Whee!

[silveradept]

I made dinner for greyweirdo, hollygrahm and droewyn tonight, and I didn't burn anything down. Although later, testing a toaster, I did manage to toast a Pop-Tart into blackness. It's almost the reverse of absentmindedness - the important bit was good, but the simple part got screwed up. Anyway, bring forth the parade of links.

Banned Books Week starts tomorrow. Do your civic duty and read some of themost challenged books of the past five years.

Proving that public schools are more like prisons than educational facilities, a bill just passed the House that would give school teachers and administrators carte blanche to pat-down students at any time, for any reason. Well, any reason at least nominally related to drugs or weapons, but it's basically any reason at all. This is building on the precedent that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply in public schools. I'm sorry, inmates. You'll be able to get out eventually.

According to the BBC, torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein. Yay for "liberation".

Flickr-powered umbrella. For those occasions where you need a visual accent to your rainfall. Or a montage of photos while you're singing in the rain.

Virtual 'bees' could help a robot see in three dimensions. The technique only has the computer process things in three dimensions that appear to be "interesting" to explorer units, and then to those units who follow the explorers, a 3D rendering could happen nicely.

The Business Bib - a pullover object that makes you look suited in your skivvies. Perfect for the webcamera commuting crowd.

Things that will make you more likable. One could also title this "Things everyone else appears to know, but that you think you don't." It will take work, of course, to make yourself more likable, but you do know how.

I'm off to bed, so that I'm properly rested for the feetball and volleyball games tomorrow. Huzzah for sporting.

Comments

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Glad to know that my favourite series of books is the number one challenged series. :D

What disturbs me the most about the random searches, is they mention strip searching more than once. I mean, really now, what purpose does it serve to strip search students?!

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

[i'm #1! i'm #1! i'm #1!]

[silveradept]

The purpose? To reinforce the mentality that students have no rights at school, and that conformity is the best way to do all things, because the odd will be searched. We guarantee it.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

but...that brings up all sorts of issues. Aren't teenagers supposed to learn not to be clones of each other? It just irks me that you are probably right, and they will search any student that doesn't fit the "norm"...but what is "normal"?

[silveradept]

They're supposed to not be clones of each other in socially acceptable ways - meaning that they can choose to wear J. Crew or Abercrombie, listen to this pop star or that pop star, or land in one of the "Acceptable-image" subcultures - the not-really goth, for example.

What "normal" is is whatever the principal, or the teacher, or the Board of Education, defines it as. Which likely means WASP.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Way to teach the kids individuality.

*sigh*

[silveradept]

Thay are teaching kids individuality - the individuality of the societal and corporate worls, which says you can decorate your cubicle with cute things, but that you're still going to have to wear a suit to work. Unless it's a "casual day", ehere you can trade the suit for a polo and maybe jeans. They're teaching the kids that the only individuality you're allowed is in your choices of consumption, or on things that don't have any impact at all. This is acceptable individuality - you can be yourself so long as it doesn't bother me in any way. As soon as it does, though, you should be silenced for being a disturbance.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I dunno abot that. Where I had been working, we finally got yelled at for decorating our cubicles. Especially me, because of some of the...not mianstream...stuff I decorated with.

I don't like this trend. I want my children to be able to wear whatever they want, and not get hassled about it. As it is, I'm freaking out about what to wear to fly next week. I mean, I woldn't want to fit the profile of a terrorist.

[silveradept]

And that's the scariest part - people are so afraid of everyone else that anyone who shows a bit of real difference has the worst thought of them. So you either keep your head down and look normal, or you're not afraid of having people be very afraid of you for being an individual to the point of drawing the law, management, or violence on you.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Well, and I also told you about how I felt "ok" wearing my cat ears around Ann Arbor, but you heard my mom's reaction to them as soon as we walked in the door of her house. "you wore those all day?!" and when I told her yes, she told me to take them off. Sadly, I thikn that's the "normal" response. Even when i would on occasion wear goth-y clothes...it was wrong and weird.

I just want to live my life the way I want to, and wear what I want. Is this so hard to do?

[silveradept]

Yes, yes it is. There are a significant number of forces that are acting on you to try and make it so that you can't live your life the way you want to. If you want to do that, then you have to be committed to it, in spite of those that will try to get you not to.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

There are so many people out there who *aren't* strong and who wind up being miserable because they can't dress or act the way that they want to, whether that's their style of dress, their religion....anything. It's really disheartening, especially with all the "be yourself" crap that gets tossed at us from an early age.

[silveradept]

How much of that "be yourself" is sincere? And then, how much of it is reinforced by your peer group? Because for as much as those older and wiser than us say not to make the mistakes they made in conformity, when all the people you hang out with on a regular basis, or the people in your age/grade make fun of you or look at you strangel for being "weird" and shunt you off to a non-popular, non-"acceptable" place, then it's a mixed message. If you have, heavven forbid, teachers, bosses, and administrators who also jump on the people who choose to be themselves and discplining them for not conforming, then where is the positive "be yourself" message?

Saying "be yourself", when the atmosphere, and your actions, scream "CONFORM!" at 110 dB, is taking a piss in the wind. Actually being yourself in that sort of environment is like giving the double deuce to everyone that you meet. Someone's going to take offense.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Well, and you also have the "be yourself"-ers who "be themselves" as a group, and then you have a little group of clones. It makes me angry when I see a group of 3 or 4 girls all dressed the same way.

I will not conform!

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

According to the BBC, torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein. Yay for "liberation".

Not that I'm saying it's false, since obviously I don't know first hand, but the BBC has been pretty blatant about embellishing the facts to make America look bad lately. And really, in order for torture to be worse than it was under Saddam Hussein, they'd have to be doing things like throwing prisoners into meat grinders.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

*bookmarks last link*

And "things that creepy stalker furries who message you wanting you to be their friend because nobody is their freind and everybody hates them need to learn so that they can have actual friends and not somebody they have a business relationship with but pretend it's a friendship" is the proper title of this piece.

I intend to hand the next one of those I see this link.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Though the quote at the end of the fourth section looks as though it would only make stalkerish behavior worse.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

See my comment in your lj. I have NEVER found it inapropriate to have somebody interested in me, wanting to know about the things I like. It's when you confuse interst in a person AS a person with interest in them as a sex object that I get creepy. I really love it when somebody asks about what I do, and is willing to listen to be babble on about costume making and figure painting. "Care, kindness and compassion" isn't the same as "perverted inquiries into my sex life."