posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eftychia at 04:45pm on 2003-07-06
eftychia at 04:45pm on 2003-07-06- I'll put the mood-killer (pointed out in a friends-only post by someone on my friends list) first and hope the rest of the links can cheer you up afterwards ... "The Last Resort" is an artcile on Guardian Unlimited from The Observer, 29 June, about personality re-education camps for teens. It's mostly about one such facility in Jamaica, but it turns out there are ten similar programs elsewhere. It's hard for me to summarize all the aspects that horrified me in part one -- it's basically a simple, organized, brainwashing system for trouble teens (I left the 'd' off the end of "trouble" intentionally) -- but it was in part two that my blood began to run cold, when I hit quotes such as, "Other students were sent here for wearing inappropriate clothes, using bad language, or hanging around with the wrong sort of friends," and, "Also striking is the assumption parents make of entitlement to their child's affection, as though this is a legal right. 'She's a neat kid, she really is,' a former student's mother says. 'She just didn't like us.' But now, 'I don't believe she's lying to me any more, and that's a neat feeling.'" Or one student who said, "Oh, my relationship with my family was pretty bad. I just went to my room and avoided my parents. There was always arguments and stuff." And one student described thus, "A straight-A high-school graduate, she was heading for Harvard until an unsuitable choice of boyfriend had her sent here at the age of 17." Perhaps the clearest phrasing was when the author said, "once adolescence is criminalised [...]". I was sufficiently horrified to think, "This can't possibly be real, can it?" A bit of searching turned up a 1999 article from Forbes, a January 2003 article from the Tico Times about a related facility which included a quote from a parent who said, "The parents are just as brainwashed as the kids," and a message on a FACTNet discussion board containing lots of additional links. Go read about it, be horrified and disgusted, then come back and chase some more entertaining links so that I won't have completely ruined your day.
- Odd that in the same day of reading LJ and mail I run across links to images of a tree and an interstellar dust cloud that each seem to be sending the same message to whoever is looking. (Okay, after reading the suggested interpretation on the Astronomy Picture of the Day page and squinting a bit, I saw what they meant, but my first impression was the same as the description of the tree.)
- The latest incarnation of the slidewalk idea, this time in Paris: the le trottoir roulant rapide: "'People have to learn how to use it and that takes time,' the trottoir's inventor, Anselme Cote, told BBC News Online. He added that escalators had presented travellers with a similar challenge when they were first introduced."
- Lightning strikes chursh as preacher asks for sign from God, "[...] the church's steeple was hit by lightning, setting the church on fire and blowing out the sound system. [...] the lightning traveled through the microphone and enveloped the preacher, but he was not injured."
- Well, it's not an X-wing or a Y-wing, but this might still
have to be
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silmaril's next computer. :-) (Okay,
I'm drooling over the idea myself pretty seriously...) An
ariticle in The Register describes the PC that one
Russ Caslis built inside a Kenner toy
scale model of the Millenium Falcon. The project
included physical mods to a hard drive and power supply. The
project requirements going in included "working engine lights"
and "adequate cooling". "Unlike the toy, my ship won't be
able to rotate it's laser cannon. That's OK... I have lots of
other surprises in store that will make up for the lack of a
rotating laser cannon." - The LiveJournal
Pizza Arbiter lets you enter a bunch of LJ usernames, and
returns a list of pizza toppings the folks on the list who've
previously entered their pizza preferences can all agree on.
(krikket wanted it to track crust-style preferences
as well. I'd like to see "I really like this", "I'll eat this
without complaint but wouldn't choose it for myself", and
"no way" as the options for each ingredient, rather than the
simple "like/don't like" check boxes currently there. Still,
it's a cute toy. Go enter your preferences now.)
- holzman pointed out this precious script for the
Useless Invasion Sketch from
rec.arts.sf.fandom.
"THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
(played by John Cleese) walks down the street carrying THE
IRAQI INVASION (played by an empty parrot cage). He walks into
THE WHITE HOUSE (played by a cheesy storefront) and addresses
COLIN POWELL (played by Michael Palin). [...] AP: I wish
to register a complaint about this military action, which you
sold me just a couple of months ago. [...]"
- Behind the Name
offers up translations and etymologies of lots and lots of
given names. (sometimes_nate pointed out the
random
name generator on the site, but I found the rest of the
site more interesting.) I remember enjoying looking through
the list of name-meanings in the back of my dictionary and
wishing for a much larger list -- here is a larger list.
Names from several ethnic/language groups are included, and
not just from Europe. There's also a related site for
etymologies
of surnames.
- Oh boy. Put down your drinks. It's the
"Smeagolian Rhapsody" by murnkey and
mightywombat:
Isss this the real life?
and later:
Isss this just fantasy?
Caught in my dark cave
No escape from reality
Open our eyes
Look up to the caves and see
I'm just a poor Smeagol, we needs no sympathy [...][...] But I'm just a poor Smeagol and nobody loves us
along with a bunch of other "songs heard through the Gollum filter". I fear this form of brain damage may be contagious. Thanks to
We's just a poor Smeagol from a hobbit family
Lives-ing our life as a monstrosity [...]scherzoid for pointing it out. - And to round things off, here's a
Cthulhu/Muppet crossover filk by lensman,
who took a few lines from krikket and ran
with them. (Bwah-hah-hah! I know what half of you will
be humming the rest of the day!)
(no subject)
Last I read about them, they were being investigated in some of those off-shore countries, but I'm sure they'll just go further underground.
I think perhaps the time's come for general awareness raising, and perhaps legislation construing sending one's kid to such things as per se child abuse.
Think you might like this
Tranquillity
These people ought to be locked up for crimes against humanity. Not that there aren't out-of-control adolescents that need this sort of thing as an attempt to keep them from harming others, but the smell of this is so scary and offensive... where is the wei wu wei? And if this is love, I'd sooner cease to be.
So glad I'm older and have learned to keep my head down mostly, pick my fights mostly carefully, and don't have someone stupid standing over me. Suddenly, I feel I've been lucky. Very lucky.
I grieve both for those younglings who were sent there needlessly, and those who require some nasty counteraction to their destructiveness. Then I'll go back to my vacuuming. Work can obliterate a sense of obscene helplessness/hopelessness. Thanks for the heads up about something dirty I always suspected was going on. Next?!