![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yet more material - 19 September 2007
Sep. 19th, 2007 11:28 pmWork today. Work tomorrow. Work Friday (although it’s only a half-day, there’s a bonding exercise or something going on in the morning). Weekend off, cable hooked up, repairman will be coming on Saturday. First time in this year I’ll get to watch the Maize and Blue do their padded rugby thing. Detroit’s self-destructing in the AL, and are unlikely to make the playoffs, even after having a better than .500 record for this year. It’s going to be hockey season soon, right?
Warnings for consumers - Dole Hearts Delight bag tests positive for E. coli, be careful that your meats don't have dildoes in them, and the ways supermarkets arrange and rearrange to keep you there longer and buying more.
Different warnings from the men and women in our “Don’t do that” department. One: Rock Star wannabee men, the band is not about recruiting lots of pretty girls to make you look good. You will have to have musical talent if you want to be anything other than a garage band. Second: Large spaceborne rocks touching down near you may cause illness. Third: Like many philosophies, feminism is not binary in nature. To be a feminist, one does not need to believe in the total superiority of women, nor advocate that all of them go into the workforce to maintain “equality”. In fact, as a fairly complex philosophy, the temptation to simplify it is great, but invariably results in distortion. Fourth: In a culture where fear and suspicion are the virtues, college students, dissenters, and those who dare to ask questions will be met with powerful, but nonlethal, force. And last: Those who cannot learn from their history are likely to commit the same errors as their predecessors. Or, if you prefer an alternate take, it's the Road to Serfdom. Even the re-educators of Muslim detainees might have a questioning eye at that. For the record, it’s trying to train out the extremist ideas and replace them with a more moderate and tolerant Islam. If it succeeds, can I enlist a similar program for the wingnuts in this country, of any faith?
Speaking of said wingnuts, Pam’s House Blend has some coverage of the Values Voter Debate, including a reworked version of God Bless America that asked why God should bless America, for all the evils that we’ve done, like making schools safe for people of all faiths. I think the far scarier possibility is the one where it's possible that a judge or juror will bring their religion into the interpretation of law, with or without you knowing it. And heaven help you if you’re on their blacklist and they hide it well.
:-) turns 25. That’s right, smiley is twenty-five years of age. Despite the proliferation in chat programs, emoticons are older than the World Wide Web by at least a decade. Certain misquotations from literature and elsewhere, however, have been going on for far longer, to much the same cultural effect. So if you want to correct someone on their quotations, just reach out through the tubes and give them a slap. This may come in handy if what Democracy Arsenal has to say about fuzziness in the numbers of the Petraeus report compared to Pentagon reports are true.
The Gadgetry department has a new thing - a toasting device that takes a handwritten message and imprints it on the toast. Perfect for leaving messages where they will be noticed. Assuming that someone doesn’t munch the toast while reading the newspaper.
Is it really necessary for women to bare plenty to get their careers ahead in acting? A Guardian report on how showing off undergarments or nothing but one’s naked assets seems to be a popular thing among actresses, and while it appears to help the careers of some, the reporter wonders whether it’s doing significant harm in the long run to them and other actresses who might be good but not pretty.
Cybercrime outpaces security efforts. Which is what happens when a large, decentralized, relatively open-source group of people are working on a “problem” as opposed to a centralized and proprietary department in a company somewhere. More minds and more time make more and better products. Even more, though, according to the article, lots of crime happens when one person has keys to the storeroom, then raids it and flees, selling the stuff they stole to that many-minded hive.
Everything’s not all bad. You’ll get either a laugh or an admiration of the following - the winners of the World Beard and Moustache Championships for 2007. (Link may change to update with new years and contests. That will probably change many times before the longest-running experiment produces another drop of pitch for the students to look at.
We’re also going to see the first live mermaid, thanks to Weta Workshop's prosthetics department. A double leg amputee who’s a great swimmer will get a tail to use while she’s in the water. Weta’s donating time and staff, and a grant got the materials for her. I wonder what the pictures will be like now when someone claims to have spotted a mermaid.
Thirteen tricks to motivate yourself, one of the primary ones being “Find work in a profession where you’re naturally motivated.”
On that note of needing motivation, I think I’m turning in for bed now. Work in the morning and all that. I’ma working stiff now, and while it’s shiny and new now, I wonder what that feeling will be like in six months or a year. Maybe two or three years. Guess I’ll know when I get there.
Warnings for consumers - Dole Hearts Delight bag tests positive for E. coli, be careful that your meats don't have dildoes in them, and the ways supermarkets arrange and rearrange to keep you there longer and buying more.
Different warnings from the men and women in our “Don’t do that” department. One: Rock Star wannabee men, the band is not about recruiting lots of pretty girls to make you look good. You will have to have musical talent if you want to be anything other than a garage band. Second: Large spaceborne rocks touching down near you may cause illness. Third: Like many philosophies, feminism is not binary in nature. To be a feminist, one does not need to believe in the total superiority of women, nor advocate that all of them go into the workforce to maintain “equality”. In fact, as a fairly complex philosophy, the temptation to simplify it is great, but invariably results in distortion. Fourth: In a culture where fear and suspicion are the virtues, college students, dissenters, and those who dare to ask questions will be met with powerful, but nonlethal, force. And last: Those who cannot learn from their history are likely to commit the same errors as their predecessors. Or, if you prefer an alternate take, it's the Road to Serfdom. Even the re-educators of Muslim detainees might have a questioning eye at that. For the record, it’s trying to train out the extremist ideas and replace them with a more moderate and tolerant Islam. If it succeeds, can I enlist a similar program for the wingnuts in this country, of any faith?
Speaking of said wingnuts, Pam’s House Blend has some coverage of the Values Voter Debate, including a reworked version of God Bless America that asked why God should bless America, for all the evils that we’ve done, like making schools safe for people of all faiths. I think the far scarier possibility is the one where it's possible that a judge or juror will bring their religion into the interpretation of law, with or without you knowing it. And heaven help you if you’re on their blacklist and they hide it well.
:-) turns 25. That’s right, smiley is twenty-five years of age. Despite the proliferation in chat programs, emoticons are older than the World Wide Web by at least a decade. Certain misquotations from literature and elsewhere, however, have been going on for far longer, to much the same cultural effect. So if you want to correct someone on their quotations, just reach out through the tubes and give them a slap. This may come in handy if what Democracy Arsenal has to say about fuzziness in the numbers of the Petraeus report compared to Pentagon reports are true.
The Gadgetry department has a new thing - a toasting device that takes a handwritten message and imprints it on the toast. Perfect for leaving messages where they will be noticed. Assuming that someone doesn’t munch the toast while reading the newspaper.
Is it really necessary for women to bare plenty to get their careers ahead in acting? A Guardian report on how showing off undergarments or nothing but one’s naked assets seems to be a popular thing among actresses, and while it appears to help the careers of some, the reporter wonders whether it’s doing significant harm in the long run to them and other actresses who might be good but not pretty.
Cybercrime outpaces security efforts. Which is what happens when a large, decentralized, relatively open-source group of people are working on a “problem” as opposed to a centralized and proprietary department in a company somewhere. More minds and more time make more and better products. Even more, though, according to the article, lots of crime happens when one person has keys to the storeroom, then raids it and flees, selling the stuff they stole to that many-minded hive.
Everything’s not all bad. You’ll get either a laugh or an admiration of the following - the winners of the World Beard and Moustache Championships for 2007. (Link may change to update with new years and contests. That will probably change many times before the longest-running experiment produces another drop of pitch for the students to look at.
We’re also going to see the first live mermaid, thanks to Weta Workshop's prosthetics department. A double leg amputee who’s a great swimmer will get a tail to use while she’s in the water. Weta’s donating time and staff, and a grant got the materials for her. I wonder what the pictures will be like now when someone claims to have spotted a mermaid.
Thirteen tricks to motivate yourself, one of the primary ones being “Find work in a profession where you’re naturally motivated.”
On that note of needing motivation, I think I’m turning in for bed now. Work in the morning and all that. I’ma working stiff now, and while it’s shiny and new now, I wonder what that feeling will be like in six months or a year. Maybe two or three years. Guess I’ll know when I get there.
