| sneedle flipsock |
28 May 2004: two people every minute |
flipsockgrrl @ gmail .com |
This week:
Warsaw's caring policepersonsVisiting Warsaw, Maciej Ceglowski was assaulted in broad daylight by incompetent thugs. He flagged down a passing police van to report the incident:
Says Maciej, "If you are ever, ever in Warsaw, I highly recommend you flag down a passing cop car and tell them you've been assaulted. You will meet with a kind of unconditional acceptance and emotional support that I didn't know could be found outside one's immediate family. " 28 May 2004 | top of page Rock, paper, scissorsPlay Roshambo online: it's a much slower, more relaxed (Zen-like?) version than the live-action game. The site's creator comments:
thanks, Paul | 28 May 2004 | top of page Tog's top 10 reasons not to shop on the InternetUsability advocate Bruce Togazzini lists 10 common e-commerce problems. 28 May 2004 | top of page SecretsA nurse turned spy for the Union in the American Civil War, Private Franklin Thompson became a master of disguise as he infiltrated enemy camps learning their secrets. To be caught meant certain death, but Thompson was well versed in secrets. After all, he had a secret of his own--his real name was Sarah Emma Edmonds. 28 May 2004 | top of page Bureaucratic stupidity (a continuing saga)Harper's has a transcript of a phone call from a prison inmate to his parents--who had just buried another inmate, thinking he was their son. This doesn't happen in New South Wales, where we have a slightly more sophisticated way of identifying people before they're buried: we get a relative to view and identify the body. If this kind of identification is not possible (common in hanging suicides because of the facial disfigurement) then the fingerprints are checked against police records--which, of course, every prisoner has, even if s/he is only on remand. Elementary, really. And so you'd have to ask: how stupid does one have to be in order to run an American prison? 28 May 2004 | top of page The rock-star philosopherFor a man who gets about in a flaccid brown jumper, Alain de Botton is quite the rock star. His books are "a curious, charming combination of diary, commonplace book and essay." Recently he has turned his attention to "a quest for love as secret and shameful as it is compulsive. Status anxiety is a worry that we may fail 'to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect'." Ambition is good, de Botton commented at a Readings event this week: without it, we stop trying and lose interest in life. The problem with status anxiety is that "We may spoil the best moments of our brief lives concerned about what other people (who won't be there at our funerals) make of us. If we cannot stop worrying, it is especially poignant that we should spend so much of our lives worrying about the wrong things." The Onion reports this week on an excellent example of status anxiety:
Flipsock friend Iza points to the hazards of posting your photo on the Internet: people are likely to play with it. 27 May 2004 | top of page Web demographicsA Jupiter Research study found nearly half of the surveyed (US) corporations have two to four major Web site implementations planned for 2004, and nearly 25 per cent are prepared to spend at least US$1 million on their web operations, compared to 20 per cent in 2003. A study of 24 people's web searching behavior found users tend to look only at the first 1-3 search results and, if they find a credible link there, will almost always click on it. Only five of the 24 went to the second page of results rather than launching a new search. The researchers also found users are much more likely to use a search engine to look for information about a product or service they want to buy; use of search engines drops off as the user draws closer to the actual purchase transaction. Another study, with a sample of 1649 people, found similar behaviors. Fifty-seven per cent of these users said they use the same search engine all the time; another 30.5 per cent have several favorites that they use interchangeably. Older people and women tend to abandon a results page faster than youngsters and men. In this second study, preferences for 'natural' over paid listings also showed some demographic biases:
(MSN users preferred paid listings.) The American Library Association provides an annotated list of knowledge management resources on the web. A collection of 300 icons from 1800 web sites shows some emerging trends in web design: like road and safety signs, these icons represent concepts that are understood across cultures. If you can make them both usable and pretty, you're on a winner. (thanks, Justina via Paul) 27 May 2004 | top of page A catchy tune you won't hear on American radio"Fuck you all so very much," sings Eric Idle in his new "FCC Song". He's unimpressed with the dominant conservatism of the United States that squashes free speech and punishes the wrong criminals. He comments, among other things, about the FCC's propensity to fine people for speaking freely on the radio: half of the US$4 million in FCC fines since 1990 have been levied on one person, shock jock Howard Stern. I love that Idle's voice sounds so very very nice, and yet his mind definitely is not. via Doc Searls | 27 May 2004 | top of page Pass the PKSingapore has relaxed its ban on chewing gum. Registered users may buy medicinal chewy from pharmacists. This is a direct result of Singapore's free-trade agreement with the United States, which came into effect earlier in the year. 26 May 2004 | top of page Seductive, fragmented cityscapesArchitect Zaha Hadid's "seductive paintings of fragmented cityscapes became an antidote to the self-referential pomposity of postmodernism and the crushing banality of British development" in the 1980s. Until recently, few of her designs had made the leap from paper to the real world, yet her status as the world's top female architect is secure. Volkmar Klien and Ed Lear followed a trail of fire across an urban landscape: they 'lost' cigarette lighters in pubs, to be found and picked up, then tracked the lighters' movement through the city of Limerick:
The result is a real-world gallery exhibition and a web exhibition. (thanks, Paul) 26 May 2004 | top of page Where did the readable critics go?Poets and novelists tend to have degrees these days, and academic critique of literature is a thriving industry. Since the 1950s "literary criticism as a discourse available for, and even attractive to, the common reader has all but disappeared. Literature as criticism--DeLillo's knowing essayism, Rushdie's parables about hybridity, Franzen's postmodern riffs --has burgeoned, while criticism as literature, what RP Blackmur called 'the formal discourse of an amateur', has faded." 26 May 2004 | top of page CollectivismAn art consultant will be hired for Parliament House in Canberra after some government backbenchers complained its A$40 million collection is too modern. Michael Klein started his curating career at Microsoft by firing the art committee that hired him. He has a budget of close to US$750,000 a year and thinks "Art is a vital part of people's lives. I think, by living with it at Microsoft, employees see the world in a richer and deeper way than they would without it." He's built a corporate art collection that features mainly contemporary artists from the Pacific North-West area of North America. How to fake a Gaugin and get away with it. How to restore Michaelangelo's David (NYT) and confound the critics by doing a good job. David has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in his 500 years: as well as being made of low-quality marble, he's "been struck by lightning, had an arm broken off by rioters, had a toe smashed with a hammer, and suffered the indignity of a metal fig leaf being attached to his genitals." (The NYT link needs a username = flipsock and password = sneedle) A bunch of librarians and archivists have formed the International Internet Preservation Consortium in an effort to prevent certain electrons being recycled into oblivion. 26 May 2004 | top of page Swing it, boysGlenn Miller and Fats Waller "embody the A side and B side of a time when melodic tranquillity and robust rhythms found common cause. People who come of age in such a period think it will last forever--ask any veteran of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But the swing era expired in short order; hip-hop is already twice its age... Beyond the pleasures of their performances, Waller and Miller provide an unexpected service: they humble critical stereotypes and show ways that jazz and pop once enriched each other, and might still." CD sales in the US have risen 9.4% in the year to date. Says Keith Jopling of the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry, "If this is the result of a combined formula of anti-piracy lawsuits knocking people off file-sharing sites and the massive adoption of legal services and a spike in CD sales then it could be good news for everyone." This sounds like spin to me: Jopling admits that people who download music are also buying pre-recorded CDs, and I see no reason why people who download free music would be any different from those who pay for legally registered downloads. 26 May 2004 | top of page What's the view from your window?One of the advantages of being an astronaut (or cosmonaut) would be the great view from your workplace window: see these beautiful NASA pictures of Earth from space for a sample. Also, Slate.com finds out what Mars and Mormons have in common. 26 May 2004 | top of page BrandingTroy observes at tbn97.org that "in this world of floater brands and fickle consumers, these corporate-political brands have had to increasingly up the wattage... [B]ig brands like 'The USA', have had to call in the experts to break down the nation-brand monsters and make them more agile and able to flex and flow through the ever changing needs of the political players, and retain the ability coax and influence the minds and hearts of the masses." 25 May 2004 | top of page Cambridge tops league table againCambridge has again been named Britain's top university, according to the Guardian newspaper's annual 'league table'. Barring 11th-hour concessions, British universities that cater for part-time students will be left worse off by the introduction of top-up fees. Birmingham academic Mike Grojean is studying the leadership style of junior army officers in Iraq. 25 May 2004 | top of page Understanding ice hockeyI used to play hockey. Then, in university, a member of the Canberra Knights frequented the student residences and I discovered ice hockey. Don Lane's late-night explanations are but a dim memory, so here's a rundown on the basics of the game. 25 May 2004 | top of page Fame thrust upon himselfScientist Peter Knight is tired of waiting for greatness to be thrust upon him, so he has invented his own unit of measurement and thrust fame upon himself. If you fancy having the units of luminosity, power, current, work or heat named after you, says Knight, "it is the usual plain brown envelope job. They will be up for auction on eBay next week." 25 May 2004 | top of page Two people every minuteEvery minute of the day, two people are killed in a war somewhere. The BBC program "One Day of War" follows individual fighters in 16 of these wars, over the same 24 hour period. The program's web site provides background about the wars, why people are fighting, how long it's been going on, how many have died, and what it's like to be there. One wartime US President, George W Bush, "being Bush, thinks abstractions and good intentions will conquer... unpleasant facts. To Bush, they aren't even facts; they're illusions. The reality is the great narrative of the war on terror, whose infallible course is set by a higher power. 'The way forward may sometimes appear chaotic; yet our coalition is strong, and our efforts are focused and unrelenting, and no power of the enemy will stop Iraq's progress,' Bush insisted... Close your eyes, and you can almost see it." 24 May 2004 | top of page Wanted: Gilligan's professor for new 'reality' TV showHave you ever dreamed of being stranded on a deserted island with a movie star? Can you make a telephone out of a coconut? Does the idea of being on a cool new reality series excite you out of your proverbial lab coat? A well-credentialled US production company wants to hear from suitably qualified nerds willing to re-enact Gilligan's Island as a 'reality' TV show. 24 May 2004 | top of page Language and writingShakespeare by Damon Runyan: from Harry of the Five Points:
Says Flipsock friend Ioannis, "Imagine (Think of) a world of English without any French influence (impact), including linguistic. Some beautiful folks at the Christian Science (Studies) Monitor have done just that." I love Anglo-Saxon as much as the next person, but English sans French? Quelle frommage! thanks, John |24 May 2004 | top of page Getting around blogger's blockShould I ever suffer blogger's block, I'll refer to this template of a standard blog entry for inspiration. via currybet.net | 24 May 2004 | top of page Chernobyl updateLast month we noted the web site about a woman who goes for a motorbike ride through the dead zone surrounding Chernobyl. This month we learn it isn't quite what it seems. 24 May 2004 | top of page Japan's desert islandBuilt on a coal reef in the 1800s, this ghost city on Gunkanjima was abandoned when the ore ran out in the 1970s. via BoingBoing.net | 24 May 2004 | top of page Time to shed the metaphorskinEver-eloquent Matt Jones on where IT is going:
At the Queensland University of Technology, they've been thinking hard about planning their IT infrastructure. Universities tend to have lots of floor space in lots of buildings, sometimes in different parts of a city and often in separate cities altogether. Add heritage buildings, funding constraints and a captive audience of highly tecnoliterate students and staff, and you have some big challenges in planning and installing network cables, servers and other IT hardware. via BoingBoing.net | 24 May 2004 | top of page A Scanner DarklyFilming has begun on A Scanner Darkly, the Philip K Dick adaptation in which Keanu Reeves stars as the narc who goes crazy when ordered to spy on himself. Meanwhile, in Bloomsbury, Batman. 24 May 2004 | top of page Down the rabbit holeThe US Government has dubbed its latest anti-terrorism data-mining project Matrix. The American Civil Liberties Union says:
Wearing sunglasses and ultra-cool leather coats may or may not help you when the Matrix gets involved. 24 May 2004 | top of page |
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