"You will learn who your daddy is, that's for sure, but mostly, Ann, you will just shut the fuck up."
-Henry Rollins
Boing Boing: War-on-Terror-themed photo spread in Vogue Italia
Topic: War on Terrorism
9:32 am EDT, Sep 12, 2006
State of Emergency, a most disturbing fashion pictorial shot by Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia, September 2006. Models: Hilary Rhoda & Iselin Steiro.
Police State Style... Everyone is going to be watching you while the cops are beating you down at the airport this fall. Better make sure you're decked out in the latest Italian fashions.
These pictures are kind of disturbing, but they are also iconic.
[ Agreed. I find it fascinating, and the reactions to it as well. I know live journal comments aren't necessarily the place to go for intellectual content, but the gut reactions some people had to it were very interesting.
I interpreted the misogyny as deliberate and symbolic, not as a self promotion, personally, and I found it more disturbing than alluring. I think you're meant to feel violated on behalf of the models. Perhaps they look a bit more bored than scared, but then too, that may be purposeful as well; a reference to the way we, as a society, have basically accepted what's happened to us and our freedoms.
Of course, I know the danger of overinterpretation. It may be that this photographer gets off on dominance and thought it'd be "cool" to use airport security and dogs as a vehicle, in which case, that's pretty crass and dismissive of a very real issue. So, I'm not about to start lauding him as a genius, necessarily. The above is just what *I* thought, which says more about the generality of art than anything else. It *almost* doesn't even matter what the artist thought they were making. -k]
Fred Phelps, who you may recognize as the guy who protests dead soldier's funerals with his "God Hates Fags" brigade, takes on Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.
Play carnival music in your head while this runs. This dude is nuts.
... Remote Buddy makes that remote kick some serious ass. For instance. You can use the remote to advance slides in powerpoint. You can use the remote to go back and forward in firefox. You can control vlc with the remote...
OMFG the remote rocks.
Remote Buddy is in "beta" and the developers say you'll get free upgrades for all the 1.x releases if you pay the low low price of 9.99 euros (that's $12.81 in girly-man american dollars.
[ Looks like a pretty rad bit of software.
Makes MediaCentral kind of redundant, which I like. MediaCentral has problems. Primarily, it's not good at handling "OMG I can't read that file format" conditions. It'll sit and choke.
Also, it's really not designed to handle iTunes libraries as, ahem, extensive as mine. When I go into iTunes mode, and go into "Albums" it sits and chokes for *minutes*. That renders it useless. I wonder if this app suffers the same way when in fullscreen mode...
Course, all my poor old non-intel macs don't have the built in reciever. I could get a keyspan remote, but that would hardly feed my desire (almost completely unreasonable desire, i might add) for a new intel-mac Mini.
Popoholic » Blog Archive » Worst Fight Scene in Movie History!
Topic: Miscellaneous
12:51 am EDT, Sep 3, 2006
Wow, this is so bad that I couldn’t stop laughing. This has to be the worst, homoerotic fight scene ever filmed. Make sure you watch the end; you don’t want to miss how the villain dies.
I don't even know what to say. Really. Just, wow. -k
RE: Stratfor: Al'Q wins in London even though the attack was foiled.
Topic: War on Terrorism
6:39 pm EDT, Aug 30, 2006
Decius wrote:
k wrote: I also get that telling people "Don't be afraid." isn't a tack the government can take easily; it's up to individuals to realize that their own fear is the actual problem.
I don't agree.
In World War II we faced threats to our way of life that far surpassed what we see today, and the attitude of politicians at the time was defiant and strong. This sort of leadership contributed to a society that was not afraid and was ready to do what they could to contribute.
[ I ought to have been more precise. I meant to say that it's not as simple as just saying "Don't be afraid." It sounds weak and pathetic, whereas what we have sounds strong but really isn't. As I said, it's opportunistic. Nothing more or less. The people's fear is a good way to acquire power and I think that's what it all boils down to, eventually. True courage would've been to say, "This was a vicious attack, but the American people won't cave into terror... we'll guard our freedoms and our lives." Of course, words like that were said, I suppose, but the actions I've seen don't bear that out.
At the same time, I don't think it makes sense to compare our current situation to WWII, even superficially. Was that a greater threat? I don't know, perhaps so, but look at what we've already lost and you decide how much greater. As you bemoan, we've lost a substantial bit of liberty and sacrificed an awful lot of treasure and goodwill. That's not easily comparable to the threats posed by the Axis which were far more directly comprehensible.
It's like the difference between a gun and cancer. Both are fatal, and it's hard for me to call one categorically "more of a threat." Continuing the analogy, the benefit, I guess, is that you can treat cancer, possibly, which you can't do with a bullet to the head.
You're absolutely right when you say that our current approach -- crash loudly, carrying a big stick, flailing it about while beating your chest -- is a pointless waste of time, money and lives. It's not WWII. There's no well defined enemy. Winning isn't achieved by killing X number of men on a battlefield or destoying an industrial base or incinerating civilians with nukes or sustained carpet bombing. Winning is achieved by undermining the credibility of international terrorist mentality and by not being the evil empire we're purported to be. I'm not saying you don't have to send in the troops sometimes to make it possible for new modes of thinking and acting to take root, but I haven't seen it happen in Iraq, and that's beside the point anyway (my problem with Iraq isn't so much that it's not working as that there was no honesty in the process. As you say, anyone who had a realistic vision of the thing was sacked because it didn't fit the political desires of those in charge... i ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]
Platinum today: Scientists make 'amazing' fuel cell breakthrough
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:30 pm EDT, Aug 23, 2006
A team of Korean scientists has developed a new method of storing hydrogen as a solid, easing potential complications associated with the commercialisation of fuel cell technology.
...
Describing the "amazing" breakthrough, PhD student Lee Hoon-kyung said: "The material binds hydrogen with absolutely no energy input and the hydrogen can then be extracted using relatively small amounts of energy."
Color me skeptical.
Then, I'm basically skeptical about the entire concept of hydrogen as fuel. For the billionth time, you need to get hydrogen from somewhere, usually requiring the input of a lot of electricity. The whole thing only works right if we find some clean (e.g. not fucking coal) ways of generating electricity.
Don't get me wrong, there's something to be said for moving the pollution out of the city itself and centralizing it around power plants, but it's not exactly getting the same as eliminating the stuff, is it?
"This would be like if botanists had found something between trees and bushes and invented the word 'animal' to describe it."
If you've ever spent days^h^h^h^hweeks on end arguing with people about the definition of a word, you'll find this article both comforting and hilarious. If not, you might find it hard to understand how anyone couuld get so worked up about such a thing.
[ I'm total agreement with the geologist's point of view. The word exists and is in common use in it's field. Hijacking it doesn't make sense, particularly when the whole intent behind the "creation" of the term is to create an entirely novel classification. Come up with something novel, or go generic and use "dwarf planet," which is perfectly comprehensible, if not particularly exciting.
And don't get me started on this astronomer's assertion that the extent of their fact checking was the built in dictionaries in Word and WordPerfect. Aside from reinforcing the stereotype that science geeks are disdainful of the humanities, it's just lazy. I know *someone* at that conference has, or knows someone who has, a decent dictionary, or access to one. Major universities often have a full 20 volume OED or the next best thing, the Shorter Oxford, which is only about $100, and is extremely comprehensive. Someone could've identified this issue. -k ]
Tabjab is a powerful way to keep track of the interpersonal debts that often arise between friends, roommates, and coworkers. You can use Tabjab to send out bills for dinner debts, bar tabs, rent, utilities, entertainment, or any other expense that people share. These bills are delivered via email, and they are easy to consolidate when it comes time to pay.
My roommate and I have been working on this website since late last year. We've been keeping it under wraps but we decided this weekend to formally make it available. When your friends or roommates owe you money you can input it into Tabjab. Tabjab will keep track of it, send emails out, and calculate reciprical debts. Check it out and let us know what you think!
[ Congrats, Tom and Mark! This is a tool i've had great need for in my life (albeit not lately). Very nicely done. -k]
