15 october 2004: get souls and disconcert the public
flipsockgrrl @ gmail .com
This week:
Indifference
From WH Auden's poem "The More Loving One":
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s greatest civilisations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
--attributed to Alexander Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, 1778
The Socialist Songbook has some excellent singalong lyrics for the post-election blues...
I am the very model of a modern labor liberal,
I never am for evil while I am for good, in general.
I like to be in office, so I'm expert on the tactical
For though I have my ideals, I am also very practical.
I am very well acquainted too, with matters geographical
And talk about all rulers in a manner biographical.
About the global struggle, I am teeming with a lot of news
With many cheerful facts about the tyrants we must not abuse.
(Repeat last line 3 times)Oh, I am very good at speeches, and at times sound even critical
But since one must be cautious, it may come out hypocritical.
In short, as long as issues can appear so vague and general
I am the very model of a modern labor liberal
(Repeat last 2 lines)
And then there's the battle hymn of the republic of ideas:
Mine eyes have seen the failure of
the Student Bill of Rights,
They have trampled out its glories
with contractual delights,
They have plunged us into darkness
never more to see the light,
As reaction marches on.To hell with Academic Freedom,
To hell with Academic Freedom,
To hell with Academic Freedom,
As reaction marches on.
The Sudanese oil industry brings in US$2 billion in annual revenue. Foreign investment in the Sudan comes from companies such as the China National Petroleum Corporation, Russia's Tatneft, Germany's Siemens AG, Switzerland's ABB Ltd and France's Alcatel, all of which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and many of which deal in petroleum. Many Australian superannuation funds invest in overseas stocks: are you indirectly helping to fund murder, rape and attempted genocide in Dafur?
14 October 2004 | top of page
.edu
"If the average university website were to sit an exam it would fail. In fact, every day a great many university websites are being examined by potential students and they are failing badly."
The 1973-74 edition of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas is available online, a browsable and searchable summary of human thought so far. A new edition of the dictionary is being prepared (off-line). (via 3quarksdaily)
Voters in Colorado will this year elect members for their state university system's board of directors.
In the USA low-income students often leave university before finishing their degrees--and take with them an unserviceable debt for tuition fees. In some cases, this lingering debt prevents them returning to complete their studies.
Blackboard's co-founder and chair, 32-year-old Matthew Pittinsky, thinks "we are moving into an era where you just take for granted that you're learning in a networked learning environment the way you take for granted that you're shopping in an e-commerce environment, where students can contact faculty members who are expert in their discipline wherever they are in the world, access in electronic form articles that are long out of print, and interact [outside of class] with the instructor and other students."
14 October 2004 | top of page
Science
Here's a news story that could've been ripped off from the X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages".
Corpse flower blooms in Sydney, people take photos.
Scientific American announces its 2004 Science and Technology Web Awards. They've identified the 50 best web sites in the areas of anthropology and palaeontology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth and environment, engineering and technology, 'great minds', health and medicine, physics and science for kids.
Contempt is never wise in biology. Louse DNA could clear up some mysteries about where modern humans came from.
Kenya's Wangari Maathai is an environmental and political activist. This month she became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize when she was honored for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace". According to this week's newspapers, Wangari Maathai believes the HIV virus was developed by humans for use in biological warfare.
Using intelligent agents (virtual tourists) to identify the most aesthetic vistas in Switzerland. Regardless of computerised findings, no artist would use colors like these. (thanks, Trevor)
Einstein on Bohr: "And so I was in Brevity's corner for its first bout with Bohr, and like all other 'Bohr vs. Brevity' prize fights, Bohr won." Intrigued, Jim Ottaviani created a graphic novel about the Danish physicist.
It's starting to look as though quarks are made of strings.
In "How Users Matter", sociologists Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch say technology analysts need to give more thought to how people "consume, modify, domesticate, recofigure, and resist" technologies like computers, telephones, cars, medicines and consumer appliances.
Why heart patients are being prescribed vibrating trousers. (thanks, Paul)
The IgNobel Prizes for 2004 have been awarded, including gongs for:
-
Steven Stack and James Gundlach for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."
-
Jillian Clarke for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.
-
The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain for producing a liquid that's almost, but not quite entirely, exactly like water.
-
Donald J Smith and Frank J Smith for patenting the combover.
-
The Vatican for outsourcing prayers to India.
-
Daisuke Inoue for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.
- Ben Wilson, Lawrence Dill, Robert Batty, Magnus Whalberg and Hakan Westerberg for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.
"Back when he was writing the Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton argued with his pal Chistiaan Hyugens about an interesting question: Would someone swim faster through water or through a thick, viscous goo? Newton bet you'd go slower; Hyugens argued the opposite. Newton decided to put both viewpoints in the Principia, since he couldn't resolve it. There seemed to be no way to test it: Who was going to go to the trouble of constructing a massive tank and filling it with goo?" Edward Cussler at the University of Minnesota, that's who.
"It's quite rare for a scientist to stumble upon a bold new insight about cognition. It's even more rare to do so while experimenting with a bunch of ferrets that are being forced to watch The Matrix."
Twenty-odd years after discovering a square bacterium in a pond near the Red Sea, scientists have successfully grown it in a laboratory. The microbe is unusually slow to reproduce and is extremely tolerant of salt and magnesium chloride.
14 October 2004 | top of page
Cluetrain
Downloading free music has its price, a cost measured in inconvenience and occasionally error-ridden copies of your favorite songs. The few megahits at the top of the charts aren't where the real money is: smart music retailers are dipping toes into the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.
Action these new paradigms proactively: it works! (thanks, Katherine)
If you have to present some data as a graph, table or image, make simplicity your guiding principle.
An American car company brought current owners in to test the new model of their car. Customers were amazed at the comfort of the new seats, pleased with the extra legroom, though the new steering wheel angle made controlling the vehicle easier, and the new shape made it easier to get in and out of the car. In turn, the car's designers were surprised: the only change they'd made to the passenger cabin was a slightly different angle in the driver's seat.
To build a successful customer loyalty program, you first need to decide what sort of customers you want and how long you're willing to spend wooing them.
14 October 2004 | top of page
Web and 'net
David Weinberger remarked that, on the web, everybody's famous for 15 people. Danny O'Brien asks: how many people do you need to be famous for?
"When a former Microsoft program manager, software entrepreneur and author of a much-admired book on user interface design backs down from one of his best-known ideas, then a few people notice. When he announces in the process that software has changed and Microsoft's best days are behind it, then heads start to turn."
Software tools for doing card-sorting.
Research methods for finding out how people use mobile technology.
Library User Interface Issues is a forum for librarians, usability engineers, user experience strategists and other professionals to discuss issues of usability as they apply to online subscription resources in the library environment.
Usability testing for e-commerce: successes and resources.
When it's first launched, your intranet will attract lots of visitors. Avoiding some common traps will help maintain that interest over time and turn curious staff into regular visitors.
Redesigning existing products, with added usability.
14 October 2004 | top of page
Arts and letters
The New Yorker calls Collision Detection "the web's go-to site for brainy technobabble-meets-pop-culture references. Tech geeks and Luddites alike will marvel at the daily tidbits from journalist (and MIT alum) Clive Thompson, who writes about techno-arcania with wit and intellectual heft."
Not many amateur film-makers could honestly say they've received a fan letter from Steven Spielberg. With a hand-held camera Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb recreated "Raiders of the Lost Ark", shot-for-shot, in Biloxi, Mississippi. It took seven years, and now--fifteen years after it was finished--the film is being screened in a Texas cinema. Wouldn't it be ace if Spielberg and Lucas had released this version with their own DVD boxed set of Indiana Jones movies?
Jacques Derrida wrote "absurd doctrines that deny the distinction between reality and fiction", according to academics at Cambridge University who protested in 1992 against a plan to give him a doctoris honoris causa. They can relax now, because Derrida won't be doing it again.
Exciting new action heroes of truth, justice and beauty: get your Foucault, Hegel, de Beauvoir or heavily-armed Wittgenstein doll today!
People are buying more non-fiction books than fiction, though publishers are putting out 17 per cent more fiction titles. Biography, history and religion showed double-digit sales increases for 2003 in the USA.
Ban Comic Sans from your Powerpoint presentations and web pages. You know you should.
"I do remember permanently the hologram speech, because we had to reshoot it," Carrie Fisher told fans at the recent Comic-Con festival in San Diego. "Whenever I get lost on the way to someone's house, or I just forget your name, it's because I remember the speech ... 'General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars...' I'm a thousand years old and I still remember that thing. It's very disturbing. I have to take medication, and yet it still won't go away."
Critiquing the critic: James Wood used to be hailed as a promising young reviewer of literature; these days he's "unconcerned with things of this world, and his spiritual authenticity gives us faith in his judgments."
"According to 'Yin-Yang Book', more than 100-year-old tools get souls and disconcert the public. Those tools are called Tsukumogami. At every beginning of a new year, the event called Sweeping soot is held in which old tools are thrown away on an alley. This aims not to get mishap from Tsukumogami." The good news for the Tsukumogami is that the Singon Sect reckons old tools and other inanimate objects can acquire souls and attain Buddhahood.
Ron Grainer wrote the "Dr Who" theme music--well, most of it. Without Delia Derbyshire, it wouldn't have sounded half as good. Delia Derbyshire worked for the BBC for fifteen years, although Beeb regulations prevented her from being credited by name for her many compositions. Derbyshire was quite the pioneer in electronic music, and her legacy is only now being appreciated.
In the 1940s Frances Glessner Lee constructed detailed crime scenes in dollhouses to teach forensics to a homicide investigation seminar. The founder of Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine, Lee was named an honorary captain of the New Hampshire state police. The photos of these miniatures are spooky and slightly macabre.
Raph Koster was creative lead and lead designer on Ultima Online and Ultima Online: The Second Age, and the creative director on Star Wars Galaxies. His new book, Theory of Fun for Game Design, is intended as "an accessible, lay-oriented text that explains, finally, what this medium means. Why are grownups playing games? What makes a game fun? What do games do to the way twe perceive the world? What do games do to the way we change the world?"
14 October 2004 | top of page
Sport
There's
something very wrong about torturing
Sims. It's like refusing to build bridges for Lemmings.
A tale of two pranksters, a grouchy Singapore school principal, the school's Photographic Society and an online auction. (via BoingBoing)
Scenes from a blockbuster action movie featuring a technology expert with approximately my own real-life skill level. (And I ain't no Mr T.)
A shopping list for squillionaires.
The updated version of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy game has inspired Flipsock friend Michael: "I will have to put Hitchhiker's on my Palm pilot again and finally complete the game. If you get stuck and want hints instead of spoilers just Google Infocom + invisiclues. Although it's more satisfying to experiment and try to nut out the solutions. It's also worth checking out Invisiclues once you have completed the game as there are some suggestions for fun things to try out. Here's the stuff that came with the original, single-box, version of the game (I like the fact that the 'peril-sensitive glasses' are permanently black)."
Exceptionally cool, comments Flipsock friend Trevor. Hint: click on people and things to make the animation move on. (Requires Shockwave and sound)
At Pixel Moon, you can design your own moon base and add it to the landscape for others to ponder and enjoy.
Straightjackets: not just for bedtime any more...
1. Put camera in front of face. 2. Shake face and take photo. 3. View photos at the Shakeskin Gallery.
[sigh] There's one in every class or sports team.
14 October 2004 | top of page
2004 flipsocks:
17 Dec: the
sock has flipped
10 Dec: anything anywhere any time
3 Dec: instant
flattery
26 Nov: the steamroller
of branding
19 Nov: fried
v rice
5 Nov: the page
with no name
29 Oct: and then
there were none
22 Oct: filled
with naughty laughter
15 Oct: get
souls and disconcert the public
8 Oct: ooh,
aah, ooh
1 Oct: pinch
and a punch
24 Sep: design
is the new art
17 Sep: footsteps
of Aeneas
10 Sep: slow
art, viral aesthetic
3 Sep: I
can see your house from here
27 Aug: forever
blowing bubbles
20 Aug: jargon
for the digital age
13 Aug: beautiful
plumage, the Norwegian blue
6 Aug: brokenated
terribility
23 Jul: Alice
underground
16 Jul: color-coded
2 Jul: for
so long treated as nouns
25 Jun: looking
for love, echidna-style
18 Jun: joy-to-stuff
ratio
11 Jun: fun's
fun but a girl can't dance all night
4 Jun: pink dinosaur
28 May: two
people every minute
21 May: incompitnce [sic]
14 May: zygomatic smile
5 May: mailbox
30 Apr: bananaguard
23 Apr: mmmmmWAH!
15 Apr: playtime
8 Apr: googlewhack
2 Apr: we
wish to inform you...
18 Mar: daffy dills
12 Mar: echo
chamber
9 Jan: refund profologies
Also on this site:
articles:
who
is geoffrey ebert?
testing
for the fun factor
chicken
at the (higher education) crossroads
crawford's theory of interactivity
froghunting
home-page
real-estate wars
the eagle
has landed
listmania:
must-reads
for web people
recent reads
pop-culture
quotes
neology:
they shoulda been words
recipe:
lemon and
rosemary risotto
reviews:
Written
In Blood by Chris Lawson
The
Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
Without whom (web):
frankenstein
journal (Chris)
tbn97 (Troy)
webster's encyclopedia [sic]
science playwiths
(Peter)
neroliwesley.com.au (Neroli)
Fraser
Jonathan
Maverick IT network consultants
(Rick)
Look! There's a castle!
(Brent)
Cairns Corporation (Gerald)
Homosapien Books (Julie and
Bruce)
Southern Sky Watch
(Ian)
Panda's Thumb (Ian again)
ABC Science-Matters
(official)
science-matters (unofficial)
chisig
Bovios
Disinfo.com (Alex Burns)
Lee Battersby
Little Malop Gallery
Digest of Usability Resources and
News (Dey)
WooWooWoo (Andrew)
Without whom (also):
Ramona P Lovechild
Dombardo
Katherine with a K
Katherine (no relation)
Catherine
Teresa
Corey
Claire
Claire (no relation)
Helsbels
Iain
Toby and Jann
Andrew
Paul, Warren, Dr K and The New Reality
Stephen
Tania
Trevor
