Posts from — December 2004

STUFF – STORY – HOME : New Zealand’s leading news and information website: “About 50 supporters watched as the 31-year-old, who was sexually violated by a man earlier this year, painted a 7-metre by 2.5-metre billboard with a plea to parents to tell their sons not to rape, stripped off her clothes and doused herself in red paint. Naked, she huddled beside her artwork like a rape victim. Titled Bitchin Billboard, a board about integrity and truth, the performance art was self-help too, she said.”

(Via .)

——

here, she’d probably be arrested, at least she’s free.

» Alek’s Christmas Lights Webcam: “Use the christmas webcam to view live images of a buncha christmas lights and also CONTROL them – i.e. YOU can turn them ON and OFF via your web browser! The christmas webcam has PAN and ZOOM capability that you can also control. The webcam and webcontrol are ONLY operational between 1800 and 2200 Mountain Time. Each web surfer can only update the webcam 10 times, change the lights 3 times, and play with the pan/zoom 5 times, withen 5 minutes – this limits the load on my server/Internet connection and I’m concerned about the christmas webcam being (ab)used too much and the blinking lights bothering the neighbors!
“

(Via .)

——

weeeeee!

Cowgirl Country and Western: “Rochelle: I really need to redesign that damn blog.
Rochelle: I’m just kind of empty of ideas for it.
Jason: go for a cowgirl country and western thang

*awkward pause*

Rochelle: you scare me sometimes.

Jason: hee hee”

(Via Diary of an Aspiring Librarian.)

just as long as she doesn’t confuse it with the reverse cowgirl look….

Hypertext 3.0: “

I just heard the good news that Johns Hopkins Press will be publishing George Landow’s Hypertext 3.0 next year. V

“

(Via Mark Bernstein.)

—-

cool

Repubs Paid Programmers To Create “Vote Switching” Software: “

Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for ‘vote switching’ software
By Wayne Madsen for the Online Journal.

According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to ‘control the vote.’ At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.

“

(Via On Lisa Rein’s Radar.)

—–

isn’t vote tampering a crime, a very very serious crime?

this is horrible. to disrespect the democracy like this. i would say it is traitorous, it is basically conspiring to commit a coup or very much parallel

FT.com / Arts & Weekend – Dock of the bay: “As this magazine was going to press, a Guantánamo public affairs officer said the combatant status review tribunals were continuing at the camp despite the judge’s ruling. ‘In the meantime, some legal issues are being argued in Federal Court which may or may not ultimately affect this process,’ he added.”

(Via .)

ummm, doesn’t anyone have the power to intervene in these kangaroo courts?

Robbers Scared by GTA: “HellSpam writes ‘Some robbers tried to burglarize a poor old lady and her 3 grandsons. Her grandsons happened to be playing Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas, and the sounds of the police from the game scared them away! From the article: ‘The police in the game were saying, ‘Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police.’ The burglar, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police and panicked … being apprehended by Playstation.’ Now, no more saying games are bad for you…’”

(Via Slashdot.)

——

accidents will happen. though this sounds suspiciously like urban myth.

The Cecil B. DeMille Syndrome: “The Cecil B. DeMille Syndrome. n. 1. Named for the Hollywood director famous for his casts of thousands–The Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, Cleopatra, and many others. 2. The tendency of student writers to begin their essays, no matter how…”

(Via Matthew G. Kirschenbaum.)

—–

i still do this, and i think it is justified to some extent.

Wonder, Delight and Approval: “

A must read: Rep Henry Waxman’s report on The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence- Only Education Programs finding that these curricula, meant for children and adolescents, present “false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health” (including assertions that an abortion will make you sterile and that condoms don’t protect against STDs) and stunningly outdated stereotypes about gender roles. This paragraph from the report made me whoop and then go grimly silent:

“Another curriculum lists ‘Financial Support’ as one of ‘The 5 Major Needs of Women’ and ‘Domestic Support’ as one of ‘The 5 Major Needs of Men.’ The curriculum states: Just as a woman needs to feel a man’s devotion to her, a man has a primary need to feel a woman’s admiration. To admire a man is to regard him with wonder, delight and approval. A man feels admired when his unique characteristics and talents happily amaze her.”

The spirit of Phyllis Schlafly, if you remember her. I’d worked hard to forget.

-RH

“

(Via Girl In the Locker Room!.)

——

one more example of the republican social agenda writ large into the minds of children. the waxman report is a must read for those that think ignorance is a bad thing.

University Instruction as Toilet-cleaning: “

From a student column in the Oregon Daily Emerald:

Students pay teachers to educate us, yet they are then allowed to tell us how much we’re learning. The whole situation seems akin to a boss paying her employee to clean toilets and the employee turning around and telling the employer how much she is or isn’t happy with the cleaning job. If I’m paying someone to do my housekeeping, I’ll be the one to tell the receiver of my hard-earned money exactly how well they did. Shouldn’t it be the same with education?

We are currently paying a large amount of money to attend this University and receive an education. If I have paid to be taught something, shouldn’t there be a repercussion for the teacher rather than, or at least as well as, the student when knowledge has not been taught?

“

(Via Kairosnews – A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy.)

—–

yet one more example of how students don’t know what university is about. of course, it doesn’t help that most parents don’t, and more teachers don’t, and for that matter most everyone doesn’t including universities. there is a great loss of anything other than the symbolic identity and certificatory identity of universities. the norms and traditions and expectations that were implied are slowly withering away.

for me universities are locations where people are supposed to learn, they are libraries and people who foster that learning, and they do not have any specific duty to any specific student for any given amount of money. they have a duty to ensure that students learn material and that learning is guaranteed, but not that they learn, people can fail.