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eftychia at 05:27pm on 2003-05-27
eftychia at 05:27pm on 2003-05-27- Pretty!! A polyamory symbol pendant Now to try to find out whether the jeweler invented that symbol or picked it up someplace else...
- An assortment of buttons relating to gender identity, polyamoury, orientation, etc., a few of which I should get, and many more of which I'd expect a bunch of my friends to wear.
- A tale about gender, sort of: "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" (Lois Gould, 1972). "Once upon a time, a baby named X was born. This baby was named X so that nobody could tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Its parents could tell, of course, but they couldn't tell anybody else. They couldn't even tell Baby X, at first. [...]"
- Chris Johnson looked at some patterns in album sales, and posted his analysis in "Evergreen Albums": "My primary interest in doing this study was to work out which albums and artists have been able to drive long-term sales even after record industry hype had moved on to other, newer records, and whether there were any surprises in the data. There were." That much is interesting and worth a look. He also posted acoustical analyses of the most significant persistent-hit albums, which are fascinating. He presents a hypothesis regarding the sonic qualities that are required for a decades-spanning hit, and proceeds to present sonograms and dynamics plots from those albums to back it up. And explains why -- lyrics, composition, arrangement, and performance aside -- he thinks current studio practices cannot produce a long-term hit that'll eventually become a "classic". Wait until you have some time to kill before diving into the sonic analyses.
- Aha! A certification exam for computer professionals that has real world questions on it! Such as: "Read the attached 400 page technical document for new software, and reduce it to a 20-word non-technical memo for circulation to all staff." And: "A student wants to save a 560 Mb PowerPoint Presentation onto a 3.5" floppy disk with a 1.4Mb capacity. Create a one-page dialogue of your conversation with the student."
- The world's oldest multiple-page book, over 2500 years old, goes on display in Bulgaria. "The six sheets are believed to be the oldest comprehensive work involving multiple pages." It's written in Etruscan. (As Fred, who sent me the URL, mentioned, "And they still have a functioning instance of the hardware to read that ancient media!" But the article calls Etruscan a "lost" language, so does that mean we don't have the software for the ancient data format? (Still, his point stands ... And, of course, we can still look at the illustrations.))
- An essay in Wired about what's culturally wrong with Digital Rights Management. I'm not completely decided how strongly I agree, but it raises some points that I think need to be thought through and talked about. "In reality, our legal system usually leaves us wiggle room. What's fair in one case won't be in another - and only human judgment can discern the difference. As we write the rules of use into software and hardware, we are also rewriting the rules we live by as a society, without anyone first bothering to ask if that's OK."
- "Look and See", a Smallville (or Superman) fanfic story. Definitely a "shipper" story; it's a quite amusing spin on that.
- Jason Halperin describes being caught in a raid just because he happened to be in the wrong restaurant: "Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war." Making the story even more chilling that it already was: "When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: 'Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month.'" And remember, this was just for having picked that restaurant to eat in on the wrong night. "All of those who thought that these laws would never affect them, who thought that the Patriot Act only applied to the guilty, should heed this story as a wake-up call." The officer walking away muttering, "We are at war, we are at war. How can they not understand this," reminded me of the Baltimore police officers who kept "answering" all of my questions when I was detained for taking a photograph at the Inner Harbor, with, "You have to understand sir, in light of recent events..." as though that actually explained how anything they were doing was relevant.
- "Three Norwegian students have compiled the country's first penis gallery to help men be more content with what nature has given them." (Ananova, 7 May 2003) "We wanted to show that the penis exists in all variations and we wanted to break down the visualisation from the media/internet of the great giga-penis." They wanted to show 100 penes, but only had time to compile photos of eighteen for the gallery, which, according to the article, they hope will be used by surgeries, health clinics and sex counsellors.
hungry
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