Links

Sometime between June 8th and June 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• The grand strategy of Al-Qa’ida can be thought of as auto-immune warfare:: "Specifically, auto-immune war is a strategy, but its tactical implementation is the creation of false positive responses. Security obsession gums up the economy with inefficiencies. Terrorism terrorises the public; security theatre keeps them that way. As Kilcullen points out, every day, millions of travellers are systematically reminded of terrorism by government security precautions. Profiling measures subject entire communities to indignity and waste endless hours of police time. Vast sums of money are spent on counterproductive equipment programs and unlikely techno-fixes. National identity cards and monster databases are the specific symptoms of this pathology in the UK, just as idiotic militarism is in the US."
• Clove Cigarettes to be illegal: Well, now what are all the goths and gothlings going to smoke at the clubs? "This one's been pretty much under the radar, but HR 1265, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will ban 'harm-reduced' cigarettes (those labeled 'mild' or 'light') and flavored cigarettes. It also puts tobacco regulation under the FDA. This bill just passed the Senate and President Obama has said that he will be signing it into law. Here's a few tasty excerpts: Prohibits a cigarette or any of its components from containing as a constituent or additive any artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or any herb or spice (including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, and vanilla) that is a characterizing flavor of the tobacco product or tobacco smoke."
• 30 ROCK Is a Rip-Off of the MUPPET SHOW!: I've never seen 30 Rock, but now I want to… "Tina Fey's 30 ROCK is currently the most acclaimed comedy series on television. It's won numerous Emmys and Golden Globes and I think Pulitzers. Critics and audiences alike love the show and its lovable zany characters, and consider it one of the most original comedies in years. And I guess it is original…if you've never seen THE MUPPET SHOW. Because, my 'friends' (in quotes because I don't know or trust you, please don't be offended), Tina Fey's 30 ROCK is quite obviously ripping off Jim Henson's beloved TV show. 'You're crazy', you say? 'Wow, now with the insults. This is why I don't trust you', I respond. And the I hit you up with so many facts you HAVE to concede I'm absolutely right."
• Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames: "June 13, 12:15am: A first wave of 'It's alive! Go get your name!' posts go up on various technology blogs, noting that the service is running a little bit slow. None of these posts mention that you can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook."
• Yub Jub Means "Devour the Weak": An Authoritative Study of Ewoks, From the Field Notes of Davo Atten-Boru and Pladdo Cardigun, Exo-Naturalists.: "After several cycles of exhaustive fieldwork, we can unequivocally report that Ewoks are not the naïve companionable canopy dwellers initially reported by Alliance military sources, but rather a singularly violent, cunning species, driven by perpetual internecine combat and territory acquisition."
• Sprinkle When You Tinkle: "See, commonly women will say, 'Can't you aim straight?' unaware that the aim is completely irrelevant to the path the wee decides to take once leaving the body. As I said, this is true for both ladies and gentlemen. Ladies don't realise this happens because they don't watch themselves wee. Yet, their wee sprinkles out into the gap between the seat and the rim of the porcelain of the loo."

Sometime between June 1st and June 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Goths in Hot Weather: "There's one thing that troubles me about our cheery friends: what to do they do in summer? All that makeup, long black leather and rubber must get very sticky. I think we should show our respect for these poor unfortunates, struggling to stand out from the vanilla crowd despite blazing temperatures and sunshine that puts the rest of us in shorts and vest tops. Join me in celebrating the majesty of the Goth, who, eschewing any practicality whatever, still has the commitment to don a full length leather trenchcoat, stupid New Rock boots, and half a Superdrug counter of makeup. All hail the Hot Goth!"
• Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen: "Twenty years ago, on June 5, 1989, following weeks of huge protests in Beijing and a crackdown that resulted in the deaths of hundreds, a lone man stepped in front of a column of tanks rumbling past Tiananmen Square. The moment instantly became a symbol of the protests as well as a symbol against oppression worldwide — an anonymous act of defiance seared into our collective consciousnesses."
• Creating New Documents: "There is a very basic problem with this arrangement: How do you create new files? On the one hand, since you use the Finder to manage your files, it would make sense to create new files in the Finder – right where you actually want them. On the other hand, since each individual application typically has at least one unique type of file, the Finder can't create new files – only individual applications can."
• Geotracking Your Photos With the AGL 3080: "Small and unobtrusive, all you need to know is that if the green light is blinking, it's recording GPS data. It's one of many similar devices, such as the GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr and Sony GPS-CS1KASP, that all function in virtually the same ways — they are either on or off, recording data or not, and they tend to do a pretty good job."
• What Plagiarism Looks Like: "Some enterprising readers (faculty? student-journalists?) have gone through the dissertations of Carl Boening and William Meehan, highlighting every passage in Meehan's that can be found, word for word, in Boening's. Neither the University of Alabama (which granted Boening and Meehan their doctorates) nor Jacksonville State University, where Meehan is president, has chosen to take up the obvious questions about plagiarism that Meehan's dissertation presents. As another recent story suggests, plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer's status rises."

Sometime between May 26th and June 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• On the (Rebooted) Final Frontier: "It's one thing if you want to pick on the movie itself — there are certainly visible seams in the plot, though really I think that if you're going to complain about the scientific validity or the military verisimilitude of Star Trek, you are simply in the wrong theater to start with — but the criticism that baffles me is the one I keep seeing about 'disrespect.' As though it's the act of rebooting itself that's the problem. To which I can only reply, are these people all nuts? Star Trek's entire history in all media over the last four decades has been nothing but revisions and reboots. Hell, the original Kirk-and-Spock version was actually a reboot after the first pilot failed to sell."
• 15 Sexist Vintage Ads: "We've come a long way since advertising was so offensively sexist. Right?"
• Seattle Police Dispatched to Zombie Walk: "This is a startling example of the blinders we wear as geeks. We saw this guy, mentally acknowledged that it was a really cool costume and then didn't think anything more about it. Neither of us had any clue at first what the police were doing there. In our minds there was absolutely nothing amiss and it took both of us several seconds of having the police shouting to realize what they were getting so worked up about. Oh right. There is a guy with a gas mask carrying a rifle with grenades strapped to his jacket standing in the store."
• Confessions of an Introverted Traveler: "We introverts have a different style of travel, and I'm tired of hiding it. Oh, I'm always happy enough when interesting people stumble into my path. It's a lagniappe, and I'm capable of connecting with people when the opportunity arises. And when the chemistry is right, I enjoy it. But I don't seek people out, I am terrible at striking up conversations with strangers and I am happy exploring a strange city alone. I don't seek out political discourse with opinionated cab drivers or boozy bonding with locals over beers into the wee hours. By the time the hours get wee, I'm usually in bed in my hotel room, appreciating local color TV."
• Meme Scenery: "So I had this silly idea to isolate the backgrounds from famous Internet memes, removing all the subjects from every photo or video. I'm pretty happy with the results. Like Jon Haddock's porn sans people, these photos are banal out of context. Only someone familiar with the original memes would sense something's amiss, like the set of a play waiting for the actors to stumble into history. Can you name all 22?" (I got ten of them…)

Sometime between May 25th and May 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• California High Court Upholds Same-Sex Marriage Ban: "The California Supreme Court upheld Tuesday a ban on same-sex marriages that state voters passed in November, but it allowed about 18,000 same-sex marriages performed before the ban to remain valid. The 6-1 ruling was met with chants of 'shame on you' from a crowd of about 1,000 people who gathered outside the court building in San Francisco."
• ‘Buffy’ in for Feature Relaunch: "A new incarnation of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' could be coming to the big screen. 'Buffy' creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel. The new 'Buffy' film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching 'Star Trek.' "
• 14 Cars Damaged During WA Couple’s Stripping Game: "Troopers have arrested a man and a woman suspected of damaging at least 14 vehicles by throwing rocks onto them from a railroad trestle over Interstate 5 near Lakewood, Wash., as a part of a bizarre stripping game. Investigators say the couple was playing a stripping game, the rules of which involved Madison shedding a layer of clothes for every left headlight the two managed to bust. The same rule applied to Sizemore and right headlights."
• May The Force of Others Be With You: "Let it be said, my friends, that the early drafts of Star Wars should be a rich source of encouragement to every aspiring screenwriter the world over – because they royally sucked. They are of the same low, amateurish quality that may be found in many first screenplays…. (Thus, many scripts and new writers have the potential to reach Star Wars heights.) Had Star Wars never happened, had Lucas…theoretically asked me to review his script for him, I'm not sure I could've even finished reading the darn thing."
• Is It OK to Run an Illegal Library From My Locker at School?: "I now operate a little mini-library that no one has access to but myself. Practically a real library, because I keep an inventory log and give people due dates and everything. I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it's the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I'm doing a good thing, right?"

Sometime between May 19th and May 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie Breaks a Third World Record: "Agatha Christie has set a new world record — for the book with the thickest spine. Measuring over a foot long, with 4,032 pages, the volume contains the complete Miss Marple stories — all 12 novels and 20 short stories. "
• Rules for Time Travelers: "With the new Star Trek out, it's long past time (as it were) that we laid out the rules for would-be fictional time-travelers. Not that we expect these rules to be obeyed; the dramatic demands of a work of fiction will always trump the desire to get things scientifically accurate, and Star Trek all by itself has foisted half a dozen mutually-inconsistent theories of time travel on us. But time travel isn't magic; it may or may not be allowed by the laws of physics — we don't know them well enough to be sure — but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed. And sometimes it's more interesting to play by the rules. So if you wanted to create a fictional world involving travel through time, here are 10+1 rules by which you should try to play."
• Klingon Anti-Virus: "Use Sophos's Klingon Anti-Virus to quickly perform an on-demand scan and find viruses, spyware, adware, zero-day threats, Betazoid sub-ether porn diallers and Tribbles that your existing protection might have missed. The software can be run without deactivating your current anti-virus software. Phasers can be left set to stun. (This software has compatibility issues with the version of msxml4.dll used by cloaking devices on Romulan-modded D7-class battle cruisers. Installing this software on such vessels is punishable by ordeal of Ginst'a'Ed.)"
• Star Trek: What It Teaches Film Makers About Special Effects: "…of the many factors I found impressive, the one that particularly stuck out against the tide of blockbusters in recent years was that there was barely a special effect wasted. Granted, there were lots of special effects in the film, but each had a purpose in the greater scheme of things, and at no point did I get the impression that someone was playing a videogame before my eyes, or showing me what their computer could do. Coupled to the fact that there was no ridiculously over-the-top slow motion gimmickry, along with no unnecessarily confusing edits, and I left with the real impression that this was a film made by people who absolutely, top to bottom, knew what they were doing."
• Dollar ReDe$Ign Project: "We need to rebuild our country, revive our economy, redesign the Dollar bill. Email us your ideas. Win a prize. In God We Trust, In Change We Believe." Some neat designs already posted if you scroll down a bit. I'm particularly fond of this entry.

Sometime between May 16th and May 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Geek Girls Network Interview: Shannon Flowers From Seattle Geekly: "…not all geeks are guys. There is an ever growing female demographic that are just as geeky as their counterparts. Geek girls need to remember that they still have a bit of 'power' in the geek world. Haven't you ever walked into a room full of geek guys and they looked at you like 'OMG it's a GIRL!'? We can still flaunt that as geek girls. If you were ever scared to go into your local comic shop, go now, and ask some questions… there will be TONS of guys to jump at the chance to help you!"
• Zoo’s Penguins Finally on View: "Each penguin has a distinct personality. Dora, who has a yellow tag on her left wing, is a fussy eater. During frozen fish feedings, she usually hangs back while the keepers give out herring and capelin, only eating when they're putting out silver-sides. Meanwhile, Burkles, a penguin with a white tag on his right wing, likes to help himself. He'll walk behind his keepers and look in their pockets, or try the food bucket. 'He's a bucket diver,' Pardo said. Burkles was less keen on catching live fish. John Samaras, the other penguin keeper, had to nudge him into the water."
• Fox Abandons Experiment to Air Fewer Ads: "Fox Broadcasting has decided to scrap its year-old strategy of airing fewer ads at higher prices during some TV programmes, after it failed to prevent a revenue shortfall. During the test period, 'Fringe'…ran with around 10 minutes of ads, about four to six minutes less than the typical hour long show. Fox's experiment with airing full seasons of shows with fewer ads was designed to combat ad clutter and stop viewers from fast-forwarding through breaks." That's a shame — I liked the extra runtime and fewer commercials. Can't honestly say I'm surprised this happened, though.
• It’s Terminal: A Dozen Scenes of Early Office Computing: "Computers… at home, at work and at play we take these technological marvels for granted yet not long ago we did not compute anywhere. The introduction of computers began at the workplace and, chunky and clunky as they might have been, they were a revelation at the time. Let's look back and get digital with early office computers!"
• Reinventing Star Trek’s VFX: "Kavanagh is eager to make a point about the post-production work at ILM, and to do so, he's showing some of the early cuts. Onscreen, the iconic U.S.S. Enterprise, streamlined, modeled, animated, and rendered at ILM, is voyaging somewhere in the final frontier. And then, as if we were watching a silent movie, a black card with white text interrupts the sequence. It reads: 'Overhead light dutch angle of Enterprise in the middle of massive debris field. Enterprise barreling through it.'"

Sometime between May 7th and May 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Dell Launches ‘Della,’ a Women’s PC Site: "Want to market netbooks as a fashion statement? Fine. Just don't create a silo for women in a Web site like Della, that depicts females as poolside-lounging, latte-sipping ladies with little else to do than decide how to match their outfits to a computer."
• Star Trek Movie Annotations: "Every article and review has mentioned how time travel is being used to explain/justify this reboot, this new take on things where old rules are broken or, at least, revised. And yet, it is clear that the writers involved have an affection for what came before, making many references to the canon old school fans know and love. Thus, we have put together this list of references and nods to other Trek stories. BE WARNED, SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW. If you have not yet seen the new Star Trek film, DO NOT continue reading so you can fully enjoy the story later for yourself."
• Home Is Still Where My Eyes Are: "My problem remains that going to the movies now doesn't offer much of an escape. And if you're a kid, you might not want to blow all your allowance money for a single movie ticket and then break open the piggy-bank if you want some popcorn and a soda. And if you're an adult, you're stuck watching movies that are either out of focus or not properly displayed on the screen amidst a sea of rude people who will gladly put their stinky shoes right next to your face while they text message their friends about how bored they are."
• A History of Klingon, the Language: "Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number. In Spanish, the -o suffix on a verb like hablar (to speak) indicates a first-person singular subject (hablo–I speak) while the -amos suffix indicates a first-person plural subject (hablamos–we speak). But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29. There are so many because they indicate not only the person and number of the subject (who is doing) but also of the object (whom it is being done to)."
• With a Private MiFi Hot Spot, Be Online Wherever You Like: "…imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May."

Sometime between May 6th and May 7th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion: "To kill some time in a diner, Teller was practicing his version of Cups and Balls, a classic sleight-of-hand trick popularized by ancient Roman conjurers. It involves a series of 'vanishes' and 'transpositions' as the balls appear and disappear underneath the cups. Teller hadn't brought any props, so he used wadded-up napkins and clear water glasses. Somehow, this made the trick even better. Although it was now possible to follow the crumpled napkins as Teller variously palmed them, squished them, and moved them from cup to cup, the illusion persisted. 'The eye could see the moves, but the mind could not comprehend them,' he says. 'Giving the trick away gave nothing away, because you still couldn't grasp it.'"
• Star Trek: Spock, Kirk and Slash Fiction: "For decades, dedicated fans of 'Star Trek' have postulated a Kirk-Spock romance. A look at 'slash' fiction, 40 years later." For people who know of slashfic, this article isn't going to say anything new. What's most interesting to me is that it was written for Newsweek — not one of the places I'd generally expect to see an article exploring this side of fandom.
• SEO Joke, SEO, Joke, Search Engine Optimized Joke, Funny, Funny Joke: "So a CEO, a web programmer and an SEO expert are on a desert island. And the SEO expert says, 'You guys, I'm so thirsty. Is there anything to drink?' And the CEO says, 'I just drank the last of my water 30 minutes ago.' And the web programmer says…"
• The Star Trek Failure Generator: "Failure (No. 60441): The gravitational algorithms are unstable! // Fix (No. 637735822): Calibrate the primary hologrid with subcutaneous processors!"
• Star Trek Klingon Language Suite: "Standard issue for cadets at Starfleet academy, the Klingon language suite is an integral part of any officer's electronic reference library and has even been adopted by the Klingon fleet for use by officers interacting with Federation forces. Available for iPhone and iPod Touch, the Klingon Language Suite will beam you to the top of the promotion list – or increase the odds of would-be cadets' admission to the academy! "

Sometime between May 2nd and May 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?: "If you've ever had a good, long look at the human phallus, whether yours or someone else's, you've probably scratched your head over such a peculiarly shaped device. Let's face it–it's not the most intuitively shaped appendage in all of evolution. But according to evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, the human penis is actually an impressive 'tool' in the truest sense of the word, one manufactured by nature over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. You may be surprised to discover just how highly specialized a tool it is."
• The Biology of B-Movie Monsters: "Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context–make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large–and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve. Absolute size cannot be treated in isolation; size per se affects almost every aspect of an organism's biology. Indeed, the effects of size on biology are sufficiently pervasive and the study of these effects sufficiently rich in biological insight that the field has earned a name of its own: 'scaling.'"
• Cheap Thrills With Muppets Rawk: "For this show artists had to take an existing rock album cover and re-image it with Jim Henson's Muppets. You could use any Muppet and it the art had to be 12' x 12'. When I got to join in on this I searched a little bit for some cool covers. The previous show had some gems in them…I knew that I had to do something really cool. So when I ran across Cheap Thrills over and over in lists of the 'best rock covers ever'. Someone had to do this cover with Muppets! I wasn't sure if I could really do it, but I thought I'd bite off more than I could chew and do it myself."
• Stop Worrying About Your Children!: "In her new book, 'Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry,' Skenazy suggests that many American parents are in the grips of a national hysteria about child safety, which is fed by sensationalistic media coverage of child abductions, safety tips from alarmist parenting mags, and companies marketing products that promise to protect tykes from every possible danger. She by no means recommends that mom and dad chuck the car seats, but says that trying to fend off every possible risk, however remote, holds its own unfortunate, unintended consequences."
• Old Japanese Maps on Google Earth Unveil Secrets: "When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn't expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn't caused any problems. But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities."

Sometime between April 28th and May 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• DJ Richie Hawtin ties Twitter into his setlist with Twitter DJ and Traktor: "The Twitter DJ application utilizes feeds from an updated version of Traktor's standard broadcasting technology to send 30 second updates during Hawtin's set of what's currently playing to a designated Twitter account, allowing anyone following the Twitter group to obtain a unique insight into how a DJ builds the atmosphere and dynamics of a set, track by track, and in real time."
• Ferris Bueller is Tyler Durden: "My favorite thought-piece about Ferris Bueller is the 'Fight Club' theory, in which Ferris Bueller, the person, is just a figment of Cameron's imagination, like Tyler Durden, and Sloane is the girl Cameron secretly loves. One day while he's lying sick in bed, Cameron lets 'Ferris' steal his father's car and take the day off, and as Cameron wanders around the city, all of his interactions with Ferris and Sloane, and all the impossible hijinks, are all just played out in his head. This is part of the reason why the 'three' characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day — Cameron is alone, just imagining it all. It isn't until he destroys the front of the car in a fugue state does he finally get a grip and decide to confront his father, after which he imagines a final, impossible escape for Ferris and a storybook happy ending for Sloane ('He's gonna marry me!'), the girl that Cameron knows he can never have." (Continue reading comments for more exploration of the theme.)
• How to Be a Successful Evil Overlord: "Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists, or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present…The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord"
• The Skinny on Using NASA Images: "The short version: All publicly available NASA images are on nasaimages.org, which is co-operated by the Internet Archive. It is most likely legal for you to use them for any purpose (commercial or otherwise) unless there's someone famous in the image. Keep reading for more detail."
• Practical Tips for Combatting Swine Flu in Your Home: "*There is always some flu around and flu is always killing some people. Even when a raw mutant flu manages to kill off more people than a shooting-war, flu has never ravaged whole cities as cholera or the Black Death can do. As awful pandemics go, flu is like the snotty-nosed little sister of awful pandemics. *So if you catch the new swine flu, you're very likely not gonna die. *But since it is a flu, you're gonna kinda WISH you could die. *You're not ACTUALLY gonna die unless your lips are turning blue, you have bad chest pains, you can't swallow water, you can't stand up, you're having seizures and you don't know where you are or what your name is. As this document suggests, you're gonna want to watch out for those symptoms."