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Lounging about - 21 May 2007
May. 22nd, 2007 01:35 amWell, I keep trying. I keep looking. Eventually, I’ll get there. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask some advice from those who have been there before me about what books I should consider doing for my “skills assessment” in June. It’ll give me something to practice, that’s for sure. I’ll need to renew my library card, I think, to check them all out and use them. That shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I still live her in the city. I’ll probably have to bring along my proof of residence or something. Won’t be a worrisome bit at all. So, tomorrow is advice, is choosing material, is mailing out material, is making arrangements for the flight, I suspect. Or communicating those arrangements to my financiers. I couldn’t find a telephone number or e-mail address to ask about interview stuff for one of those places. I’m wondering whether I should go through the regular reference channel and see if I can’t get them to pass it to the right people. Or, maybe I’ll see if I can’t find a number that will get me a human and then work my way from there. More often than not, because I haven’t heard anything, it’s already been closed off and I’m not selected. But, dammit, I want to know that, hopefully in a timely manner.
Anyway, I’m just fretting. I was that nervous for the other interview, but that might have been because I was tired... actually, no, I was nervous. I think I just felt more like I had done well. (That illusion was ground to dust later, of course, but it was nice to hope.) I'm not being passive-aggressive about this, am I?
So, getting on to the more comfortable territory of the link lists, the leading point is a MySpace attributed to the son of Dr. Laura that had cartoon depictions of child molestation, rape, suicidal situations, and the like. Lambert’s Blog then extends this to a more general principle that he attributes to “authoritarian family values”. (Less the parenting styles and more the iron fist in general.) To me, it looks like quite the leap of faith to get from the one to the other. I’m not quite sure where bad pictures leads to the undermining of the foundation of the country. And in writing that last sentence, I said “Sounds almost like some of the arguments against pornography. Maybe I can see where this leap comes from.” Not to say that I necessarily agree with either premise, but that might have lit the room a little bit.
In more comfortable political territory - The Senate Majority leader plans to call sessions of the Senate over the summer to ensure that any appointments get a proper review, rather than being in recess and having the President appoint them with no oversight or confirmation. In the Iraq realm, factories that were closed down are being restarted, hoping to try and curb the insurrection and the unemployment rate by putting people who could be planting bombs to work making bombs... err, goods. Goods. Right.
The person who linked to this policy statement from the White House said it was saying that, in the event of an emergency, Bush becomes dictator. (Declaration of martial law, anyone?) But this Homeland Security Directive doesn’t look to be doing that, but I might be having troubles disentangling the legalese to find that. So if someone can take the machete to it and point out what it actually does, I’d be quite happy.
Taking the politics to the streets are a freeway blogger that shows a flag and the word "Impeach" on the overpass, (here's one that uses an actual flag - I think there’s probably some flag-display rules being violated there). Buzzflash has an interview with the Freeway Blogger. That sort of thing may not be easily reproducible in the United Kingdom, where even police chiefs are worried about the Orwellian tendency to put up more and more CCTV cameras.
Last out of this is The Marching Camp sounding off on the nature of war as he sees it, and explaining why those who oppose the current course of war should be providing alternatives, rather than contemplating defeat (and thus, making themselves the enemy of the Marching Camp). It continues along the fault lines that I’m seeing regarding this war - for the pro-war movement, it’s increasingly no longer about Iraq or Saddam, but about securing the world from radical Islam, preferably before they do something that destroys our way of life. While it took time, I note that when radical Christianity tried to take over the world, it eventually failed or found itself to be in error and corrected the matter.
Proving that there are still plenty of ways of expressing your sexuality, Spiegel magazine has an article about people whose fetish and love is of objects, not people. Big objects, it appears, like the Berlin Wall or the Twin Towers, some of which they may have miniatures and pieces of to fetishize. Sounds like there’s a Rule 54 for the real world, as well - if you can think of it, someone’s already done it.
Perhaps working against the thing I linked to yesterday about worries over the ocean’s CO2 absorption ability - a new phytoplankton-including model might help to make for more accurate modeling. So the CO2 capacity might still be going down, but now we might be able to measure it more effectively.
More science (SCIENCE!) suggests that a way of making hydrogen fuel by adding water to a mixture of aluminium and gallium might be useful as a hydrogen fuel source, allowing for mixing at the engine rather than needing to carry a hydrogen tank. Medical science might be listening to your muscles to see if they're diseased, by measuring vibrations of the muscles. A database of “responses” would be needed to help interpret the sounds made.
Off science, on to religion - starting with another reason why you might not want to talk to strangers as a child... they might try to evangelize you. At something like 10 years of age. Getting them while they’re young, I guess. Getting to poke fun at the holy book, however, there's a possibility, however small, that the Bible might be determined to be an obscene, age-restricted material. It would be interesting, considering there are several sexual situations in the book...
Something more serious, however, is the mother blaming Satan, and not her husband, for the microwaving of their 2-month-old daughter. The jury indicted the husband, and the wife says that he has mental illness. It’s a rather bizarre story, and I wonder what the real reason was behind it.
Getting into a category of girl power, the Girls Read Comics (and they’re pissed) start with a pairing, first, the Anti-Comics Feminist Bingo Card explained.. (The actual object here). The second offering is How One Might Write in a Female Character the Won't Be Rampantly Sexist. Not to worry, the gamers are covered as well, with the first issue of Cerise Magazine, with several articles about girl gamers. And leading, perhaps to where it was destined (and this is not me saying “Oh, here they go again”, but that as a tendency, when a large amount of feminist material ends up on my desk, there are the conversations about how matters such as rape are not taken seriously, sex obtained through fraud is not, apparently, rape, and the general tendencies in comment responses to rape - they’re not flattering. A large part of this is spurred from the fallout over the Opie and Anthony show (the two were fired by CBS).
Going artistic, have a look at some pictures of Beautiful China. I don’t know if there’s been some color postprocessing done, but the pictures are wonderful.
What may not mix well with the previous girl-power set of links, are several galleries of Asian girls, some scantily clad, some not clad that much at all, with guns. (NSFW, most likely) Last for the “girls” category is a project designed to make “cooperative play” a very different exercise - controllers for video games where the games are played through the players making intimate touches with each other. I don’t think that would work for something like a fighting game, though. Maybe a visual novel?
The very last bit, though, is the Pirate Image Archive. This would have been useful to have for the last U*CON convention, because of the theme. Even so, yar! Bedtime.
Anyway, I’m just fretting. I was that nervous for the other interview, but that might have been because I was tired... actually, no, I was nervous. I think I just felt more like I had done well. (That illusion was ground to dust later, of course, but it was nice to hope.) I'm not being passive-aggressive about this, am I?
So, getting on to the more comfortable territory of the link lists, the leading point is a MySpace attributed to the son of Dr. Laura that had cartoon depictions of child molestation, rape, suicidal situations, and the like. Lambert’s Blog then extends this to a more general principle that he attributes to “authoritarian family values”. (Less the parenting styles and more the iron fist in general.) To me, it looks like quite the leap of faith to get from the one to the other. I’m not quite sure where bad pictures leads to the undermining of the foundation of the country. And in writing that last sentence, I said “Sounds almost like some of the arguments against pornography. Maybe I can see where this leap comes from.” Not to say that I necessarily agree with either premise, but that might have lit the room a little bit.
In more comfortable political territory - The Senate Majority leader plans to call sessions of the Senate over the summer to ensure that any appointments get a proper review, rather than being in recess and having the President appoint them with no oversight or confirmation. In the Iraq realm, factories that were closed down are being restarted, hoping to try and curb the insurrection and the unemployment rate by putting people who could be planting bombs to work making bombs... err, goods. Goods. Right.
The person who linked to this policy statement from the White House said it was saying that, in the event of an emergency, Bush becomes dictator. (Declaration of martial law, anyone?) But this Homeland Security Directive doesn’t look to be doing that, but I might be having troubles disentangling the legalese to find that. So if someone can take the machete to it and point out what it actually does, I’d be quite happy.
Taking the politics to the streets are a freeway blogger that shows a flag and the word "Impeach" on the overpass, (here's one that uses an actual flag - I think there’s probably some flag-display rules being violated there). Buzzflash has an interview with the Freeway Blogger. That sort of thing may not be easily reproducible in the United Kingdom, where even police chiefs are worried about the Orwellian tendency to put up more and more CCTV cameras.
Last out of this is The Marching Camp sounding off on the nature of war as he sees it, and explaining why those who oppose the current course of war should be providing alternatives, rather than contemplating defeat (and thus, making themselves the enemy of the Marching Camp). It continues along the fault lines that I’m seeing regarding this war - for the pro-war movement, it’s increasingly no longer about Iraq or Saddam, but about securing the world from radical Islam, preferably before they do something that destroys our way of life. While it took time, I note that when radical Christianity tried to take over the world, it eventually failed or found itself to be in error and corrected the matter.
Proving that there are still plenty of ways of expressing your sexuality, Spiegel magazine has an article about people whose fetish and love is of objects, not people. Big objects, it appears, like the Berlin Wall or the Twin Towers, some of which they may have miniatures and pieces of to fetishize. Sounds like there’s a Rule 54 for the real world, as well - if you can think of it, someone’s already done it.
Perhaps working against the thing I linked to yesterday about worries over the ocean’s CO2 absorption ability - a new phytoplankton-including model might help to make for more accurate modeling. So the CO2 capacity might still be going down, but now we might be able to measure it more effectively.
More science (SCIENCE!) suggests that a way of making hydrogen fuel by adding water to a mixture of aluminium and gallium might be useful as a hydrogen fuel source, allowing for mixing at the engine rather than needing to carry a hydrogen tank. Medical science might be listening to your muscles to see if they're diseased, by measuring vibrations of the muscles. A database of “responses” would be needed to help interpret the sounds made.
Off science, on to religion - starting with another reason why you might not want to talk to strangers as a child... they might try to evangelize you. At something like 10 years of age. Getting them while they’re young, I guess. Getting to poke fun at the holy book, however, there's a possibility, however small, that the Bible might be determined to be an obscene, age-restricted material. It would be interesting, considering there are several sexual situations in the book...
Something more serious, however, is the mother blaming Satan, and not her husband, for the microwaving of their 2-month-old daughter. The jury indicted the husband, and the wife says that he has mental illness. It’s a rather bizarre story, and I wonder what the real reason was behind it.
Getting into a category of girl power, the Girls Read Comics (and they’re pissed) start with a pairing, first, the Anti-Comics Feminist Bingo Card explained.. (The actual object here). The second offering is How One Might Write in a Female Character the Won't Be Rampantly Sexist. Not to worry, the gamers are covered as well, with the first issue of Cerise Magazine, with several articles about girl gamers. And leading, perhaps to where it was destined (and this is not me saying “Oh, here they go again”, but that as a tendency, when a large amount of feminist material ends up on my desk, there are the conversations about how matters such as rape are not taken seriously, sex obtained through fraud is not, apparently, rape, and the general tendencies in comment responses to rape - they’re not flattering. A large part of this is spurred from the fallout over the Opie and Anthony show (the two were fired by CBS).
Going artistic, have a look at some pictures of Beautiful China. I don’t know if there’s been some color postprocessing done, but the pictures are wonderful.
What may not mix well with the previous girl-power set of links, are several galleries of Asian girls, some scantily clad, some not clad that much at all, with guns. (NSFW, most likely) Last for the “girls” category is a project designed to make “cooperative play” a very different exercise - controllers for video games where the games are played through the players making intimate touches with each other. I don’t think that would work for something like a fighting game, though. Maybe a visual novel?
The very last bit, though, is the Pirate Image Archive. This would have been useful to have for the last U*CON convention, because of the theme. Even so, yar! Bedtime.
