Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I'm wondering what would it be like to have a cultural space that was to gender as atheism is to religion." -- Jennifer Moore in Gender and Belief

I got a kick out of yesthattom's "Top 5 Rejected Papers from this year's LISA Conference" entry. Mostly #1, but figured the idea was cute enough to pass along.

Personal organizational deadlock
Minor complaints
and How I'm doing today

My body did not cooperate with my plan to attend 3LF rehearsal last night -- I crashed instead. Hoping I make it to HCB rehearsal tonight. Poor attention span and sense-of-time today, so I'm not getting much done (also distracted -- got some heavy stuff on my mind that I need to find a way to set aside for a while and/or get some perspective on).

Now boygeorge (my WinNT box) is thrashing every time I try to do anything on it -- like scroll an already-open browser window -- so I need to wrap things up to a saveable state and reboot it, but I've got sooooo bloody much open (one Telnet and one browser, but lots of open windows in the browser, and Opera only usually restores all of its state when I do a "save windows" and quit), so it's taking me a while to get to that point. It'll probably get rebooted tomorrow. Meantime, I'm reading mail on rupaul (my Win95 machine). (Actually, I'm reading mail on tipton, one of my Linux machines, but I'm doing so via a telnet from rupaul. I keep all the UNIX/Linux machines downstairs 'cause they don't much care whether I'm actually sitting in front of them or not when I use them.)

I should go set up the Mac I was given at Balticon. But I want to put it in the office, so I need to rearrange some other hardware and piles of stuff first. Or I can put it in the bedroom, where the currently-broken Mac is, even though the assortment of input devices make it more suitable for the office workstation.

Hmm. Not sure whether I should give the new Mac the same name as the old Mac (carlos), or pull another name off the list-of-possible-machine-names I've got, 'cause I'm still hoping to get carlos working again eventually.

Running late to get out to HCB rehearsal, but I think I'm finally feeling together enough to drive out there. In the meantime, here's what I accomplished today -- my latest batch of link sausage:

• Biological Weapons Found! ... in Maryland (The Guardian, 28 May) Not all that big a story except for the ironies regarding its timing relative to the whole business in Iraq. "Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence centre at Fort Detrick. Iraq's failure to come up with paperwork proving the destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of deception in the run-up to the war."
• A survey on Health and Aging Issues in the BD/SM Scene: "The following survey is being conducted in order to aid presenters in the formulation of relevant and necessary workshops on the issues facing all of us as we grow older in the Leather scene. This survey is NOT intended to be a clinical study nor is it intended for use by health care professionals." It took me about twenty minutes to fill out.
• The Infra-Red Zoo Gallery (thanks to perspicuity for the link): "By viewing animals with a thermal infrared camera, we can actually 'see' the differences between warm and cold-blooded animals. Infrared also allows us to study how well feathers, fur and blubber insulate animals." (Note that the infrared photography I've done has all been reflected infrared, in very short wavelengths quite close to red (950nm). This is longer-wavelength thermal infrared. What I do is somewhat biologically interesting too, but nowhere near as dramatic, and more relevant to plants than to animals. Then again, I don't need a refrigerated camera...)
• A New York Times article defending the right to be grumpy and/or curmudgeonly, in the face of a pro-cheerfullness "Grump Out" by a group called "Smile Mania". It refers to Andy Rooney as America's "curmudgeon in chief": "The only way to correct what's wrong is to talk about it," Mr. Rooney said. "A restaurant needs complaints or it's never going to fix what's not going right." Some of the followup comments are good too ... "Anyone who hands me a fucking banana and tells me to cheer up is gonna show up at their proctologist's office later with an interesting story." Is it ironic that the article and discussion made me smile?
• Y'know that big to-do about the SCO lawsuit claiming that Linux infringes on copyrights to System V source code, on which, allegedly, all modern Unices (and Linux) are based? Well, according to this article in Infoworld, "Novell on Wednesday said it never transferred the copyrights and patents of Unix System V when it sold the software to SCO in 1995." SCO does have an answer for that, but I suspect the challenge that Eric Raymond told me about at Balticon will stop this nonsense even if the letter from Novell doesn't.
• vvalkyri echoed the link to the story about the PATRIOT Act raid in her journal, and in response, cos posted this list of links to related stories about the erosion of liberties recently. Some of these are links I've posted before (but if you've just started reading my journal in the past month or so, you probably didn't see them). Others were new to me. Scary and infuriating stuff. And unless enough people get scared and angry enough to do something about it, it'll only get worse.
• Somebody please tell me this is just anti-US propoganda made up out of whole cloth: US plans death camp in Guantanamo (Pakistan Daily Times, citing The Mail On Sunday) "The US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber. [...] the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war since it established the camp at a naval base to hold alleged terrorists from Afghanistan.
• Fred pointed out that if you search Google for "search engine", Google itself is third on the list of results. (Dunno how long this'll stay true, but if somebody wants to put a screen-capture up someplace...)
• A sort-of anti-Barbie, Feral Cheryl: "Feral Cheryl is modelled on the green extremists, known as 'ferals' from Australia." "This 34 cm vinyl doll runs barefoot, dreadlocks her hair with coloured braids and beads, wears simple rainbow clothes, has piercings and a range of tattoos, and even a bit of natural body hair. Her motto is 'Live Simply, Run Wild'. Her only accessories: a bag of home grown herbs [a small stash of dried basil], a sense of humour and a social conscience."
• And just to round this batch out to an even number of items, here's a a cute novelty model rocket