Weekend over - final week begins!

[silveradept]

ॐ गंगणपतये नम - Aum Gan Ganapataye Namah to those who call on Ganesha for aid and support. It is Ganesh_Charturthi (or has been Ganesh Charturthi) for today and a few days afterward. I was going to surprise przxqgl by showing this up in my journal and having him comment, but he already beat me to it. Awareness is good - timing is a little trickier to make happen. Ah, well. The sentiment is still probably appreciated.

After such a holy thing, more mundane matters. Creative and Apple settle their differences. Although, I think I might have a name for my computer. Since my current MP3 player is a Zen, I thought Ozymandias would be a good name for it. Which would make the computer Millicent.

Also tried to make chocolate covered strawberries with annaonthemoon today, but I blundered - the brandy had been in the refrigerator with the strawberries. The brandy, when it hit the chocolate, created fudge. And the dip hasn't solidified. So I think that one's a bust, insamuch as it's not hard shell. But it is still chocolate covered strawberries, so that's good. Although far more of those than I can eat in one setting. And a bit messy to eat them all.

A The Ministry of Truth Strikes again... Science seems to be taking a beating here. The EPA, an agency at least supposedly in the public interest, is being forced to close public access to its materials because the budget is being shrunk to the point that the libraries can't stay open. Guess we'll have to rely on corporately-funded studies now, won't we? And we'll believe all the Exxon-Mobil studies that say "Global warming? Naaaw. Now buy more gasoline, tree-hugging hippie thoughtcriminal." With no data to provide an accurate, independent study, science is set back even more and the truth about warming or its lack is only obscured more under a, heh, smokescreen.

Are taller people smarter? Maaaybe. The article says it could be that tall people get selected for more powerful jobs - which plays into the research that says people tend to be dominant when they look down, submissive when they look up, and such. So a tall, loud person might select into a powerful job according to the Dogbert method. ("You must obey me because I'm loud.") It might be that tall people are fed well and nutritiously in the moments when it matters most, and so they not only grow tall and strong, but brains grow and they become smart. Or maybe it's just people noticing something neat and going, "Hrm. Wonder why that happens?" There's no guarantees that my height (2m) is going to do anything for my chosen profession... in fact, it might work against it.

Bizarre Books Index - I recognize some of the titles on the lists, and suspect they were published as books making fun of things (especially the mullet one). Still, interesting to see what has already been published.

Some of the offenses the Republican Party has committed against children. If there is a similar Democratic list, I'd willingly put it up - we were warned about professional politicians early on, and we're getting the full impact of such a thing.

Porn up, rape down? It's an intriguing thought - having porn around for catharsis might stop someone from going and acting out the fantasy on real women/girls. Although, I wonder - for those that do go through with it, are they just more polished at it so that it doesn't get reported (perhaps because of the victim's death) or is it more violent in general? Because a drop in incidence matched by an increase in severity may or may not be a tradeoff that's worth it.

Speaking of beauty stuff, the UK is going to make it harder for under-18s to have purely cosmetic procedures. As it was captioned on the Cabal, "Sorry, Princess, you'll have to wait until you're 18 to get bigger boobs". The remaking of the body to the artificial standard of beauty is disturbing to some degree.

"Chumby" - perhaps the latest semi-intelligent culture agent? It runs on Wi-Fi, so it'll probably have to be set up to talk to and through whatever network it gets attached to. It's designed, apparently, to take the idea of the clock radio and raise it to the Internet Power. Embeddable, apparently, in quite a few things. If you've got the skills to create a shell for the thing, you can make it anything you like - Hello Chumby is just as possible as The Figment of Chumby's Imagination. More information about Chumby - it can apparently be programmed to retrieve almost anything. We'll keep an eye on it, but I'm not sure that this is going to be anything other than a cool gadget. (Although, if it can be hacked to include a USB port and programmed to receive input and commands, then it could very well become something useful to the $100 laptop project...) So we'll see how it does in Japan, right, since Japan loves cutting-edge cool?

And we end with "holy" things - Jesus Tattoos and Jesus Bandages. They'll work perfectly with the Armour of God Pajamas.

That's the stuff for tonight. At some point, perhaps when things are a little more settled, I'll finally invite greyweirdo and cohort over for dinner. Although about every time things calm down that far, someone gets injured or something. Either way, g'night.

Comments

[przxqgl.livejournal.com]

i commented anyway... 8)

ॐ गंगणपतये नमः

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

M) Fifth paragraph: the Bavarian Fire Drill comes to mind.

Last paragraph: hmm. The site appears to have gone down. (What is it they call it? 'Controlled crash'? Something different...)

[silveradept]

Bavarian Fire Drill? I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with that term.

And yes, they're down at the moment. They'll be back, if this product isn't vapourware.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

M) Read the Illuminatus! trilogy. If that's either too long or too inconvenient, just search the phrase on Google: somewhere there should be a quote of the relevant section.

Hmm. *doesn't really understand what it is, yet*

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Fudge covered can work, it's just a shame that I didn't think to tell you not to put the brandy in the fridge! Ah, well.

[the-entity.livejournal.com]

Regarding pr0n vs. rape, it's possible that spanking the monkey to pictures of nekkid ladies is a useful safety valve for male aggression. But the increased availibility of pr0n has coincided with changes in how rape cases are dealt with and perceived: I gather it's easier to convict for and harder to get away with these days (less grilling of victims in the hope of discrediting their testimonies by dredging up past indiscretions and making them sound like whores; less "the way she dressed, she was asking for it" - though that attitude is making a (http://feministing.com/archives/004474.html) comeback (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0902/steyn082302.asp) in unpleasant ways; not so many fratboys and college sports stars getting a pass, although they still do). Plus there's more awareness of the issue - newspapers no longer have the slightest sense of taste, sensitivity and discretion, which has the upside that we get to hear about things which they'd have been more likely to quietly pass over back in the 50's - people are maybe more conscious of the evil of the act, and the possibility of getting caught and thrown in jail for it.

In summary, I am unsure that porn should get more credit than feminism (which has been actively trying to deal with the issue for decades).

[silveradept]

That's an interesting thought - with rape stigma lessening enough to be something that can be talked about and prosecuted rather than closeted and blamed on the victim, the rape rate may be going down. Who would have thought that the media's constant search for the lowest common denominator has been a benefit in some ways over the years.

Feminism, self-defence, and pepper spray probably deserve at least some recognition, and possibly more than pornography does, when it comes to stopping rape.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Creative + Apple? Wouldn't that be Crapple?

*GD&R*