Posts from — June 2006

For the first time in history, there is a chance that a feminist party, with a feminist agenda, will take place in a national parliament. This is a momentous occasion. It is nothing short of a revolution. It is something that could improve the situation of women around the world in many different ways. It would prove that feminism can no longer be ignored in politics.

http://www.feministsupport.com/

feminist initiative party platform

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the feminist initiative in Sweden is running for seats in parliament. to the best of my knowledge, this is the first organized feminist party platform running for elected national office.

AlterNet: The Da Vinci Senator:
“In his dream, America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years — schools, Social Security, welfare — will be privatized or simply done away with,” reads the article. “There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all.”

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this would not be an america….. it would be something else entirely. something like ‘canada’ but with religion.

Fighting the L$ downward spiral – a solution:
Not usually talking about the economy, Gwyn attempts this time to see a possible solution to the L$ inflation, as proposed by some very talented residents of Second Life, and discusses the implications.
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the problem with this system is that it adapts to and accepts devaluation at a very fast pace. what that means is that it could contribute to rapid devaluation of lindens. so what the lindens should do to prevent that is to put pricestop percentages in so if the linden changes down more than say 5% in a day, the price is frozen for 5 days.

the other thing that they should do is create linden sinks, which take lindens out of the market. the best way to do that would be to tax transactions or sales at some some very small rate after 10l. so under 10 linden things are untaxed and over 10 linden a 1% tax which probably should be progressive after 1000 linden to 2%. the sole goal there is to take lindens out of the system. That will stabilize the currency

26 Cheap Camping Tips:
According to the original poster:

These low-cost equipment/ideas/fixes for Scouting and camping in general [were] originally found on a F-Net Scouting board and [were] reposted on Fidonet on Nov 11/92 by Steve Simmons. The file evidently originated with BSA Troop 886 in the USA.

This list is HUGE. Here are my favorite ideas:

Channel lock pliers make good pot holders.
Nylon rope can be used as shoe laces.
Use a large zip lock plastic bag, filled with air, as a pillow.
A plastic bottle makes a good latrine for cold weather camping. (You don’t
have to ‘go’ very far from your sleeping bag). Keep it just outside the tent flap.
Carry several pieces of lumber cut into two-inch squares to summer camp and
use these to level platform, tent, and cot.
Old shower curtains make great ground tarps.
Waterproof matches by dipping them in nail polish.
Waterproof matches by dipping in melted paraffin.
Make fire starters by filling paper condiment cups with saw dust and pouring
paraffin into the cup.
A length of chain and a piece of coat hanger bent into an S-shape will allow
you to hang your lantern from a tree limb.
Keep batteries in prescription bottles.
Prescription bottles also make good match safes.
In fact, prescription bottles (or 35mm file containers) make good storage places for small items of all sorts.
A frisbee will add support to paper plates when the plate is place inside
the frisbee.
Laundry lint makes good tinder.
Keep the water in your canteen cooler by wrapping the canteen in foil.
When it comes time to pack up at the end of a camp, a wet toothbrush, face
cloth and bar of soap wrapped in foil won’t dampen the other things in your
kit.
To prevent batteries from wearing down if a flashlight is accidently nudged
on while you’re traveling, put the flashlight batteries in backwards.
To protect your feet from blisters, smear soap on the inside of your inner
sock at the heel and underneath the toes. Carry along a bar of soap and,
when you feel your feet become tender, give it a try.
To keep mosquitoes away rub the inside of an orange peel on face, arms and
legs.
Wrap fishing gear in foil to keep line from tangling and hooks from rusting.
By lining the compartments of a tackle box with foil, you can prevent rust
damage to plugs and other equipment.
To remove musty smell from canteen, put three teaspoons of baking soda into
the canteen with a bit of water. Swish it around and let sit for an hour,
then rinse out the canteen.
An empty plastic soda bottle, cut off to a convenient height, will work as a
camp bowl. You may want to sandpaper the cut to smooth the edge.
Save inner cardboard tubes from kitchen and toilet rolls, stuff with waste
paper and use as fire-lighters.
Use zip-lock bags for mixing foods, be sure it is closed tight and the top
is held shut before shaking or kneading.
Duct tape can be used to repair most everything on a trip. Use it to patch
tents, mend poles, hold up schedules, patch torn shoes, hold poles for
mosquito nets to cots, etc.
If you like these, check out the entire list

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heck… i use some of these in everyday life….

Chinese Death Van.:

Remember a previous post on Neatorama on mobile gallows in Africa? Well, China took it one step further. Executions there are carried out in a more modern fashion: in a mobile execution chamber inside a “death van” that shuttles from town to town.

Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China “promotes human rights now,” says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van …

From the outside, the vans resemble the police vehicles seen daily on China’s roads. A look inside reveals their function.

“I’m most proud of the bed. It’s very humane, like an ambulance,” Kang says. He points to the power-driven metal stretcher that glides out at an incline. “It’s too brutal to haul a person aboard,” he says. “This makes it convenient for the criminal and the guards.”

Link

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this…. in my mind is going one step too far with the administration of ‘justice’ . the death penalty in the back of a van. i am way of course that this could be fiction… but conceptually it smells of the efficiency run amok and the transition of any pretense of humanitarian values toward the thanatosian .

top three:

These are the three best things I’ve read this week:
1. Jeff Jarvis writes about Bill Gates leaving Microsoft: “The Meaning of Bill”.
2. Guy Kawasaki: “How to Kick Silicon Alley’s Butt”.
3. Paul Graham: “Why Start-ups Condense In America”.
Enjoy.
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i think the guy kawasaki post is the most significant of the three. he focuses on the reality of investing and startups, hits the idea on the head, that idea is ‘people have to have ideas that they want to bring to reality, people shouldn’t be trying to make money’. if you have the idealists with the capacity, then the money will flow. if you don’t have the idealists or the capacity, then you won’t have any real research and development and without research, you only have businesses and business is different from entrepreneurial activity.

In a purr-fect world…:
My friend Kambri just alerted me to a project she worked on called the Meow Mix House, where apparently 10 cats are living right now in complete and utter luxury. I hate to sat it, but I noticed that there are NO BLACK CATS in the house. The reason why I bring this up is because my cat Smitty often protests that most cat food commercials are racist, saying, “Yo, how come that big fluffy WHITE cat gets all the ching-ching and the bling-bling? Where my Fancy Feast at? Oh – is it CUZ I’M BLACK? It’s cuz I’m black!” I always tell him no, it’s because you’re lazy and maybe if you’d start killing some of the cockraoches around here you’d get some wet food as a reward, but he usually just sulks away and starts drinking again…
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cats like beer? my cat doesn’t….

The TV Thing:
As with all TV Things, everything could go horribly wrong. But this is the deal I’ve been waiting for, with people who understand the project and format I want to work in. And you know something’s going right when people in TV are telling you to go more experimental and take more risks. This isn’t your US network tv experience.

I’m writing the pilot at the moment. (And I should particularly thank Joss Whedon and John Rogers for their insights into the process.) More details will hopefully follow as the project progresses. Or, you know, a tearstained screed if it doesn’t.
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this sounds entirely cool

A New Internet2:
The Internet2 high-speed-networking consortium announced today that its new nationwide fiber-optic network will be built by Level 3 Communications Inc. and will be operational in about a year.

Internet2 decided earlier this year not to renew a contract with the telecommunications company Qwest to lease high-speed lines for use in Abilene, the conventional network that Internet2 now provides to colleges. The contract will be allowed to expire in 2007.

The new network, which has the working name of NewNet, would be a competitor to National LambdaRail, a national fiber-optic network operated by a consortium of research-oriented institutions. Merger talks between the two groups collapsed this spring.

NewNet would significantly expand the networking capacity available to scholars and would enable them to set up temporary, high-capacity networking links with ease. (The Chronicle)

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actually to say that it will be a competitor of lamdarail is false. Lambdarail is for experimentation and testing. I2 is the university-research internet. the difference is that occasionally you won’t be able to use lamdarail because someone will be using it for other things. I2 though is generally less research oriented these days and never seems to have experiments outside of normal operations.

Wired 14.06: START:
Day 18: I take the Dell to Best Buy’s Geek Squad and tell a technician that I’m having a bit of trouble with it. Less than four hours later I get a call back from Carla. She declares it a total loss and advises wiping the hard drive and restoring it with system disks. “The tech ran a couple of virus scans,” she says. “One kept beeping so much that he had to just turn it off.” Ah, that’s the stuff.
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this is what happens when you try to infect your computer… if you don’t try it takes less time… the zen of windows…..