Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Trying another new format. Let me know how it works for y'all, especially in comparison to the last one.

1. Shorter Right-Wing Punditry's Reaction to the Valerie Plame Affair: An Internal Dialogue
2. Cartoon cat in science study
3. The more you watch the Fox News channel, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong
4. USPS Sues Internet Users
5. Tattoo meta-art, 'Ineradicable Stain'
6. De clunibus magnis amandis oratio
7. Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election?
8. Lost In Translation (Not the movie)
9. Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet
10. And last but not least, a useful link for right about now: Extreme Pumpkins.com - Pumpkin carving at its wildest! Hallowe'en isn't all that far away -- start designing now.

1. Shorter Right-Wing Punditry's Reaction to the Valerie Plame Affair: An Internal Dialogue: "But why would the names of lady spiesies be in the newspapers? It's so confusing, it makes our brainses feel all swirly and bad! No, master never said those nassty things! Never! It was the lady spysy herself who did it, never master! Gollum! Gollum!" Chock full of external links, too.
2. Researchers are using a cartoon featuring Sylvester the cat to study how language is reflected in the gestures people make. "Speakers of different languages not only describe the world differently - they think about it differently too, according to the study." Uh, this sounds a lot like the Sapir-Worf hypothesis, which I thought had been discredited, but maybe these researchers are actually studying something subtly different from S-W, or maybe there's something to S-W after all? "[...] speakers of different languages used different gestures to depict the same event. This appeared to reflect the way the structure of their languages expressed that event."
3. The more you watch the Fox News channel, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong: "Based on several nationwide surveys it conducted with California-based Knowledge Networks since June, as well as the results of other polls, PIPA found that 48 percent of the public believe US troops found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group; 22 percent thought troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq; and 25 percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's going to war with Iraq. All three are misperceptions. The report, 'Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War,' also found that the more misperceptions held by the respondent, the more likely it was that s/he both supported the war and depended on commercial television for news about it." The article goes on to describe several interesting correlations (while being careful not to specify causality, but it's hard not to start thinking that way). "Only 23 percent of those who held none of the three misperceptions supported the war, while 53 percent who held one misperception did so." And: "For each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far. Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between."
4. USPS Sues Internet Users: "Any business/government agency who has lost money because of services now provided freely by the Internet may sue to regain those funds, so long as their company/agency's name is a four-letter acronym." And there are links there to "related stories": Microsoft Alleges US Government is a Monopoly, and RIAA Sues Mirror Manufacturers.
5. Tattoo meta-art, 'Ineradicable Stain': "Writer Shelley Jackson invites participants in a new work entitled 'Skin.' Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another. In the event that insufficiant participants come forward to complete the first and only edition of the story, the incomplete version will be considered definitive. If no participants come forward, this call itself is the work." I find the concept fascinating. At least one person on my friends list will be participating, which is probably where I heard about it.
6. De clunibus magnis amandis oratio by "Mixaloti equitis", is a Latin translation of "Baby Got Back" (with an interlinear re-translaton back into English).
7. Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election? (Wired): An examination of some rule-bending (at best) regarding untested/uncertified patches to electronic voting machines by Diebold. "If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election- certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified."
8. Lost In Translation: "What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program." A convenient web form where you can enter a sentence and view the results of each step in the ten-translations process. And if the result isn't garbled enough, just click "try again" to keep going where it left off. But some sentences get pretty twisted on the first run: "I they never say that nonpleasant age of I." Heh.
9. An idea I've heard suggested elsewhere, and even know some folks who've done this by swapping bits of plastic in face-to-face meetings, Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet ups the scope by automating the trading of "bonus card" bar codes for a handful of grocery and drug store chains over the web. Just print out one of the bar codes from the site and tape it over the bar code on your bonus card. The page also includes links to an article pointing out holes in stores' explanations of the reasons for the cards ("If all the grocery stores want is to improve their efficiency, they just need to know what items are being sold and what items are bought at the same time. There's no reason for them to need loyalty cards for this. They can record all of this information without knowing who was making the purchases."), and also to a message from someone who points out, "Openly circumventing the process encourages these companies to return to more covert ways of capturing the info." Me, I use a card from one chain that they finally just gave me without my ever filling out a form, after they got tired of my not having a card, and a card from another chain that a friend found lying in a parking lot.
10. Extreme Pumpkins.com: "At what point did the carving of pumpkins turn into a 'cute' event? [...] Where did we lose touch with one of the years coolest events? Today we will seize back this ritual. We will carve that sumbitch into something ugly and plop it on the front porch." The designs, while sometimes gross in a holiday-apropriate and even humorous way, are quite clever. "Other Jack-O-Lantern sites would have you believe that witches gouls and goblins are what is really scary. We know better. Old age, drowning, violet death, and venerial disease are truly frightening. So use your imagination and delve into darker subject matters for your next pumpkin design." Includes a gallery of extreme Jack-O-Lanterns, sketches, alternative light sources (the road flare is rather dramatic, if short-lived), and all sorts of nifty ideas. There's even one with pumping "blood" using a garden-fountain pump. Samhain is just around the corner, folks!