: That I wish I had been born maybe a decade earlier than I actually was. The reasoning behind this is that some of the most fascinating, fun and unique movements/eras have occurred in the past 15 years or so, and I've been just a little bit too young to fully participate in them. Witness the now-dead Golden Age Of The Internet, or the now-ancient Golden Age of Electronic Music. Even these pale in comparison to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, or the 1940s International Communist Conspiracy, or Devo. In short, I become unreasonably convinced that all the interesting things have already happened; that now that the 1990s are over, nothing of greater signifigance than Advanced Dungeons & Dragons will occur until we're past our prime. This is obviously quite daft, not to mention a bit defeatist and depressing. I've counteracted this ocassional conviction by holding the belief that every generation and culture (yes, even ours) has its moments, movements, purposes, and unique opportunities. We will, inevitably, have something awesome-- maybe several awesome somethings-- to be a part of. The question then becomes: What will these be? What will those born in 2001 look back on and say: "Damn, I wish I had been around to be a part of that!"? Any ideas?
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linkydink On the Very Real Effects Of Pollution: You may find it interesting that the fabled Hole In The Ozone Layer has suddenly become very very real to me; Southern Australia is right underneath one of the largest gaping holes in Earth's atmosphere, and the tippy-tops of my ears are quite crisp as a result. If you're outside for more than 20 minutes around here without SPF30, you should expect to be burned. I'm a little taken aback by such an immediate effect from what previously struck me as something of an old wives' tale.
lunes, febrero 26, 2001
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linkydink "'American dependence on foreign oil threatens our national security and our freedom, and we need to recognize that,' said Senator Trent Lott, the Republican majority leader, on the Senate floor today, advocating drilling in the refuge." here's what i have to say to Senator Lott:
want to keep us independent, Senator Lott? why not be a *real* republican and get the goverment out of the oil industry? my proposed solutions would be for the government to impose some sort of environmental tax on oil and put the money toward researching better technologies, viable alternative fuel sources, and general reduction of greenhouse gases; someone to smack Senator Lott upside the head and tell him to stop being such a sensationalist, since the OPEC countries rely on us to buy oil just as much as we rely on them to provide it and i doubt our oil consumption is really that much of a national security threat; somehow make people realize that they personally are responsible for pollution and that the problems it causes are very real (probably through economic means, such as charging more per gallon of fuel for cars with worse gas mileage).
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linkydink More disturbing, but more technical is "Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix.
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linkydink Two more good reasons to upgrade your browser besides standards-compliance or feeping creaturism.
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linkydink after reading dave's deep fried baby article and looking at the pictures, i found myself (disturbingly enough) humming They Might Be Giants' song "Hot Cha", featuring such lyrics as "drink and cook the prodigal son; fondue folks for everybody." sometimes the way my brain works disturbs even me.
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linkydink "The strangest thing of all - it was like looking at a stopped clock on the submerged Titanic - was a half-erased whiteboard in the company's old supply room. ''How can [AllAdvantage] make money by repackaging software we already know and understand?'' it asked in faded blue marker. Below the question were a few smudged attempts at answers."
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linkydink i've switched browsers from Netscape 4.75 to Mozilla 0.8, since the latter supports more standards (and i can't stand netscape 6 and i'm principally opposed to IE for its monopolistic business practices). anyway, the point is, i'm trying to switch the page to linked CSS. since i'll be making it pretty for my browser, it'd be nice if y'all would tell me if it's totally screwed up in whatever browser you use. note: this hasn't actually occurred yet. just a heads-up in case all of a sudden things start looking wonky.
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linkydink tonight i dropped by Fire and Water to see a band with whose keyboardist my friend aja is acquainted. (they met on a bus, actually. i thought that only happened in movies.) the band is called Mo' Matching Drapes, is based in Keene, NH, and was surprisingly entertaining. the band is composed of a drummer, a keyboardist (aja's friend paul), a bassist who also plays the tuba, and a guitarist. the tuba-man and the guitarist sing. the songs are more-rock-than-folk folk-rock-pop tunes with crazy, funny lyrics (reminiscent of TMBG at times). they're playing in Easthampton on March 10th, and at Fire and Water again on April 1st.
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linkydink timmy: i don't think you sound pretentious. i think you sound fun. certainly like the kind of roomie i'd want. but, of course, my opinion is hardly objective, since i know The Man Behind The Flier. ali: that lecture sounds like it was awesome. i'd love to have heard it, especially since a lot of it relates to the information i was reading before i did my dreadlocks - about rastafarianism and the roots of dreadlocks and all that jazz. maybe i'll read his book on it one of these days. ;) upon reading lazio's webpage i could find no evidence of neo-nazi tendencies. however, the articles i read about him in the liberal media (aka New York Times) were none too friendly. so.
domingo, febrero 25, 2001
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linkydink Australia is bad because it is lonely, but good because the birds here walk very very strangely. Here is what I am posting on local bulletin boards: Got a Room? My name is Timmy. I'm a 20-year-old guy from the USA chilling in Melbourne for 4-5 months while I study at Uni. I'm responsible, friendly, easygoing, like pets and don't smoke. I dig computers, theater, hiphop and the creation/promotion/enjoyment of all things funky. I'm looking to rent a room in a sharehouse with a fun creative vibe and some cool housemates. If you're interested, phone me at 0407-095-326 and we'll boogie. Peace, What do you guys think? Do I sound pretentious, or do I sound cool?
sábado, febrero 24, 2001
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linkydink i went to a fascinating lecture last night, given by a man named William David Spencer, a "theologian of popular culture" and writer of such books as Dread Jesus, The Global God, and Chanting Down Babylon:the Rastafari Reader. He's also got degrees out of his ears. The lecture was called "the Color of Jesus" and focused on the Rastafari culture (he married into a Dutch-Caribbean family and has lived there) He had a slide show of images of Jesus from around the world and through the centuries. The Rastafari take a Nazarite vow never to cut their locks and some worship Haile Selassie (mighty of the Trinity) who was and Ethiopian Prince born Ras (Prince) Tafari, believing him to be either a direct descendant of King Solomon and Queen Sheba (though there is no evidence they ever had children, they did have a documented correspondence) or a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. However, Selassie publicly denied being anything more than a mortal who worshipped Christ, making a clear distinction between himself and God. We saw images of Christ as a Dread, and heard song lyrics saying God would never make Jesus a "bald-head," and were shown images of Christ as Irish, Japanese, female, African, Indian, American-Indian, and of course Middle-Eastern. The point is, we don't know what Jesus looked like when he was alive as no one who documented his life saw fit to describe him physically. But, it's normal for a culture to choose a human image they can relate to in order to grasp that a man was sent from God for them personally. Hence, the familiar light-skinned, light-haired Jesus in Western Europe and the US. In all probability, based on where and when he was born, Jesus had olive-toned skin and the classic Semetic features- but who can know for sure? And based on his message that he came for all the people of the world, it doesn't matter what he looked like. Spencer concluded with an anecdote of an interview with a Reggae song-writer who has lyrics in his songs seemingly speaking against "Jesus." When questioned he said that he's got nothing against Christ, but Jesus was the name the Oppressors put on them. They call God JAH or Jess-us instead. Incidentally, the first slave ship was named the S.S. Jesus, which pretty much accounts for any reluctance to openlly accept anything of the same name. i think that covers it- it was a great lecture and i highly recommend his books. Tim: i'm jealous of your adventures down under! are you sick of hearing the phrase "down under" yet? anyway, thanks for admitting that you don't have any basis for calling Lazio a neo-nazi. though i'm not a big fan of his, he probably doesn't deserve that. keep up with your Australian cultural notes. i like 'em.
viernes, febrero 23, 2001
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linkydink Ali: Yeah, Hillary seems as sleazy and corrupted as anybody in politics, but I still would rather see her in the Senate than the nigh-neo-nazi she was running against. Now that I've written that, I realize that I don't actually have an factual basis for calling Lazio a nigh-neo-nazi other than hearsay and alliteration... Keeping up on US news via Australian TV is ludicrously easy. Last night there was a prolonged special on the Clinton-pardon scandal that made me think I was watching Fox-5-New York or something. Something doesn't sit quite right with me about that.
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linkydink another log to throw on the flash / programming for obsolete browsers fire... note: this is not to say i necessarily agree with this, since i still insist on using one of the aforementioned obsolete browsers. netscape six blows big-time - to the point where i overcame my software inertia and uninstalled it and regressed back to an older version. so i guess jrandom is right - we can't force users to do anything. but then, if i'm not programming a web business or something that's purely content-driven, but rather just for my own enjoyment, what do i care if people who use shitty browsers can't get the full enjoyment? hmm...
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linkydink did you (like my parents) vote for bush because of the promised whopping tax cuts? how much will you really save?
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linkydink on our faith-based president: "Faith is the evidence of things not seen. We do not see him working, and yet we believe he is. We do not see him thinking, yet we believe he is. We believe he is in charge." and a bonus article: the Guardian rates bush's bipartisanism so far. [both attrib MoJo]
jueves, febrero 22, 2001
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linkydink oh, and i'll be living in Martha Wilson House yet again next year, since we failed in both attempts to get a Friedman. of course, with any luck i'll have a huge, sunny room and i'll buy a hot plate, and then it won't matter at all.
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linkydink alex! welcome, welcome, welcome. jump into the fray. kate: yeah! back me up, eh! ali: i think there is something about being a politician that is inherently sleazy. yes, i am still an Idealistic Youth(tm), but in that particular regard my ideals have been smashed. i don't think there's any such thing as a truly "good" politician - that is, one who sticks to their guns no matter who tries to bribe them, threaten them, or filibuster them into submission. of course, there's a fine line between "sticking to your guns" and "bullheadedness and inability to compromise." i'm way, way too tired to nitpick at that one right now. anyway, hillary. i think it's pretty silly to try to represent a state you've never really lived in (in my book, "owned a house in" does not equal "lived in"). a part of me wants to be happy that women are gaining a stronger foothold in politics, but does it really matter if all they're going to do is play the game just like the men do? the nice thing about the gender divide is that each one brings something different to the table. unfortunately, to break into single-sex-dominated fields, the other sex usually feels the need (rightly so?) to emulate the other in order to get any respect at all. so basically, i see hillary as One Of The Boys now, and there's no trust between me and the Boys in Politics. really, i'm pretty weary of the whole thing. politicans suck. (and no, i won't beat the dead Nader-horse here. you know my thoughts on the subject...)
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linkydink "[I hope someone in particular is going to call me on that comparison, hint-hint ;]..." Now, jrandom, you weren't refering to lil ol' me, were you, punkin?
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linkydink what does it say about the people of this country that even after all the garbage that came with the Clintons has been made public (i may speak too soon-who knows what other garbage will be made known) the people of this country still elect Hillary Clinton to public office? and how are we supposed to resond to this? how 'bout "yeah, right?" sure, she was completely in the dark about everything. say we give her the benefit of the doubt and say ok, she didn't know anything- what's that say about her consciousness of the world around her? i suppose it's possible she was unaware of whatever illegal activities her husband, brother, best friends, employees, etc were involved in. i suppose it's possible she's a fine american woman interested only in helping the underpriveleged of whatever state she decides to move to. but how on earth can people trust this person? either she's basically a liar and a crook or she's oblivious and constantly deceived by those closest to her. this newest development isn't surprising. but shouldn't it be? i'm just disturbed by how little we expect from our politicians these days. we accept too easily the unacceptable behavior which has become commonplace.
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linkydink i agree with cmoore, flash itself is not evil. i think if used "correctly" it makes the web a more exciting place to be. and yes, people talk about the limitations of HTML and how it's the designers revenge.. etc etc. a good site is a good site, whether it's used Flash or not. a bad browser is a bad browser. period. there are many uses of the internet. lots of people get bogged down by content content content. and yes, content is important, content is the general motivation of websites. but delivery of content requires presentation. i have more flexibility in my presentation in Flash, than i do in standard W3 html. people have been pushing the boundaries with DHTML and javascripting, and this is not evil? why? because it fits within a comfortable framework? because we must bow down to the browser? usability, as much as it plays a key role in web design, can be confining when authored by those who wish to confine it. the users experience is dynamic. even mice can learn from experience. put a cellphone in the hands of a person in 1734 and they wouldn't have know the first thing to do with it. and after years and years of development, the users abilities have changed. flash, make no mistake about it, is not evil. and the sole purpose of the internet is NOT content. let's take away museums since they just takes up a bunch of space, huh? there's no way i could actually SAY anything in design, could i? GOD what was i thinking?
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linkydink re Flash: i don't think Flash is inherently evil; i think it, like almost everything in the world, merely has the potential for evil. granted, Macromedia may have made it too easy to use their product for evil, but that doesn't mean it is entirely devoid of usefulness. of course a lot of flash usage leads to counterintuitive navigation and/or is distracting from the actual content, and splash pages are just plain wrong. but does that mean that Flash itself is evil, or does it simply tell us that the site designers are ignorant? maybe everyone should be encouraged to read Nielsen's Designing Web Usability (which, by the way, i'm enjoying immensely. thanks jrandom.).
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linkydink "To give you an idea of the size of the Louvre, imagine the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It fits in a corner of Central Park. The Louvre is the size of Central Park."
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linkydink run Windows? tired of seeing the Blue Screen of Death? by following these simple instructions, you'll never have to see it again.
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linkydink "(what are they thinking by banning industrial hemp, anyway? it's one of the most useful plants ever, and totally unusable for drug purposes. that's like banning soybeans because Big Brother says they're evil.)" well said. i laughed, even. so i was thinking about cross-browser stuff again, and i got to thinking about Flash and how it negates the entire issue. i personally think it's a godsend to web designers. but again, back to the audience, and whether or not they feel that having to download a Flash viewer is a big pain in their butt... and whether using Flash at all is forgetting your lowest common denominator. ya know? and regarding eminem, i play bumper cars in my head with this, but i theorize that just like everything else you have to consider your audience. i believe that he's entitled to share his world-view through his lyrics, but the influence he has over the direction of the world-view of others, of people [especially younger people] who may not have a firm footing in what they believe is "right" and "wrong," changes his level of responsibility. to an audience like his he should give more weight to the reprecussions of what he preaches. but then again, it's the same historical issue. ie: the world was flat once. "everyone" thought so. and anyone who thought differently was insane --> segregation in schools was "right" once. "everyone" said so. --> rock 'n roll was "evil" once. "everyone" thought so.... so i don't expect to be settling down into an eternity of unchallenged moral dilemma. even if it is only to motivate those who speak out against what eminem has to say, it has activated a community. i'm not saying that he's not a bigot and homophobe, or that he's not just plain wrong. i'm trying to displace to the long-run. because, ya'know.. we shall overcome.. blah blah blah...
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linkydink what can i say? that it's a damn shame. i have nothing against religion except when it goes out of its way to make people unhappy for no logical reason. i can also say that this makes me appreciate our government's (now somewhat tenuous) separation of church and state, and the extent of freedom of religion (or lack thereof) that we have.
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linkydink The coverage Eminem's recieved in otherwise relatively restrained media here in the UK has been interesting to watch: Is he really one of the most important poets of our day (The over the top coverage was made to look suitably sycophantic by the same paper round about the same time)? Me, I still think he's shite. But I hate Limp Bizkit as well, so what do I know?
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linkydink Here's an answer for ya, cmoore: Eminem: Making bigotry and hatred cool, and merely making funny and harmless rhymes which challenge the rampant political correctness of our society. That is, see this, or alternatively... [I hope someone in particular is going to call me on that comparison, hint-hint ;]
miércoles, febrero 21, 2001
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linkydink jumping on the envirocitizen train again: why you should fuel your car with hemp. this is yet another reason why the DEA hemp ban is a bad idea. just say no. (what are they thinking by banning industrial hemp, anyway? it's one of the most useful plants ever, and totally unusable for drug purposes. that's like banning soybeans because Big Brother says they're evil.)
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linkydink "The point I'm making is that whether you have a Republican or a Democrat in power, the robber barons are still there. If you look at Clinton, his administration was very good to the corporations. The Dow Jones average during the Clinton years went up from four thousand to ten thousand. Well, whom did it go up for? Who benefited mostly from that? The great stockholders of the nation are the ones who benefited the most. Under the Clinton administration, more mergers of huge corporations took place -- more than any others that had ever taken place before under any administration. I'm saying this not to soften the impact of Bush's alliance with the rich -- only to say that the Democrats have made a similar alliance with the rich, except that they cover this over with a lot of different kinds of rhetoric and a softer approach because the Democrats need the votes of the labor unions, women and black people. Nevertheless, whether you have Republicans or Democrats in power, big business is the most powerful voice in the halls of Congress and in the ears of the president of the United States. So Bush is more of the same, only more so."
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linkydink "The father told the Post he doesn't believe the students are racist, but rather they appreciate those who look like them." from an article about a 5th grader's science project, which basically involved revealing the inherent race identity children develop when they're only around white kids. (or, y'know, kids of their same race. but white kids in this instance.) first off: i don't think there was anything wrong with the girl's project. i think people are just so uptight about being politically correct that they're afraid to say anything that smacks of race issues. instead of dealing with these things they'd rather ignore them and pretend everything's okay, that we don't have any race issues, just because we don't talk about them. obviously this is a blatant lie. our country has serious race issues, and not talking about them doesn't solve anything. denying racism exists is just as hurtful to minorities as mentioning racism potentially is. second: the dad's quote is just funny. they "appreciate thos who look like them"? way to turn a phrase, there, Mr. Thielen. [attrib mefi]
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linkydink here's a question for y'all: eminem: making bigotry and hatred cool, or merely making funny and harmless rhymes which challenge the rampant political correctness of our society? i tend to learn towards the former, since even if the kid means his songs to be metaphorical or amusing, he's not doing a very good job of making that clear. besides, most of his listeners don't get it. people need to keep in mind the responsibility that comes with having great influence over society. not to get all tipper on you (i don't think we should censor him, i just tend to turn my disapproving eye on his lyrics), and heaven help me for agreeing with lynn cheney for once, but i'm a bit disappointed in madonna and elton john for supporting eminem. two queers/queer supporters, one a woman, throwing themselves in with a notorious queer- and woman-basher? not okay, guys. actions speak infinitely louder than words. [attrib mefi]
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linkydink grrr. Damn the Man. or actually, the lottery. like smith, there are senior apartments here at BC and the lottery was today. #148 thank you. which is ok, we still live in apartments, which is the only housing offered, but we have the worst housing a senior can have. grr. ok, i can deal with that, but i came home to my present roommate, who, it turns out, got pick #1!!! i'm trying hard not to be bitter. good luck cmoore! hope you fare better than i have!
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linkydink "...when it's really that she's the one who hasn't quite figured out the mystical world of html yet, and she can't be bothered to fix her own mistakes." oh kate, i feel your pain. (see poll option dealing with fixing computer problems at right.) what kills me is that most people are technophobic to the point where they won't even listen when i try to explain the simplest computer stuff to them. it's like their brains shut off. they just expect me to fix it so they can go back to their regularly scheduled programming. yeesh.
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linkydink is friedman still the bastion of junior and senior ruggers? i remember attending a few parties in D3, one of which is still fairly mortifying to remember.
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linkydink jt - i'm glad the nunnery has proven to be all that it seemed. the new poll is now up! (this may be a short-lived one if i don't, in fact, get a friedman for next year) (ahem: friedmans are smith's on-campus apartments. there aren't very many of them, and the lottery is a bit cutthroat. or as cutthroat as things get at smith, which is not very.) i'm going in for a 6-person, and if that fails i'll try for a 4-person. wish me luck! speaking of RADS (that's Residence And Dining Services), what the heck is up with their news page?
martes, febrero 20, 2001
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linkydink I'm drinking a mango fruit slushy right now, which I've found is a much better alternative to the belowmentioned Ice-Coffee. When I bought it, they gave me a shot of liquid grass (they liquified it right in front of me!!) which was actually really good! Now I'm in a combination internet depot / laundromat / pool hall on Brunswick Street. The Nunnery is a fabulous accomodation. I feel 1000% better (factoring in feeling pretty shitty last night and feeling pretty awesome right now) now that I've gotten the hell out of the all-American University dorm they had me in. Right off the bat, my roommate is this awesome guy from New Zealand. Even if I don't find a place to stay soon, I think I'll be quite happy living in the hostel for a while. People are REALLY laid back and friendly here, especially compared to living in New York last summer. People actually smile! and will talk to you (by which I mean, Me.). I went into a psychedelic ravey-clothes-type store where the woman working there was all bright blue hair and tight flowey raver pants, which is the sort that in New York would never have looked at a bloke in bright red polkadots, and she was super smiley and friendly, which like blew my mind. How nifty is that?
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linkydink consider me nudged. prompted by your 10-post-ago discussion of the issue of cross-browser compatability and uses beyond IE & Netscape, it's all the same issue, really. if you believe that web designers should be coding to the lowest common denominator, then you'll be coding against IE & Netscape, since they are the "default" (for lack of a better word) applications. i think it's all about your audience. i think given the right project, i'd like to design pushing boundaries, using all the shnazzy stuff that seems to work only in IE 5+.. you know? stealing and writing and rewriting scripts that make the experience of the web increasingly dynamic. but knowing that in general, when i'm making a random site, i'm designing for people who sit on their 1998 iMac (sorry graeme) with the old Netscape 4+/IE 4+ scenario... designers on the web who push the boundaries of what's available are designing for other designers. for people in that small percentage. and until the standard is SVG and tabled tiled backgrounds that don't go HAYwire (along with many other things) in Netscape, we're stuck in the old "you're only as fast as your slowest member" scenario. the slowest member really being "average" internet surfer. the beautiful thing is, that the definition of "average internet surfer" changes fairly regularly.... so you can stealthily sneak in more and more functionality... and this is a good point by jr: "Regarding web development, web developers should not try to force the user to do anything because users can't be forced." you're right. we can't force, we can.. uhm.. to use a phrase.. nudge.
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linkydink When asked "What is today's most important unreported story?", there seems to be a disagreement over whether it's that there are so many important unreported stories, or that there are no longer any unreported ones.
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linkydink cmoore, the post that appeared was the middle of three I made... and the others had some comment about you and your heathen bastardised language. Not that they appeared or anything. Blogger hates me, and apparently didn't want you to know about God shitting on Tampa, either. But what can you do?
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linkydink What is the most important invention in the past 2000 years? cmoore, you said "other than netscape or ie, what other...". Go ask Alice. It is impossible to deduct the location of a sender from an email, but it is possible from postal mail. This all said, I'm quite aware and opposed to the lengths our society is going to cruelly and unusually punish those for their crimes, but there are many more deserving of our attention than this.
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linkydink jt, i like when you post your australian adventures here. i think you should continue to dually post. re browsers: jrandom, i know neither netscape nor IE fits the description i posted. that's why i asked for your suggestions - 'cos i've already tried those and am pretty sick of both. re prisons: how can one "authenticate" the origins of paper mail? just as i could make it look like my email was coming from somewhere else, i could make it look like my paper mail was coming from somewhere else. and while you can generally narrow down where in the country paper mail came from (from its postmark), that's about the limit of it, isn't it? and regarding the spam issue, most of that can be filtered out (although spammers get smarter every day, it seems...). so are prison-keepers just technophobes, or what? graeme, remember the rest of us're all uncultured american heathens, so you'll have to remind us that not everyone speaks our brand of english. ;)
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linkydink Regarding web development, web developers should not try to force the user to do anything because users can't be forced. I wouldn't characterize Netscape Communicator/Navigator or Internet Explorer as "decent, graphical browsers which don't do all this proprietary bullshit and do conform to w3c standards", but if you are interested in two that do, check out Mozilla and Opera. Being locked-up without expressed consent is all part of the social contract, whose merits we are free to debate 'til the cows come home, but which I don't see changing any time soon. Along these lines, inmates should not have restrictions on email anymore than they already do on post mail, and they don't. The issue, in case anyone isn't really paying attention, isn't technophobia but authentication: in a prison environment, any communication of untraceable location is a security risk, and email happens to be particularly hard to trace.
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linkydink While I'm at it, what's so surprising about calling the bathroom the toilet? Here in the UK, it's exactly the same. In fact, occasionally, it can be a euphamism for anywhere other than where you are at that moment, as in "No, I AM interested in what you're saying, but I really have to go to the toilet..." followed by you running away from your boring conversation partner and never coming back. What I want to know is, why were the oxygen masks in the bathroom in the first place?
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linkydink Should I create a separate 'blog for news of my Australian travels, or would that be too pretentious or geeky? If I did, it might look like this.
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linkydink I'm posting again from another vaguely overpriced internet depot on Elizabeth Street in downtown Melbourne. The search for housing has begun, and it's wearing me down quickly. I've realized that I'm not certain exactly what I want out of housing, nor am I really certain I had good reasons for turning down on-campus housing. Tomorrow morning it's The Land Of The Smiling Nun for me. How To Speak AustralianToilet Context: (On the plane) "You will find oxygen masks in the toilet." Probable US definition: Toilet Surprising Australian definition: Bathroom Iced Coffee Context: "I would like an iced coffee, please." Probable US definition: Cold coffee with ice in it. Surprising Australian definition: This massive frumpy milkshake concoction with whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top. Poffy Girl Context: "I'm living in a house with two poffy girls." Probable US definition: Some sort of weird prostitute. Surprising Australian definition: English woman. Fire juggling equipment Context: "I run a business that sells fire juggling equipment. Probable US definition: Equipment for the juggling of fire. Surprising Australian definition: Equipment for the juggling of fire. Go figure.
lunes, febrero 19, 2001
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linkydink matt sent me this article on prison email bans. there are arguments for both sides, of course. is it really a violation of free speech to prohibit electronic communication? i mean, it's a violation of civil liberties to lock people up without their consent, but we've done that to the inmates too. what say ye? should inmates be banned from using email or no?
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linkydink mm. actually, i'm hoping for responses from all you regular blogsters, since we're all concentrated in different fields of interest. i think matt probably means news-type media (since those are the kind he lists), but toss me whatever you've got. they'll be interesting to read, anyway. welcome, graeme! glad you finally made it. now you've got to nudge kate to post again. here's a discussion-provoker (hopefully): should web developers try to force their readers/viewers to use the latest standards-compliant technology? i want to be a netscape supporter, but they keep making browsers which are hopelessly difficult to code for. another question: other than netscape and ie, are there any other decent, graphical browsers which don't do all this proprietary bullshit and do conform to w3c standards?
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linkydink cmoore, I don't know why you put me on the spot to find sources of independent media for Matt, I mean, first of all, what kind of media are we talking about? music? film? literature? art? well, my specialty is of course music, and I could probably babble off a list of cool indie artists with webpages, but with the exception of the ambitious but relatively meagre Indiegrrl I can't think of a single source with a lot of information. Perhaps this is the nature of "independent" media, if it gets too organized it somehow ceases to be independent. It makes me wonder, is there a ceiling on the success allowed for an independent entrepreneur (in the art world or otherwise) which, when broken, makes that entrepreneur all of a sudden become The Man? Isn't the greatest success possible the ultimate goal of any genuinely motivated individual? Maybe what Matt really meant was ultilitarian media, media by individuals who seek success only to the point at which it does not enfringe in any way upon the success of others, but of course, if those others suck (e.g. Britney Spears, who is, technically speaking, working under an indie lable called Jive Records) who really wants them to succeed?
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linkydink Twice I've been invited to join, twice something's apparently fucked up. Bad luck or a message from higher forces? You be the judge. But if anyone can see this, then fucking huzzah. Hello.
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linkydink here's the word from matt on his definition of independent:
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linkydink yet another get-a-silly-name webpage (woohoo!): the mob name generator. mine's "killer". rowr.
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linkydink ah, senor mayor is at it again - trying to censor art because it's "anti-catholic". honestly, rudy. at least look at the art before you try to lay your smack down. it's interesting to see what pieces of Catholicism Giuliani gets all up in a huff about (like "blasphemy") and which ones he doesn't (like, say, adultery). salon has another interesting article on the Catholic Church's gripes about the art, and how they're trying to make themselves look like the victims here. i found it striking how very much salon plays the part of the liberal media. those articles aren't objective at all - they're both saying "wow, look how dumb the Catholics and Giuliani are for trying to pull this shit." and, of course, that's my opinion too, but i like to see both sides of the thing. ah well, i'll have to go read some conservative publication, i suppose.
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linkydink Speaking of velvet Buddhas: "We had no idea what any of it meant," he said. "It looked good on there. It is a beautiful language. And we had desert and a camel in there. It was a theme."
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linkydink question/request from matt: if anyone knows of any good independent media sources on the web, matt's compiling a list. to add to it, post here or email him.
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linkydink question/request from me: i'm doing a presentation for my networks class on web cacheing / proxy servers. it's got to be about 20 minutes, so i don't need to go too in-depth. basic explanation of how web cacheing works, problems with it and solutions for them. if any of y'all know of any links that'd give me useful information, hook me up. (or post here. since who doesn't want to know about web cacheing? it's a topic of such far-reaching interest, really.)
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linkydink in news of somewhat local interest to me, two suspects in the dartmouth deaths were arrested today. they're only 16 and 17. call me an naive, but it's pretty horrifying to me that someone my brother's age could kill someone in cold blood. yuck.
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linkydink "Flexible capitalism has precisely the same effects on the city as it does on the workplace itself: superficial, short-term relations at work, superficial and disengaged relations in the city. It appears in three forms. The most self-evident is physical attachment to the city. Rates of geographic mobility are very high for flexible workers. Temps are the single fastest-growing sector of the labour market. Temporary nurses, for example, are eight times more likely to move house in a two-year period than are single-employer nurses. In the higher reaches of the economy, executives frequently moved as much in the past as they do in the present. But the movements were different in kind; they remained within the groove of a company, and the company defined their "place", the turf of their lives, no matter where they were on the map. It is just that thread which the new work-place breaks. Some specialists in urban studies have argued that, for this elite, style of life in the city matters more than their jobs, with certain zones - gentrified, filled with sleek restaurants and specialised services - replacing the corporation as an anchor."
domingo, febrero 18, 2001
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linkydink I wish I had time to look at everything on the Blog; there is some very cool stuff. Unfortunately, I'm at a tiny little pay-by-the-minute internet de(s)pot, so I only have time to say two things. One: Highschool In-Crowd-style social politics have swept back into my life with a vengeance in the past few days, and I hate them. I think being treated like children by the various administrations we've been passed through has made us all revert to high school. (I hope that's all it is. Maybe people in general just suck.) If I had any kind of distance from the process, it might be fascinating in a sociological kind of way. As it is, it's making me nuts. I did, however, really like The In Crowd, though I don't recommend it unless you need to distract yourself from caffeine withdrawal. Two: re. the Velvet Buddha. I don't have time to read the article, but I was just talking about this sort of thing with a friend earlier today. There's something exhillerating in removing a culture's aesthetics from its meaning and context. I like it; make your own style, find your own spirituality. I can dig the way Buddha looks and consider myself a spiritual atheist. I think it's nifty. Three: Jrandom's remark about my cult-joining tendencies reminded me of this.
sábado, febrero 17, 2001
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linkydink "But still; part of me finds it funny that so many years after leaving school, I’m still running with the kids who’ll never be part of the In Crowd."
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linkydink welcome back, jhaas! we missed you. usually i find one-poster blogs pretty banal, but here are some interesting ones i clicked through today: bluishorange who would buy that? little. yellow. different. so. timmy is alive and well and living in australia. watch out for the cane toads, eh.
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linkydink (In case I forgot peoples' emails- this is so rushed!!) Hi all! Writing to you in a very brief time window in a comp lab at UMelbourne. The beurocracy has kept heinously close tabs on me and other Americans here since I touched down Monday morning. First they put us in a log cabin in the Outback surrounded with barbed wire and forced us to talk about our toilet-paper usage habits and build paper airplanes in absurd trust-fall-style "bonding games". Then, Wednesay, I went to a free range egg farm. I fed and pet a kangaroo, saw a very sleepy koala and a boring echidna. FINALLY, this morning, we got to Melbourne, where we've spent the day wandering around and generally being confused by the administration. Hopefully soon I'll get to meet some actual Australians my age instead of associating with other Americans. I have made some cool American friends, though! More in the future; hopefully I'll have a chance to write at leisure! Miss you all a bunch! =t=
viernes, febrero 16, 2001
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linkydink Time again for a visit to uncle jhaas' world: (I told cmoore I'd do an Oscars blog, but I've decided to take a more positive spin than I had planned...) So, since the Oscars came out, I've been thinking a lot about Steven Soderbergh. He's one of the reasons I still love and believe in the movies (It's not always easy). This man is one of the reason independent cinema thrives at all (his "sex, lies & videotape" is widely regarded as the first really successful indie film of the era), and now utilizes studio resources the way all directors should. It's a shame that he will probably get totally stiffed come the big night, despite his being the first human ever to be up for both best director and best film for two films. Support him and maybe buy his book, which was supposed to be interviews with Richard Lester, director of the way-fun Beatles romps "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!," but ends up being some inteviews and a lot of insights into the way this modern auteur works...
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linkydink "'Agricultural production is being achieved at the expense of our ability to feed ourselves and future generations,' Adlai Amor, spokesman for the World Resources Institute, said in summarizing the report."
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linkydink Ok, returning to the red velvet buddha thing... I spent last spring in Zimbabwe being culturally immersed. At first me and the rest of the students on my program were made to believe that we were learning how to be Zimbabwean, but I think we all discovered eventually that we would never actually be Zimbabwean, that we couldn't be, because we were raised as Americans, or Kenyans or Tibetans, etc. But at the same time, I think we all did experience what it is life to live as a Zimbabwean to a certain degree, and took that with us when we went home - I know I did, and I've learned to loathe the "white man's time" even more. While I was there I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what culture is and what tradition is and I talked to all sorts of people about it, my collegues, the directors of my program, Zimbabweans of various incarnations. And what I concluded was that neither culture nor tradition is a static thing, they are each moments on an infinite contiuum of social evolution that began at the dawn of time and will continue until the universe dissolves upon itself. We live in an increasingly globalized society, there is all sorts of mingling and meshing of cultures and traditions going on; I was a vehicle of that when I was in Zimbabwe as an American living with Zimbabweans and giving and taking culture all the time. And I don't think that there is anything wrong with that, in fact I think it is wonderful when it is approached from the angle of mutual curiosity, appreciation and intent upon understanding. Of course, that's a lot to expect from the average person not trained in cultural sensitivity and appropriateness, and at the same time that globalization is happening culturally it is happenning economically and so cultural artifacts are being popularized and marketed like candy bars. And culture is not meant to be eaten like candy bars. But what can we do about that? Protest the W.T.O. and celebrate Diversity!!!! That's my $2 for ya.
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linkydink more f*ed up shit going on in our country. protest, protest, protest, for the love of all that is holy. the aclu will even fax or email your reps for you. click click for a fairer society.
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linkydink aaah! what is this evil?! ...and if microsoft can really "See the Future," they're in the wrong field of business.
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linkydink so much for our generation not experiencing the horrors of war. george is doing his best to provoke one, it seems.
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linkydink tonight, quite by accident, i discovered an entertaining folk-rock boy named Howie Day. i went to MoHo to see Rose Polenzani and ended up liking Howie better. well enough, in fact, to warrant buying his cd, breaking my self-imposed ban on buying cds at concerts. if he was playing near any of you, i'd tell you to go see him. but he's not.
jueves, febrero 15, 2001
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linkydink "President's Day is nearly here! What are you giving George W.? Here's a thoughtful idea: Make a donation in his name to our Washington Watchdog project, and we'll send an e-mail acknowledging your gift directly to Dubya himself. You'll be sending a message, as well as helping us put a tenacious editor in DC to dig up the dirt on the administration and its friends."
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linkydink o michael, why hast thou forsaken us? "'Digital divide' is 'a dangerous phrase' because it can be used to justify government programs that guarantee poor people cheaper access to new technology." note: look at the alt text for the imac image. i found it amusing. :)
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linkydink i've always wondered what on earth the government was thinking when it banned industrial-grade hemp, and this sort of thing just reinforces my conviction that they're all a bunch of power-happy loonies.
miércoles, febrero 14, 2001
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linkydink "He was among the first to use the law to show that even in a situation of conflict, the law still applies. It is because he was prepared to do all of this that he became the first solicitor to be murdered.When the British government had to decide between preserving the status quo and putting up with some uppity Catholic lawyer, the choice was simple: the lawyer had to go."
martes, febrero 13, 2001
lunes, febrero 12, 2001
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linkydink the red velvet buddha article is interesting to me because i'm concerned by and disgruntled about Americans' (and westerners in general, i guess) tendency to appropriate things from other cultures without understanding their significance within the culture we're borrowing from. from the buddha on your shelf to the bindi on your forehead to the native american-esque animal print on your t-shirt to the dreadlocks on my head, we've market-economized things that other people hold sacred. looking at people, i assume the worst - that they have no idea what their fashion trend really means. and i know that looking at me, people probably assume i haven't done my homework on rastafarians, the black rights movement, and what have you. and in general, that's a pretty safe assumption. but what does that say to people to whom those cultural icons are actually meaningful? and what does it tell us about the effects of globalization on cultures - that all we'll really take from them is what can be marketed? there's so much in Buddhism that Americans could benefit from, and yet what we've taken is the Buddha, and dressed him up in velvet. "Is my Buddha not a symbolic recognition that postmodernism, for all its loud extravagance, apparent superficiality and materialism, is moving into a postsecular spiritual search - of which Star Wars is such a clear emblem, in which so many contemporary cultural figures are caught up, and to which even Derrida himself is bowing? And is it not equally a symbol of the potency of the East to provide us with new sources of inspiration as Western faiths seem to be flagging, or at least struggling to disentangle themselves from their own dogmas?" what sort of non-culture do we have, where Star Wars is our religion and Eastern Cultures are expected to provide us with the spiritual guidance we lack? how is our hodge-podge of cultural borrowing a "symbol of the potency of the East"? in the end, we will only take what fits with the ideas we already have and the lifestyle we've already established. we'll be left with a red velvet Buddha and a still-unquenched spiritual need.
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linkydink "Yet sooner or later, of course, as the owner of a red velvet Buddha, one is bound to ask oneself: Why? Why is it that atheists, agnostics, Christians and Buddhists take to it so quickly and easily? Why is it, indeed, that I have a red velvet Buddha sitting on my shelf, and not a pink fur crucifix or a purple suede Star of David? These questions, banal as they may seem, go to the heart of a cultural transformation currently taking place, and even gaining momentum, within the spiritual landscape of Western(ized) popular culture."
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linkydink Speaking of WWII: The Last Expression project is a forum to explore the roles, functions, meanings and making of art in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, focusing on the notorious site of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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linkydink speaking of smith's crunchy five-college cousin, some hampsters have started a fairly nifty little website called grep which, slashdot-like, provides user-submitted news as well as weather, webmail, a poll, a library search, an online directory, and a course catalog. maybe i should learn PHP and shake up some smithie interest in a similar project.
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linkydink happy v-day minus two! for those of you circa western MA, hampshire is staging The Vagina Monologues on wednesday. anyone care to join me?
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linkydink My most embarassing moment? Too embarassing to mention ;) ph34r g00g13, Jimmy. "Orientation"? "Farm"? Oh-no, is Jimmy joining a cult again? Naturally, I agree that it is ethical to use children as medical test subjects given that they want to be tested and assuming everything is conducted responsibly (though that has been a big assumption is recent history). Will the AMA agree with me? Will the government? Really concerned about your economic prospects? Maybe you should check out the Occupational Outlook Handbook, courtesy of our Bureau of Labor Statistics.
domingo, febrero 11, 2001
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linkydink or, if you're like these people, you can believe our giant trade deficit is a-okay and that big oil has it really hard, so people should lay off with the criticism.
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linkydink concerned about your economic prospects? maybe you should be... "The Bush Administration has suggested that states should be allowed to opt out of any minimum wage increase..."
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linkydink 2 from the nytimes: socially responsible investing (maybe now people will actually vote with their dollars, eh jrandom?) and children as medical test subjects. (ethical? hmm...)
sábado, febrero 10, 2001
viernes, febrero 09, 2001
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linkydink Ok, let's see if I've got this right.
If Butler ISA is boring, I'm booking my next journey with Porntravel.com.
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linkydink next time you're feeling especially bigot-y (or wish to be in that hallowed state of being), take a visit to a site that will eliminate all of your doubts that figs are indeed the Fruit of Evil.
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linkydink Several gajillion sites detailing every tiddling minutae of travel in Australia, and not a single one of them will tell me what the hell an Australian electric outlet looks like.
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linkydink For the plane: Listening
Reading
Roalddahl.org is impressive but... kind of atrocious.
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linkydink I take it back. That Politically Incorrect transcript wasn't interesting at all. If Michael Moore and Ralph Nader would quit spouting statistics we've all heard a dozen times before, (ie "If we just took the money that we spend defending Western Europe and Japan... there would be enough money to guarantee the college tuition of every young person in this country.") long enough to listen and respond to anyone else, then we might get some actual frikkin' productive dialogue (!) instead of this tiresome machismic head-bouting. Ah, well. That's what I get for looking to ABC for anything meaningful.
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linkydink wow, bush and his administration aren't doing well on the communication front, eh? if this is the stuff they're mistakenly letting us know about, i don't even want to think about what other crappy plans for the country they've got up their sleeve. oh, and here's a direct link to the Nader/Moore PI interview Timmy referred to a few posts back.
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linkydink ooh, i'm jealous. mia posted the new poetry center picks--did you see? lawrence ferlinghetti is coming to campus. i wish i could be there, dammit. http://prochoice.about.com/newsissues/prochoice/library/weekly/aa020101a.htm this sucks. ick. big, drooly, icky ick.
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linkydink tonight i saw the Boys' Choir of Harlem (for free! compliments of smith!), and they rocked. if you ever have a chance to hear and see them perform, do do do.
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linkydink Henry Adams says: "Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." from his autobiography "The Education of Henry Adams" if you have a spare three weeks or so and really really like history, it's an interesting read. lots of insights on history, life, the building of the US as it is today...he was the grandson of president JQ Adams and knew pretty much everyone there was to know in the 19th century. interesting to see how little has changed, esp in regards to education, considering my entire LIFE is education these days...but that's his point-school has little to do with what you actually learn.
jueves, febrero 08, 2001
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linkydink Dave, your hostel looks like a spaceship. I "talked" with Jhaas last night. He's alive and well, but busy. You can AIM him most nights as 'Lymphy'. Checkout this synopsis of a production of Keely and Du-- the play that I'm seeing at Wes tonight. (The link is for a different production than the one I'm seeing, so ignore the cast, photos, etc...) Afterwards is a discussion with pro-life activists about abortion, which on an uber-liberal campus like Wesleyan will be Very Interesting. The Politically Incorrect homepage has a transcript of Tuesday night's show with Michael Moore and Ralph Nader. I haven't read it yet, but I bet it's interesting.
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linkydink I'm not particularly worried. Sure, I personally can't trust Bush, but there is nothing inherently wrong with changing strategies when it comes to problem-solving; throwing more money at a problem doesn't always make it go away. I know there is next to no difference between Republicans and Democrats, but did people really expect things to stay the same?
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linkydink the hostel i stayed at in montreal doesn't have a webpage (or any privacy to speak of), but it was awesome fun, perfectly located, and full of friendly people. it was called the Auberge Chez Jean - the top listing on this montreal accomodations page.
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linkydink where will all this confusion lead? nowhere good, methinks. hey, whatever happened to jhaas? did he drop off the face of the earth? or just off the face of the blog?
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linkydink The Nunnery's webpage makes it look more like a bohemian luxury resort than a youth hostel. Hopefully, I'll be staying there come 2/17...
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linkydink While exploring the intruiging Rhizome.org, I discovered Perl is My Medium--An Interview with Lisa Jevbratt. AG: What's your favorite color? LJ: Right now it's bright green. Just plain green-like "255" green.... You know, 00FF00.
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linkydink My brain is fried, so I am afraid I am going to have to stray from my usual attempt at profundity. So.... word has it that N'Sync is breaking up, but at least we still have The Back Door Boys.
miércoles, febrero 07, 2001
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linkydink That StorTrooper applet makes you look like you're from Temptation Island. Which, incidentally, my parents visited in 1989, back when it was known as Ambergis Caye. I find this humorous.
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linkydink "I'm not sure what they sell... but I'm pret-ty sure they're about to go bankrupt." -John Stewart on Cingular
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linkydink re who needs a man: anyone who can't afford surgically-implanted stimulation at $15k, that's who. "I feel about this the way I feel about Viagra. It may help some people, but they should also address the underlying reasons for the problem," [Julia Cole] said.
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linkydink ooh! ooh! fun applet that lets you make little pictures of yourself! (or anyone you want. or make people up.)
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linkydink COUNT THEM! ONE! TWO! THREE! THREE BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS!! HA HA HA!
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linkydink "It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." — Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
martes, febrero 06, 2001
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linkydink Here's the concrete stuff: the WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights web page. What conclusion can you draw from it? Well, none really, because the only conclusion that matters is the one that a WTO Member Council would come to when they consider the matter. If South Africa is found to be involation of an agreement they signed, they will face penalties (insert sound of dead horse being kicked here); if not... oh, c'mon, who are we kidding?
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linkydink almost as much i am disturbed that Gore was/is such a corporate weenie, i am disturbed that he (and the vast majority of people who hold public office) vaccilates so damn much. granted, politicians should listen to their constituency and perhaps alter their standpoints to reflect those they represent, but that's not what we're talking about here. the problem with politicians is that they have to whore themselves to both the corporations that fund them and the people whose votes they need. must be tiring. i'm surprised Gore can still walk, what with all that whoring.
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linkydink I found Cmoore's post about Gore blocking HIV aid to Africa pretty disturbing, so I attempted to find out more. The vaugeness and contradictions in the pages I found about this are overwhelming! The WTO apparently both supports and prohibits "compulsory lisencing" of AIDS treatment, depending on when and who you ask, and Gore's stance on it seems to have swung back and forth so many times in the past few years that to cull any kind of useful concrete information out of the whole mess seems impossible. This is what I'm coming to hate about the liberal media. This Eat-The-State article has a vague paragraph about a "state department report" that seems to only peripherally involve Gore, and then says "So that's it. The protesters were angry that Gore would do such a thing," as if everything is self-evident! Forgive my rancor; I'm currently very sick and tired, literally. sigh...
lunes, febrero 05, 2001
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linkydink Ali: Wow; I like that article a lot! The author makes some really good points and seems to have excellent perspective on the situation. Even putting cloning aside, she makes some fascinating observations about the bizzare Raëlians. I like: "For all of the Raëlians' eccentricities, there is something about them that is perfectly attuned to their times... In this sense, you could see them not as bizarros inflamed by a singular vision but simply as the most fervent proponents of a genetic essentialism that is fairly widely shared these days. To put it another way, the Raëlians are just a bunch of people who took literally the cliche that science is replacing religion." Paper topic? Perhaps. I also like: "I also thought about how, if you are a futuristic prophet, your life is suffused with pop culture and you can't help looking and acting like guys from 'Deep Space Nine,' just as real-life Mafiosi can't help looking and acting like guys from 'The Sopranos.'"  On that note: Does anybody else notice a bizzare similarity between Raël and Dr. Evil?
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linkydink here's what i say to anyone who heckled me for my vote. and on a related note... [attrib. matt leclair]
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linkydink notes on a lengthy article on the NYT magazine. (modern publishing at its best) Cloning is scary. Interesting, but bad in so many ways. This focuses on a bereaved couple who want to clone their dead 10 month old son. Grief does strange things to people. read the insanity.
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linkydink  What I did with my Friday night. (Courtesy of the very cool Jesse Vincent.)Actually, I've just realized that those photos make it look like I spent Friday night in some sort of S&M dungeon, which I didn't. Not exactly. I'm just proud of my outfit.
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linkydink One of my favorite things is Coldcut mixing audiovisual soup Wednesday nights on Piratetv.net. It starts 9pm GMT which is 4pm US East Coast time. (I'll probably miss it in Australia, since that's 8am Thursday morning in Melbourne.) The visuals this Wednesday promise to be especially cool. If you've got some free time and sufficient bandwidth, I recommend tuning in.
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linkydink For Spirit: silly/serious: Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology Tries to be serious, but is a bit silly: Astroadvice Fun, and maybe serious: Matrixspace oracles. Also. there are tons of good and interesting spiritual links from Breszny's page. The songs stuck in my head the most lately are Neutral Milk Hotel's "King of Carrot Flowers," The Apples in Stereo's "The Bird That You Can't See," and The Magnetic Fields' "All the Umbrellas of London." Oh, and the Beastie Boys featuring Q-tip and Biz-Markee's "Get it Together," specifically, the "1..2..Oh my god!" part. That's kind of a spiritual moment for me in and of itself.
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linkydink well kudos to cheney or whoever's whispering in his ear, then. i'm trying to give george the benefit of the doubt for as long as i can stand. i'm trying not to be brainwashed by the liberal media into dismissing him out of hand - a dangerous mindset, since he is the president and does have an awful lot of power over my life.
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linkydink He's starting to talke someone else's talk, you mean, 'cause he sure isn't thinking on his own.
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linkydink wow, george is actually doing something to, at least nominally and temporarily, appease us cranky liberals? bring on the flying pigs! ...of course, he is going to spend an additional $60+ billion on his national missile defense system. feh. but at least he's starting to talk the talk.
domingo, febrero 04, 2001
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linkydink I'm taking this class on the social construction of "woman" and my professor keeps begging the question, why is that women are unhappy with themselves in a particular paradigmatic way in a given era. For instance, why are we currently obsessed with having the perfect body when 40 years ago we were obsessed with having the perfect refrigerator. My professor's answer is always that it is a response to the changing form of a constant and timeless patriarchal pressure that has forever been seeking to keep women down for the sake of men. After a while my professor's discourse begins to sound like some sort of conspiracy theory, like men get together in some sort of secret gathering and determine the percentage by which women's wage will fall beneath men's so that women are discouraged from working and instead beg their husbands to do the breadwinnning. Of course those in power always want to maintain if not increase their power but I think the whole thing is more complicated than that. I mean, who raised these men anyway (I think a few women might have been involved)? Something Timmy and Jason were saying about spiritual leaders and distribution of ideas set me off on that tangent, I don't really know why, but that's my take of the day.
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linkydink new and improved. this is for the moment. and it may be my private one, the one not linked from anywhere. the other one people come to from all over the world, thanks to youthresource. it'll develop over the next few days.
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linkydink very good, jason. i am indeed the unwitting mother of the dream vortex. for everyone who hasn't read the sandman series, DO. now. Preludes and Nocturnes (the first arc, the one jason referenced) is where unity's introduced, but The Doll's House is where she really comes into play, two or three more arcs along. i'm in love with this song...i'm going on an ani kick again. every year between february and june this happens. the song is "grey". you can get lyrics here.
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linkydink Unless I'm mistaken, the contents of Angrev's link to Ouch!! are not, as the page claims, taken from an actual Worker's Comp bulletin of some sort, but rather lifted verbatim from the formidable novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Weird, eh? How do you supposed that happened? Who are you, Angrev? All kinds of new people around here today... :)_
sábado, febrero 03, 2001
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linkydink The last piece of chocolate ... mmmmm ouch!! Okay, so i'm not actually posting my own words, just funny/cool stories.
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linkydink Unity Kinkaid is the grandmother of the Dream Vortex. I just wanted to drop in and say that I haven't forgotten you kids. I wanted to run something by you all... How many of you have read salon for a good long time? I used to read it all of the time when I was like a sophomore in college. I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized that for the most part, they've gotten really lame. Perhaps the biggest example of this for me was that they haven't done album reviews very consistently, which used to be one of my favorite things about them. The last one I remember was about Yo La Tengo's "And then nothing turned itself inside out", which was released a year ago. Thoughts?
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linkydink "The thing about boxing is, you can give up. You drop your arms and you lay down and it's over. Sure, you've lost the fight, but at least you're not getting beaten up anymore. Life, though... You drop your arms and you lay down and the son of a bitch just keeps pummling you." Via An Entirely Other Day.
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linkydink maybe i was just at the right place in my life for Owen Meany. who am i? i'm a former smithie (and i hope to be again one day). that's how cmoore and i met.
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linkydink I didnt get into Owen Meaney too much for some reason, but The World According to Garp was fantastic. Who are you, Unity Kinkaid?
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linkydink as an irvingophile myself, my suggestions would be: The Hotel New Hampshire, Cider House Rules, or The World According To Garp. i'd steer you away from A Son of the Circus, which i couldn't even get through. and there are many i haven't read yet, too.
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linkydink article. has anyone read any john irving? i've never even seen The Cider House Rules or Hotel New Hampshire, let alone read them. but i just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany, which has to be one of the most amazing books i've ever read. everyone go read. it's the only attempt i've ever seen at linking God with vietnam. what should i read next?
viernes, febrero 02, 2001
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linkydink Funny in a sort of where-has-my-youth-gone kind of way, a reponse to a query on Slashdot for non-zero-sum games.
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linkydink For better or for worse, the Social Heuristic web page is never going to be as authoritative as Miss Manner's Basic Training. For more practical advice, I reccomend eHow.com, where one can learn (among many other things, of course) how to take action after a car accident and how to determine damages after a car accident.
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linkydink Caroline's Social Heuristics link reminds me of a similar link that was in Memepool some time back: Aspects of American Society That May Be New to You, a cultural handbook for foreign students spending time in America. It's less specific, more verbose, and similarly interesting.
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linkydink ARRRGGHH. Evil foul mean people make me miserable. A week and a half ago a woman named Jessica Greenleaf scraped into the side of my car in Middletown. It was completely her fault, which she acknowledged in a very tired pathetic whining way and gave me her name and phone number. I didn't get an estimate for the repairs until just this afternoon; the body shop guy told me $833 for full repairs, but then confided that I could probably get it done very cheaply if I did some of the work myself. I took his advice to heart, bought some touch-up paint for myself, got the rear lamp replaced, and prepared to patch my torn decal with an old bumper-sticker. I called Jessica up and told her that the repairs were estimated at $833, but I'd settle for $250, which I thought was incredibly generous. Instead of expressing any gratitude whatsoever for my settling for a halfassed repair job to save her almost $600, she filibustered about things and told me she'd call me back on Monday. Then (here's the kicker) she called me back a few minutes later and claimed that the accident had never happened. She demanded to know if I remembered what her car looked like (which I didn't exactly) and claimed I must have her confused with someone else. I told her I definitely did not; I recognized her voice and she had agreed that we had had an accident just a few minutes before. She talked to my Dad (who owns the car) and he said we'd call the police and let them sort it out. Of course, the Middletown Police officer I talked to all but laughed at me when I told him I wanted to take legal action against a woman who I had been in an accident with a week and a half ago that I didn't report to the police at the time. Even if I had written down her lisence and registration (which I foolishly hadn't), he said there was nothing he could do if we hadn't filed a report. So, unless my Dad's lawyer thinks of something miracuous, that is that. I can survive a $90 debt for paint and a new brakelight, and I can survive spending my afternoon driving back and forth around town and making ridiculous phone calls. I can certainly survive this woman being a bitch... in fact, I know I can survive all of it. It just fucking hurts, and it's horrible. I go out on a limb to make someone's life easier and get fucked over for my trouble!! There is a part of me that is very cynical, hateful, alienated and lonely, and currently feeling very vindicated. Yeah, I know I'm making a big deal out of one tired unscrupulous woman short on cash. I just needed to vent... and to let y'all know that next time you get in an accident, make sure to get a full confession signed in blood with every ID number you can think of, and hopefully a Polaroid. And their home adress. And a shotgun.
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linkydink a woman on a females-in-IT mailing list i'm a member of created a Social Heuristics website which lays out a lot of American social customs for geeks and people from other countries who mightn't know such things. she wants to know how useful it is, if anything should be added or changed, that sort of thing. it's an interesting idea, since while most of us grew up learning social customs through cultural osmosis, many people from different backgrounds didn't. there's no way of gaining this cultural capital as good as growing up immersed in it, but perhaps having it laid out to read is a good runner-up option. what say ye?
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linkydink this one's especially for y'all who don't live in dorms: reduce your trash output (and thus not only your impact on the earth but also your trash bill) by composting. yes, even if you live in an apartment. perhaps especially so, since cities have the least leeway for solving their trash problems.
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linkydink matt created two websites for a company called Icosystem: first this one, which was rejected in favor of this one. why is it so hard for companies to accept that they need decently designed and organized websites? argh.
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linkydink Whoops, I didn't mean to come across as mean, just extremely cynical. I'd be the last person to blame The Media for everything, really. Since companies are "whores", it's pointless to suggest that we create educated companies, because it won't make a difference to uneducated consumers. Even more so, it'd be pointless for me to suggest that we create educated consumers, because consumers don't want to be educated. It strikes me as wishful thinking on two levels, Jimmy. Firstly, I don't believe in "spirit", though I could agree to "culture". Secondly, artists lead only so far as they have distribution, and thus it isn't even the artists who are really leading, but the the distribution companies who let them a "voice". For my money, I think Saul Williams is definitely inspirational and perhaps revolutionary, to the extent that he reminds us that at every moment we have a choice as to what we do and/or what we say and that that choice is not only going to effect other people, but it's also going to effect ourselves. It has a lot to do with my first paragraph; if it lasts for a minute, it's inspirational, but if it'll last for a lifetime, it's revolutionary.
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linkydink J- Yeah, I know I forgot the endquote. Blogger's interface did a weird thing and wouldn't let me edit my post. All fixed now. Also, thanks for the Kagou Anti-kro$oft advice. re. Saul Williams on Jesse Jackson: Point taken. What struck me about that quote was the idea that the spiritual leaders of our generation are the artists and poets, rather than the politicians and philosophers. Do you agree, or is this wishful thinking? Do we even have spiritual leaders? Sometimes I find Saul Williams' prose revolutionary and inspirational, other times it seems like obsessive ranting. Maybe it's all of the above. Read the interview and/or listen to Penny For A Thought and tell me what you think.
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linkydink ooh, no need to be mean, jrandom. just because the media supports those who'll make it money doesn't mean we should brush it off without further comment. also, it's useless to blame the media for everything, when really any company selling a product is pretty much a whore to the consumer. sure, they manipulate us to think we want what they're pushing, but if we don't buy it (figuratively and literally), they're up shit creek. the real question is: is there any way to effectively catalyze change in the media or Evil Corporations when people obviously don't care enough to vote with their dollars?
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linkydink I'm not clued-in enough to know why stamp sales declined in Hong Kong after the British left, but I'm pretty sure that celebrity endorsement is nothing new to the country (or any country, at this point, really). <gasp>You mean mainstream media is more interested in the celebrities that will make it money?</gasp> C'mon, the last time Jesse Jackson got front-page was when it was discovered he fathered a child out of wedlock. Among other things, Symantec has this to say: The worm utilizes a known Microsoft Outlook Express security hole, Scriptlet.Typelib, so that a viral file is created on the system without having to run any attachment. Simply reading the received email message will cause the virus to be placed on the system.P.S., Jimmy: Blogger didn't eat your post, you just forgot the endquote in the URL.
jueves, febrero 01, 2001
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linkydink If I hadn't watched at least part of the Super Bowl, I woudn't have seen the awesome Cingular Wireless ad, which I think is my favorite in a while. If it weren't for AdCritic, I wouldn't have seen the very cool (except for the horrid themesong at the end) Gary Kasparov pepsi ad. Wargames references in commercials are always very good. Sidenote: Adcritic's video-hosting is incredible; I have the whole Quicktime file almost immediately on my cable modem! Props to DVLabs, whose server also tells jokes.
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linkydink "Kagou Anti-Kro$oft says not today!" Ha-ha! My brother's computer doesn't have virus protection of any sort, nor would it matter to the Wscript.KAKworm that's been playing games with me all day! If I previously needed convincing that Windows is heinously insecure, I now do not.
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linkydink i think it's ineffective and in pretty poor taste to use a man who can't talk to sell phone service. [7:39pm: now points to the correct ad. thanks jimmy tones.] i did find pepsi's bob dole ad pretty humorous, and i liked budweiser's self-parodying "what are you doing?" ad. and i love adcritic for eliminating the last reason i could ever have had to watch the superbowl.
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linkydink "The people that are famous in this day and age are MCs, singers - there are no famous philosophers, there are no famous politicians. You talk to a high school student today they're gonna spout the philosophy of a Fiona Apple, an Ani Difranco, a Jay-Z, a Tupac... You gotta realize MTV has a larger demographic than CNN. I repeat, there's nothing more powerful than hip hop. You put Jesse Jackson next to fuckin any MC and people will tune into that MC before they'll tune into Jesse Jackson and that's a fuckin shame cause Jesse Jackson has more stuff to say and has a better cadence and a better flow and a better rhyme style too. When you rhyme you get people's attention and if you have all the peoples' attention and all you can do with that is say, 'Yo, put yo hands up', you just fuckin wasted that fuckin moment! You wasted it! Do you realize what you could have done?" -Saul Williams. I say wow. Listen.
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linkydink re. Chow Yun-Fat: I feel like making some insightful observation about the fall in Hong Kong stamp-sales coinciding with the Brits' departure from the place, and Hong Kong Post adopting celebrity endorsement (a very Western way of doing things, no?) in an attempt to salvage the situation... but I'd really be bullshitting if I did. Why is Hong Kong jocking stamps produced in Guyana?
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linkydink i don't know what the hell happened to those 2 weeks on blogger's database, but i've got them on sophia, so i manually added them into the archive list for now. i should point out that ev isn't doing this as "one man alone". (he's got meg, for instance.) however, point taken. i think slashcode is a bit much for me to muck through and customize and maintain right now. perhaps someday when i've more time to play with these things. or perhaps i'll start playing now and eventually we'll have a working product. either way, it'd be fun to do it ourselves.
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linkydink "Things have not been working great with the product for quite a while..." sez Ev. Case in point: does anybody know where our archived posts for 12/10/00 - 12/23/00 have got to? I like the idea of creating our own. It'll give me another motivation to learn PERL. Of course, I may be singing a different tune when I'm in the middle of classes. (Unless I take Databases, in which case it might work out nicely...)
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linkydink This talk of old videogames reminds me of something I had meant to post; 75 Ark is a record company that releases weird dark "futuristic" hip-hop, like Dr. Octagon, Anti-Pop Consortium and Deltron 3030. They're most recent promotional gimmick is register-to-win an authentic full-sized TRON arcade game signed by Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Kid Koala, which is like holy shit. They've also got some MP3s to check out if you're just curious, though unfortunately, IMHO, the quality of 75Ark's music doesn't live up to the quality of the talent behind it. Plus they keep their MP3s in ZIPs, which is never a good sign...
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linkydink "I can tell you, at this point, I definitely plan to keep Blogger going. If you're a Blogger user, you know that things have not been working great with the product for quite a while. I'm not going to make excuses about that. But I'm not walking away. The good thing is, I have relatively low costs (though, I still need to bring in more cash than we have been), adequate server power for a while (thank you!), and the ability to focus on what I'm good at: Creating Things." I, however, am not so optimistic that one man alone can keep an operation like Blogger afloat. What d'you guys think? Is it time to investigate another server, or perhaps set-up our own?
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linkydink  For volunteer work, cmoore, I'd reccomend United Nations Volunteers and/or VolunteerMatch. Man, Altered Beast was the shit.
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linkydink Checkout the rough draft of my homepage's menu/interface thingy. It's ugly and don't work to well yet, but let me know what you think anyway.
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Then 2/17, hopefully, go to 
